By Butch Fernandez
Business Mirror
August 28, 2008

TWO acknowledged experts on constitutional and trade issues warned on Wednesday that Filipinos would end up as the big losers if the controversial Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa) is ratified. It is being debated in the Senate.

In a forum organized by the multisectoral group Magkaisa Junk Jpepa Coalition in Pasay City, Prof. Merlin Magallona, former dean of the UP College of Law, asserted that “Jpepa is an essential aspect of the Japanese relocation strategy and Jpepa’s benefits will be accruing mostly to the Japanese subsidiaries in the Philippines.”

Magallona said the Jpepa grants extensive national treatment to the Japanese that should only be for Filipinos—such as owning land, the practice of certain professions, and operating educational institutions. “This essentially places Japanese nationals and their investments at parity with Filipinos.”

He added that “if very little preference is extended to the Filipino vis-à-vis the Japanese investors under the Jpepa, what is the value of being a Filipino in your own national economy?”

Magallona also cautioned the Senate on the issue of the pending exchange of notes between Japan and the Philippines, which Sen. Miriam Santiago had claimed will address the constitutional issues in Jpepa. He said that “without the benefit of seeing the actual document, it would be very difficult to come up with a definitive analysis, favorable or otherwise.”

He also raised concerns on the impact of the notes on the Jpepa if it is executed merely between the Philippine and Japanese Executive branches, noting that the Jpepa was ratified by the Japanese Diet and is pending concurrence by the Philippine Senate. “Any amendment to the agreement entered into by the Philippines with Japan should at least go through a similar process, at a minimum.”

In the same forum, former commercial attaché Edna Espos shared Magallona’s view that Filipinos will be big losers to Japan.

Espos, also a former director of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Bureau of International Trade Relations, noted that Sen. Mar Roxas II had established two tests to gauge the success of Jpepa. “First, did we achieve our negotiating objectives, and second, did we gain more than we gave up? The answer to these tests is a resounding no.”

Espos said that one of the goals for entering into Jpepa is to gain market access for Philippine exports to Japan. “In order to achieve this goal, the Philippines under Jpepa drastically eliminated tariffs across the board, exempting only six tariff lines for rice and salt and negotiated on issues that it would not even do so under the World Trade Organization.”

But instead of reciprocating the gesture, she pointed out that Japan excluded from the coverage of Jpepa at least 197 tariff lines, constituting mainly agricultural and marine products for which the Philippines has competitive advantage.

“The long list of Japanese exclusions, long-term phaseout of tariffs and deferred market negotiations under Jpepa severely restricted agricultural gains by the Philippines under Jpepa,” she said.

Espos added that the purported easier market access for electronics, furnitures and automotive parts under Jpepa is not entirely true. “Even without the Jpepa, these products already enter Japan duty-free; Jpepa did not change anything. Philippine garments and footwear exporters cannot take advantage of the duty-free provision under Jpepa because their raw materials do not comply with Jpepa Rules of Origin, which mandates in part that the raw materials come primarily from Japan or any of the Asean countries.”

A crucial item the Philippines failed to get after giving up so much was the removal of the enormous Japanese agricultural subsidy (including subsidies on its fishing industry) that aversely affects millions of Filipino farmers and fisherfolk who cannot compete with subsidized products, she added.

Espos elaborated on the inequity of the Jpepa by pointing out the Philippines eliminated its fish tariffs under Jpepa, but Japan will not even commit to reduce its subsidies on its fishing vessels and will, in fact, even exclude fish products from the Jpepa.

By Mario B. Casayuran
Manila Bulletin 0nline
27 August 2008

Senate Majority Leader Francis N. Pangilinan said yesterday that the Senate Committee on Rules has started harmonizing the competing jurisdiction claims of the Supreme Court and the Senate over Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV who remains detained in a military camp since his successful political campaign for a seat in the Senate in the May 2007 elections.

The Senate Rules Committee discussed the fate of Trillanes with the Supreme Court maintaining its order that the senator should remain in jail for the non-bailable coup d’etat charges.

The Senate opposition bloc, led by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr., stressed that Trillanes should appear in the Senate and perform his legislative duties because he was elected by the people.

