Sleepless in Bangkok

Thai officials are in a quandary on how to contain the expected massive protests that could ruin the weeklong U.N. Conference on Trade and Development meetings that starts in Bangkok Saturday. The UNCTAD meetings would be held in the shadow of the tumultuous protest riots that disrupted the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle last year.

But the protesters, both from Third world and wealthy countries, have descended on Bangkok and have announced they would defy police restrictions to send their concerns across. For Thai officials, that’s enough a threat to make them lose sleep, just like in Seattle. For one, securing a high-level international trade conference is a lot more complicated in a country like Thailand, which is burdened by Asia’s most notorious traffic jams and has seen recent sieges by Myanmar rebels seeking protection in Thai territory. Thai officials have thrown a tight security net around the Queen Sirikit Convention Center, the venue of the meetings. Police bomb squads are checking car trunks and undersides and security teams on boats are patrolling a nearby man-made lake. About 3,000 officials from some 180 nations are attending the meetings.

The UNCTAD, wary of the WTO’s troubles in Seattle, has invited representatives from non-government groups, some of which joined the Seattle protests, to the UNCTAD meetings. The Thai government also will confine demonstrations to a park about two kilometers from the meetings’ venue and fill the space between with riot police.

But the Battles in Seattle have set a precedent that would hound, in the years to come, the closed-door meetings of wealthy nations dictating the terms of trade in this planet. Protesters from different countries have realized they could effectively band together and cause the collapse of an important WTO summit, notwithstanding the acrimony between rich and poor nations that also partly blocked a successful outcome of the meetings in Seattle. That could be a dangerous mix for free trade.

Opponents have long warned that a globalized free trade under the helms of the world’s most powerful nations, like a powerful tornado, could crush smaller, limping economies on the wayside. Third world countries are slowly realizing that there is some truth to the protest shouts reverberating in the streets and the writings on the walls. They should know. Asia, for example, saw how some of its most promising economy collapse like dominoes in the face of the greedy games played by foreign funds and currency speculators. It unraveled the weaknesses and vulnerability of Asian financial systems prompting countries in the region to be wary of international trade agreements that could further open up to potential abuses and undermine their economies.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself has warned that global free trade might not benefit all countries. The Associated Press reported in a recent dispatch about a draft report to be presented in the UNCTAD meetings, which confirmed Annan’s fears.

“The income gap between the developed and the developing countries has grown wider,” it says. “Many developing countries … have been unable to benefit from the globalization process. They risk being further marginalized.” Even worse, it says, income inequality has risen within developing countries while job security has fallen.

The UNCTAD report says many of the WTO tariff reductions do favor industrialized countries, while a “significant” number of goods produced by developing countries remain blocked by high tariffs. Still, the UNCTAD report says that free trade will offer a lot of benefits to all countries in the world.

The UNCTAD has tried to hear out the gripes of poorer countries in discussing free trade but it has remained just a talk shop that is incapable of putting up a challenge to the power of the WTO, which issues binding trade rules and hangs threatening trade sanctions on the heads of those who would dare violate them.

The attendance in the UNCTAD meetings in Bangkok mirror the way rich nations regard the irreverence posed by UNCTAD participants to their rules. While Thailand has called for the participation of Western leaders in the Bangkok meetings, many western countries are only sending middle-level functionaries. In contrast, at least eight heads of state from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which were ravaged by the financial crisis, are attending.

ASEAN leaders have traditionally been circumspect about their individual concerns. After the crisis that tore through the region like a scythe, ASEAN leaders now want to give the world a piece of their mind.