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www.ftamalaysia.org/file_dir/52575805145fa6188865a2.doc

PEOPLE'S PROTEST AGAINST FTA
MEMORANDUM TO
THE MALAYSIAN CABINET MINISTERS
Mach 14th , 2007

NO TO FTA ,
STOP THE MALAYSIA - US FTA NEGOTIATION NOW
We the citizens of Malaysia , converging from all the states representing the various sectors : farmers , padi planters , small traders , workers , smallholders , fishermen , landless people , urban dwellers , religious groups , rural workers , media practitioners , youth , women , artists , students , academicians , health workers, cooperatives members, citizens organizations , political activist , NGOs from the environment , consumer , cultural , health , human rights and educational groups , private and public workers , rally here today in front of the Prime Minister's Department , to demand that the Cabinet Ministers who are meeting today , to halt the Malaysia -US FTA negotiation and withdraw all the Malaysian officials from the negotiation table.
We understand that the Cabinet will be making a decision soon on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States.
The People's Protest Against FTA rally today urges the Government not to continue with the negotiations.
The FTA will have a dire impact on the sovereignty of the country as our own national policies will be decided by a foreign nation which will dictate according to its interest. This is in effect selling off our hard won independence to another country.
We confirm that the benefits to our country are not clear at all while the costs from the FTA will be very high.
The Government will lose its ability to maintain many key present policies and make new policies. Prevailing social arrangements will be adversely affected as the FTA may cause tensions in Malaysian society.
The implementation of the 9th Malaysia Plan and its success will also be threatened. This means that our national development policies will be dictated by the US rather than by our own Malaysian government. The FTA in essence will hamper our country's development since any development that is in contradiction to the FTA will need to be amended even if it is not in our national interest.
The FTA will even have a severe impact on the implementation of our national development projects. If in the process of awarding projects to companies is found to violate certain provisions in the FTA, the government could be sued by a US company and the implementation of the projects could be suspended or even ceased.
We also affirmed that through the FTA, national companies will have a lesser share of the government projects as US companies will be able to bid for more and more of the available projects offered. The government will not be able then to award special treatment to national companies own by bumiputeras or otherwise and thereby defeat the whole purpose of achieving ethnic balance amongst national companies drawn by the NEP.
Malaysian companies will be unable to compete with giant US firms and banks. With a competition law that allows uncontrolled race to acquire the biggest share of the market , only big companies from the US will monopolize and rip the maximum benefit , living even Malaysian GLC unprotected.
Since the FTA forces our trade and investment to be opened up, the Government will be unable to continue supporting local firms and products. As a consequence with the reduced share of local investors, jobs will be eliminated and unemployment will rise.
Worse, consumers will have to suffer higher prices of medicines and pay higher costs for information and digital products due to tighter intellectual property laws.
In fact the FTA will undermine our policies to protect the environment and our public health. The US even wants to dictate our environmental and health policies to fit their interest under the guise of free trade.
The US is imposing through the FTA that Malaysia will not be allowed to have a GMO labeling requirement for consumers to make their choice. The US push for voluntary labeling will incapacitate the Malaysian government to put a control in the market on all the US GMO products with health risk to the public.
Within the clause of "most favored nation" which will be part of the FTA , Malaysia will be forced to give all other countries in the FTA equal treatment that is given to the US. This will further deteriorate our sovereignty on our national policies.
In trade, Malaysia may also lose out as we open our markets. This will affect our rice, tobacco and chicken farmers, as well as industrial companies such as the national motorcar industry. Under UPOF, our farmers will be forced to buy seeds from big companies which will keep them under the control of the companies.
After the Singapore FTA with the US came into force in January 2004, the Singapore trade deficit with the US has increased from USD1.4 billion in 2003 to USD4.3 billion in 2004, USD5.5 billion in 2005 and USD6.9 billion in 2006.