Pimentel maintained that there is double standard being applied on Trillanes who is still being held behind bars although he and military mutineers, without firing a shot and hurting no one, walked into and stayed for a while at a Makati City hotel demanding the resignation of President Arroyo last year.

He said Nur Misuari, former head of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which rebelled against the government and killed 100 civilians in Sulu, was allowed by the courts to leave his jail on bail. Misuari’s MNLF signed a peace accord with national government in 1996.

Herman Tiu Laurel / Infowars / Tribune / 8-25-2008

The past week of skirmishes between the AFP and so-called “lost command” elements disowned by the MILF shows the inanity and futility of negotiations with these so-called “insurgents.” The MILF will not even feign control because these groups are clearly moving in cadence with its political agenda — this time committing atrocities so grave as to make the international headlines. Moreover, the MILF has never consolidated under its wings other Bangsa Moro factions such as the MNLF, the Ampatuans and the Dimaporos, because they have all objected to its claims. So what is there to negotiate with the MILF then? Verily, capitulation calls by such miniscule groups as the “Black and White Movement” only serve to follow the US-MILF-GMA conspiracy.

As the days pass and debates rage over the Arroyo-MILF MoA issues, the stronger the arguments against appeasement and capitulation become. The MILF has been exposed as an empty phantom claiming as its “force” elements that it cannot command, and the “ancestral domain” proposition has been shown to be a vacuous conception, indefensible in moral and historical terms. The best argument we have heard is from our reader and radio volunteer Ka Ferdie who said: “If we are trace the ancestors who first established a high level of civilization in this archipelago, (these were) the Sri Visaya and the Majapahit empires in the first and second millen(nia) that were not Muslim nor Christian but Buddhist, Hindu and Animist in religious orientation.”

Domains and property concepts mutate through historical evolution but in the end, these are fixed by the social, economic and political imperatives of the times. The original migrations to the archipelago tens of thousands of years ago, like those of the Aetas and Negritoes, do not count in the “ancestral domains” claims at all because these have become impotent cultures. As new migrations arrived taking over the rich agricultural lowlands, the old communities retreated to the hinterlands, which had no value until the Industrial Revolution started the rush for minerals and ores. And now that even marshes and seas are coveted for natural gas and oil, Western energy and political powers have begun to redefine such domains to circumvent the need to deal with national entities.

The main question for the Filipino people in the aborted Arroyo-MILF MoA is: Shall we allow hundreds of billions of dollars of natural resources that form part of this nation’s wealth to be taken away from the many citizens of this country and given to foreign greed and a few self-serving bandit-leaders for their own aggrandizement? We should have asked this question even earlier, when the Mining Act was being reviewed by the Supreme Court, which finally decided to give it away to foreign interests. But the issue was not as highlighted as the Arroyo-MILF MoA because it did not involve a bandit group passing itself off as a “state” and claiming large tracks of land where Christians had properties and interests, like in Zamboanga and other cities, which really inflamed the Christians there.

From all accounts, the MILF is only a paper kris as shown by the numerous times the AFP has demolished this so-called force. But behind it is a real power in its staging of the geopolitical wayang kulit on the Mindanao stage — the US . And so the paper kris waves about menacingly even when it signifies nothing. Time and again, history has shown that the so-called Muslim insurgency cannot sustain itself without direct support from the US and its agents as in the Michael Meiring episode, which implicated the CIA in the Davao bombings of 2003 and Operation Greenbase, where junior officers were ordered to grenade Muslim mosques. Thus, the real enemies of peace and stability in Mindanao are the foreign powers.

I am deliberately repetitive in citing the Michael Meiring incident, where the FBI whisked off the American bomber back to the US, prompting Davao Mayor Duterte to tell Ricciardone, “I just would like now to make it clear, to inform…the US Ambassador and some morons there in the national government who are handling these FBI agents that you better not do that again here or I will have you arrested,” as well as, the Operation Greenbase exposé as these are crucial to discern what is really happening in the tense areas of Mindanao. Those preaching capitulation to the MILF never discuss these pivotal moments of subversion and terrorism because the only power that can overcome this foreign menace is the power of nationalism.

On my Destiny Cable TV interview last week with retired Commodore Rex Robles, he said: “I know this will sound corny but the answer to all the problems is ‘Love of Country’.” Right away, I caped it off with, “When the Filipino people begin to think of country in terms of