US TROOPS OUT OF THE PHILIPPINES NOW!

This is a reprint of the joint statement issued on June 12 by the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS-US), BAYAN International-US and People's Coalition Against War (PCAW). Today, June 12, 2002, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will raise the Philippine flag and celebrate the 104th Philippine Independence Day in the island of Basilan. This symbolic gesture is to rally the Armed Forces and the Filipinos against the bandit group Abu Sayyaf and justify the presence and the longer stay of US troops in the Philippines in the so called fight "against terrorism."

As history repeats itself, in June 1898, the First Philippine Republic welcomed an ally against Spanish colonialism. Shortly after proclaiming "independence," the bourgeois liberal Aguinaldo government realized that the "Humane North American Republic" did not come to help liberate the Philippines but rather colonize it. After nine months, the Filipino-American War erupted and the US forces "pacified" the Philippines after 16 years from 1899 to 1916 at the cost of more than 1.5 million Filipino lives and a boundless estimate of destruction in property.

Almost a century past, today, more than 1,000 US troops are stationed in the Philippines. US functionaries are rushing to get President Arroyo to sign a Mutual Logistic and Supplies Agreement (MSLA) to justify the "extended and indefinite stay" of US troops in the Philippines in the guise of "fighting the war against terror."

Now, Arroyo and her ilk still have the gall to celebrate independence when her tottering puppet regime is so heavily dependent on US imperialism from simple economics up to the last military boots that her soldiers wears. What kind of independence that the Philippines have when it cannot even decide what to teach in schools, what products to sell and what war materials it can buy for the inept military?

We, Filipinos in US, condemn the gross servility and brazen puppetry of Arroyo, the outspoken martinet of US imperialism in Southeast Asia. Arroyo is the epitome of a number one bootlicker of Bush. In the Philippines today, the Filipinos are experiencing gross corruption from high offices, spiraling taxes, zooming price of commodities, gross violation of human rights among others.

Despite Arroyo's hogwash that the US military deployment in the Philippines "has the support of the Filipino people," a US think- tank, STRATFOR, said it otherwise. In its recent analysis, STRATFOR, said: "Arroyo is losing people's support due to two things, one is her outright support to US intervention, and two, the corruption that pervades in her administration."