The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) vigorously condemns the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as an imperialist instrument of plunder and greed. The Filipino people have long suffered under the economic policies and multilateral agreements aggressively pushed by the APEC which have only ensured the interests of the advanced capitalist economies, especially that of the United States. Its key role is to facilitate, through such policies and agreements, the implementation of neoliberal policy regime in its various components: wage squeeze, social cutbacks, trade and investment liberalization, deregulation, privatization and denationalization of underdeveloped economies to serve the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie, especially the financial oligarchy.
APEC meetings have been facilitating the imposition of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement on Asia-Pacific countries, frontally and via backdoor channels. Now that the TPP agreement has been signed by the Obama administration and its full text openly circulated, it is being exposed and questioned, if not outrightly rejected, as the bleeding edge of the US-led neoliberal offensive in this part of the world. This year’s APEC meetings hosted by the Philippines are thus expected to push for a consensus on the TPP and related agreements as well.
The Aquino regime, current host of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, is an avid neo-colonial puppet of the United States. The “free market” globalization policies the regime has adopted and agreements it has signed have meant ever more intolerable exploitation and oppression of the Filipino people. They have caused worsening poverty, persistent joblessness and landlessness, the exodus of overseas Filipino workers, further commercialization of education and other basic services, military and paramilitary attacks against the Lumad and other indigenous people to open up their ancestral lands to destructive mining, palm oil and other plantatiions, and further destruction of the environment. The urban poor are subjected to demolition and uprooting to favor comprador capitalist “developers” through Public Private Partnership projects.
Neoliberal globalization worsens the conditions of the students and teachers and their families through the Aquino regime’s K-12 program. Its objective to adapt to international standards is actually aligning the educational system to the demand of foreign markets and away from the Philippines’ and its people’s own development needs. Schools will become ever more prolific producers of cheap labor-ready youth.
The brunt of the worsening exploitation and oppression caused by neoliberal globalization falls mainly on the masses of peasants, workers, indigenous people, urban poor and overseas Filipino workers. But it is the entire Filipino nation that is adversely affected by the sell out of our resources, patrimony and sovereignty.
The Filipino people stand firm against the exploitative and oppressive neoliberal policies aggressively pushed by the APEC, and are exercising vigilance on the expected outcomes of APEC’s Manila meetings. They persevere relentlessly in the struggle for national sovereignty, national patrimony and self-reliant development through national industrialization and genuine land reform. They carry forward the revolutionary tradition of our forebears against Spanish and US colonial rule, and the US-dominated neocolonial system that followed.
We draw inspiration too from our people’s heroic struggle against the US backed-Marcos dictatorhip, and all the pseudo-democratic regimes that followed, including the current Aquino regime.
We are resolutely determined to continue pursuing our revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation.
NATIONAL COUNCIL
NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FRONT OF THE PHILIPPINES
