TPP Negotiators Completely Ignored Public Interest Groups At Last Negotiations
from the they-don't-care dept
We've noted in the past how little the USTR and other country negotiators wanted to hear from various "civil society" or public interest groups during the various negotiating rounds. However, at least they made some attempt to set up "stakeholder engagement" periods, in which concerned organizations could present their arguments. However, it appears that all that went completely out the window at the last negotiations in Singapore. According to a report from Deborah Gleeson, who was there, this time around, those groups were basically shunned entirely:While civil society stakeholders have always had a rather marginal role in the negotiations, at most previous rounds there have been opportunities for academics and NGO representatives to participate formally in the process.Basically, the negotiators confirmed what many people knew was going on all along. Negotiators have never shown any actual interest in taking the concerns of these groups seriously. The meetings have always been for show, and now that it's time to "get down to business" apparently those groups can be ignored entirely.
But the meeting in Singapore had a very different feel. This time stakeholders had no role as participants and no avenues for interacting with negotiators except through personal contacts.
It was clear that ministers were getting down to business. And it was even more difficult than usual to get any information about what was happening.
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Filed Under: civil society, negotiations, public interest, tpp, ustr
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You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty is the complete opposite of 'free trade'
The TPP would strip our constitutional rights, while offering no gains for the majority of Americans. It's a win for corporations
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/19/trans-pacific-partnership-corporate -usurp-congress
Anyone can be a "Venture Capitalist": all it takes is more money than honest laborers could ever set aside out of what they EARN. A lack of conscience is helpful too, but a pile of inherited money is the key.
12:56:06[n-137-6]
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Re: You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
It's still probably going to get reported, but for what it's worth, I think this is one of your better comments.
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Re: You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=tpp
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Aye, there's the rub.
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Re: You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
but what we have now is not democracy. We have documents with laws that we, the public, are expected to be subject to being negotiated by legislators and corporate interests without public awareness over the contents of those documents. That's makes this whole thing even more infuriating.
and if we aren't able to understand the laws then why would they write the laws ambiguously so that the public, being subject to the consequences of these laws, can't understand them? Why not write the laws clearly so that they could be properly and easily interpreted by the public instead of us having to guess how a court may interpret some intentionally obscure poorly defined paragraph that no one knows how a court may interpret?
Also, last minute changes to the laws should be prohibited. Every change should delay the passage of the laws by at least two weeks (depending on how big the change is) to allow the public the opportunity to digest the change and organize a protest. That's what should happen if laws are intended to be written in the public interest. But laws are not intended for the interest of the public. They are intended for the interests of the government-industrial complex. That's why copy'right' lasts way too long and kept getting retroactively extended.
and this nonsense that we can't understand how the laws serve the public interest as well as members of the government-industrial complex is nonsense. We are a better authority over our interests than the government-industrial complex. So why are industry and government discussing laws in secret without inviting us the public?
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Deborah Gleeson is a lecturer in Public Health at La Trobe University.
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And you acting like this is new Mike?
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