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YB Dato’ Sri Mustapa Mohamed Your government, our elected representatives, say the TPPA you are negotiating will be a 21st century trade agreement. For us, a 21st century agreement must address the challenges that will shape our livelihoods, communities and our planet over the next ninety years - climate change, financial instability, food sovereignty, energy scarcity, pandemics, insecurity, inequality and poverty, and constraints on corporate greed. Instead, we understand that the proposed TPPA would intrude far behind our national borders to not only restrict our financial regulation and grant new rights for foreign investors, but also limit how things like healthcare, energy, natural resources and culture will be regulated; how our tax dollars may be spent; what sort of food safety and labelling will be allowed; whether medicines will remain affordable; and more. What you are proposing and the way it is being negotiated are undemocratic and hypocritical. First, a TPPA would bind our domestic policies and laws for decades ahead; even when the government changes its policy in future or faces new realities, its hands will be tied. Second, Third, you are conducting these negotiations in secret. A more transparent TPPA process would provide some basic safeguards against errors and identify risks that may not be apparent to negotiators and the government. It could also help convince people that a TPPA really will replace the past trade pact models that benefitted and privileged special interests and multinational firms. The reason commonly given for needing to keep the negotiating texts secret is that greater transparency would undermine negotiations. But this presumes that your proposals would not survive the sunshine of scrutiny. Even the World Trade Organization (WTO), hardly renowned as a bastion of transparency, now posts country documents and negotiating texts on its website for scrutiny. If politicians and negotiators cannot convince the public through robust, open and informed debate about what you are proposing in our name, the talks should not proceed. We are demanding, at a minimum, that the Malaysian
Government proposes to all the other the TPPA negotiating parties at
the forthcoming negotiations in 1) Create and maintain a public website which governments and civil society can post information and participate as equals in a dialogue and debate; 2) Post the draft
text of each chapter as it is completed to open them to expert and public
scrutiny. Given the global financial crisis, the perfect starting point
is the texts on investment and financial services, completed in the
December 2010 3) Post countries’ position papers on specific subjects that are tabled during negotiations; 4) Guarantee that all civil society has equal access to information and engagement with the process, regardless of whether they are supportive or critical of the proposed agreement. Failure to agree to such transparency and allow for open debate will further discredit the TPPA negotiating process and strip any negotiated text of legitimacy. Thank you for your kind attention. Yours sincerely,
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