U.S., IMF force Asia to ax millions
By Fred Goldstein
It's a full-court press.
The world's biggest bankers, represented by the Clinton
administration and the International Monetary Fund, are putting
enormous pressure on the governments of Indonesia and south
Korea. These finance capitalists are demanding agreements to
keep themselves solvent during the present crisis. The losers
will be the masses of people.
Clinton sent Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to
tell Indonesian President Suharto to sign on to the IMF's
program of bankruptcies and layoffs-or else.
The Summers-Suharto meeting was preceded by a series of
warning telephone calls to Suharto from President Clinton,
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro
Hashimoto and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. It also
followed a two-day-long high-pressure campaign from IMF Deputy
Manager Lawrence Fischer, who met with Suharto and other
Indonesian government officials.
The imperialist powers were outraged because Suharto hadn't
moved vigorously enough to force bankruptcies of local banks
and corporations and hadn't dropped from his new budget several
high-employment public projects.
The IMF and the world's financiers are blaming Indonesia's
financial crisis on corruption and cronyism. But their real aim
is to secure payback on the estimated $135 billion in loans
they have pumped into Indonesia in search of easy profits.
Suharto came to power in 1965 in a CIA/Pentagon-inspired
military coup that killed an estimated 1 million people. Yet he
got nothing but praise from the imperialist countries when he
opened up Indonesia's natural resources to foreign
exploitation.
His regime is under fire now because the imperialist bankers
want him to push even harder against the masses with tax
increases, austerity programs and layoffs. And if this provokes
widespread rebellion-well, that's why Suharto and his army got
built up by the U.S. in the first place.
Summers brought this message during a 40-minute meeting with
Suharto Jan. 13. He was then joined by Defense Secretary
William Cohen-who spent another 40 minutes hammering home the
same message from the Pentagon.
When it was all over, Suharto pledged to go along with the
IMF.
IMF President Michel Camdessus will be in Indonesia Jan. 15
to make Suharto sign an agreement.
The other pressure point right now is south Korea. Camdessus
went there on Jan. 12 and got the leaders of both the militant
Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which last January led a
general strike against mass layoffs, and the bigger, more
conservative Korean Federation of Trade Unions to agree to join
a commission with the bosses and politicians.
This body is supposed to discuss how to restore the economy.
Its real mission, however, is to facilitate legislation
permitting mass layoffs. The KCTU and the KFTU had previously
said they would not join the commission.
Meanwhile, the south Korean Labor Ministry reported that
"more than 1,000 South Koreans a day, or more than six times
last year's average, are applying for unemployment benefits."
(Agence France-Presse, Jan. 11)
In Indonesia, the economic collapse is staggering. According
to a Jan. 14 AFP report, "Jakarta's growing army of unemployed
... are being offered a one-way ticket back to their home
villages. In Jakarta alone, an estimated 2.5 million people
have lost their jobs in recent weeks."
This article is copyright under a Creative
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