Pages

Saturday, July 09, 2005

ARROYO REGIME IS DISINTEGRATING BUT STILL HAS A FEW TRICKS TO PLAY

Press Statement 9 July 2005
By: Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines

The Arroyo regime is visibly cracking up and disintegrating under the pressure of the broad united front of opposition political parties, mass organizations, professional organizations, church people, business groups, retired military and police officers and other forces demanding the resignation or ouster of Gloria M. Arroyo from her usurped position as president of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).

After consultation with Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales, former GRP president Corazon Aquino has categorically called for the resignation of Arroyo and her replacement by the vice-president, Noli de Castro. In turn, the latter has promptly begun to drum up his claims to competence as her successor. Through his most trusted agents, he has proceeded discreetly to contact military and police officers for support.

The ruling coalition is breaking up. The Liberal Party has taken the lead in calling for the resignation of Arroyo. Ten cabinet members and high officials of the Arroyo regime have resigned and in turn have demanded that Arroyo resign, instead of requiring all cabinet members to resign. They seem to be acting in coordination with church and business groups which have demanded the resignation of Arroyo.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has declared that units of the New People's Army (NPA) are keeping away from urban population centers in order to encourage the broad masses of the people to march and rally against the regime. The NPA is concentrating on waging tactical offensives in the countryside.

At least four significant groups of military officers have welcomed the CPP declaration and have pledged to uphold civilian supremacy, respect the democratic rights of the people and withdraw support from Arroyo upon sight of at least 500,000 people in the national capital region.

The chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has declared that the military would respect the democratic rights of the people to assemble and speak. But the chief of the Philippine National Police is expressing extreme loyalty to Arroyo and hostility towards the people who are exercising their rights in opposition to the regime.

US officials at various levels have announced that any change of government in the Philippine must follow the "constitutional path" and "rule of law" and have continued to express support for the Arroyo regime. Thus, the regime boasts that it will stay in power so long as it keeps US support. At the same time, some pro-US elements in the conservative opposition parties claim that Arroyo has lost that support.

While the regime is definitely disintegrating, Arroyo can still play a few tricks in ways more serious than apologizing for a "lapse injudgment" and "sending away" her husband and her son. She continues to proclaim that she will not resign. The forces of the broad united front are therefore forewarned not to become complacent but to be more resolute and militant than ever in arousing and mobilizing the people in their millions and in adopting a wide range of tactics to demonstrate the regime's inability to govern.

Plans are afoot for Arroyo to stage mass rallies in her favor, especially in some provinces where governors and mayors remain as her allies, and to use the Philippine National Police to suppress mass rallies that are not granted permits by pro-Arroyo local authorities. By these plans Arroyo is taking a gamble that is likely to inflame civil strife. The very crowds she tries to rally can also turn against her as in the Ceaucescu example in Romania.

As the public clamor for resignation or ouster continues to grow and her regime becomes untenable, Arroyo is supposed to have two possible courses of action. One is to take a leave of absence and have the vice-president Noli de Castro perform the functions of the presidency. Another is for her to become the "caretaker president", who will follow a script prepared by former president Fidel V. Ramos, Speaker Jose de Venecia and some smart guys of Lakas-NUCD.

The script entrusts the "caretaker president" with the task of letting a "high commission" to go through the motion of investigating some corruption scandals, the two houses of Congress to become a constituent assembly that will make constitutional amendments for satisfying the US and the local exploiting classes and for adopting a federal and parliamentary system and the parliamentary elections to take place in 2006.

However, the most that Arroyo can do is to gain a little more time on her political death bed. She has politically and morally suffered a fatal wound by being caught in the act of electoral fraud and stealing the GRP presidency. The tapes are the incontrovertible proof of her grave crime before the court of public opinion.

They expose the immorality and illegitimacy of Arroyo's usurpation of power. They have already kindled the fire that is fuelled by the wide and deep going social discontent of the people due to the crisis of the ruling system and that has the potential of burning down not only the political house of Arroyo but the entire ruling system of big compradors and landlords.

