BY BAGONG ALYANSANG MAKABAYAN – PANAY
JULY 4 marked the 77th year of the Philippines’ supposed independence from the United States of America. It was on July 4, 1946 when the third Philippine Republic was inaugurated, following the Second World War and after the Philippines and the US signed a Treaty of General Relation that relinquished American sovereignty over the archipelago.
The date was thereafter celebrated as Independence Day until 1962 when Pres. Diosdado Macapagal, by proclamation, moved the Independence Day to June 12 to mark the 1898 proclamation in Kawit, Cavite of independence from Spanish rule. In 1964, Congress passed Republic Act 4166 formally designating June 12 as the country’s Independence Day. Meanwhile, the 4th of July was celebrated as “Republic Day”, which Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. later declared as Philippine-American Friendship Day.
Whether July 4 is celebrated as Independence Day, Republic Day or Friendship Day matters little to the ordinary Filipino. The most important issues today remain to be the harsh socio economic realities that keep him or her at the fringes of desperation and our country well within the sphere of foreign control, particularly, that of the United States.
The widespread poverty among our people, the absence of an independent foreign policy, the subservience to the political and economic interests of the US and other capitalist nations, the exploitation we endure by these same foreign powers, and the lack of programs and policies aimed at agrarian reform and national industrialization are all indicative of the fact that, while the Philippines has nominal independence, it remains a vassal state in the constellation of US hegemony.
From the start, the country was forced into economic agreements disadvantageous to us, beginning with the Bell Trade Act in 1946 to the 1989 bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) updated in 1994. We continue to be hostages to the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) even if these are detrimental to the vast majority of Filipinos.
Such agreements and policies transformed our economy into one that is export-oriented and import-dependent – unable to produce our own goods and, instead, reliant on industrialized nations for finished products. Any potential we have of building our own industries and developing a robust economy using our rich natural resources and manpower is undercut by policies that serve foreign capital. We have become little more than a market for developed economies, whose corporations exploit our country for its raw material and cheap labor. These policies – held in place by a government and political elites submissive to foreign masters – have kept us from achieving real progress through genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization.
As one administration after the next bankrupted our economy through corruption and neoliberal policies, the loans they drew from both local and foreign lenders, including the IMF and the World Bank, increased exponentially. The national debt has now ballooned to more than P13 trillion, half of which was incurred under the Duterte administration. These loans have themselves become weapons to subvert our development by forcing us to embrace neoliberalism, privatization, regressive taxation, and other anti-people policies that keep Filipinos poor while enriching only the upper echelons of Philippine society. Meanwhile, the government devotes the loan proceeds to big-ticket infrastructure projects that do little to contribute to long-term growth and have proven to be a rich source of corruption for public officials.
As the country suffers under a vicious cycle of crises, followed by increased debt, followed by more crises, we find ourselves tied to the mast of a sinking ship captained by capitalists and bureaucrats who seem to be interested only in lining their pockets with profit and plunder.
On top of it all, military agreements between the Philippines and the United States, like the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) are firmly in place to ensure constant US troop presence and to safeguard American geopolitical interests not just in the country but the entire Asia-Pacific region. (To be continued)/PN
