No to Australian Military Presence in the Philippines!

Block the Senate Ratification of the Philippine Australia “Status of the Visiting Forces Agreement”!

The Philippine-Australia military agreement, known as the Status of the Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA), which was poised to be ratified by the Philippine senate on June 6, has now been postponed until late July for final ratification. The SOVFA will enable Australian troops to conduct military exercises and other related activities in the Philippines. The SOVFA, as with the US Visiting Forces Agreement, sets the guidelines for the treatment of visiting Australian troops. The SoVFA was signed in Canberra in May 2007. The moves to ratify it now coincides with the plans of the United States to increase its military forces in the Philippines under a rebalancing scheme which significantly increases US and imperialist militarization of the Asia and Pacific region. The containment of China, which is emerging as a direct competitor to the US and other imperialist countries economic interests, is a key and explicitly stated objective of this heightened militarization.

Seven senators voted against ratification on the day Senator Loren Legarda, the chairperson of the Senate foreign relations committee, still managed to gain the support of 13 of the 21 senators present. However, this means that she was still two votes short of the necessary two-thirds of the Senate membership of 23, to ratify the agreement. This gives the anti-war movement, left and progressive forces a few extra weeks, to step-up the campaign to block the passage of the agreement.

The Australian-US Alliance

Australia is an important ally of the US and its relationship with the US is sometimes described as one of a “junior partner”. As a “partner” it defends its own national interests and its foreign policy serves the interests of the Australian capitalist class, the 1%.  Australian big business has worldwide interests. From the Congo to the Philippines and Chile, Australian mining countries destroy communities and pollute the environment. Being a relatively small country, Australia lacks the military capacity to project power globally, so Australia’s 1% protects its worldwide interests by tying Australia’s military to the major power of the day. A hundred years ago, this meant Britain. Today, it means the US.

Australia’s military engagement in Afghanistan is just the latest in a long line of US-led wars of aggression Australia has signed up to, which includes Iraq (twice), Somalia, Vietnam and Korea. In the South Pacific it is a regional imperialist power and Australia’s powerful mining corporations operate with impunity and little regard for local indigenous communities, workers or the environment. While in the Philippines there has been no direct experience of the brutality of Australian imperialism, the people of the Pacific region, such as the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, have suffered and continue to suffer under Australia’s imperialist yoke.

The Australia-US military alliance has also shifted into higher gear along with the US shift to the increased militarization of the Asian region. The US lease on its military base in the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia runs out in 2016 and the Pentagon wants to relocate at least some of the military functions of the base to various Australian bases in Western Australian, Darwin and the Cocos Islands. The US has used Diego Garcia to base nuclear weapons, marines, warships, bombers and spy planes. And it has used it as a transit station for political prisoners sent for “rendition” to other countries so they can be tortured, though this is officially denied. Diego Garcia is a strategic hub of the US war machine.

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a part of Australian territory, was used as a military base by the British in World Wars I & II and now the US military wants the islands as a base for drones and other spy planes. The new Australia-US deal will allow for 250 US marines to be stationed in Darwin next year, increasing to 2500 by 2016. There will be increased US military ship visits to Darwin and other ports in northern Australia. There will be more US warplanes, including B-52 bombers, based in Darwin. Darwin, situated on the northern tip of the Australian continent, with its proximity to South East Asia, is strategically located. More joint US-Australian military exercises will take place on Australian soil. US military equipment will be stored in northern Australia, including cluster bombs. These weapons indiscriminately scatter explosive “bomblets” that remain deadly long after conflicts have ended and mainly harm civilians. The Australian Labor Government has fully backed and spearheaded these moves.

Even without the SOVFA, a small number of Australian troops have been deployed to the Philippines since 2001, to supposedly train Filipino soldiers. In July and August 2004, Australian Special Forces landed for joint training exercises. In 2005, there were press reports that the Australian police were conducting "covert operations" in the country. This was followed by reports that elite Australian troops had joined US and Filipino soldiers in operations against alleged terrorists in Mindanao. Even without the SOVFA, Australia can opt to continue sending troops to the Philippines, as long as the Philippine government consents. What Australia wants through the SOVFA is to secure the guarantees and exemptions that the agreement accords to Australian troops when they are deployed in the Philippines. Without the SOVFA Australian troops would be subject to the laws of the Philippines as ordinary tourists.

The Australian SOVFA and the US VFA

As with the US VFA, the Australian SOVFA should be scrutinized and exposed for its potential violation of Philippine sovereignty, its violation of Philippine laws on criminal jurisdiction and custody as well as the social and environmental costs of having foreign troops conducting prolonged and sustained military operations in our country.

