[naiman-columns] Can We Reclaim Politics in 2000? (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Can We Reclaim Politics in 2000?

As if you didn't know, the "race" has started for next 
year's elections. We know that George Bush Jr. has raised a 
record amount of money, that Al Gore is "stumbling," and 
that Hillary Clinton is running for Senate, because these 
are things that the news media have harped on. Yawn.

But wait a minute. Does politics have to be this boring? 
Does it have to be a spectator sport of fundraising and 
image? Or could it yet involve the participation of ordinary 
people talking about real issues and their impact on people 
outside the Beltway? Could politics -- even electoral 
politics -- yet be meaningful, exciting, even surprising?

We can take heart from the example of a determined group of 
AIDS activists who have made a front-burner issue of 
something previously obscure: the shameful role of the U.S. 
government in trying to stop poor countries from making 
pharmaceuticals affordable. 

Recent advances in the treatment of AIDS have greatly 
improved the prospects of people with access to the latest 
drugs. But AIDS activists estimate that 22 million people 
from sub-Saharan Africa and 34 million people in the 
developing world will die in the next 10 to 15 years because 
of excessive drug prices that keep AIDS drugs out of the 
reach of people in the developing world.

In 1997 South Africa passed a law to make pharmaceuticals 
affordable. More than 1 in 15 South Africans are HIV-
positive. The law allows the government to introduce 
competition into the domestic market by compelling 
pharmaceutical companies to permit other companies to 
produce a patented drug in exchange for a licensing fee. It 
would also allow the government to import competing generic 
drugs from other countries.

Both of these practices are legal under the "intellectual 
property" provisions of the World Trade Organization. 
Supporters of the drug companies claim otherwise, but 
apparently they don't believe their claim enough to take a 
case to the WTO, where they would lose. Yet, because of the 
political influence of the U.S.-based pharmaceutical 
companies which make huge campaign contributions, the 
Clinton Administration, including Al Gore personally, has 
tried to bully the South African government into repealing 
its law, including threats of trade sanctions.

The Clinton Administration policy is odd when you remember 
that back when the Clintons supported health care reform, 
they made a fuss about the high price of drugs. The public 
loved it, but the pharmaceutical industry complained, so the 
Clintons backed off. It's also ironic when you consider how 
much the pharmaceutical industry is publicly subsidized, 
through federal spending on research which the drug 
companies turn into profits. And it's the height of 
duplicity when this policy is carried out under the banner 
of "free trade": as any honest economist will admit, if the 
word "protectionism" had any real meaning besides referring 
to the forms of protectionism that big corporations don't 
like, it would surely apply to the violation of competitive 
market principles involved when the U.S. tries to impose its 
patent laws on developing countries. The U.S. patent laws 
maintain lucrative monopolies at public expense, driving up 
health care costs and forcing many people to choose between 
needed drugs and other necessities of life. But imagine how 
much worse the situation is in poor countries which are 
forced to face these prices. They simply can't afford to 
give the pharmaceutical companies the corporate welfare they 
enjoy here.

Until recently, few people outside the Beltway knew anything 
about this. The first major crack in the wall came when 
Jesse Jackson introduced his HOPE for Africa Act, in 
competition to the Administration's Africa Growth and 
Opportunity Act. A provision of the HOPE bill bars any U.S. 
funds from being spent to interfere with efforts by African 
countries to make pharmaceuticals affordable, so long as 
these efforts are WTO-legal. Many AIDS activists campaigned 
on behalf of the HOPE bill; in raucous demonstrations, they 
chanted: "History will recall: Clinton and Gore did nothing 
at all!"

But now they've really upped the stakes. By disrupting Al 
Gore's campaign appearances, they've got the Administration 
on the ropes. It looks like Gore may back down, and stop 
bullying South Africa on behalf of the pharmaceutical 
companies.

Lots of people talk about "globalization." These activists 
did something about it. Now if the AIDS activists can 
introduce real politics into the 2000 race, how about the 
rest of us? Maybe we should think of every campaign event as 
an opportunity for real politics.

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Robert Naiman <naimanr@preamble.org>
Preamble Center
1737 21st NW
Washington, DC 20009
phone: 202-265-3263
fax:   202-265-3647
http://www.preamble.org/
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