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We hope the Senate plenary decides to ratify the Japan-Philippine
Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) with the conditional terms
written in the joint report of the Committee on Foreign Relations
and the Committee on Trade.
Ratification—even with the conditions stated
in the joint report submitted to the plenary by Senators Miriam
Defensor Santiago for foreign affairs and Mar Roxas for trade—is
better than no action or killing the agreement.
This is the first ever case of a treaty whose
Senate ratification is being given conditionally.
Senators Santiago and Roxas deserve to be
congratulated for daring to take that route and working to convince
the bipartisan memberships of their committees to go along with
their solution to the JPEPA problem.
President Gloria M. Arroyo and the Japanese
agreed on the agreement in 2006. But it only becomes a binding
treaty after the Senate ratifies it. The President and the
Cabinet’s economic team have worked hard to campaign for its
ratification and several senators have spoken in its favor.
Mrs. Arroyo warns that non-ratification of the
JPEPA would cause the Japanese government and Japanese investors to
turn their back on the Philippines. These would then enlarge their
loans, aid, trade and investments in other Asean countries that have
entered into economic partnership agreements with Japan.
Among other provisions, the agreement abolishes
import tariffs on many products traded between Japan and the treaty
countries.
Sen. Roxas warns that the Philippines would be
put in a disadvantageous situation if it refuses to forge the same
kind of economic agreement Japan already has with other countries.
“Then investments from Japan would go to the other countries and
our products, like coconut [and] sugar, would be able to enter the
Japanese market only by paying higher tariff,” he said. Admitting
that JPEPA is not a perfect treaty, he thinks that all things
considered, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for us
Filipinos. Most other senators agree with him.
Santiago and Roxas show leadership
Sen. Santiago thinks that in its present form
the JPEPA is likely to be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court.
She and Sen. Roxas have taken the unprecedented
move of getting their committees to give their concurrence to JPEPA—and
get the whole Senate to ratify it—subject to conditions.
The report states that Senate concurrence is
conditioned on Japan and the Philippines signing a supplemental
agreement to be added to the extant JPEPA documents to ensure that
no activity under the JPEPA will contravene any Philippine
constitutional stricture and provision governing public health, the
protection of Filipino enterprises, the ownership of public lands
and use of natural resources, the ownership of alienable public
lands, the ownership of private lands, the reservation of certain
areas of investment exclusively for Filipinos, and granting
preference in the national economy and patrimony to Filipinos.
The conditional concurrence also upholds laws
and regulations now in force covering foreign investments, the
operation of public utilities, the preference for hiring Filipino
labor and the use of Philippine materials, the practice of the
professions, the ownership of educational institutions, the transfer
of technology, and the ownership of mass media and advertising
agencies and companies.
All of these need to be spelled out in a
supplemental agreement because, Sen. Santiago explains, the JPEPA
does not include all the reservations that are in Japan’s economic
partnership agreements with Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Adding
these conditions makes the JPEPA more or less exactly like the
Japanese deal with those countries.
At this writing Senators Santiago and Roxas were
still to get the assent of the majorities in their respective
committees, which they are most likely to have. Come next Monday,
the two senators will co-sponsor the conditional-concurrence report
on the Senate floor and defend it against senators who will debate
against its approval.
They will need two-thirds or 16 votes out of 24
for the report and the motion to ratify the JPEPA to be carried.
May Senators Santiago and Roxas win their case.
The opposition is wrong
Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo would
have to negotiate a supplemental agreement with the Japanese
ambassador or the Japanese foreign minister covering all the
conditions enumerated by the Senate. An exchange of notes in which
both countries state their agreement to observe the conditions laid
out by the Senate will also suffice.
These conditions should satisfy all the
objections nationalists and environmentalists have raised against
the JPEPA in its present form.
Among the groups who have campaigned to block
ratification are the Kalikasan-People’s Network for the
Environment, which claims that “the JPEPA will allow the Japanese
to dump their toxic waste on our land and give them unbridled rights
to deplete the country’s resources and degrade our marine
ecosystem.”
Other objectors are an anti-JPEPA coalition
called No Deal!, the group of comfort-women supporters called Lila
Filipina, the think-tank and research company Ibon Foundation, the
fisherfolk group Pamalakaya, the multi-sectoral alliance Bayan and
the Fair Trade Alliance.
With Sen. Jamby Madrigal’s announcement that
she would vote against ratification, only seven more senators are
needed to kill JPEPA.
Killing JPEPA is ruining our future.
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