August 22, 2005

CPA Calls for the Indigenous Peoples in the Cordillera to JUNK GMA

The Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) joins the nationwide demand for the immediate removal from power of GMA. As concerned Filipinos, we must add out voices in exposing the illegitimacy of the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for the grave offenses and crimes she committed against the Filipino people. GMA must be held accountable for massive cheating in the 2004 elections, to graft and corruption, to systematic human rights violations and political repression, to economic mismanagement and omission of her sworn duty to respect, uphold and protect the rights, welfare and interest of the Filipino people against her personal interest and of her family and kin.

The CPA, being in the forefront of the indigenous peoples movement, is witness to the worsening condition of indigenous peoples all over the country under the term of GMA. The basic problem of national oppression of indigenous peoples has been aggravated with the aggressive sellout of land and resources of indigenous peoples to corporate greed leading to development aggression; militarization of IP territories resulting to systematic human rights violations, lack of basic government services and sustainable livelihood sources, especially in remote villages, and heightened commercialization of indigenous peoples culture.

In fact, indigenous peoples are presently worst off compared to past regimes, with massive poverty and economic dislocation and marginalization. GMA has proven her insincerity to uphold the rights of indigenous peoples by her anti- IP policies such as the Mining Act of 1995, Executive Order 364 which puts the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) under the Department of Land Reform (DLR), and various administrative and executive orders on weakening environmental safeguards and full participation of IPs on projects concerning them as stipulated in the provisions for the Free, Prior and Informed Consent ( FPIC) of indigenous peoples. While GMA has been regularly visiting areas of the Cordillera, these visits are more to consolidate her political machinery in the region, and not in terms of concretely addressing the basic problem of oppression and marginalization of the poor majority of indigenous peoples.

Concretely, the substance of the worsening development aggression and national oppression of indigenous peoples in the Cordillera under GMA are as follows:

GMA sells our peoples’ ancestral lands to big capitalist companies. The main subject of GMA’s negotiations with China, Korea, and Australia is the interest these nations’ capitalists have expressed in Philippine resources. The revitalization of large mining in the country, mainly by transnational corporations, is top on GMA’s list of economic development targets. Among GMA’s priorities are 9 mineral exploration and mine development projects in the Cordillera – all located beneath, atop, or upstream of land that our communities utilize for agricultural and small-scale mineral production; all thus requiring the displacement of our communities from economic resources and pursuits vital to their survival and to massive and irreversible environment destruction. GMA also helps big capitalist companies circumvent laws that protect our national patrimony, our local communities, and the environment. She has purposely sought out and utilized means of bulldozing, boring through, or at least getting around the legal obstacles to wide-ranging, large-scale capitalist exploitation of the country’s natural resources.

The biggest such obstacle was a 2004 Supreme Court decision to declare unconstitutional those provisions of the Mining Act of 1995 which allowed foreign capitalists full control of mineral lands and mining operations, in violation of the patrimony provisions of the 1987 Constitution. GMA’s maneuvers resulted in the Supreme Court’s reversal of its original ruling less than a year after this was made. Other obstacles remained, though: provisions in environmental law, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act, the Local Government Code, and the Mining Act itself which, in effect, stated that large mining projects required the consent of affected communities and local governments. GMA has, however, devised cunning means of dealing with these legal obstacles administratively. With these means at their disposal, GMA’s minions in various government agencies are now able to process quite speedily the 114 applications that have been filed for exploring and mining 1.2 million hectares – that is to say, 66% of the total land area – of the Cordillera!

The trade policies of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo have opened the country’s domestic market for agriculture to a flood of cheap foreign produce. Not satisfied with just implementing the law on agricultural tariff reduction that resulted from Philippine concurrence in the 1994 treaty which created the World Trade Organization, GMA has been negotiating bilateral agreements that allows the surplus vegetables of other countries to enter the Philippines absolutely toll-free. GMA does not care about what this will do to the 45,000 vegetable-producing households in the Cordillera who are already reeling from the effects of tariff reduction on their capacity to compete against importers for shares of the market. Unlike their counterparts in many countries, they have no crop or market insurances to fall back on. If they lose what remains of their market shares, they will be unable to survive.

GMA kills local agriculture. Unlike their counterparts in China, Korea, Australia, and other countries, such as the US, Philippine agricultural producers have no recourse to subsidies from the state. This, and not cost-inefficient production, is the primary reason why our agricultural producers in the Cordillera cannot sell their goods at prices that are competitive with those of imports. GMA once promised “safety nets” that would help at least the vegetable growers among them survive the impact of global free trade in agricultural goods. But few of the measures promised by GMA have thus far materialized; and these did not include subsidies, anyway. Even more committed to the principles of global free trade than its proponents among state leaders in the US and other advanced capitalist nations, GMA has reduced Philippine government support for agriculture. From a measly 4.2% during GMA’s first year in office, expenditures on agriculture have fallen to 2.9% of total government spending. In the Cordillera, this has translated into smaller budgets for the maintenance and improvement of public agricultural facilities, and greater reliance on partnership with private corporations for the dissemination of new developments in agricultural technology.

