As the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Cancun, Mexico, collapsed and strong divisions rose again between developed and developing nations, Rafidah Aziz, the blustering Malaysian trade minister for international trade and industry, could not resist the temptation to swagger.

She told the waiting media that "developing countries had come into their own" by no longer willing to "be dictated to by anybody". She had said the same thing at the WTO summit in Singapore in 1996.

The Star's

headline on its online edition had Rafidah hailing this outcome as a 'victory'.

No, Rafidah, it is no victory.

Whatever Rafidah and her cohorts in the G22 organisation of developing nations might say or think, there were no winners at Cancun when the trade talks collapsed. Only losers on both sides.

While it is true that the West with its economic power and markets has often displayed arrogance, so too has Rafidah who - like her guru Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad ( photo ) - claims to represent the interests of the developing world. Baloney.

The G22 may have strength in numbers and that's understandable against the collective strength of the Western economies. But in the final analysis, each representative seeks to protect state interests.

This leads to an interesting question: given the puny size of Malaysia's agricultural sector in global terms, or even in comparative terms with other developing economies, what interests was Rafidah representing at the Cancun talks?

Rafidah led the charge against investment rules talks getting off the ground. Listen to the racket made by developing world delegates - all have one thing in common: a mono-linguistic form that's steeped in the old, sterile, predictable virtuoso of anti-imperialism and anti-colonisation.

They're always strong on rhetoric, almost never on substance. There's a fear among Third World states that foreigners armed with money will take away their way of life, instead of considering the possibility that foreign investments may improve their living standards.

Whatever the potential inequitable impact of investments, appropriate domestic policies and legislation would mitigate any adverse local consequences.

The real reason, though, is that Malaysia wants to protect its still nascent, small and medium manufacturing sector. Curiously it's been nascent since the mid-1970s.

Extension of Seattle

Cancun delegates were faced with three contentious issues: they bickered over agricultural reforms, a global investment agreement and a call by four African nations for the West to remove cotton subsidies.

Each of these issues symbolises all that is wrong with the world trading system and its rules, most of which are imposed by the West. Still, this is nothing new.

The Doha Round of trade talks two years ago was doomed to failure even before it started. Much of the Uruguay Round of trade talks has yet to be resolved. Remnants of the old General Agreement for Trade and Tariffs (GATT) remain in one form or another.

The WTO presidency is hopelessly incompetent. So the failure at Cancun is unsurprising since it was simply an extension of Seattle four years ago. Nobody should have expected anything less than for each side to press hard for its own interests to be considered.

If Rafidah thinks the collapse of the Cancun talks was a sign of victory for the developing world, she is only displaying her ignorance. And she couldn't be more dishonest.

Whatever chance the G22 had of winning more concessions from the West crashed when Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez, arrogantly shoved a new draft document in the faces of its members without consultation.

It shows the nonsense surrounding the unity of the G22 self-stylers. There's no homogeneity among them, despite the fact that all hail from the Third World.

But bigger differences lie within the G22 and it'll be interesting to see just how long this unity lasts. If I were the West, I'd wait on the sidelines and let this group disintegrate under the weight of its own hubris.

Hypocrisy in policies

The most powerful players in the G22 aren't insignificant states like Malaysia which, like Australia, is forever trying to box above its weight. They're Brazil, China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia and Mexico, all of which are big countries with potentially massive markets.

These countries even harbour ambitions of harnessing their size to build their global market power. It won't happen.

For one thing, none are durable markets. For another, none are disciplined enough in global financial terms. Moreover, strong differences exist between the agenda of each nation. Brazil wants open markets, while India wants them closed tighter than Fort Knox.

But here's the real sting in all the hypocrisy that is Asian: every state clamours for investment, yet South Korea and Japan are dead set against opening their economies to more investors.

Japan blocked General Motors and Ford to protect Toyota and Nissan, and South Korea blocked foreign investors that would have whittled down the family-owned, crony-infested chaebol conglomerates. Now they're quietly feeding the same ideas into other soft-bellied Asian states.

Rafidah may well hum a victory tune, but in time Asia will rue the loss of a golden opportunity, as no doubt will the rest of the world.

For Malaysia, any chance of additional foreign direct investment flows into an economy where FDI has been hollowing-out has just gone out of the window no thanks to a minister who prefers to play politics and take centre-stage to spout claptrap.

MANJIT BHATIA is managing director of AsiaRisk - a political and economic research and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. The writer specialises in international economics and politics and the Asia-Pacific region.