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Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership deal far worse than NBN
Philippine Daily Inquirer (letter to the editor) - March 5, 2008
Ester V. Perez de Tagle – While the ZTE national broadband network (NBN) deal is rocking the nation, an even more damaging shocker is speeding past public notice towards implementation. The Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) is on its way to ratification unless more senators give it closer scrutiny.
Just like the ZTE-NBN deal, the JPEPA was negotiated in secrecy and signed abroad, away from the glare of Philippine media. A case had to be filed in court before a copy of the contract was released to the public.
But worse, the JPEPA is a comprehensive "mega-treaty" with serious adverse impacts on our country's sovereignty and health, economy, environment and social well-being. The NBN involves only the loss of taxpayers' money to corruption; the JPEPA involves the loss of our sovereignty as a people, and of our food and water security-the very sources of our people's survival and livelihood. What was paid for this act of high treason?
During the Senate hearings, the senators berated the JPEPA panel for incompetence in coming up with an unacceptable and indefensible bilateral agreement. Shouldn't the JPEPA then have been rejected outright or renegotiated, instead of getting a "band-aid" called "side agreement"? If challenged before an international court, could this side agreement stand against an intact main agreement signed by two heads of state and ratified by the legislatures of both countries?
Moreover, treaties under Philippine jurisdiction are part of Philippine law and would have the effect of overriding previous contrary legislation. Besides, the side agreement does not correct all the serious problems spawned by the one-sided agreement. The Japanese placed many reservations or exemptions to the JPEPA, to protect their interests-which our panel miserably failed to do for ours.
For example, the Japanese could fish in our waters while we could not fish in theirs. Their factory ships, usually sailing in fleets, could, with their superior equipment, catch much more fish than our fishermen could; and they could process and pack their catch on site, ready for international export-even to compete with our fish products in our local markets. Because of the economy of scale, their products would be cheaper. So who would buy Philippine products?
Article 93 bans the Philippines from imposing technology transfer and from hiring a given level of Filipino executives or labor-prohibitions not found in Japan's EPAs with other countries. So why are we being herded into following these countries by ratifying our outrageous EPA with Japan? The Philippines is internationally cited as a biodiversity superstar, richer in natural resources than those other countries. Instead of investing in people development to enable our people to protect, nurture and wisely use our precious resources for the social and sustainable economic development of our country, why is the leadership selling our superstar Inang Bayan as a prostitute?
[Ester V. Perez de Tagle is the founding chair of Concerned Citizens against Pollution (COCAP), via email]
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