As a result, our agricultural producers have become more vulnerable to the efforts of transnational corporations to entice them into adopting the use of crop breeds and chemicals that will give them high yields, but at the cost of their incurring high-interest debts with input suppliers, degrading their land and their water sources, and endangering the viability of indigenous and locally adapted food crops on their own farms as well as those in the wider surroundings.

GMA has no regard for basic civil liberties and has pursued the policy of total war in IP territories. In general, GMA has displayed a propensity for disregarding the basic civil liberties of the people. Worst on the overall record of her government’s human rights violations has been the assassination of numerous activists among the indigenous Mangyan and migrant settlers of Mindoro, another resource-rich target of transnational capitalist expansion in mining. In our own resource-rich Cordillera, the Armed Forces under GMA has deployed at least 14 companies of regular troops and 13 companies of the militarized PNP – the majority of them in Kalinga and Abra, which are now the primary targets of transnational mining.

GMA also has no qualms about harboring hoodlums, like those in the so-called CPLA, and involving them, as well as simple armed auxiliary recruits, in conflicts that can spark or fan the flames of tribal war. At least two of the 14 companies of military regulars in the Cordillera are Separate Rifle Companies comprised of CPLA “integrees” – i.e., Cordillera People’s Liberation Army personnel whose integration in the AFP has been authorized and formalized by GMA herself. Under GMA, Civilian Armed Auxiliaries in the Cordillera have grown to nearly 47 platoons, the majority of them drafted from the tribal communities of Abra, the Mountain Province, and Kalinga. GMA is obviously unconcerned about the long list of criminal activities that the CPLA has been involved in. To her, the CPLA is just one more weapon to wield against NPA revolutionaries, as are the Civilian Armed Auxiliaries.

GMA is violating the rights and sacrificing the wellbeing of our indigenous communities to the interests of big capitalists, such as those in mining and in dams. Economic expediency has been GMA’s excuse for many of her policy decisions and much of her legislative advocacy. But her primary concern is obviously not the alleviation of the economic situation that the Filipino masses are in; rather it is the creation of economic conditions conducive to the interests of foreign investors and the elite in Philippine society. Prior to her crisis, GMA played deaf to labor demands.

Under GMA, government intervention in labor disputes has many times taken the form of violent, repressive action. Worst on record was last year’s massacre of striking Hacienda Luisita workers by the Philippine National Police. The same police measures as were witnessed at Hacienda Luisita are now being used on our striking workers in the Lepanto mines: the transformation of the mining compound and its surroundings into a virtual garrison, dotted with heavily manned outposts; the violent dispersal of picketlines – at least 15 instances to date, since the strike began in June; black propaganda geared at associating the local workers’ union with the revolutionary New People’s Army, in order to justify the thick presence and military stance of the PNP. The right to strike is a basic liberty of the working class. But GMA obviously has no respect for this.

GMA already showed her knack for finding ways around inexpedient laws early in her Presidency. Between January 2001, when GMA assumed the Presidency, and July 2002, when the construction of the San Roque dam was completed, our indigenous communities in Itogon challenged the legitimacy of the dam project by citing its failure to comply with the IPRA’s provisions on Free and Prior Informed Consent. But this was dismiss on the technicality that the contract for the project has been signed eighteen days before the IPRA was signed. Further, in spite of the numerous violations on legal requirements and on the rights of affected peasant and IP communities, GMA instead appealed for the communities to stop its campaign against the San Roque Dam as this is already affecting foreign investment in the country. GMA has again proven her loyalty to foreign corporations and funders, more than having the political will to rectify past decision on anomalous projects like the San Roque Dam.

GMA cares nothing about indigenous peoples, peasants, and workers in the Cordillera or anywhere in the Philippines. Her policies have consistently shown her to be sorely
lacking in compassion and uninterested in the issue of social justice. She is anti-poor,
anti-people. As indigenous peoples long suffering from national oppression, we should participate in the nationwide movement to oust GMA from the Presidency. But even GMA’s ouster would not deliver us from our hardships as indigenous people and as Filipinos because our problems are rooted more deeply than GMA. We must actively struggle for a total transformation of the system that underpins the workings of our society.

Advance the cause of national democracy!
End national oppression! Persevere in the struggle for the genuine recognition of the ancestral land rights and collective rights of indigenous peoples!
Onward with the peoples movement for genuine systemic transformation for social justice and peoples empowerment!
Oust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo!