The recent signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by 12 countries, including Chile, has sparked a national debate about the free trade agreement's potential impact on healthcare and civil rights in the South American country.
"At the beginning, we worried about the possible restrictions contained in the economic accord signed between the Pacific (Rim) countries, now our concern centers on health," Chilean news website Cambio 21 wrote in an editorial Tuesday.
While the leaders of the signatory countries have been touting the agreement's economic benefits, "there are those who warn that it is another means to clamp down on civil liberties," the article said. The TPP's contents have yet to be made public, but many fear that the agreement mainly benefits corporations to the detriment of consumers, leading, for example, to costlier medications. The TPP's corporate-friendly regulations on biological medications and patents are one of the areas raising the most concern in Chile, where lawmakers and activists have criticized the lack of transparency around the "secretive" document.
Largely spearheaded by the United States and Japan, the agreement was signed on Oct. 5 in the U.S. city of Atlanta, Georgia by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Mexico and Peru, as well as its two main sponsors.
The treaty is designed to drive trade between member countries by lowering tariffs and standardizing laws governing intellectual property, labor rights, environmental protection, and investor-state disputes, among other areas. It must be ratified by each country's legislature before being put into effect. Lawmakers will not be able to amend its contents, but only approve or reject the accord as is.
On Wednesday, Chilean rights protection agency Derechos Digitales (Digital Rights), a non-governmental organization, demanded the contents of the TPP be made public. "Now more than ever it is necessary for the texts of the negotiation, (which have been) jealously guarded over the past seven years, to be released, so that we can know the real magnitude of the costs and benefits associated with signing this trade alliance," the NGO said in a statement.
The Chilean NGO, founded in 2004 by a group of lawyers from the University of Chile, warned "this secrecy is incompatible with democracy in the 21st century," and described the backroom dealings as "characteristic of authoritarian regimes."
Chilean Deputy Vlado Mirosevic, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, noted that the only thing the public knows about the TPP so far was released by the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks. "We know nothing about the 29 chapters of the TPP, except for some generalizations," Mirosevic said.
While Foreign Affairs Minister Heraldo Munoz had said the objectionable terms had been modified, lawmakers remained in the dark, Mirosevic said.
Pablo Viollier, a spokesman for Derechos Digitales, has said the TPP carries more costs than benefits, and leaves citizens vulnerable. "What we need to make clear is that the agreement has a corrupt beginning, having been negotiated over the years ... behind the people's back," Viollier said. "A treaty that regulates such sensitive topics as intellectual property, labor rights, environment and economic ties cannot be done in secret, especially when it affects 90 percent of the global economy. That reveals a lot about the spirit of the treaty," he said.
Meanwhile, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has tried to allay fears, at least those involving costlier medications, saying negotiators were able to keep patent protection periods for biological medications down to five years, instead of the 12 the United States was asking for.
The TPP "expands our sphere of influence and inserts us more fully into a priority zone for the strategic development of Chile ... without renouncing our convictions," she said.
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