05/10/2026
05 OCTOBER 2026
BAYAN UK STATEMENT ON Marcos Jr’s newly signed framework for £5 billion UK Export Finance support, and ongoing negotiation for sending British Military troops in the country. (3m30' Read)
Marcos Jr., THE FILIPINO PEOPLE ARE NOT PAWNS FOR IMPERIALIST WARS.
BAYAN UK views with grave concern the Marcos Jr. administration’s deepening economic and military agreements with the British government, including the newly signed framework opening access to £5 billion, or nearly ₱419 billion, in UK Export Finance support, as well as the ongoing negotiations for a UK–Philippines Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA).
The Marcos administration presents these arrangements as trophies, parading them before the people as promises of progress, growth, investment, development, and national security. In reality, these are neocolonial agreements that will place the country under even greater imperialist control through economic and military policies subservient to foreign interests.
The UK and Philippine governments signed a financing framework on 23 September 2026, securing £5 billion in export finance for infrastructure projects aimed at expanding British business opportunities in the country. Clearly, this funding will be used to build infrastructure supporting the development of the Luzon Economic Corridor and facilitating the US-led Pax Silica Initiative.
Pax Silica is a US-led initiative aimed at securing global supply chains for advanced technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence. It currently involves 25 country signatories and partners, including the UK. The initiative is geared toward establishing a 1,600-hectare special economic zone in Tarlac, Philippines, which will be used for data centres, oil depots, semiconductor production, and weapons manufacturing. This initiative will exploit the country’s critical resources, displace Aeta Indigenous communities, and pave the way for further environmental destruction.
We warn the British government that Marcos Jr., like his dictator father, is deeply associated with a political system marked by corruption. These investment schemes directed toward public infrastructure projects serve as a means of facilitating foreign capital for the benefit of private contractors, including political allies and cronies who treat government as a business from which they can profit. The British government should take heed of the thousands of unfinished, unbuilt, and fake flood-control projects exposed by the Filipino people, which have allegedly funnelled billions of dollars to the bureaucrat-capitalist class and have been met by an upsurge of protest across the country.
We also warn that investment in the Luzon Economic Corridor and the Pax Silica Hub risks complicity in the increasing human rights violations associated with the displacement of Aeta Indigenous communities and environmental destruction. Furthermore, the British government risks enabling continuing violations of international humanitarian law under the Marcos Jr. administration, including red-tagging, trumped-up charges, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, strafing, and bombings carried out by the Armed Forces of the Philippines against Filipino communities in the countryside resisting Pax Silica.
The Pax Silica Hub and the development of the Luzon Economic Corridor will not contribute to genuine national development or the industrialisation of the country. They form part of a US blueprint for a new form of colonial project that will exploit the Philippines’ critical raw materials at cheap prices, rely on the cheap labour of Filipino workers, and turn the country into a chess piece in a US-led war in the region.
Marcos Jr., as a puppet of US imperialism, is putting the Filipino people in danger by leveraging our country’s geopolitical location for escalating military tensions between US & China. His administration undermines Philippine sovereignty by allowing foreign troops to participate in Balikatan military exercises in the country. Over the past two years, British forces have taken part as observers in these exercises in the Philippines.
Recently, these military exercises involved the launch of a Tomahawk missile from Tacloban City Airport in Leyte, travelling approximately 390 miles before landing and exploding in Nueva Ecija. The use of civilian infrastructure for such military activity places the lives and safety of Filipino people at risk. This is the kind of military involvement that the US–Marcos regime seeks from the British government as the two governments begin formal negotiations for a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement, initiated in August 2026, that would establish a legal framework allowing British troops to operate in the Philippines.
BAYAN UK calls on the Filipino diaspora in the UK to take a more critical look at these extractive agreements, expose their dangerous effects on our people, and defend our country against foreign control and domination.
Our historic struggle has shown that no amount of foreign investment will bring genuine development to our country, and no amount of foreign military support can defend our country’s sovereignty as long as the decaying system of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism remains rooted in our semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.
Our country’s progress can only be achieved by ending the systemic ills of society and addressing the root causes of the problems faced by the Filipino people, including landlessness, joblessness, inadequate social services, and low wages, through genuine land reform and national industrialisation.
The path toward genuine development lies in the struggle for genuine national independence and sovereignty.
Filipino diaspora in the UK, reject Pax Silica! Reject US-led war-mongering in the Asia Pacific! Join the struggle for national democracy and liberation!
