Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s upcoming meeting in Washington with US President Joe Biden will further deepen the unequal relations between the two governments, to the detriment of the Filipino people’s interest.
Marcos Jr. does the US’ bidding in ensuring the US’ strategic military and political interests in the Asia-Pacific region by increasing US troops and presence in various sites under the US-RP Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and through Balikatan exercises.
The Marcos Jr. administration, in turn, continues to receive more funds from the US government for military and police operations for counter-insurgency campaigns that result in extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, bombings and forced evacuations of peasant and indigenous communities, among the host of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Such funds likewise fuel the US counter-insurgency objectives in the Philippines to quell political dissent and the exercise of rights.
Thus, the Biden-Marcos Jr. meeting signals the Philippine government’s unequivocal pivot towards strategic US interests, which has grave impacts on national sovereignty and the Filipino people’s rights. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is not fit to act as the architect of a self-reliant and independent Philippine foreign policy.
We call on all freedom-loving Filipinos to denounce and oppose the Marcos Jr. regime’s subservience to US interests, even as we equally denounce China’s contempt for Philippine sovereignty through its incursions into Philippine territorial waters.