|
|
Change Your Life! |
Asian Development Bank latest victim of protests, new scrutiny |
|
News
|
May 10, 2000
CHIANG MAI, MAY 9 (AP) - The Asian Development Bank has become the latest victim of protests and new scrutiny that has dogged the big multilateral economic institutions since the World Trade Organization's debacle in Seattle last year.
The bank concluded a three-day annual meeting Monday in a luxury hotel that resembled an armed camp, ringed by an estimated 2,000 riot police to keep out perhaps 1,200 mostly poor Thais demonstrating with emotion - but not violence - that bank-funded projects have ruined their lives.
Meanwhile, the United States, which has a 13 percent stake in the bank, signaled during the meeting that it is not prepared to put up more money in a new capital increase, saying the bank should make better use of the funds it already has.
The refusal put Washington and some similarly minded European members of the board of governors on a collision course with Japan, which also has a 13 percent stake and dominates the bank's management.
The differences were papered over in end-of-conference notes issued by Tadao Chino, the bank's Japanese president, saying that governors had agreed to go ahead with a study of the bank's resources and needs, while also agreeing the institution needed to be more efficient.
But whenever the results come up for discussion, the study will bristle in Washington, which urged the bank to be more selective in the loans it makes to developing countries and to not compete with lending that would be better made by the private sector.
"The study will take some time and be the basis of future discussions," Chino told the closing news conference.
The bank's mission is to reduce poverty in Asia, where it says some 900 million people live on less than one U.S. dollar a day. Critics charge it with being more comfortable with doing deals with governments and big business than consulting with the people it intends to help.
The same kind of criticism has been leveled in protests over the past six months against the WTO, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank - the international economic institutions on which the ADB is modeled.
Edwin M. Truman, the U.S. Treasury's assistant secretary for international affairs, told the board Sunday that "we must find concrete ways to strengthen popular participation."
The point was driven home in daily protests outside the Westin Hotel, besieged by protesters at times numbering as many as 4,000. Some 2,000 riot police were deployed to contain them, but there were no serious clashes. Fire trucks with water cannon on standby were parked next to Mercedes-Benz cars and tour buses ferrying the delegates.
Many of the demonstrators came from a coastal area south of the capital, Bangkok, where the ADB is helping fund a mammoth wastewater treatment plant to clean up pollution from barely regulated industries that sprouted up over the years.
The villagers who will have it their backyard make their living mostly from fishing and farming. They say the facility's proximity will unjustly punish them for a mess they didn't make.
The ADB claims that millions of people will benefit but has admitted its consultations with the villagers were poor.
The protesters demanded that the ADB stop funding the project and, echoing anti-globalization protests, cease making loans that increase the indebtedness of poor countries or harm farmers and the poor in the name of financial restructuring and reform.
Chino, who subsequently said his schedule was "too hectic," sent them a letter Sunday, promising the bank would study their demands and meet their leaders in June.
The protesters denounced it as a stall and said they wanted a better answer Monday, before the bank packed up from this northern Thai city and went home.
On Monday, they got the same letter. They burned it, lit firecrackers and dispersed, a few hours before the delegates started heading back to their home countries.
Weeraporn Sopa, 33, leader of confederation of farmers from Thailand's poor northeast, said the demonstration built on the protests he attended in Seattle last year.
"I have to warn the ADB and organizations like it they should listen to us," Weeraporn said. "When you still have a conscience, you can control the streets."
|