Liberal International 57th Congress – Theme Resolution Speech

18 June 2011, Manila, PhilippinesLet me begin with something out of the box, as it were.  I lift from the Herald Tribune yesterday, particularly of the column of Tom Friedman (of ‘Flat, Hot and Crowded’ fame), naming “the most influential foreign figure of the year in China” – not Obama or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.   He is seen as a rock star in China, Japan and South Korea.

Michael Sandel, Harvard University political philosopher and author of the best-selling book “Justice: What is the Right Thing to Do?” – who uses real-life examples in his highly-popular classes to illustrate the philosophies of the likes of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.  Sandel tosses out questions to students and varied audiences like “Is it fair that David Letterman or Dirk Nowitzki or David Beckham makes 700 or 1000 times more than a schoolteacher?”  “Are we morally responsible for righting the wrongs of our grandparents’ generation?”

So in the manner of Sandel – let me begin by posing these questions as a way of proposing a thematic debate that we hope will move us away from just the abstract and academic and focus what provokes thought, sharpen reasoned argument and even deepen moral understanding.

“Are liberals by principle responsible to uphold free trade even if it means the erosion of a basic respect for human rights?

Specifically,

Should consumerism (of widely affordable and accessible manufactured goods) in Canada be sustained by sweatshops with child labor in Calcutta?

Should the appetite for finely-crafted luxury items in New York or London be sated by the nimble hands of children trapped in hovels in congested favelas of Rio de Janeiro?

Do the sumptuous sushi and tuna or other seafood delicacies in Tokyo restaurants — justify overfishing and coral-reef destruction in Philippine and Indonesian waters that further impoverish coastal communities or trample on the rights of indigenous peoples?

Should mineral resources extracted from critical ecosystems in Africa to fuel industrial growth in the Eastern seaboard of China or urbanization in India or elsewhere be auctioned to the highest bidder?

Can Liberals justify food miles or a carbon-food footprint — if the tropical fruits we buy in, say, European supermarkets, transported across oceans, are produced with cheap, labor union-busting practices in agrarian regions of Central America?

Should the free flow of labor, a key pillar of free trade – as with the phenomenon of the over 10 million Overseas Filipino Workers in over 100 countries – include or justify the adverse social costs on families?
Even more pointedly, is the so-called emancipation of career women in highly developed city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong attained on the backs of the Filipina domestic helper or nanny who cares for the children and homes of these women?

Do OFW remittances that keep an entire economy like that of the Philippines afloat with 15 billion pesos a year or roughly 12 percent of GNP – three times higher than FDI — justify a three-generation export labor policy to date that is based on the separation of parents or elders from their children?

Should liberal governments in power continue to impose economic sanctions on the Burmese junta and insist on Suu Kyi’s release and the Burma’s democratization, or if because of their rich resources that we may need for our own economic growth, tolerate continued repression?

With the rise of a global economic powerhouse like China, should liberal governments or liberal leaders or policy-makers set aside their core human rights and democratic values in favor of benefiting as a trading partner or investment destination?

These are the more visceral representations of the thematic resolution before us today, that we as Liberals seek to grapple with and address – not only simply from the vantage of policy or implications for law, but more importantly, from the moral standpoint of justice and the common good.

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Liberalism, after all, is not just about economic freedom or free markets to lift millions mired in poverty, but about the political freedoms that a state must with its inherent powers enable and protect in a milieu of democratic and open institutions and the rule of law.

As schools of thought go, there are three tracks we can take in the deliberation on free trade vis-a-vis human rights.

One lens with which to view this would be what we would call the DIVERGENT or MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE frame.  Simply put, if we were to pursue the ends of free trade, we must be prepared to overlook or to trade these off with human rights protection.  If human rights were to be paramount, on the other hand, free trade is necessarily impeded, recognizing that there would be high opportunity costs to trade because competitiveness, all told, is enfeebled or reduced.

The second frame is what we call SEQUENTIAL – that is, one is the antecedent to the other.  Human rights will have to come before free trade – or in broader terms, democracy before development.  Or free trade before human rights – in this case, development first before democracy.  We call to mind Singapore’s experience and like development models driving the so-called ‘Asian Values’ debate.

The third lens would be what we call CONVERGENT or PARALLEL – that both human rights and free trade are mutually-reinforcing or essentially complementary.  Simply put, both have to be pursued in parallel terms or trajectories.  As President Aquino said this morning, free trade policies must serve the ends of human rights – or stated differently, development and democracy are inextricably linked.

Increasing the spaces of democracy and human rights is not only about more open institutions but even more so, the reduction of what Nobel laureate Amartya Sen would call “unfreedoms.”  Democracy, after all, in regions especially like Latin America, Africa and Asia, cannot be removed from or understood independent of the discourses on development.  Sen argues that beyond free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary, democratization requires the removal of major sources of “unfreedoms” – poverty, corruption, tyranny, poor economic opportunities, systemic deprivation and injustice, neglect of public facilities, intolerance and repression.

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It should be clear that the latter framework is the liberal path.

The manner by which we grapple with and deliberate – and yes, vigorously debate – the specific and wrenching questions earlier posed will allow us to further refine and define the kind of choices we make, the values that inform those decisions and choices — and simply put, answer the question, who we are essentially as liberals.

If we were to metaphorically depict this, we can use the visual of a staircase.  The top of the staircase is the perfect marriage as it were of Human Rights and Free Trade.  The choices and decisions we make as we answer such questions determine the manner and pace of our ascent and the quality and integrity our choices as liberals.  Or how we move from the real to the ideal, until we reach the point where the ideal and the real become one and the same.

As a case in point, with our Burmese friends here, it should be clear to us as liberals that while we all want Burma to have an open economy and trade with the world with its vast comparative advantages in natural and human resources, we cannot turn a blind eye to the continued repression of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese people.  So as CALD and LI would have it, we advocate for nothing less than the freedom of Suu Kyi and all Burmese, even as we work towards the integration of Burma’s economy into the orbit of free regional and global trade.

As we begin our debates, we call to mind a quote from Vaclav Havel – the Czech head of state who rose to power after being a long-time prisoner of conscience during the long years of harsh communist rule – who said that when what we say or do becomes dissonant with what we truly feel or believe in, that is the beginning of moral damage.

As liberals, we must only be true to ourselves – in the discourse on human rights and free trade as in all other tenets that give us our raison d’etre – not just in terms of being intellectually honest, but in the fundamental sense of being our being grounded on moral principle.

So let the debates begin here – yet still make convergence happen!