Demonstrations can serve as a wake-up call, so said Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. He was, of course, referring to "the demo in the United States", not the "Black 14" rally last Saturday. But never mind the contradiction.

As top dog, Mahathir can say whatever he likes and still be dutifully quoted by our "responsible" press. Didn't he say that the Black 14 "rioters" were preparing Molotov bombs? Despite the police dragnet across the country, only a, er, toy gun, was found. So much for the Black 14ers' intention to run amok.

Clearly, one year after the sentencing of sacked deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, anger continues to seethe in the streets of Kuala Lumpur despite dire warnings of arrests by the authorities.

So was the outrage in the streets in Washington last weekend among the anti-globalisation protesters. Their reason: little, if anything at all, has been done about the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. They are right.

Consider this. Over the last three decades, the disparity ratio between the richest 20 percent of the world's population and that of the poorest 20 percent has increased from 30:1 to 61:1. And people in more than 100 countries representing one-quarter of humanity are worse off than they were 15 years ago.

Today, the net worth of the world's 358 richest individuals is equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 percent of the world's population a whooping 2.3 billion people. And concomitant to the rise in global wealth which has incidentally ballooned by six-fold to US$23 trillion is a silent genocide. Every year, 30 million people die of hunger.

These grim statistics prompted the Group of 77 to label the situation a "global apartheid" when it met last week in Cuba. They have good reasons to say so. In apartheid South Africa, 16 percent of its population controlled over 80 percent of its resources. Likewise, globally, 20 percent of world's population has control over some four-fifths of world's resources.

Over the years, free-marketeers have shrewdly sold the world the idea that the Third World is bridging the gap spearheaded by a dozen or so rapidly-growing tiger economies whose growth is spurred by the opportunities of globalisation, or internationalisation, of world markets. The poor, so we were told, are fast catching up, and soon there will be a happy convergence of rich and poor.

For those who are very much in touch with reality, this is pure hogwash. United Nations Development Programme Administrator James Gustave Speth described it as a ''very widespread and very dangerous" myth. Or in the words of former World Bank president Robert McNamara, ''Even if the growth rate of the poor countries doubled, only seven would close the gap with the rich nations in 100 years. Only another nine would reach our level in 1,000 years."

These, according to secretary-general of UN Conference on Trade and Development Rubens Ricupero, are the awkward truths that the world must face. First, no economic law exists that will catapult developing economies to the income levels of developed countries. Second, growth does not trickle down. It trickles up.

Herein lies the truth. Global free-marketeers are clueless on how to deal with our ugly predicament. Their solution is the standard fare of more of the same ''leave it to the market". In this concocted leave-it-to-the-market scheme, investment from rich countries is to be the engine of growth in poor economies.

But the reality is, of course, very different.

Over the past few decades, investments have gravitated around a handful of Third World countries. In 1993, almost 80 per cent of foreign direct investments went to only 10 countries. Of these, seven were in East Asia which accounted for two-thirds of total inflow. The rest of the Third World received nothing but pennies.

That, of course, is not surprising. After all, investors go where they can extract the most profit in the quickest possible way. And profits can only be made in growing, not basket-case, economies.

As Asia confronts a new phase of globalisation spearheaded by the globalisers, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is needed, now more than ever, to help protect and advance the interests of the poor.

The declaration established that human rights include the right to social security, the right to a reasonable living standard, the right to food, the right to education, the right to housing, the right to health, the right to work and the right to rest and leisure.

Perhaps all this is nothing new to Mahathir. What is new is this: The call of global democracy must go hand in hand with the respect for human rights in Malaysia. As reformasi leader Tian Chua said hours before he was arrested on Sunday: "Spewing rhetorics about freedom from imperialist superpowers holds no meaning, unless we are also free from domestic autocratic rule."