News release │13 August 2008 │Secretariat: 0926-6246061

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Anti-JPEPA activists hold protest at Japanese embassy

Side deal will not protect RP from Japanese economic invasion – NO DEAL!

Activists from various organizations under the NO DEAL! Movement held a protest action today in front of the Japanese Embassy in Manila to oppose the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA).

The protesters described JPEPA as “Japanese economic invasion” that even the proposed side agreement to address its serious constitutional defects could prevent. Senator Miriam Santiago, chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations, endorsed the upper chamber’s ratification of the controversial treaty last week. Her endorsement is based on Japan’s supposed commitment to sign a side deal that will revise the Philippines’ unconstitutional commitments in the treaty.

“Assuming that the side agreement does resolve the constitutional issues in the JPEPA, it still does not answer the concerns raised by our small fishers, farmers, workers and small businessmen on the treaty’s impact on their livelihood. It still does not guarantee that the country will not become a large dumpsite for Japanese toxic wastes nor the interests of our nurses and caregivers will be protected. The JPEPA will only deepen the domination of our economy by Japan at the expense of our national development and our people”, said Arnold Padilla, spokesperson for NO DEAL!

To dramatize the group’s opposition to JPEPA, they burned a huge Japanese imperial flag of which the feared effects of the treaty on the country are printed such as “loss of jobs”, “plunder of natural resources”, “toxic wastes” and “surplus products”.

Padilla said that they decided to hold their protest action at the Japanese Embassy to deliver a strong message to the Japanese government that ordinary Filipinos reject the JPEPA with or without a side agreement. “The bottom-line is that we do not see any substantial benefits for our people from the treaty. On the contrary, we expect more economic displacement based on the agreement’s unfair provisions and based on our experience with other similar free trade deals such as the World Trade Organization that destroyed local industries and people’s livelihood”, Padilla argued.

JPEPA is currently pending at the Senate, which needs to concur with 16 votes from its members for the treaty to be in force. Senator Mar Roxas, chair of the Senate committee on trade and Santiago’s co-sponsor of the JPEPA, has asked to defer the debates on the treaty last Tuesday until negotiators from the Philippines and Japan have produced the side agreement.

The anti-JPEPA coalition welcomed this development as it exposed Santiago’s earlier false claims that the ratification of the controversial treaty is “virtually assured”. Padilla said that even the side agreement itself, which Santiago hypes as the cure to the constitutional defects of the JPEPA to ensure its ratification, is facing a lot of issues and problems. “The senators have not even seen this side agreement. No one knows what it really contains and how it can supposedly uphold the Constitution”, Padilla pointed out.

Padilla added that their group will continue to hold talks with individual senators to convince them to vote against the JPEPA. “We need at least eight patriotic senators to resist this invasion”, said Padilla. (END)