AMY GOODMAN: And you’re listening to Democracy Now!

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit has ended in the Philippines. President Clinton hailed APEC as a victory, because Pacific Rim nations promised to eliminate many tariffs on computers and telecommunications equipment in the next three years, which could mean billions of dollars in export sales for U.S. companies.

Outside the APEC meeting, however, thousands of demonstrators gathered to protest the impact of global free trade on the world’s poor. One of the organizers of those anti-APEC actions is Walden Bello, chairperson of the International Conveners Committee of the Manila People’s Forum on APEC. He joins us now by phone from the Philippines.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

WALDEN BELLO: Hi. Yes. Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Good morning. Why don’t you tell us what your major problem and what the Manila People’s Forum on APEC’s major criticism of this Asian summit was?

WALDEN BELLO: Well, the major problem that we had with APEC is that it is a mechanism for indiscriminate trade liberalization through the Asia-Pacific region and that we feel that this liberalization of trade, which is very much part of a package of radical free market economics, is going to be quite disturbing and not beneficial at all to the masses of people in the region. It certainly serves the interests of transnational corporations, but it is likely to have fairly devastating effects on farmers, on small and medium enterprises, on workers and on the environment. And we have seen how this sort of radical free market economics has created an economic disaster in Mexico, which — whose GNP declined by about 6.9% last year. And we have seen how what are called structural adjustment programs by the World Bank and the IMF have institutionalized stagnation in Latin America and Africa. And it is examples like this that make a lot of people here wary about the APEC agenda.

The other thing, of course, that many of us in the Asian region fear is that APEC is simply another mechanism that is being utilized by the United States to push its trade objectives, much like it uses Super 301 and Special 301 of the U.S. Trade Act. The big reality to most of us here is that the United States has a deficit — or, in 1995, had a deficit of about $160 billion; $120 billion of that was with the 10 Asian economies. And so, there is a realization in Asia that really APEC is simply a means to try to solve the U.S. trade deficit by opening up Asian markets and turning the trade deficit into a surplus. So, with this new telecommunication — I mean, with this declaration that information technology tariffs would be reduced down to zero by the year 2000 — which, by the way, is not binding — many fears have been heightened about the way that APEC is being utilized as a weapon of trade, particularly for the richer countries like the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s fair to characterize President Clinton’s position as hailing free trade over freedom, when referring to human rights?

WALDEN BELLO: Yes, I would definitely think so. There is this definition that the APEC elites have that they come in APEC as heads of economies, rather than heads of state and heads of countries. And it has been on that basis that President Ramos, for instance, banned José Ramos-Horta, the Nobel Prize winner, from coming to the Philippines to join our parallel conference.

AMY GOODMAN: From East Timor.

WALDEN BELLO: So, there is a —

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I think it’s interesting, Walden Bello, that Anthony Lewis wrote a piece yesterday in The New York Times, an op-ed piece, where he said that President Clinton — it was a piece on East Timor, and said that President Clinton was very careful at APEC not to be photographed with Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia.

WALDEN BELLO: Well, yes, I think that Mr. Clinton, he came here under a cloud of — you know, a lot of articles had been written about his links with the Lippo Group, the Indonesian crony of President Suharto. And yes, I think that was — that there was a major effort to do that. And I agree with you that there is definitely, you know, that stand of free trade over freedom, that has characterized the position of both President Clinton and President Ramos when it comes to — especially when it comes to East Timor. And President Ramos of the Philippines has clearly lost a lot by this banning of Mr. Ramos-Horta of East Timor from coming to Manila.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe what the scene was like there over the weekend with the Manila People’s Forum, with the protesters going on at the same time that APEC was? What did you do?

WALDEN BELLO: Well, let me just say that we had — before the summit, we had the Manila People’s Forum, which drew around 600 delegates from both the Philippines and from throughout the Asia-Pacific region. About 250 came from outside the Philippines. And what we came up with was an alternative — sorry — declaration and plan of action that put equitable development, sustainable development and fair trade in contrast to APEC’s focus on free trade. And shortly after the conference, both the Manila People’s Forum as well as other organizations had sponsored caravans to the former Subic Naval Base, where the summit was being held, and thousands of people went to Subic. And here, they were met by barricades of police that basically had only one thing in mind, to prevent them from going to — from reaching Subic, which is about 60 kilometers away. And —

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, weren’t some leaders in the Philippines arrested before the anti-APEC conference took place?

WALDEN BELLO: Yes, one very prominent labor leader was arrested on some charges that — you know, on criminal charges, but it was clear that the timing of the arrest was — well, the arrest was timed to coincide with trying to put him out of commission during the APEC — during the APEC process.

So, there was all of that, what we might call. curtailment of many freedoms, like the freedom of association, of people being prevented from going to Subic. There was the banning of Mr. Horta from coming to the Philippines. And there was a very tight screen at the Manila International Airport, which turned back a number of delegates coming to the Philippines who were going to attend the Manila People’s Forum. But nevertheless, an international delegation from the forum was nevertheless able to sneak through to Subic Bay. It, in fact, included Lori Wallach of Public Citizen in the U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: Based here in Washington.

WALDEN BELLO: Yeah, based in Washington. And Lori, together with about eight other people, went to Subic the night before, and they evaded that tight security screen. And the next morning, they, in fact, were able then to move and — move into the front gates of Subic, and they were able to deliver to the Philippine government representatives, who grudgingly accepted, the Manila Declaration of the Manila People’s Forum, which expressed fairly strong opposition and condemnation to the sort of free trade liberalization that APEC represents, and put a very strong emphasis on the importance of human rights and economic rights. So, despite a strong security cordon, you know, the representatives of the forum did get through to — and as they had promised that they would be able to deliver a declaration to the 18 heads of state. Now, whether or not the Philippine government distributed that to the other 17 heads of state, or even to President Ramos, we don’t know.

But so, there was a lot of real politics and symbolic politics involved here. And one of the things that has — that was very clear was that you do have a lot of — or, a significant part of the population in this country is very skeptical of the APEC process. There’s a lot of skepticism, if not fear, of the sort of indiscriminate trade liberalization that APEC represents. And there are quite a number of people, you know, that are willing to take the streets to protest the sort of globalization for the few, that you might call it, that is the APEC process.

AMY GOODMAN: Walden Bello —

WALDEN BELLO: Basically, the way APEC is being seen here is that it is a sort of very similar and is an extension of the North American Free Trade Act.

AMY GOODMAN: Walden Bello, I want to thank you very much for joining us, chairperson of the International Conveners Committee of the Manila People’s Forum on APEC. He was speaking to us from the Philippines. I should also say, as they were talking about Subic, that at the same time, another conference took place in the Philippines protesting U.S. bases around the world, from Vieques in Puerto Rico to Panama to Japan to right there in the Philippines.