The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), through its Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena, on 17 December, 2024, strongly condemned the Philippine Senate railroading the ratification of the Japan-Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) which completely blindsided the Filipino people.
The CPP condemned the Marcos regime for signing the RAA which will pave the way for the entry of large numbers of Japanese military forces in the Philippines and for the prepositioning of their war vessels and weapons in the country.
The CPP asserted, “The RAA further erodes and tramples on Philippine national sovereignty. By signing the agreement, Marcos completely took away the Philippines’ capacity to exercise an independent foreign policy. It firmly binds the county into the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, under which Japan plays an important role as a junior imperialist power in the US plan to contain and counter China.”
The CPP warned that “with the RAA, Marcos is practically erasing from the nation’s memory the brutal history of colonial occupation and abuses perpetrated by Japanese fascist troops against the Filipino people...Imperialist Japan is bound to take advantage of the RAA to turn the Philippines into its launching pad for international naval operations, which are becoming increasingly aggressive against China.”
It can be recalled that similar military access agreements involving Japan and pertaining to the Indo-Pacific region have been made with several countries in recent years: the 2020 ratification of the Quadralateral Security Dialogue between Japan, India, Australiain and the US, the 2022 RAA between Japan and Australia which strengthens the one signed in 2014, and the 2023 RAA between Japan, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
“The Filipino people must oppose the Japan-Philippines RAA and demand its abrogation. Instead of promoting peace in the South China Sea, the military agreement will only fuel further armed tensions and drag the country further into inter-imperialist conflicts,” concluded the CPP.