The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 30, 1999 - 5 Malaysia' s ruling coalition wins .landslide victory WTO listens to critics; holds meeting, dialogue KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's coalition won a resound- ing victory in yesterday's parliamen- tary elections after a year of political and economic turmoil that threatened the Malaysian leader's reign. Mahathir's 14-party National Front 0etained its two-thirds majority in the 93-seat Parliament with a campaign that focused on economic and civil stability. The strong showing announced today assured Mahathir of a fifth consecutive term. The Alternative Front opposition coalition had hoped to hold the National Front to fewer than two- thirds of the seats to prove Malaysians yearn for democratic freedoms and overnment transparency. The opposition did win a crucial victory when the wife of Mahathir's imprisoned former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, trounced a former Cabinet minister in the race for the rural north- ern seat that Anwar held for 16 years before being sacked and convicted of corruption. "This is a victory of the people. It shows that people dared to choose change," Azizah Ismail told her sup- porters late yesterday. Anwar is serving a six-year sen- tence for corruption and is on trial for sodomy. Since being jailed and beaten, the 52-year-old Islamic scholar had become the opposition's leading sym- bol for change. The final tally for yesterday's vote in Parliament and I1 state assem- blies was not expected until later in the day. Mahathir could see his landslide vic- tory as vindication of his risky actions in the past year, from the firing of the popular Anwar to his controversial eco- nomic policies that brought sneers from Western financial gurus, yet brought the country out of recession. Mahathir proclaimed his victory Azizah Ismail, leader of the oppostion National Justice Party, waves to porters after she won the first parlimentary seat for her new party In Permatang Pauh in the Malasylan state of Penang yesterday evening. AP PHOTO her sup- early today to thousands of cheering members of his United Malays National Organization. "The people have given us more than a two-thirds majority. That's clear proof that they still want us to lead the country," he said. "We will ensure that the country remains free, remains united and remains successful." The new government was expected to be formed later today, with the Malaysian king reinstating Mahathir as prime minister in a formal ceremony. The Alternative Front had hoped to win at least 65 seats, but with 191 of the 193 seats decided, they had won only 40 seats. In the previous Parliament, the opposition held only 23 seats and the ruling coalition con- trolled 166 seats. The Washington Post SEATTLE - Hoping to reverse beliefs that it is secretive and undemoc- ratic, the World Trade Organization yesterday hosted hundreds of its critics in a meeting hall here for a dialogue on trade's impact on development and human rights. The three-hour encounter was polite - even though friends of some of the guests were outside on the street angrily waving banners attacking the Geneva-based organization. WTO Director General Mike Moore argued that the current world trading system benefits just about everyone. "Over 30 countries - 1.5 billion peo- ple - want to join the WTO," he declared to the gathering. But Martin Khor, from a group called Third World Network, had a different view. The consequences of more trade liberalization, Khor said, could be "so negative and serious in the Third World that there will be tremendous political instability over the next five years." With 3,000 WTO delegates set to for- mally begin new talks on trade liberal- ization negotiations today, the meeting was the first step in a program to put a more sympathetic face on the trade agency and make its operations more open. Since its creation five years ago to police world trade, the WTO has become the target of a diverse interna- tional coalition of activist groups that include environmentalists, labor unions, consumer groups and private development agencies. They contend that the WTO has too much power, that it infringes on countries' sovereignty by making them change environmental ONLY NINE MORE DAILYS LEFT IN THE MILLENIUM. READ UP. rules. The critics also complain that an agency that forever praises "transparen- cy" in trade - the establishment of clear rules, the elimination of back- door deals - is notably lacking in the quality itself. Dispute panels that act as judges when countries have trade disputes operate in secrecy. There is no require- ment to make filings and briefs public. Often little is known publicly until the panel issues its decision. The offi- cial rationale is that the panels are essentially government-to-government negotiations, and that contacts of this kind always take place in private. No one in the WTO or in the major industrial powers wants to weaken its authority in dispute settlement - it has established "rule of law" in world trade, they say, and that is only for the better. But on the question of openness, pressure is building for change. The Clinton administration has come to voice the rhetoric of some of the peo- ple in the streets. The White House pro- posed yesterday's meeting with the advocacy groups as a way of getting them invested in the process. Officials say it marks the first time in eight rounds of trade negotiation over the last 50 years that the outsiders' views have been sought. "It's terribly important that the views of civil society not just be heard but incorporated into the work of the WTO," U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said after yester- day's meeting. "The openness of civil society is a stabilizing force and lends credibility to the system." Northern Ireland cabinet makes history BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - On a day many thought would never come, Protestant and atholic adversaries yesterday formed an extraordi- nary Northern Ireland government that attempts to ring together every branch of opinion within this bit- erly divided society. The unprecedented four-party administration - due to receive powers Thursday from the British gov- ernment - includes Catholics who long vowed never accept Northern Ireland's right to exist, and Festants just as unwilling to accept Catholics as political equals. Triggering an exercise envisioned in the Good Friday peace accord but delayed for more than a year, he four biggest parties within Northern Ireland's leg- slature took turns unveiling their choices for a 12- member Cabinet, an exercise akin to a pro sports draft ,ick. Picking first were the province's major British Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, and major Irish ?atholic party, the Social Democratic and Labor Party DLP They both got four posts. ,. But Protestant legislators gathered at Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast gasped when Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams announced his first pick - his party's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, as education minister. McGuinness - who rose to the top of the Irish Republican Army's command in the 1970s - will now oversee the predominantly Protestant state schools as well as the separate Catholic system. Sinn Fein's other candidate, schoolteacher Bairbre de Brun, had been considered the far more likely pick for the education post. She instead received the health ministry, arguably the toughest job in the administra- tion, since closing hospitals is on the agenda. "The reality is that very many young people do look up to Martin McGuinness," said Sinn Fein chair Mitchel McLaughlin, who pledged that both McGuinness and de Brun would help project "a vision of a society at peace with itself." And even the Democratic Unionists, the province's most uncompromising Protestant party, took their two allotted posts within a Cabinet they had hoped would never be born, The Democratic Unionists nromised to do their jobs impartially but vowed never to sit in the same Cabinet room as McGuinness, a factor certain to make the government's early days particularly prob- lematic. "We will never rest until we rid this country of IRA- Sinn Fein and all other brands of terrorism. They have no place in any democracy," said the Rev. Ian Paisley, the Democratic Unionist leader. Paisley's deputy party leader, Peter Robinson, became minister for regional development, and a longtime aide, Nigel Dodds, will be minister for social development. "We now have a mastermind of murder in a posi- tion to educate our children," said Dodds, whom the IRA tried to kill three years ago while he was visiting his gravely ill son in a hospital. But the Ulster Unionists, who made Yesterday's Cabinet formation possible by dropping their long- time demand for IRA disarmament in advance, took a far more upbeat view. U Time Is Precious i 0 Wasting time waiting for a PC? Get a Kaypro System I've got to type up this report L before lab! Those overheads are going to take forever to print Shoot, that midterm's in an hour! e Custom configured systems available Just 50 more pages to print... ,4 .,.'t .. _ ,,, /: ,w ..' 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