Since after the overthrow of Estrada in 2001, the institutions and stalwarts of the ruling system have considered the phenomena of mass uprisings repeatedly overthrowing a president as being very risky for the entire ruling system. They have been frightened by the expressed CPP view that the revolutionary forces and people strengthen themselves by overthrowing one ruling clique after another until they gain enough strength to overthrow the entire ruling system. In reaction, the apologists of the ruling system have invented the myth that the people are tired of mass uprisings.

But the ruling system has a problem in keeping a detested president long in power. The longer a president like Arroyo stays in power, the more rotten and despicable she makes the system to the increasingly exploited and oppressed people. And whoever is the president, so long as the rotten system persists, the people will detest it and have all the opportunity to strengthen themselves, irrespective of how long or short a president can stay in office.

The broad masses of the people demand that the basic roots of their oppression and exploitation are addressed. They wish to empower themselves against the US and the local exploiting classes that torment and make them suffer. They wish to uphold national sovereignty, conserve the national patrimony, carry out land reform and national industrialization, promote a national, scientific and democratic culture and adopt an independent foreign policy for world peace and development.

The crisis of the ruling system has become so grave that the ruling classes can no longer rule in the old way. The people want are volutionary change of government, in which the toiling masses of workers and peasants obtain and exercise their due share of political power. There are revolutionary forces that can lead the people in the revolutionary process.

Social degradation and political turmoil will continue so long as the ruling system of big compradors and landlords persists. The victoryof the broad united front against the Arroyo regime should lead to the formation of a transition council and a government that accommodate the patriotic and progressive forces of the legal democratic movement and pave the way for the success of peace negotiations with the revolutionary forces and people represented by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. ###

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Stop U.S. Intervention In The Philippines

by: Philippines Cultural Studies Center
Friday, Jul. 01, 2005 at 5:14 AM
philcsc1@yahoo.com

Signs of U.S. intervention in the political crisis in the Philippines are surfacing fast. Lessons need to be drawn from the mistakes and failures of People Power 1 and People Power 2. Systemic change is needed, not simply change in personnel. People Power 3 need not mimic the first two--otherwise, everything remains the same, even worse.

STOP U.S. MANIPULATION OF ARROYO'S DOWNFALL AND U.S. INTERVENTION IN CHOOSING HER SUCCESSOR

Incontrovertible signs from Washington and elsewhere indicate that theBush Administration and its reactionary cabal have already instructed their local agents in Manila to replace Arroyo with one of the elite factions, together with a bloc of traditional military-business groups. This is routine maneuver for the US State Department and Pentagon. As in the February 1986 overthrow of Marcos, their agents will use both normal and violent means to maintain its hegemony in its neocolony, particularly when its Mindanao military/political base is at stake.

The Philippines of course has historically been pivotal toUS. projection of its military power in Asia and the Middle East. Besides, Filipinos are famous worldwide for being 200% Americanized and martyrs for "Americanism" everywhere.

Washington is now plagued with the mounting disasters of the war inIraq and Afghanistan. Public resistance to the on going war is increasing, especially among military families and business sectors. Meanwhile, the challenges of Iran, North Korea, and of course China, not to mention Chavez's Venezuela and the insurgents in Colombia, Nepal, and elsewhere, are extremely worrisome to the corporate power elite.

To be sure, the Philippines is not comparable to oil-rich Indonesia ore ven touristy Thailand. Nonetheless, the U.S. hegemonic bloc is extremely fearful that a nationalist, nay a left-wing, alternative may take advantage of the chronic weakness of the Filipino oligarchy ridden with corruption, internal antagonisms, and sycophancy to corporate U.S. and foreign interests. Preparations to transfer the Okinawa operations to the Philippines are being expedited even as the militarization of Japan proceeds without let-up. The Philippines also provides about 10 million migrant contract workers to service corporate globalization around the planet (for example, building Guantanamo prison-cells and cleaning the barracks of the troops inIraq).

