In 1993, the late President Fidel Ramos signed Republic Act No. 7652 (RA 7652) that allowed the long-term lease of private lands by foreign investors and it became the template for other pieces of legislation that liberalized land use and allowed aliens to control vast tracts of land for a minimum of 50 years and an extension of 25 years.
The law foretold a raft of economic liberalization laws that led to the crippling of fair trade and protection for domestic food producers, from farmers to small manufacturers, and allowed the accession to GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO.) RA 7652 was a big come-on for foreign investors, including those who had wanted land to lease cheap land for a minimum of 50 years. But not many took the bait, and the foreign chambers of commerce operating here wanted more concessions, from low tax rates to reduced business costs, from low wages to cheap fuel, electricity and water.
With the regime of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., foreign investors will get all these and more, as the current People’s Initiative (PI) to change the 1987 Constitution reduces the Basic Law into a charter for 100% foreign penetration into any corner of the country, with the PI’s proposals for allowing aliens to buy, control and manage land making the plan of the Arroyo regime to lease 2.4-million hectares of farm land to Chinese agricultural corporations from Heilongjiang and other provinces a silly joke. The KIlusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) lambasted the plot and the idea fizzled out.
Under the pro-alien Cha-cha, Marcos Jr. would practically greenlight the sale of 14.2-million hectares of the country’s alienable and disposable public to 100% foreign owners. This is practically half the entire country, which has 30-million hectares of land, according to the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) headed by Peter Tiangco. Incidentally, NAMRIA previously disclosed that the nation’s reefs, sandbars, atolls and seamounts have not been mapped while Chinese research vessels have worked on the disputed areas of the Spratlys, Paracels and even Benham Rise, which a UN agency ceded to the Philippines.
“As if the 50-year allowable lease period to foreign investors stipulated in Republic Act 7652 or the Long-Term Lease of Private Lands by Foreign Investors is not enough, Marcos Jr.’s Cha-cha or Macarena will allow full ownership of lands by foreign entities,” KMP howled. A check with the Cha-cha proposals, showed they were designed to burn the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution, specifically Sections 2, 3, 7, 10 and 11 of Article XII; Section 4 of Article XIV; and Section 11 of Article XVI, all involved foreign ownership. In other words, you will have a “pasadya” Constitution that benefits aliens, the “trapos” and compradors but not the “indios” who would be cast by the wayside. The masterminds of this Cha-cha gig think the country is populated by nimrods and people who walk on their heads.
While all countries maintain strict rules on foreign control of land (see the US ban on Chinese land purchases and China’s ban on foreign landownership), the PI backers insist that restrictive and protectionist provisions of the Constitution must be scrapped to let foreign businesses fully own private properties, be congressional franchises, operate schools, mass media and run vital public utilities. In short, everything will be for foreigners. The next thing they will do is grant foreigners the right to vote and run for elective posts and this could mean the liberalization of citizenship rights.
This PI and Cha-cha gimmick is running on empty despite being financed, as usual, by taxpayer money. The country’s history should tell the masterminds that foreigners profited at from the country from 1521 to 1898; the Americans took over from 1898 to 1941, and the Japanese ran the show from 1941 to 1945. Then the Americans returned and their military bases were dismantled only in 1991. So, how many years did Filipinos run the country like hell? This interlude of Filipinos running the country like hell was so long that the Cha-cha conspirators want a return to foreigners running the country. Would they like to be restored as gobernadorcillos and cabezas de barangay, Guardia Civil members or officers of the US-led Philippine Constabulary?