For a Brighter World
UNITE TO STOP THE MAI!
Following is the text of a joint statement issued by 57 communist parties, including CPI (ML), various unions and progressive organisations against the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The opposition to the MAI has also been steadfastly growing all over the world. While at the same time the U.S. and other OECD governments are aggressively promoting it. This will come to a head in October 1998 at the Ministerial Meeting of the OECD.
The proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), currently being negotiated by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries but intended as an investment regime for the entire world economy, poses a colossal threat to the democratic and social rights of workers and peoples of all countries and to the national sovereignty of all states.
It is an outrage that such an international treaty, which would be binding on governments and take precedence over the domestic laws and national interests of almost every country, has been negotiated behind closed doors and purposely shielded from the world’s peoples for more than two years.
According to its promoters, the MAI would become the new "constitution of a single global economy", one firmly under the control of the most powerful transnational corporations and international banking and financial institutions. It would constitute a qualitative leap in the imperialist-driven "globalization" process that has already led to increased economic instability and disparities between countries, and caused growing unemployment, poverty and other hardships for working people, and the loss of social rights and services.
The main purpose of the MAI is to grant complete capital mobility to global corporate interests. Under its terms, transnationals would have the unfettered right to penetrate national markets at will, free from regulations or "performance guarantees" applied by national governments.
Such an investment regime would fundamentally undermine the ability of states to determine national economic development objectives, to maintain and improve labour standards, to control the utilization of precious natural resources, to prevent privatization and expand collective and social forms of ownership, and to preserve the environment.
It would effectively eliminate the democratic and sovereign right of peoples and their governments to determine their collective national destinies, and would accelerate the downward leveling of social and economic rights in all countries.
International agreements to regulate common and mutually advantageous trade between countries are urgently required, but the MAI and similar initiatives, which provide a virtual carte blanche to the most powerful private corporate concerns, would take the global economy in a dangerous, anti-democratic direction.
Growing popular opposition to the MAI around the world, combined with competitive rivalries and differences between some of the leading capitalist states, has already forced a crisis in the MAI negotiating process. Despite the current impasse and the six-month postponement of the signing, powerful imperialist interests led by the United States are continuing to press for adoption of the main components of the MAI, either through the World Trade Organization (WTO) or by amendment to the Basic Rules of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
We therefore call on the labour movement and democratic forces in all countries to maintain and intensify their united efforts to prevent the ratification of the MAI by their governments in any form believing that there can be no compromise on a basically anti-working class agreement. We reject the drive by the transnational corporations for maximum profits and global dictatorship. We propose alternative economic policies which place primary importance on meeting the needs and aspirations of the people, protect the environment and maintain the independence and sovereignty of all nation states, as opposed to the global corporate drive for maximum profit.