The NGO show at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle last week reminds me of the Irishman who, ten minutes after hitching a ride, taps the driver on the shoulder and asks, "you wouldn't be goin' t'other way would ya?" So it was with the likes of Greenpeace and Community Aid Abroad and the Australian Conservation Foundation. They hitched a ride with the WTO in order to showcase their own organisations, which by and large are against free trade and development.
The Greenpeace message came wrapped in a condom, "When practiced responsibly, Safe Trade can prevent various infectious global problems such as poverty, deforestation, desertification, pollution, and the exhaustion of species, natural resources and habitats".
Community Aid Abroad concentrated on the citizens' voice, appealing to "an Australian community standing against global corporate tyranny and the threat posed to democracy, environment, and consumer choice by the WTO".
The ACF wondered whether people would "be forced to eat genetically modified foods without their knowledge, and whether the "mindless free trade agendas" would "undermine the capacity for a nation to properly protect native forests, dolphins and turtles?"
How is it that some interest groups claim a moral superiority over the democratically elected government representatives with whom they compete for public attention and approbation? How can they be right all the time and governments wrong? The fact is they seek to undermine the legitimacy of democracy by suggesting an inherent bias against the dispossessed.
For example, the calendar of events for the NGO's at Seattle was more extensive than for WTO ministers. It included an International Women Workers' forum, A Family Farmers' summit, an Indigenous Peoples' forum, a Peoples' Tribunal, an Ecumenical Worship Service and the one that really caught my eye, "Corporate Accountability: who rules?" The latter begs the question; to who are the NGO's accountable? Do they really represent the people on whose behalf they claim to speak? Certainly the elected representatives of poorer nations do not think so. They resent the impediments that NGO's seek to place on trade, making it harder for these nations to trade their way out of debt.
The WTO consists of 135 member nations, its power derives from the agreement of mostly democratic governments to expand the areas of free trade and resolve trade disputes of member countries in agreed products and services. On what basis can NGO's demand a place at the table alongside the Ministers? Did they win an election of the whole of the people, including women, indigenes, family farmers and the religious? Or do they practice the lazy politics of advocacy?
NGO's consist of mail-order memberships of the wealthy left, content to buy their activism and get on with their consumer lifestyle. These people take out insurance against global capitalism, just in case democratically elected governments fail to tame the beast. The insurance strategy does not entitle them to a place at the negotiating table alongside governments. To do so is to deny governments their legitimacy.
The measure of legitimacy in democracy is an agreed set of procedures for election to ensure a fair contest. Should the same test be applied to NGO's? If groups are to have representation at public forums they should be accountable to their members. NGOs' have a responsibility to their membership for the views they expound on their behalf. The mechanisms by which voluntary associations are held accountable are not visible, the very criticism these organisations level at the WTO.
Governments should not too readily anoint groups that claim to represent interests. They should not cede legitimacy to interest groups. The formal democratic mechanism is being eroded by the status afforded NGO's at government forums. Their claim to a moral superiority is baseless. Governments, of course know this, but nevertheless think they are a useful conduit to voters. That they may be, but they are also irresponsible bodies and must not be given a status they do not warrant.
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