Juffa against free trade push

 By MOUA OMOA

NORTHERN Governor Gary Juffa has rejected a push for free trade in the Pacific region saying neo-liberalism is a hard pill to swallow.

He warned during the recent Pacific parliamentary and political leaders forum in Wellington, New Zealand, against so-called free trade agreements in the Pacific.

“My presentations in the New Zealand parliament to the NZ Finance Minister plus World Bank and IMF officials were well received by many of our fellow Pacific Island leaders who all agreed that liberalisation of trade was not good for the Pacific at all,” he said.

“It in fact stood to create the very poverty the ‘unholy trinity’ of the IMF, World Bank and WTO claim to be attempting to address.”

Juffa told the forum that free trade was a concept promoted by giant corporate interests to open an economy’s doors to a flood of goods from the more powerful economies.

The agreements are also designed to destroy any attempt to become economically independent.

He said developed economies destroyed fledgling manufacturing efforts by the small island states and they removed labour and migration laws which allow the large corporations to basically bring in whoever they want, take over any business they wish and relegate the people of the small island states to observers, spectators and marginalised victims on their own soil.

“I am leading the fight against so called free trade in the Pacific.

“The reason is because it is not free for us.

“We are expected to engage in informal sector activities whereby we are virtually salesmen for junk from foreign economies and create a filthy, unhealthy society of consumerists living in abject poverty and misery, while our wealth will be developed and carted off shore by corporate giants who have secured the services of their governments to suppress and oppress our efforts at true independence under the pretext of free trade,” Juffa said.

Personal invitations were extended to Juffa and other Pacific Island leaders to attend so Pacific issues debated were based on their opinions and not on behalf of their governments.