KUALA LUMPUR: The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) should be reviewed and debated in the Parliament.
Third World Network advisor Martin Khor said, he made the suggestion to the Council of Eminent Persons (CEP) today as CPTPP has yet to be verified.
"We are looking at not just the CPTPP but we are also looking at the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) in general and of course the obvious thing is that the CPTPP has not been verified yet.
"It could be reviewed by Parliament. We didn't have a Parliament debate on CPTPP but we debated on the TPP before.
"So, I proposed that the Parliament look into the CPTPP like how they looked into TPP before," he told reporters when met after the CEP meeting at the Ilham Tower, here, today.
The TPP was a trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and United States signed on Feb 4, 2016, which was not ratified as required and did not take effect.
After the US withdrew its signature, the agreement could not enter into force. The remaining nations negotiated a new trade agreement called CPTPP, which incorporates most of the provisions of the TPP.
According to Khor, the CPTPP had set up an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, whereby foreign investors can sue the government in international tribunals by claiming they did not receive fair treatment, or that they lost future profits because of a change in government policies.
In some cases, he said, tribunals awarded investors hundreds of millions or even more than a billion US dollars in compensation.
"This same ISDS system is used in many bilateral investment treaties. Many countries suffered losses from claims made by foreign investors in tribunal decisions seen as biased.
"Indonesia, India and South Africa are among countries that have pulled out of their investment treaties. Even the (US President Donald) Trump administration is having second thoughts about ISDS," he added.
Khor also proposed for the country to review the Bilateral Investment Treaties (BIT) just to see how fair they are or what are the risks Malaysia will face if the country remained in the treaty.
Meanwhile, Khor remarked that he was not suggesting for Malaysia to pull out of the treaty, but just to review it.