BANGKOK - The timing of the scandals is apt, say some critics from South and South-east Asia, who ended a three-day conference here Monday.
The crisis in corporate America comes at a moment when the Anti-Globalisation movement in the region is reasserting itself after losing some steam following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, they add.
"There was some disorientation after Sept. 11 and the momentum we had gained till then was lost", says Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank. "But with the corporate scandals, we see the other side losing the momentum and our side is gaining", he said.
However, Bello feels that the Asians leading the charge against corporate-driven globalisation have still to make up for the lost political ground in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. "We are not at the point we were in the region before the attacks in the U.S., but we are getting there", he said.
But for one Indian activist, what is significant is the evidence shown by the U.S. corporate scandals that corporate America is not the ideal model it had been made out to be by the champions of the neo-liberal economic order.
The crisis in corporate America comes at a moment when the Anti-Globalisation movement in the region is reasserting itself after losing some steam following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, they add.
"There was some disorientation after Sept. 11 and the momentum we had gained till then was lost", says Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank. "But with the corporate scandals, we see the other side losing the momentum and our side is gaining", he said.
However, Bello feels that the Asians leading the charge against corporate-driven globalisation have still to make up for the lost political ground in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. "We are not at the point we were in the region before the attacks in the U.S., but we are getting there", he said.
But for one Indian activist, what is significant is the evidence shown by the U.S. corporate scandals that corporate America is not the ideal model it had been made out to be by the champions of the neo-liberal economic order.