MAI Poll Disaster

MAI negotiations are in trouble again. None of the countries involved really wants to let itself get overrun by foreign investors, (except perhaps the UK,) and so the list of exemptions and exceptions to MAI rules has grown to unmanageable proportions. Negotiations have been rescheduled so that the document will be provisionally signed on the 27th April (back from the 18th). This will be a statement of agreement with the broad aims of the MAI and a commitment to resolve national differences. The date for finalising the agreement has been put back to November.

Corporate Watch is advocating an unofficial national referendum on the MAI. It involves a very simple action that was tried out by the Oxford MAI group on 24th January.

Campaigners set up their own polling stations at two points in the city centre to try and canvas general opinion on the MAI. These polling stations featured banners displaying the messages "Don't let big business trash democracy" and "Vote today by WDM; and a couple of articles from the alternative press about the MAI. There was also a ballot box, voting slips, leaflets and a three-sided screen to create a 'polling booth'. The voting slips offered two choices "I am opposed to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments" and "I am in favour of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments".

One of the polling stations netted a massive 80 votes - 77 opposed to the MAI and 3 in favour, giving the multilateral vote a disappointing 3.75% of the electorate. This hard core of "free traders" collapsed at the second site where only 3 of 175 votes (1.7%) were found to support the MAI. Electoral commentators (and polling officers) were shocked by plummeting support for the OECD's plan. With 97.6% of voters against them the democratic mandate for the Multilateral Agreement on Investment looks shakier than ever. Not that Whitehall or the DTI has ever bothered to ask the people in the first place.

Hundreds more declined to vote but went away informed with a determination to learn more. Send details of your own polling actions - when, where, & voting statistics - to Corporate Watch. Contact 01865 791391 mail@corporatewatch.i-way.co.uk