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
