No shit. This goes for everyone else apart from the US too. That's why it was kept a secret.
If we can prove that these politicians signed these agreements after receiving backhanders, can we declare it null and void?
If we can prove that these politicians signed these agreements after receiving backhanders, can we declare it null and void?
Part of the problem of any trade deal is that you'll end up pissing off one group at home to make another one more happy. Trade negotiators argue they need to have the deals be negotiated in secret or special interest groups will cause too much noise and trade deals will never get done.
It's true of business deals too. Typically the managers will negotiate the deal in private, and then present it their board and/or shareholders to be ratified.
It's just really hard to make significant decisions in a large group of people. Anyone who has been in a huge meeting, or on a big committee, will understand that.
The legislators are forcing this pact specifically because it promotes certain interests of various corporations. The group that will end up getting pissed off is the public at large when their quality of living is reduced. Novartis et al will get their rapacious drug profiteering enforced onto countries that currently aren't under their dominion, and the people who live in those countries will suffer through high prices for medicine because their politicians got a fat kickback.
Special interest groups are driving this entire partnership from start to finish.
[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9619214/budget-deal-congress
If you try to give up one thing (e.g. free trade) in exchange for another (anti-counterfeiting provisions) and you get jumped on as soon as you suggest the first you never get a chance to broach the second.
Maybe the solution is to have a mandatory waiting period after the full text is released. 90 days before any votes can take place, something like that. Gives people time to go through and actually evaluate the proposal as a whole.
And the ability to rubber stamp a 6,000 page monolithic treaty which has already been agreed to is a complete joke. It's about as democratic as a parent asking a child, "would you like to go to boarding school or boot camp?" The democracy happened during the negotiations and amendments -- at that point the needs of each constituent were considered, included or excluded, compromised. Unfortunately the citizens of these countries or their elected representatives or anyone willing to represent their interests weren't invited to that party.
The negotiation would be harder, sure if it were public but that's because making an agreement that is fair is a lot harder than asking corporate lobbyists to narrate a wishlist and typing it up. All they had to do was reconcile the many, many different wishlists (still very hard), not put forth an agreement that actual citizens would approve of (much harder but what they should actually be doing).
This prevents unexpected surprises, allows for a straight forward process, more honest discussion and makes it possible to reach compromises without appearing weak to constituients. It also acts as a filter for bad ideas and makes it easier to figure out, if something has any chance at suceeding without it becoming a public failure.
Why?
According to that, all parliamentary debates should be secret, too. 90% of it are finding a compromise between two parties.
Appearing "weak" is a virtue, not a weakness.
Not as unreasonable as it sounds. The parliamentary system was devised when hardly anyone could read, and they certainly couldn't see debates on the TV.
It's rare for parliaments to have actual passionate debates. That usually only happens on controversial and dividing issues, where it's worth it to make a stand to appeal to voters or where public support might help.
Most of the time these debates are just a formality to pass through a compromise everyone already has agreed to pass through beforehand. Accordingly you'll see that parliamentary debates and even votes are attented often only by a small number of representatives, not because they're not doing they're job it's because they've already done theirs at that point and have better things to do.
Yeah, like fundraising!
By the time something has reached the debate level, which is just theater for the most part, the big decisions have been made. No one is changing their minds or votes at that point, unless something previously unknown and exceptional is revealed, which is rare.
The whole process starts with a committee being started, they writing and working on several compromises, and then giving parliament the ability to vote on these.
But the work of the committees – except for the TTIP committee – is also public.
This trade deal will change the lives of millions, if not a few billion people. There is no room for governments to claim the need for secrecy when their true intention is to mask the transfer of wealth from the public to a few megacorps.
A way to satisfy both sides might be to allow the discussions in private but have them recorded by independent parties who are in turn watched by public watchdogs. Then on conclusion of negotiations and before a law is ratified the entire debate could be made available.
You could have your private negotiations and laws could only be ratified when private compromises that negatively effect the demos hadn't been made.
People keep repeating this line with no evidence. I've been around for a number of international treaties and this is the first one I recall where the #1 issue is how secretive and un-democratic the process is.
Of course there are always backchannel discussions but with the TPP there has be little indication that ANY of the initiatives are actually being driven by the needs of the electorate.
When my elected official couldn't even see a copy for years (even in secret) and then was only able to when it was basically an all-or-nothing done deal about to signed something is very, very wrong.
Do you not understand why they need to be negotiated in public? I guess you don't because you didn't even know they were always negotiated in secret.
[1] https://blog.nader.org/1994/12/26/naftagatt-deals-shrouded-i...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/12/how-us-ch...
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/01/us-iran-nuclear-bu...
Your other two examples are from last year and involve the same president driving TPP.
It wasn't secret to the entities benefiting from it, only to the entities being hurt by it.
Land of the Free ...
How about instead saying: we believe in open democracy and so despite it slightly weakening our position we'll require negotiations to be open and require those ratifying the treaty to first have a free vote in their parliamentary houses [wherein one option will be to ratify following a referendum].
Now that would be spreading democracy.
A cynic might think that this was the first best option to secure the world against change following the 1%-protests to ensure rich capitalists maintain their position of power because "oh we can't tax this damaging activity because it makes these people poorer and they made us sign a treaty".
If you asked the people what they want on every bill no country could function. Every tax would get rejected, and every spending bill approved.
Similarly for asking each congressperson about each individual clause in the TPP.
Cynically, one might argue that it is, in practice, a (plutocratic) republic and not a democracy, I suppose.
Keeping the negotiation process secret allows it to be analyzed as a package.