The leadership of the National Democratic Front on Friday condemned the signing of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, calling it a “flagrant trampling on Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and called on “the Filipino people to launch a powerful campaign to abrogate” the pact.
The NDF is the umbrella organization of underground organizations allied with the Communist Party of the Philippines.
In a statement, the NDF’s national executive committee also called on Americans to “stand up in solidarity with the Filipino people” against “escalating US military intervention in the Philippines” the way they did against the Vietnam War.
Noting that the pact was “negotiated in secrecy, preventing the Filipino people from knowing its contents” until after its signing on April 28, the day US President Barack Obama arrived in the country for a two-day visit, the NDF called the EDCA “a shameless surrender of national sovereignty by the Aquino regime.”
It cited provisions of the agreement that they said gave the US an “indecent extent of privilege(s)” such as Article IV, which states: “The prepositioned materiel shall be for the exclusive use of United States forces. United States forces shall have control over the access to and disposition of such prepositioned materiel and shall have the unencumbered right to remove such prepositioned materiel at any time from the territory of the Philippines.”
The article also gives US forces and contractors “unimpeded access to Agreed Locations for all matters relating to the prepositioning and storage of defense equipment, supplies, and materiel, including delivery, management, inspection, use, maintenance, and removal of such equipment, supplies and materiel.”
“From such provisions in EDCA, it is clear that the US forces can undertake numerous activities which can amount to using the Philippines as a launching pad for US wars of aggression, which the US had carried out in the past against the peoples of Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries,” the NDF said.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/85930/ndf-on-edca-a-flagrant-trampling-on-philippine-sovereignty
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ReplyDeleteNo surprise here. To the Maoist NDF, the US is the Great Imperialist Satan whose military presence in the Philippines must be undermined and opposed.
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