House Bill 787 seeks to provide foreigners the right to exploit Philippine natural resources and privately own land in the Philippines and amass profit out of it. Both are restricted under the 1987 Philippine Constitution which, because of the particular circumstances under which it was drafted, upheld national patrimony, or the Filipino people’s sovereign right to control the nation’s natural resources.
Though the 1987 Constitution is still in place, millions of Filipinos are increasingly losing whatever piece of the Philippines they have been clinging to. Filipino peasants are losing the land they till, as foreigners – American, Japanese, Chinese and Malaysians – take renewed interest in utilizing our land for their jatropha, sugarcane, coconut production for biofuels and other industrial uses; for expanded banana, pineapple and other fruit production for their canneries and markets. Communities are being demolished to give way to five-star hotels, plush condominiums and subdivisions, golf courses, and other resorts – haven and playground for the rich and powerful.
Others are being relocated as they become endangered by operation of foreign mining corporations. All these at the instance of the government, in its collusion with foreign interests in circumventing the Constitution, in utter disregard for the people’s well-being.
Even the increasingly devastating impact of the current global economic crisis on the rural and urban poor cannot move this government and the Congress to take note of the people’s plight and take heed of the people’s cry. The House of Representatives adamantly refuses to legislate a thorough and genuine agrarian reform program. Reforms under the flawed CARP are being withdrawn with the unceremonious termination of the largely unimplemented program Peasants have been marching for a year now demanding that agrarian reform be thoroughly pursued to correct the social injustice of land monopoly established by Spanish and American colonization and being perpetuated under the present system.
Despite a succession of landslides and mudslides triggered by environmental destruction wrought by previous foreign mining and logging operations – calamities that buried whole communities and forced the evacuation of thousands of survivors to uncertain, temporary centers – the government continues to insist on and promote foreign mining operations and allow export-oriented logging operations in the country against the expressed wishes of endangered communities.
The urban poor’s pleas against demolition of their homes in the absence of provisions for humane relocation fall on deaf ears and their resistance is met with the most savage of attacks.
And this GMA-led government now want to drive the final nail to the coffin of our national patrimony. They want multinationals and rich foreigners to have open access to, and control and ownership over our natural resources – forest, minerals, land and waters. They want to remove whatever formal recognition there is in the Philippine Constitution of the Filipino’s inalienable right to his homeland.
As the House of Representatives debates on the House Bill 787, millions of landless and homeless Filipinos can only ask: WHO DO THESE REPRESENTATIVES REALLY REPRESENT? Why are they so eager to sell out our patrimony? For whom? For how much? Why not stand for us?
With such betrayal, we, the mass of Filipinos, have only ourselves to rely on to protect our own claim to these “. . . ang aking lupang sinilangan; . . . ang tahanan ng aking lahi . . .” Only by defending our national patrimony can we recite in full solemnity our Panatang Makabayan. Only then can we take pride in being one people with our own homeland. Only through struggle can we frustrate the renewed colonization, albeit in new form, of our country.
Oppose the imperialist-subservient Nograles Bill!
Our Homeland for Filipinos, Not for Foreigners!
Kilusan para sa Pambansang Demokrasya – Mindanao
(KPD – Mindanao)
April 2009