Developing Nations Live in Fear of Economic Terrorism: Mahathir
"While the rich fear the terrorists, the poor, too, live in fear.
They live in fear of the predatory rich bent on taking over their economies and their countries.
"What I say is not an exaggeration or alarmist; globalization and free trade along with democracy are being touted as the saviors of the world and, in particular, the poor. But our experience till now is that we are being destabilized and robbed," he said in his keynote address at the banquet of the sixth biennial Langkawi International Dialogue (LID) 2002 at Mahsuri International Exhibition Center at Padang Matsirat, in Malaysia's northen island resort of Langkawi, on Thursday night.
Some 400 government and business leaders, their spouses and young entrepreneurs are attending the four-day dialogue aimed at creating smart partnership to enhance security and prosperity for development.
They include Ghanaian President John A. Kufour, Kyrgz President Askar Akayev, Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Bethuel Mosisili, Mauritian Prime Minister Aneerood Jugnauth, Namibian President Dr Sam Najumo, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, Swaziland King Mswati III and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
Twenty-one media representatives from Smart News Networking (SNNI) will discuss and give an update on various issues with leaders of the participating countries.
The SNNI comprises senior journalists from Malaysia and Africa.
It offers a medium where Malaysians and participating members in Africa can have access to each other in the area of news and information.
The SNNI was launched to disburse news from Malaysia and Southern Africa such as from Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
Dr Mahathir has hit out at the international media and liberal Western countries which work hard to undermine new, developing democracies even to the extent of supporting efforts to overthrow governments.
They could not bring themselves to believe that the people in these countries had democratically elected their governments, said the prime minister. He said: "If the countries were stable and doing well, the international media and Western countries would accuse the leaders as being dictators."
Dr Mahathir said countries were being told to open up their economies to foreign participation, adding that there was no doubt that foreign direct investments (FDIs) in industrial production had created jobs and increased the wealth of the poor.
"Malaysia has greatly benefited from FDI. But now the rich are competing with the poor to attract FDI. They are providing land and capital free to foreign firms, including those from the newly developing countries, to site their plants in the rich countries," he said.
"The failure to set up plants in their countries can mean all kinds of non-tariff barriers and discrimination.
The result is not an inflow of capital to the poor countries but starvation of FDI and even outflow of capital," he said.
"One rich country was able to attract a major investment away from Malaysia by offering U.S.$200 million to the corporation apart from other perks. There is no way Malaysia can offer anything like this," he said.
He said about 50 years ago, many of the colonies of Western countries won independence but quickly realized that they had gained nothing. He said economic pressure was used to deny real independence for these countries, adding that it was Indonesia's President Sukarno who first recognized this and called it "neo-colonialism."
"He was laughed at by the world. But today economic pressure has replaced the gunboat to threaten independent countries. Just as in the colonial era, the regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America were unable to defend themselves. Today the newly independent countries are unable to defend themselves.
"They are terrified of being colonized once again through economic pressure coupled with the propaganda of the media," Dr Mahathir said.
"Only economic terrorism is made out to be legitimate and to be deserving of support by everyone," he added.
He said to fend off economic terrorism, countries must first understand what was hitting them.
"Then we must work together within our borders and between our countries. We are weak and we are client states, dependent on aid and loans. But it is still possible to take a common stand to fight off the threat," Dr Mahathir added.
The prime minister said it was not that globalization and the free market were bad, but the interpretations of these ideas that were bad.
"If we come up with a proper interpretation, with proper safeguards for us, which recognize our weakness and our need for time, then globalization and the free market can help us achieve economic growth and maintain our independence. It is entirely possible to do this," he said.