After September 11, 2001, the New People's Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines were promptly declared "terrorist organizations" by the U.S. State Department. This is meant to paralyze any international support for the nationalist insurgency. The millions of Filipinos abroad might be a support base for the NPA and the National Democratic Front—just as the Islamic nations supported the Moro National Liberation Front during the Marcos dictatorship. The systematic media exploitation of the Abu Sayaff as somehow comparable in scale to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, together with its linking of the Abu Sayaff with left-wing and nationalist dissent, has conditioned the U.S. public to recent military incursions ("exercises") in the Philippines. It has allowed Bush and his generals to refurbish the politically bankrupt Arroyo and the AFP as part of their united front against opponents of U.S. neocolonial encroachment wherever profits can be made.

Ever since IBON and other pollsters began documenting the decline of public support for Arroyo amid the jueteng scandals involving her family, the U.S. has begun to follow their tested modus operandi on"regime change." They have consulted with opposition politicians, the Catholic Church, the Judiciary, and of course their military operatives. Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo recently solicited the backing of key U.S. lawmakers for Arroyo such as Republican Senator Thad Cochran, chair of the US Senate Appropriations Committee; Republican Senators Robert Bennett of Utah and Jim Kolbe of Arizona, as well as Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California (where the majority of Filipino Americans reside). Romulo also got the support of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, former adviser to President Bush, and one of the shrewd authors of the project to resuscitate the obsolescent American Empire in the post-Cold War epoch.

A revealing interview of US diplomat Karen Kelley, which appeared in the online Inquirer (reported by Agence France Press, June 29, 2005), suggests the duplicitous mode of preparing for "regime change" as seen from the US Embassy in Manila. While former lackeys of Arroyo are abandoning ship and jumping into the Susan Roces bandwagon, the U.S. poses to defend orderly transition, which means appearing to endorse transparency and accountability while engaged in cloak-and-dagger shenanigans to preserve business and military interests in their former "showcase of democracy" in Asia. The case of "Cold Warriors" Ramon Magsaysay, Benigno Aquino, and Col. Edward Lansdale of the notorious Phoenix program in Vietnam easily come to mind.

Given the pre-emptive and unconscionable means used by globalizing capital to prevent any real substantive change in the local power hierarchy, we shouldn't be deceived by all this legalese rhetoric about democracy and freedom. It is necessary for all progressive forces not to rely solely on bureaucratic or parliamentary means to get rid of Arroyo and her business network. The few wealthy families have never relied only on peaceful means to seize power and maintain supremacy. Nor have the bourgeoisie anywhere in the world. "Civil society" and State as presently constituted only serve to maintain the seemingly "normal" unequal division of power and wealth. We need to be critical of current institutions and practices, and also guard against sectarian dogmatism and opportunist vanguardism. Let the dead bury the dead.

As events in our history have proved, representatives of the ruling class can never represent the genuine long-term interests of the people. Neither Aquino nor Arroyo (who represent sections of the privileged minority) can solve the systemic evils of rampant poverty and unnecessary deaths caused by the unequal division of wealth (in particular, land and other means of production) and the chronic backwardness of the economy due to subservience to U.S. dictates (via World Bank and International Monetary Fund conditionalities). Nor can populist gimmicks tied to Estrada and assorted "social democrats" obsessed with capitalist globalization elsewhere except in thePhilippines, mobilize informed grass-roots support for a thorough going land-reform program, industrialization, a halt to OFW warm-body export policy, and the genocidal war against Moro and indigenous communities.

