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The Millenium Development Goals have failed! - The World Bank and the Indonesian government must be held responsible
Papernas Statement - March 29, 2007
[The following statement was to be presented during action by the National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas) at the Hotel Shangri-La in Jakarta on March 29 to protest a meeting on the Millenium Development Goals and the newly passed Foreign Investment Law. The action however failed to go ahead after a convoy of buses bringing in Papernas members for the demonstration was attack by members of the Islamic Defenders Front. Translated by James Balowski.]
The Millenium Development Goals (MDG) were born out a response or panic by the advanced countries and international donor institutions as a consequence of the failure of their neoliberal economic policies that have been forced onto Third World countries such as Indonesia. These economic policies have been proven to have bankrupted many nations and further increase the gap between the small number of rich and the billions of poor. This is the reason that after five years, the eight targets of the MDG to eliminate poverty by the year 2015 as declared by 189 of the poorest countries have shown absolutely no signs of success.
Over these five years, the MDG have failed to reduce the maternal mortality rate of the 500,000 women that die per year in the poor countries. The MDG have also done little for the 827 million people that will be living in extreme poverty in the next 10 years, the 50 countries that have become even poorer or countries that risk falling into poverty within the next 35 years (The Human Development Report: 2005).
At first glance the MDGs appear promising: as if poverty in the Third World countries is an illness that has to be treated by a cure provided by the governments of advanced countries, those who hold the right of veto at the United Nations. So they oversaw the birth of the MDGs to “assist” the poor nations with the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank (ADB) that in their mercy have funded various MDG projects through schemes such new loans or debt swaps.
But how can these false improvements confront the reality that the world economic order at this time is causing massive losses to the poor countries. An economy that is has resulted in 2.5 billion (40 percent) of the world’s people living on less than US$2 a day and sharing in only 5 percent of the worlds total income, while 54 percent of global income ends up in the pockets of just 10 percent of the richest people in the advanced capitalist countries. The poor countries must bear the burden of massive foreign debts while the foreign capitalists in the advanced countries take control the natural resources that should be used to bring prosperity to the people.
It is this globalisation of neoliberal economics that instead of globalising prosperity has globalised poverty. Which has facilitated a new colonialism through the enforcement of conditions to facilitate investment and free trade, cause the natural wealth of Third World countries to be completely owned by foreigners (the US, Japan and Europe) and the profits flow into the pockets of foreigners, ensure the free entry foreign goods (the import of rice, textiles and other consumer goods), the cutting of subsidies for food, education and healthcare, the selling off of state own industries (Telkom, the state water and electricity companies) including educational institutions (universities) to private foreign investors resulting in them becoming ever more expensive as each day goes by. This is the source of the suffering of farmers, workers and the poor throughout the world, which has already bankrupted many countries in Latin America.
The MDG are a falsehood and lie because the target countries continue to be forced to pay off their foreign debts that should be used to create prosperity. The MDG cannot be achieved because governments are required to sell of state owned enterprises (BUMN) to foreigners. The MDG are nothing more than an illusion because foreigners own the produce from the exploitation of our natural resources. Moreover the World Bank and the ADB provide us with new loans to fund the MDG, which sooner or later we will also have to pay off.
The main obstacle to the achievement of the MDG is the burden of foreign debt and foreign control of poor countries’ natural resources. For as long as this remains the case there will be no solution, and the MDG will remain nothing more than window dressing (or a way for governments to wash their hands of the problem) and will be unable to change the structural causes of poverty. Without abolishing the foreign debt, the MDG achieve little more than enabling those poor countries that are not yet bankrupt to continue to paying off their foreign debt.
The Indonesian government has no courage, the people must fight
The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla and the traditional political parties in the House of Representatives (DPR) has obediently continued to accept new loans, pay off the foreign debt and allow control of the country’s natural resources to fall into the hands of foreigners. This is the reason that the programs of the MDG have no basis and are impossible to attain. The Yudhoyono government like all of its predecessors, including the parties that won the elections have all submitted to and been ready to become accomplices in economic policies that facilitate the creation of a new colonialism. All of them have fought to become agents for the foreign domination of the Indonesian economy. They have never voiced any objections to and never truly struggled for the emergency demands in the MDG to improve the people’s welfare.
So, it is not therefore surprising that a report on MDG achievements that was compiled by the ADB and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) dated October 16, 2006 stated that Indonesia is one of the countries along with Bangladesh, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines that been the least successful in achieving the MDG.
Indonesia’s pro-neoliberal macro-economic policies do not provide the basis for the MDG to succeed. The World Bank is one of the institutions that must be held responsible for the failure of the MDG in Indonesia, because the World Bank is the party that has most aggressively forced Indonesia to implement policies to deregulate the market that have in practice contradicted the ideals of the MDG.
Because of this therefore, the National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas) along with all those struggling for the welfare of the poor, calls in the World Bank to:
Jakarta, March 29, 2007
National Liberation Party
of Unity (Papernas)
This statement is also supported by the Poor People’s Union (SRMK), the Poor Peoples Coordinating Post of Struggle (Popram), the National Student League for Democracy (LMND), the Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggle (FNPBI), the Indonesian Transportation Trade Union for Struggle (SBTPI) and the Mahardhika National Women’s Network.
SBY-Kalla have failed to achieve the MDG – Just some of the evidence