For example, on the issue of criminal jurisdiction the SOVFA and the US VFA are similar. As with the US VFA, under the Australian SOVF, the Philippines cannot exercise primary jurisdiction if the Australian side claims that an action was carried out in performance of an "official duty." If, for example, an Australian soldier were accused of being complicit in the killing of innocent civilians or of other human rights violations, their Filipino victims would not be able to sue him or her in Philippine courts once Australian authorities claim, and Philippine authorities agree, that the action was carried out on "official duty”. Unlike under the US VFA Australia must "consult" with the Philippines on whether an action indeed falls under "official duty" and the Philippines apparently has the final say.

On the issue of custody, the SOVFA (unlike the US VFA) gives the Philippines custody of the accused during the trial period. Pending investigation, however, the Philippines would be able to detain the accused only if the soldier was already in the hands of Philippine authorities. If he or she were already in the hands of Australian authorities, however, they would remain with the Australians (though on Philippine territory). Upon conviction, on the issue of confinement to serve the sentence, the provision in the SOVFA is vague and lends itself to different interpretations.

Philippine experience with the actual application of the provisions of the VFA with the US was recently put to the test in the trial of US Marines accused of raping a Filipina in November 2005. US and Philippine government officials invoked the VFA's provisions to justify the holding of the accused under US custody upon arrest and in the entire duration of the trial. A Philippine court subsequently found one US Marine guilty and ordered him imprisoned in a Philippine jail in December 2006. US and Philippine authorities again cited the VFA to defy the judge's order. Under pressure from the US, which cancelled scheduled military exercises with the Philippines to express its displeasure with the Philippine Court's order, Filipino officials promptly spirited the convicted rapist out of the Philippine jail, to be jailed in a cell inside the US embassy complex in Manila, according to US officials. We have no reason to believe that the experience will be any different under the Australian SOVFA.

Despite the minor ‘differences’, however, the SOVFA essentially seeks the same objectives for Australian troops as the VFA does for American soldiers: to exempt Australian troops from being subject to the laws of the Philippines by according them a different legal status “to the extent negotiable”, i.e. Australia will push as hard as it can for its interests to prevail under the SOVFA. While Filipinos or other nationals who are accused of committing offenses in the Philippines will have to go through the normal judicial process that applies to everyone in the country, Australian troops covered under the SOVFA will not.

The Philippine government support for the SOVFA is a part and parcel of its support for US strategic interests in the region, under the extremely misguided view that this somehow coincides with Philippine national interests. The Philippine elite are still doggedly committed to clinging on to the coat tails of a bigger power, living off its benevolence and under its shadow. For a majority of them this power is still the US and along with it they also have an ‘open door’ policy to welcome and even subjugate the nation to the interests of key US allies such as Australia.

The Philippines government best serves its national interests by pursuing an independent foreign policy, in keeping with the Philippine constitution. Major developing countries are emerging with greater economic and strategic clout, pro-people’s governments are creating new regional blocs and alignments, such as in Latin America, and peoples’ movements in the Middle East are challenging the old pro-imperialist status quo. In simply lining up with the US, Australia and ‘old’ imperialism, the Philippine government has once again demonstrated its lack of foresight and absence of leadership in crafting an independent vision and path for the country.

REI MELENCIO

International Desk

Choose a pro-people Supreme Court chief justice

We commend the conviction of Chief Justice Renato Corona by the senator judges. By doing so, we hope that the process that it started would lead to a new paradigm in good governance as Senator Allan Peter Cayetano had said.

The conviction has already snowballed into an en banc order by the Supreme Court to release the SALNs of all members of the judiciary, and by a number of legislators and government officials volunteering to waive confidentiality of their bank accounts.

Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) believes that for justice to endure, the government should now “open the book” of the top echelon of its bureaucracy to the scrutiny of the public.  But disclosing the assets and properties of government officials is also not enough. Public accountability requires public scrutiny on how the wealth was acquired.

In this regard, we ask the P-Noy government to review and reintroduce the idea of the Truth Commission that was rejected by the Corona-led Supreme Court last year.  This time around, the commission can be tasked to look into the irregularities committed not only by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo but all the top officials of the land, whether pro-Gloria or pro-Noynoy. The Commission and the Ombudsman can assist each other in ferreting out the anomalies and persecuting all those involved in wrongdoings.

We should not stop at just the waiving of waivers.  We should audit all these accounts and assets, and confiscate whatever is ill-gotten or simply unexplainable. The government can use these properties to finance more welfare services for the people. Perhaps, the government would then have enough funds to get rid of the Value Added Tax (VAT) which has become an onerous burden to the poor since its implementation.