There is therefore no reason for Malaysia to sign an FTA with the US nor to continue with the negotiations as it is very costly to do so.
Malaysia can maintain positive and better trade and economic relations with the US without an FTA.
With the above expectations we are not convinced by the assurance announced by the government that the interest of the country will be protected. Negotiating with the US for an FTA to us is a high risk attempt and a gamble that would wipe out 5 decades of independence through a globalized liberal free market economy.
Negotiating for an FTA with the US to us is a sell out of our national sovereignty. The fate of the 25 million people of this country cannot be gambled away by an agreement which binds its future to a foreign nation.
What the Cabinet will eventually decide on this contentious issue of an unjust trade agreement will be a testimony to the victimized generations to come. We shall not allow this to happen.
We rally here today to call on all the elected representatives of the people that have been mandated to hold high positions as Ministers to :
1. Call off the FTA negotiation.
2. Reject any attempt by any foreign country to dictate our own trade policies.
3. To exercise transparency in all international treaties and agreements undertaken by government officials.
4. To allow enough public feedback on any international commitments that affects the livelihood of the people..
5. Save guard national institutions especially those that affects the daily livelihood of the people from been controlled or monopolized by foreign corporations.

Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid


IPN: Rice versus reason as farmers protest against FTA
http://www.policynetwork.net/main/artic ... cle_id=761

29 June 2007

Rice versus reason as farmers protest against FTA
2006-08-03
Philip Stevens and Alec van GelderSouth Korea's rice farmers are not just famous for their unique sticky rice. They are also fast developing a reputation for being politically sticky opponents of free trade negotiations. The amplified rhetoric and vested interest of such groups is holding up a new Free Trade Agreement with the US that would not just be good for their country, but for the whole region. The stunts of these subsidy-addicted farmers make good photo-opportunities (they jumped into Hong Kong harbour at the WTO meeting last year) but they detract attention away from the benefits the other 90 per cent of South Koreans would get from opening their economy. And, as Thailand and Malaysia start FTA negotiations with the US, it is important that vested interests there do not threaten those talks too.

Anti-trade activists present trade as a zero-sum game, in which economic gains for one country are a loss for others. In fact, free trade increases wealth overall by lowering prices, creating jobs, opening new markets and compelling companies to compete by developing better products. In the early 1960s, South Korea was poorer than Ghana _ now, with 70 per cent of the South Korean economy reliant on international trade, it is hard to believe that the country is questioning the merits of free trade.

Despite many restrictions, trade between South Korea and the US in 2005 reached an enormous $84 billion (3.18 trillion baht), but this could shoot up by 13 per cent in the short term alone under this pact. According to the government-backed Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (Kiep), the South Korean economy could expand by as much as 2.27 per cent a year under the FTA.

But the estimated benefits would be slashed by a quarter if South Korean rice farmers succeed in excluding agricultural produce. The rice farmers will be okay, though: They get 63 per cent of their income in subsidies from the South Korean taxpayer.

Pharmaceuticals are another area of contention in Asian FTAs. Many governments impose restrictions on the types of imported medicines that may be reimbursed by their own public health authorities, in order to protect domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers from foreign competition.

Another devastating affliction on poor people in the region are the real barriers imposed by Asian governments in the form of punitive tariffs on imported medicines -- as much as 18 per cent in the case of Thailand.

If these and other barriers can be reduced, not only would it make modern medicines cheaper for consumers, it would expose the sluggish local pharmaceutical industries to competition. Improved IP (intellectual property) protection standards would incentivise these industries to develop useful new drugs themselves instead of relying on state protection to simply copy foreign products -- a process that has already begun in India, which enacted a new patent law in 2005. In this way, the health of the people and the economy would improve in a virtuous circle.

The creative industries are another case in point. One of the more controversial aspects of this FTA is a reduction in South Korea's quotas for local films, allowing more foreign films to be screened. The local industry relentlessly attacks this, claiming its status deserves protection for cultural reasons.

South Koreans are still likely to watch domestic content but a more competitive market would drive South Koreans and the US to invest more in catering to what local people actually want -- instead of what the government thinks they should want.

Put differently, this will finally enable South Koreans -- rather than South Korean bureaucrats -- to choose which movies they watch. The promise of competition has already empowered South Korean directors to take more risks. International blockbusters like Wang-ui namja (The King and the Clown) and Oldboy are the result.