How can the owners of Hacienda Luisita and the plantations in Negros, Davao, and elsewhere support the loss of their property and class privileges? How can the classes represented by Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo really allow the break-up of feudal privileges and their monopoly of political power in their territories? Behind them stand the corrupt mendacious officers of the AFP and the PNP(notwithstanding the presence of some nationalist middle-level personnel in the ranks), as well as warlords and gangster-vigilante formations sponsored by the CIA.

This is not to exclude individual members of these conservative and reactionary groups from joining the anti-imperialist united front. What we need is adherence to and step-by-step implementation of a tactical and strategic program of nationalist development that will mobilize the masses of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, and indigenous communities. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of the past. What is needed? Not a mountain stronghold policy of imposing a party line in a sectarian manner, but a way of unleashing the energies, wit, cunning, and intelligence of the masses to destroy the old structures of oppression and exploitation that have victimized us since the days of Spanish colonialism, and particularly since the missionary agents of U.S. "Benevolent Assimilation" landed on our shores and civilized 1.4 million dead Filipinos.

We need to initiate and explore new radical means of emancipatory transformation. A transitional nationalist and popular-democratic government is needed to prevent the usual trick of using so-called legal procedures that have always reproduced the status quo to restore peace and "business as usual." If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of People Power I and the delusions of People Power II, we need to rely on a united alliance of armed workers' and peasants' councils, community organizations, existing guerilla forces, and other grass-roots agencies to destroy the mechanisms of imperial domination through the institutions used by the landlords, compradors, bureaucrats and traditional politicians. Otherwise, we will prolong the injustice of the present set-up and the suffering of millions ofFilipinos now and in the future.

Only a massive mobilization of the majority of citizens, of all oppressed and exploited sectors, in particular the Moro people and the tribal communities, can rid us of the evils of the exploitation of labor, political tyranny of the U.S., WB/IMF, and WTO, foreign control of the economy, and the racialized inferiorization of our cultural heritage. We need to arm the masses to defend themselves against the counter-revolutionary violence of the U.S. and its local followers.

A thousand defeats and sacrifices litter the past; is history repeating itself?

But our countrymen who gave their lives fighting against Spanish, U.S. and Japanese colonialisms speak to us from the future, saying: "A new world is possible. It is there for us to win."Let us seize this crisis of the enemy—the oligarchic elite and U.S. imperialism—as an opportunity to advance the national democraticrevolution of the Filipino masses and liberate ourselves from the evils of neocolonialism, racial and gender oppression, commodification, and globalized misery.

KUNG HINDI NGAYON, KAILAN PA? MAKIBAKA, HUWAG MATAKOT!

By: The DIRECTOR AND STAFF
PHILIPPINES CULTURAL STUDIES CENTER

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

AUPWU Position: No To a Bogus President

The All U.P. Workers Union, Manila Chapter and the National Executive Board have made a stand to the raging controversy on the Presidency of the Republic. Our stand: NO to a bogus and do nothing GMA regime.

The decision was arrived today in successive meetings: at 9:00 AM, the expanded Manila Chapter Executive Board meeting held at the PGH Pfizer Vitual Library and; at 1:00 PM the National Executive Board meeting held at the AUPWU Manila Conference Room. Prior to the unanimous decisions by both bodies, each meetings were marked by lengthy discussions and verbal tussle on the contents of the Gloriagate Tape and the wide ranging options-from "patawarin na" to ouster.

For the Manila Chapter, the stand was for the chapter to add its voice on the clamor for the ouster of a corrupt, anti-people and bogus GMA Presidency. An Ad Hoc Committee headed by Ms. Amond Olivar, the Chapter Secretary and four other members was formed to draft the official statement of the Chapter. The committee is expected to hand-in a draft statement to the Chapter President/National PRO on Monday, July 11, 2005 for editing and printing. The statement will be mass circulated by the Public Affairs and Special Projects Committees.

Meanwhile, the National Executive Board's stand was to get rid of the GMA government under any situation-from resignation to ouster. The National President and the Diliman Chapter were given the tasks of drafting, finalizing and printing of the Union's statement.