Security factor may draw more events here
Despite flak from World Bank over blacklist, many delegates appreciate S'pore security measures
Sep 22, 2006
The Straits Times
SINGAPORE'S handling of security at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings may draw more conventions to the city, even though it was criticised by the global lender and activists, analysts said.
Singapore banned outdoor protests and earlier objected to 27 of a record 700 civil society activists at the meetings because of their involvement in riots at past summits.
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz had said the city-state suffered 'enormous damage' to its reputation. However, Singapore avoided a repeat of the protests that disrupted the 2005 World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong and the IMF gathering in 2000 in Prague, where demonstrators hurled cobblestones at the police.
'Personally, I welcome criticism but I do not welcome people throwing stones at shop windows etc,' said Mr Marc Faber, managing director of Hong Kong investment firm Marc Faber, who attended the meetings in Singapore.
'I would have done the same in the shoes of the Singapore Government.'
The Republic said law and order were a top priority at the meetings from Sept 13 to Sept 20.
While activists protested at the lack of freedom, the measures were appreciated by delegates.
Delegates recalled the IMF meeting in Prague, where dissenters also stormed a balcony at the hotel where many of the participants were staying. The police responded with tear gas and concussion grenades.
Pakistani government economic adviser Ashfaque Khan, who attended the meetings in Singapore, said: 'It was very bad in Prague. They stormed the place where the meeting was taking place. The delegates were running, they were moving out.'
At the Singapore meetings, activists were confined to an area the size of a badminton court for their protests, though they had access to other areas within the convention centre.
Executive director Paul O'Callaghan of the Australian Council for International Development, who moderated a town-hall meeting between activists and Mr Wolfowitz, said: 'Any host country doing international conferences which involve development and aid needs to have the prerequisite of coping with the participation of civil societies.
'This one piece in the equation has caused damage to its reputation as a future host,' he said of Singapore.
The Republic cut to five the number of activists it objected to, but stressed that its decision to lift the ban on 22 activists came before the public statement by the World Bank criticising it.
The mega event was expected to help boost Singapore's tourism arrivals, which dropped to a two-decade low during the 2003 Sars outbreak - with a record 9.4 million visitors likely this year.
The Government estimated in March that it would spend more than $100 million to host the IMF and World Bank meetings, and expects at least half of that in tourism revenue.
Senior vice-president Joachim Rosenzweig at Germany's Landesbank Rheinland-Pfalz and a delegate at the meetings, said that Singapore's reputation has not suffered.
'I remember very well in Madrid in 1995 where people threw stones at the cars of the delegates, and that was quite an aggressive atmosphere,' he said.
'This is something which you don't have the feeling would occur here.'
Other delegates said convention organisers should not expect to duplicate the same setting as their own countries. The IMF and World Bank meetings are held outside Washington every three years.
Mr Stefan Gavell, executive vice-president at State Street, the world's largest investment service provider for institutions, who attended the meetings here, said: 'The more you do that, the more you're going to have to deal with local sensitivity issues.
'You can't be too careful with the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.'
BLOOMBERG
y am i not surprised ST printed this after the IMF/WB meeting was over..
