The pact, now pending ratification in the Senate, was negotiated in secret and signed over two years ago in 2006 by Arroyo in faraway Finland away from the Filipino public eye.

But Filipino citizens, particularly the members of the Senate, were alerted by environmental groups about the "lopsided and unconstitutional" features of the JPEPA. And they have campaigned against its ratification by the treaty-ratifying Upper Chamber of Congress.

During public hearings conducted by the Senate’s committees on foreign affairs and trade relations, the concerned environmentalists cited serious violations of the laws of the land, such as "giving away of Philippine land, allowing discriminatory treatment for Filipino nurses and other professionals, formalizing and dumping of toxic waste, and opening up our seas to foreigners."

On the other hand, members of the government team that negotiated the treaty tried but failed to swamp the senators and the public with confused, confusing and conflicting arguments in their defense of the agreement. They kept on claiming that it was an "all-or-nothing deal that cannot be renegotiated.

Now, two weeks before the scheduled release of the joint committees’ report, a citizens’ coalition vows to escalate nationwide action and information against the ratification of that flawed pact. Composed of over 25 civil society organizations, members of the academe, the church, and environmental groups, it also raised their collective concern about a proposal of some complicit senators for a "conditional concurrence" of the treaty.

"Some senators are supposedly working to ‘fix’ the problems in the JPEPA," they revealed at a meeting at the University of the Philippines - Diliman where they discussed their plans to escalate actions against JPEPA." And they pointedly asked: "Why are those senators now trying to clean up the mess of the Executive Branch when their power is simply to approve or reject the treaty?"

In an open letter warning the senators against the treaty’s ratification, the concerned environmentalists warned: "With the ZTE-NBN now in the public mind, with the concession of the Spratlys (to China) nipping at its heel, the ratification of the JPEPA will be a greater bitter poison for the public to stomach. The ramifications are even graver with JPEPA since it is more than a business deal. The treaty if ratified becomes a law of the land. If the Senate does ratify it, the question becomes who are watching the watchers?

"The Arroyo administration is marked with a litany of anomalous agreements entered into at great cost and detriment to the Filipino people. The year 2010 is not far away. We, the Filipino people will remember and distinguish the traitors from the patriotic!"