And when banks and businesses disengage from such nations, they are accused of not caring for the plight of the poor and oppressed. So often there are simply no perfect solutions.
The core problem is the corruption of the various governments. And the depicted dichotomy between the dictatorial regimes of the past and the democratically elected governments of today does not stand up under closer scrutiny. The video has difficulty explaining the commitment of the elected governments to pay on the foreign debt. It can only assert that in the case of the Philippines that the officials are Marcos loyalists and that in South Africa politicians are afraid of scaring off future foreign investment.
Indeed, contrary to the depiction of this video, the government of South Africa is currently embarking on a program to loan Zimbabwe $1 billion, despite the recent atrocities committed in the “drive out the trash” campaign of president Robert Mugabe. Ironically, the South African government would be in the same position with respect to Zimbabwe as the IMF or World Bank in South Africa!
As Samuel Gregg and Osvaldo Schenone write in the book A Theory of Corruption, “We must recognize that all societies, no matter how sound their moral and institutional cultures, are in some way marked by corrupt activities.” This is true for both democratic governments and despots, transnational banks and multinational corporations.
Responding to the developments out of the G8 meeting in Scotland a few weeks ago, Norwegian Church Aid explicitly opposes restrictions on debt relief that would do nothing but improve the economies of the debtor nations. Atle Sommerfeldt, Secretary General of Norwegian Church Aid, says, “All G8 countries must now follow the example set by the UK and guarantee that no country is forced to liberalise trade or commercialise public services as a condition of debt relief.”
This video presents and indefensibly unbalanced view of the facts of debt burdens and poverty in developing countries, externalizing blame to foreign entities, while minimizing internal causes like governmental corruption and repressive economic systems. The irony should not be lost on the viewer when a poor woman in Argentina speaks from a village named after Che Guevara.
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