CPP/Ang Bayan: Declaration of National Sovereignty and Patrimony Week

From the April 7 English language edition of Ang Bayan posted to the CPP Website: Declaration of National Sovereignty and Patrimony Week

In the face of heightening US intervention, increasing presence of US and allied foreign troops, intensifying foreign economic plunder and the worsening puppetry of the Aquino regime to the US government, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on the Filipino people and all their patriotic, democratic, progressive and revolutionary forces to launch a widespread campaign to banner the call for national freedom.

Let us declare April 22-30 as National Sovereignty and Patrimony Week to jumpstart this intensified propaganda and education campaign and drum up the patriotic demands of the Filipino people.

Let us recall the Filipino people’s heroes in ther struggle for national independence, from Andres Bonifacio to Macli-ing Dulag, from Amado V. Hernandez to Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran, from Ka Bert Olalia to Ka Roger, from Teresa Magbanua to Juvy Capion, and all those who have died fighting for the Filipino people’s aspirations for genuine independence.

The National Sovereignty and Patrimony Week will cover the scheduled swing-by visit of US imperialist chieftain Barack Obama. It will also cover the upcoming anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). It covers as well as the death anniversary of Macli-ing Dulag and the celebrations of International Earth Day which underscore the issue of increasing foreign plunder of the country’s non-renewable resources and the resulting environmental destruction.

The struggle to uphold national sovereignty and patrimony is set to become one of the Filipino people’s central points of resistance in the rest of the year and in succeeding years as they amplify their demand for the ouster of the current puppet Aquino regime.

This struggle currently involves:

(1) opposing the planned signing of the Agreement for Enhanced Defense Cooperation which will allow the US to carve military enclaves and maintain permanent military presence in the Philippines of several thousand US troops in the guise of “joint exercises,” "humanitarian assistance and disaster response;” and demanding the abrogation of the Mutual Defense Treaty (1956), the Visiting Forces Agreement (1998) and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (2002).

(2) opposing increasing US military interventionism in providing the puppet regime with military funding and arms support, conducting surveillance operations, providing logistical support and direct participation during combat operations and in conducting bombing runs;

(3) opposing the planned amendment of the 1987 constitution (“chacha” or charter change) which seeks to remove restrictions against foreign ownership of land and business operations in the Philippines in order to fulfill the conditions set by the US government to facilitate the Aquino regime’s application to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

(4) opposing the Aquino regime’s campaign to open up wider tracts of land for rubber, oil palm, pineapple and banana plantations and entice more mining operations to extract black sand, gold, zinc, coal and other mineral resources.

(5) opposing the neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation, liberalization and denationalization, especially the Aquino regime’s crony-controlled Public-Private Partnership projects;

(6) opposing the Aquino regime’s refusal to heed the people’s demand for genuine land reform and national industrialization and instead generating an empty economic bubble of office space, mall and condominium construction.

In the economic field, we must set the spotlight on the prevailing grave socio-economic conditions that are a result of US-imposed neoliberal policies which have brought about unprecedented hardships on the people, including the deregulation of the oil industry, the further liberalization of the power industry, the privatization of water services, the use of public funds to augment crony investments in tollways and other infrastructure projects and so on.

We must develop strong national criticism of the Aquino regime and all previous puppet regimes over the past seven decades for their failure to develop a national industrial base and independent economy capable of producing the needs for domestic consumption and production and sustaining employment. We must expose the import-dependent, export-oriented and debt-financed production that oppresses the workers with low wages and the peasants with widespread landgrabbing.

We must condemn the reactionary puppet state for subjecting the country’s national patrimony to foreign plunder, allowing foreign big capitalists to siphon out non-renewable mineral resources; and grab tens of thousands of hectares of land and carve out large tracts into chemical-fed plantations which cause massive soil erosion and widespread public health problems including air pollution and the poisoning of rivers and streams.

We must expose how foreign-owned mines and big logging and plantation operations, like foreign-owned semi-manufacturing plants in the so-called “economic zones” do not serve to develop local production and fail to generate a substantial number of jobs correspondent to the extent of its super-profits and how these are interested only in exploiting the cheap labor and cheap raw materials in the Philippines.

We must expose Aquino’s “rapid economic growth” as “ampaw” or having a hollow core and nothing but an illusion conjured by the influx of the oversupply of money in US and China banks and which is set to explode the moment the US and Chinese financial systems make adjustments causing the massive withdrawal of portfolio investments.

We must aim to reinvigorate the Filipino people’s sense of patriotism and national dignity by carrying out, among others, a sustained campaign to review Philippine history from the nationalist point of view. We must revive the Filipino people’s historic resistance against US military bases.

We must expose how the US has been involved in surveillance, joining trainings, bombing runs, logistical support and other combat operations through its Zamboanga-based Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P). We must expose the public relations campaign being conducted by the US military to make US basing and interventionism more palatable, making use of loose change from the overflowing funds of the US military in token school construction and village electrification projects.

We must expose how the Aquino regime is serving to justify the “US pivot” towards Asia involving the deployment of 60% of US overseas naval troops and 50% of its land-based troops in the Asia-Pacific. We must expose, debunk and oppose the claim of the Aquino regime that it is defending Philippine national sovereignty in allowing the US military to maintain its presence in Philippine seas and have unrestricted access to Philippine facilities in order to confront China’s aggressive assertion of its claim over the South China Sea land formations.

We must show how Aquino’s assertion is no different from the justification of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo who welcomed US colonial troops to supposedly fight the Spanish colonialists. The result will not be different: foreign military, political and economic dominance. We must assert and prove that upholding and defending national sovereignty and national patrimony can only be carried out as an independent act of a country. To claim that one’s country can assert its sovereignty with the help of a superpower is to beg to become a protectorate of that power.

We must relentlessly oppose US interventionism in the internal affairs of the Philippines. We must expose how the US embassy operates as the center of political power of the reactionary state in the Philippines where policies, laws and programs emanate and Filipino politicians kowtow to the US ambassador and seek his stamp of approval. We must expose how the US military directs the Philippine military in the conduct of the counterrevolutionary war Oplan Bayanihan, which was patterned after the US Counterinsurgency Guide of 2009.

We must shatter the illusion of a “globalized” world being promoted by the imperialists’ ideological and cultural agencies which seeks to break down the national boundaries of third world countries and subject these to military intervention and economic plunder while the imperialist countries race to erect high protectionist walls in their home economic. We must assert the necessity of achieving national sovereignty and defending the country’s patrimony as key factors for securing the country’s future as a modern and progressive state amid the prolonged and continuing crisis of global capitalism.

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/publications/ang_bayan/20140407/declaration-of-national-sovereignty-and-patrimony-week