Job loss for 100,000 workers feared if JPEPA passed
“JPEPA presents a clear and present danger to the automotive, iron and steel workers in the country,” said Frank Mero, national president of the PMA and the Automotive Industry Workers’ Alliance (AIWA).
Mero said the implementation of JPEPA could trigger the mass layoff of about 77,000 workers from the automotive industry, aside from iron and steel workers whose livelihood depend directly or indirectly on the automotive industry.
He pointed out that Article 27 of the JPEPA agreement would pave the way for the legalization of used four-wheeled motor vehicles, which violates an existing policy prohibiting the importation of second-hand vehicles.
He also claimed that Article 27 was not in the original text of the agreement but was inserted by negotiators.
At the public hearing on JPEPA conducted by the Senate committee on foreign relations yesterday, the PMA found allies in constitutional experts who argued that the treaty may be “unconstitutional” on several points, thereby making JPEPA face an impending Senate rejection.
Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, foreign relations committee chairman, read the opinion of former Supreme Court Justice Florentino Feliciano before the hearing on the treaty.
Feliciano, who was unable to attend the hearing because he is in the United States, asserted that the treaty has “serious constitutional problems.”
“In my view, personally, when Justice Feliciano says something, that is no longer debatable as far as I am concerned…Even the administration spokesperson on this particular issue conceded that Justice Feliciano’s opinion is simply in the level of the supernatural. When he says something, there is almost nothing that you can say against it,” said Santiago, who recognizes the versatility of Feliciano, describing him as “the preeminent legal expert of this country and the most famous international law expert Asia.”
Former Dean Merlin Magallona of the University of the Philippines echoed some of the arguments of Feliciano that JPEPA infringed on the “exclusive tariff setting power of Congress,” particularly the House of Representatives, provided in Section 24, Article 6 of the Constitution.
“Virtually, if we go by the objective analysis of these independent experts, the JPEPA is dead. JPEPA is unconstitutional on several grounds, and then they went on to explain which these provisions are, and why they adversely affect the validity of the JPEPA,” Santiago said.
Former Sen. Wigberto Tanada has supported the legal opinions of the two experts.
The two legal experts said that the Constitution specified that such tariff powers might be delegated to the President not through a treaty but by law.
“I have already emphasized both in this particular hearing, and in any other occasion, that the constitutional issue is a threshold question,” Santiago said.
Santiago added that the Senate cannot possibly amend the treaty but it can simply send it back to the executive branch “for renegotiation or amendment, addition, or exclusion as we see fit in the Senate floor.”
Magallona pointed out that the national treatment to be given to Japanese investors would also violate the constitutional requirement that companies operating in the Philippines be at least 60 percent Filipino.
Santiago saw the possibility of the treaty being brought to the Supreme Court if the government pushes through with the ratification of the treaty.
Sen. Manuel Roxas II, chairman of the Senate committee on trade and commerce, said there is a possibility that the Senate will just recommend a renegotiation of the contract. – With Christina Mendez
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