KARAPATAN stands with the Filipino people, including those who courageously protested at the Investment Forum for the Luzon Economic Corridor in BGC yesterday, in opposing the US-led Luzon Economic Corridor and the Pax Silica initiative, which Marcos Jr. promotes as engines of economic growth and national development. Behind this rhetoric of “investment,” “innovation,” and “economic competitiveness” is the continuing sell-out of Philippine resources and people’s rights to US and foreign interests.
While Marcos Jr. did not mention the Pax Silica initiative during the Investment Forum, our fellow Filipinos outside the hotel shouted “No to Pax Silica!” as police violently dispersed the protesters, leaving scores injured and five people’s paralegals arrested and detained. We listen to their chants and protests, amid claims that Pax Silica and the LEC will bring advanced manufacturing, critical mineral processing, jobs, and technology to the Philippines. In reality, these initiatives place the country’s resources, land, infrastructure, energy, and workforce at the disposal of foreign capital.
Marcos Jr. claims that these investments will strengthen the Philippine economy and expand Filipino capabilities, even as their fundamental logic is to integrate the country more deeply into global supply chains dominated by foreign corporations and powerful states. How can the Marcos Jr. government speak of “value creation” while the Philippines’ land, minerals, energy, water, and other resources are opened up to serve strategic and foreign imperialist interests?
When Marcos Jr. said yesterday that the Philippines is “ready” for investment, he meant that the Philippine government is hell-bent on fully accommodating US and other foreign interests while presenting the surrender of our resources and economic sovereignty as “development.” He is likewise ready to thwart protests and opposition to these projects in the name of profit, leading to the total sell-out not only of our resources but also of our rights as a people and as a sovereign nation.
The Philippines is once again being placed at the heels of US global hegemony, with the Marcos Jr. government offering our country’s resources, sovereignty, and people’s rights in exchange for promised foreign investments.
KARAPATAN joins the Filipino people in calling for the junking of the Pax Silica project and opposing further plunder of the country’s resources and attacks on our sovereignty and genuine national development through the Luzon Economic Corridor. Genuine development must uphold people’s rights, protect communities and natural resources, build Philippine domestic economy and industries, and place the country’s economy under the control and for the benefit of the Filipino people.