May 23, 2002
The anti-globalization movement continues to gain strength despite the fact that US president George Bush, in the heat of his world anti-terrorist war, is attempting to stamp out any protest against the unjust world economic order. The International Monetary Fund is among the favorite targets of anti-globalization demonstrators around the world, because they view neo-liberalism as a symbol of social injustice.
A recent IMF decision regarding Ecuador confirms the suspicions of labor organizations, ecologists, indigenous peoples and other sectors active in the movement against globalization. The IMF, an international symbol of capitalism, taking advantage of the difficult financial and social situation in which Ecuador finds itself, negotiated a $240 million loan which the lending institution demanded not be used to improve basic services.
The IMF insisted that Ecuador refrain from earmarking just ten per cent of its earnings on the sale of oil to improve its health and education systems. Though the amount involved is paltry, just $11 million in the year 2003 and $40 million in 2006, IMF executives refused to listen to government pleas to improve the lot of the majority of Ecuadorans.
In fact, one of the essential Monetary Fund requirements is that the government reduce social spending to ridiculously low levels and apply drastic fiscal "reforms" like those implemented in Argentina, the consequences of which we are all know. IMF demands, that Ecuador eliminate money earmarked for health and education services, specify that the funds must be reserved only for payment of the foreign debt. If not, credit negotiations will promptly end. Problems between the people and the International Monetary Fund are easy to understand given the numerous campaigns the anti-globalization movement has organized in favor of forgiving the foreign debt and reforming the World Bank and IMF. The huge protest in the US city of Seattle in l999 during the World Trade Organization Meeting there marked the take-off of a movement that gathered more than 50,000 protestors.
The demonstrations in Seattle condemned the WTO, World Bank and International Monetary Fund for turning into the flagships of neoliberal globalization. In the year 2000 more than 20,000 gathered in Washington DC to protest during the IMF and World Bank Assemblies and in 2001 the movement interrupted the holding of the World Social Forum in the Swiss city of Davos, where the world's most powerful and rich had gathered.
Anti-globalization activists were also in New York this year, during the recent meeting of the Davos forum. And they were present in the latest session which was held in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
It is clear that activists the world over are determined to continue denouncing the effects of neoliberal globalization and the work of the international credit agencies in their role as pillars propping up the rich and powerful as they steal the riches and labor from the ever-expanding poor majority.