The grand deception

May 9, 2008  --  Got something to say?
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Nestor MataNestor Mata
MANILA-Gloria Arroyo, who has deceived the Filipino people for more than seven
years, is trying to pull the same trick of deception on the senators of
the land. She is calling for the ratification of the controversial
Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement or JPEPA.

The treaty, which has been under constantly severe attack by
constitutionalists, economists and environmentalists, is scheduled for
deliberations on the Senate floor next week. In anticipation of this,
Arroyo is peddling specious benefits from the flawed pact in an attempt
to have it ratified by the Senate.

If ratified, she claimed, P365 billion in direct foreign investments
would surely come from Japan. But this was quickly oppugned by her
former vice president, Teofisto Guingona and concerned environmentalists
nationwide led by the Magkaisa Junk JPEPA Coalition.

They slammed Arroyo’s overture to the senators and warned against what
they described as “grand scale violations of the Filipino people’s
rights, if the pact is ratified.” And they called on the senators to
resist Arroyo’s pressure to give their stamp of approval of the treaty.

Guingona, who was a senator before his brief stint as Veep, urged the
senators “not to be deceived” by the specious benefits of JPEPA that are
being peddled by Arroyo and her economic and trade officials. “The
economic gains that our country is supposed to reap once the treaty is
ratified are purely speculative and lacking real merits as the
proceedings of the Senate would show.”

In the first place, he said, “Japan’s own study reveals that the
Philippines is not a priority destination for Japanese investments for
the next three years, because of ‘inadequate infrastructure, an
underdeveloped legal system and problems with legal operation,’ among
others, JPEPA won’t cure the reasons behind low foreign direct
investments, but it will be a grand-scale surrender of our rights as a
sovereign people.”

Guingona was joined by the MJJC, a multi-sectoral movement that has been
campaigning for the rejection of the flawed JPEPA. The coalition of
environmentalists echoed Guingona’s warning about the much-ballyhooed
profits to be gained from JPEPA’s ratification. And they voiced “their
hope that the Senate will assert its institutional independence and
fight for the sovereign interests of the Filipino people.

“The President promises P365 billion in direct foreign investments from
Japan if JPEPA is signed, something not found in the actual text of the
treaty, ” they noted. But “even if it was in the treaty, we now ask: Is
that the price for Filipinos to violate our own Constitution, to
surrender our lands and seas, and even surrender the lawmaking powers of
Congress?”

And they disclosed the results of a survey on the international
operations of Japanese companies by the Japan External Trade
Organization (JETRO), a government related agency, which ranked the
Philippines as last among 18 Japanese investment destinations. The JETRO
surveys, which also showed the Philippines as among the top five
countries where there are many risks of doing business, clearly
disproved Arroyo’s claims in her recent speech at the Yazaki-Torres
factory in Calamba City, that JPEPA would bring in billions in foreign
investments and create 200,00 jobs for Filipinos.

Apart from the economic flaws, as learned constitutionalists had
testified during Senate public hearings, the JPEPA violates the
constitutional provisions of promoting of public health and providing a
healthy ecology to Filipinos. It compromises the health and welfare of
present and future generations because it encourages the entry and
dumping of toxic wastes into this country from Japan.

There are other flaws in the JPEPA, such as the disadvantages to
Filipino OFWs, including nurses and caregivers, the lopsided provisions
in favor Japanese agricultural and industrial products, and many, many
more reasons why the Philippine Senate should not ratify the
controversial JPEPA.

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Posted by News Team | Filed Under Nestor Mata 

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