A momentous election produced a historic verdict in the United States last week. It catapulted an African-American — Barack Hussein Obama — to the highest job in Washington for the first time since the US was founded over two centuries ago. Obama’s victory marked a decisive turnaround in the US and global politics and its impact will continue to dominate political discourse for years to come.
He galvanised American society by the sheer strength of his political slogans — “its time for a change” and “yes, we can.” This is not to deny the effect of the worsening economic and political conditions on the electorate. Indeed, they had a much bigger impact than what Obama could have achieved through his own mobilisation. In a way, the US has turned out to be a failed state (economic crisis and Katrina) during the last eight years due to the miserable governance of President George W Bush. “Two wars launched, but neither over; a climate incrementally and alarmingly hotter [because of the refusal to enter into the Kyoto protocol]; the worst financial crisis in a century; treaties torn up; torture rationalised; detainees who disappear beyond judicial reach; the rule of international law weakened; enemies emboldened, allies undermined,” said The Guardian in its leader on the seismic events that have shaken the world in the past eight years.
Just when the world is celebrating the advent of a “transformational” leader, members of the World Trade Organization too have been provided with an opportunity to find an “Obama-like” figure to govern their trade body. The current incumbent, Pascal Lamy, will complete four years of his tenure next year and the search has begun for his replacement. He is the fifth director general since the WTO was established in 1995.
Prior to that, the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) used to be manned by officials who were never trade ministers. But those faceless officials — the famous one being the late Arthur Dunkel who was popularly known for the Dunkel draft which became the Final Act for the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1993 — had quietly produced dramatic results without being in the public gaze. These very officials were the backbone of agreements hammered out during eight rounds of successful global trade negotiations.
But all that changed when Peter Sutherland was appointed as the GATT’s director general in 1993. He was a former EU commissioner and came with a stated goal: conclude the Uruguay Round and oversee the transition from GATT to WTO. He is a remarkable success story which is yet to be repeated by any of his successors. More importantly, he didn’t stay a day longer after he accomplished his task.
Subsequently, the three other director generals — Renato Ruggiero (former Italian minister), Mike Moore (former New Zealand’s prime minister), and Supachai Panitchpakdi (former Thai finance and trade minister) — also stayed for their respective terms and left the organisation a day before their tenure ended.
But Lamy, who once infamously described the WTO as a “medieval” organisation, wants to stay on for a second term. In his application, he claims that he “undertook to reinforce multilateralism, to work to ensure that trade opening continues to contribute to development and that the interests of developing countries are placed at the heart of the world trading system.”
However, a cursory examination offers a different picture altogether. Lamy’s first term is characterised by setbacks, failures, missed deadlines, suspension of negotiations for almost a year in which case multilateralism was the victim of concentric circles of powerful but exclusive elites of the so-called G4, G6, G10 and recently the G7 which has become the hallmark of decision-making at the WTO. His self-righteous approach and belief that the WTO Doha work program which was turned on its head to become a market-access round would address or solve all global economic problems befits a character of a denial(ist) who cannot see that the global economic order is flawed and should be reshaped. Otherwise, he faces ugly comparisons like the one Barack Obama raised about George W Bush!