Manila: Declaration of Independence

Raissa Robles (Journalist, based in Manila)

Immediately after Manila announced it was pulling its troops out of Iraq, citing national interests, American officials wasted no time in uttering harsh, emotionally loaded words of condemnation.

US ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardone said: "In a time of test, enemies demand that you kneel. I just ask you: please don't confuse your enemies with your friends."

Such statements are particularly biting when viewed from the backdrop of the Philippines' bitter post-second world war experience with its former colonial master. In a testing time half a century ago, America not only confused its "friend", the Philippines, with its enemy, Japan; it also demanded that its "friend" kneel.

Between 1945 and 1949, Japan, which had bombed Pearl Harbour and first shattered America's sense of security, got nearly US$2 billion in American aid (emergency food supplies and credit grants for importing raw materials, which the defeated nation turned into finished goods for export).

The Philippines, which loyally stood by America, was given only US$1.4 billion in aid during the same period. And most of that, according to US banker Daniel Bell, who investigated the matter, "cannot be regarded as aid in any real sense" because it was payment for services performed for the US.

America had decided it was in its national interests to revive Japan, to counter the communist advance in Asia. It disposed of its obligations to rebuild Manila, which its bombs had devastated near the close of the war, by granting the Philippine islands quasi-independence.

But Manila was made to kneel for this measure of freedom and the release of its aid. It first had to agree to give Americans the following rights: the exploitation of Philippine natural resources and land ownership for 27 years; military bases beyond the jurisdiction of the host government; duty-free export to Manila for eight years and with partial duty for 20 years; the right to set the value of the Philippine peso against the US dollar; and to repatriate capital out of Manila freely.

In the same period, a US quota limited the export of sugar, cordage, rice and coconut oil - the only products it could produce in quantity.

There is now talk that Washington will cut aid to punish Manila for bowing to popular demand to pull out its troops. But as one Manila woman interviewed on TV noted, the Philippine economy did not collapse, as American officials had predicted, after the US bases pulled out in 1992. "We'll survive this," she said. It was a simple assertion of Philippine sovereignty and all its attendant consequences, independent of the wishes of its former colonial master.

(Originally appeared in the July 22, 2004 issue of South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, reproduced here with permission.)