Demonstratie in de Filippijnen tegen de WTO (24 juli)

Philippine government served notice to
walk away from Doha negotiations

(verslag Joseph Purugganan, Focus on
the Global South)

MANILA. July 24, 2008–Around 200
farmers, fishers and workers staged

back-to-back pickets today in front of
the Department of Trade and Industry

in Makati City and the office of the
National Economic and Development

Authority (NEDA) where they served
notice a special order from the people of

the Philippines to defend the interests
of poor Filipinos in the

negotiations and reiterated their
demand to the President to issue the

marching orders to negotiators to walk
away from an unfair and unjust Doha

deal.

At the Trade office, fisherfolks
leaders assailed the aggresive push of

developed countries for an ambitious
tariff reduction formula in the NAMA

negotiations that would effectively  reduce the Philippines tariff rates by

as much as 50%. They also assailed the
relentless effort to limit the

flexibilities for developing countries
with the maneuver of linking the

issue of the coefficient with the
flexibilities.  Fishers also bewailed the

push for sectoral negotiations on
fisheries as an attempt to fast track even

further the liberalization of the
fisheries sector. Kilusang Mangingisda

(Fisherfolk Movement) reiterated their
call WTO out of Fisheries.

At the Socio-Economic Planning office,
the agency in-charge of the services

negotiations for the Philippines,
workers and anti- privatization activists

deplored the attempts by the US and EU
to speed up the liberalization of the

services sector by way of the signaling
conference. They demanded that the

Philippine negotiatiors side with
Bolivia,Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in

rejecting the latest proposals for a
new services text.  The leaders also

took the opportunity to
"welcome" incoming Director General of the NEDA

former Senator Ralph Recto.