Once again, we ask that President Aquino be circumspect in choosing the new Supreme Court chief justice. We believe that one of the main reasons why we have a factionalized Supreme Court is that the power to appoint Supreme Court justices is in the hands of the president.

President Aquino should adopt a transparent approach in choosing the new justices. This can be done in a process that integrates public nomination, consultation and hearings. Independent people’s organizations, including human rights groups, civil society groups, and others should be allowed to nominate members of the Supreme Court based on constitutional requirements. We should refrain from choosing Supreme Court justices who have merely served corporate interests, as there are more laudable lawyers doing meritorious services to the people.

Sonny Melencio

Chair, Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM)

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Corona Conviction is not a Deterrent to Corruption

Malacanang and its paid hacks in media are now making a mountain out of a molehill. They say that the conviction of Renato Corona by the impeachment court is a triumph of democracy and a cleansing of the bureaucracy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The telenovela that was the impeachment of Corona ended with a predictable and lackluster climax, leaving the masses unentertained and not craving for more. The single and simplistic moral lesson of the story: “tell the truth in your SALN”.

Despite the long proceedings, the Senate could only prove one fact: Corona did not properly disclose his dollar deposits in his SALN. Hence, its verdict rested on the sole issue of “non-disclosure”, covered by Article 2, which it raised to a “culpable violation of the Constitution”.

In so doing, the complaint, reduced to Articles 2, 3 and 7 during the deliberations, was further narrowed down to “non-disclosure” (Article 2, paragraph 2.2). It did not determine if such cash assets were ill-gotten or acquired illegally, leaving unanswered the people’s questions on “ill-gotten wealth”, “court decisions for sale”, “misconduct and corrupt practices”, etc., etc. The result was a “narrowing down” not to focus on more substantial issues; the case was watered down to insignificance.

The respondent’s admission of non-disclosure was enough for the prosecution and the senator-judges to obtain a guilty verdict. They did not use Corona’s waiver of his dollar deposits to put such bank accounts under scrutiny. Hence, it is clear as daylight that the real intention of the impeachment court was not to expose and punish immoral conduct and corrupt practices in government but to merely remove Corona in the Supreme Court, to replace an Arroyo crony with an Aquino lackey in the judiciary.

If the impeachment court truly wanted to cleanse the bureaucracy, it should have let the sun shine in the dark and shadowy corridors of power. Let the people know how Corona acquired his millions of dollars; how Lucio Tan compelled the Court to flip-flop on the FASAP (Flight Attendants and Stewardesses Association of the Philippines) case; how much perks and privileges are given by PAL to members of the Supreme Court.

But it did not; the impeachment court stopped in its tracks. It did not go beyond the question of non-disclosure. To the people, especially the workers and the poor, we believe that they did so because further investigation would reveal their modus operandi, the prevalent malpractice of officials in the bureaucracy who use their power and influence for economic and personal gain.

Hence, the conviction of Corona would not be a deterrent to corruption since no “crime” other than “non-disclosure” was established. While government officials should properly disclose their properties in the SALNs, a statement of how much one owns is not enough. Public accountability requires public scrutiny on how such wealth was acquired. Therefore, we reiterate our demand for DISCLOSE ALL, for the full disclosure of all bank records and financial transactions by all government officials – a political reform that would test the Constitutional provision on “sovereignty”, if all power and authority truly resides in and emanates from the people. #

PRESS STATEMENT

May 30, 2012

Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP)

Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM)

SANLAKAS

UNITED VOICES OF CONCERN

(Amidst the sounds of fury over

the Southeast Asian Sea)

24 May 2012

World Peace Bell, Quezon Memorial Circle

Quezon City, Philippines

The contending states claiming territorial jurisdiction over sections of the ‘Southeast Asian Sea’ are only heightening regional tensions to a frightening degree.  In particular, the contentious row between the Philippines and China is being amplified by certain quarters to a near-conflict level for seemingly nationalistic, but in fact chauvinistic reasons.  And as the almost daily sounds of fury raise the stakes for the region’s masses of humanity, many more sober voices of concern must now come out to be heard and not be silenced by the saber-rattling of a deluded few.

Southeast Asia’s regional security environment faces a clear and present danger.  The Manila-Beijing standoff emanating from their rival claims to the Southeast Asian Sea must urgently be turned around and be resolved through a process of open diplomacy between the two nations.  Both sides need to do so swiftly in order to avert a possible scenario of military confrontation affecting the wider Asia-Pacific region.  If this happens, it would only cause a massive blow to the Philippines—its peoples, the economy and society at large.