A free market offers South Koreans what years of protection never could: Better movies, more valuable jobs and greater choice.

Leaving the convincing numbers aside, there is only one way for the emerging economies of Asia to play a bigger role in the global economy -- that is to compete with the world's best and brightest. South Korean entrepreneurs constantly prove their worth in spheres such as electronics and the automotive industry, but other vibrant industries will never emerge from behind a protective wall of tariffs.

In South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia, FTAs offer the best hope of progress. With the Doha round of multilateral trade talks ending in failure, the World Trade Organization (WTO) may no longer be a relevant forum for trade liberalisation. Any WTO member -- ranging in size from China to Togo -- can scupper an agreement. In contrast, an FTA has only two parties, making a mutually satisfactory deal more likely.

Finally, greater economic and trade ties also make strategic sense. As authoritarian China begins to flex its muscles in the region, it makes sense for East and Southeast Asian nations to seek the stability and interdependence provided by increased trade and prosperity. The pressure will then be on other governments to forge greater ties not just with the US but, at least as importantly, with each other. Bilateral deals are a step in the right direction, but multilateral deals are much, much better.

And the more China can be brought into free trade deals, the more it will find economic freedoms to be in its own self-interest and the more its growth will benefit its neighbours.

South Korea needs this FTA, but the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) must also achieve real internal free trade instead of just talking about it, as it has for the last 15 years. The whole region needs to boost prosperity and cement strategic alliances with the interdependence of free trade. The benefits for Asia are too important to be derailed by special interest lobbies.

Philip Stevens and Alec van Gelder are analysts at the International Policy Network, a development think-tank based in London.



Click here: [Ip-health] Bloomberg: S Korea Deploys 100,000 Police Against FTA Protesters
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Bloomberg: S Korea Deploys 100,000 Police Against FTA Protesters
Mike Palmedo mpalmedo@cptech.org

Wed Jul 12 10:56:02 2006

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S. Korea Deploys 100,000 Police Against Protesters (Update2)
July 12 (Bloomberg) -- The South Korean government deployed 100,000
police officers in downtown Seoul today as thousands of workers
demonstrated against trade negotiations with the U.S.

About 30,000 protesters clashed with 15,700 riot police in front of the
Seoul City Hall at 5 p.m. local time, authorities said. Police fired
water cannons trying to disperse the crowd who retaliated by shaking
police buses that had been set up as barricades. Central Seoul faces
severe traffic jams because of the protests and torrential rain.

The demonstrations came mid-way through talks in the city that are the
second round of negotiations between the U.S. and South Korea for a $29
billion free-trade agreement. An evening media briefing by Ambassador
Kim Jong Hoon, South Korea's chief negotiator, was postponed until tomorrow.

The U.S. wants South Korea to open its rice market and expand access to
the auto and pharmaceutical industries, while South Korea wants rice
excluded from the accord. The Korean Alliance Against Korea-U.S. FTA had
called for a 100,000-strong march in the capital. As darkness fell, riot
police lined the barricaded roads around the presidential Blue House.

Earlier in the day, members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions,
decked in rain coats against the rain, took over the roof of the Dong-a
Ilbo newspaper's Ilmin Newspaper Museum at a central downtown
intersection. They draped the building with banners calling for an end
to trade negotiations with the U.S. and equal rights for temporary workers.

Unions on Strike

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which claims 63,000 members at
major companies such as Hyundai Motor Co., said its members will be on
strike today. It encouraged its members to join the demonstration.

The Ministry of Labor said about 74,000 workers had joined the one-day
strike, with members of the less militant labor group Federation of
Korean Trade Unions also participating.

``We are sick of the government's propaganda that the free- trade
agreement with the U.S. is the only way forward,'' Kim Jin In, the
Alliance's spokesman, said before the rally began. ``We plan to show our
strength during today's rally, be there rain or shine.''

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler and Korea's Kim are
leading the talks. They hope to reach an agreement by year's end so it
can be ratified before President George W. Bush's trade authority expires.

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