The latest round of conflict between the Marcoses and the Dutertes is a reflection of the depths of the political crisis of the rotten ruling system. It shows the irreconcilable contradictions between the rival bureaucratic-capitalist factions, who both are greedy for power and insatiable plunderers of the people’s money.
This rivalry between the two factions, drunk with power, is threatening to escalate into a violent phase. The conflict recently intensified with the exposé of Vice President Sara Duterte’s corruption in using over ₱600 million in “confidential and intelligence funds.” In the face of desperate attempts to cover up the exposed corruption, Duterte flaunted her power by refusing to submit to the congressional investigation and taking illegal steps to block it.
Duterte openly threatened the lives of Marcos, his wife Lisa, and Speaker Martin Romualdez, whom she accused of threatening her life. Marcos “reciprocated” and mobilized the police and other state agencies to take legal action against Duterte. Amid mounting calls to impeach Sara Duterte, old Rodrigo, former president, drew attention to himself by openly calling on young military officers to take action in the face of what he called Marcos’s “fractured leadership.” Duterte is riding on the people’s grievances against the Marcos regime and anti-US imperialist sentiments to obscure how people suffered from grave oppression, repression and his regime’s subservience to the US and China.
These conflicts are further fueling the Filipino people’s hatred towards the ruling classes, particularly against the Marcos and Duterte ruling cliques. The people are well aware that this power struggle does not arise from any lofty principles or goals, but from the scramble for control of the large budget, government contracts, control and influence over the military and police, and other privileges that benefit their families and bureaucratic capitalist clique. They represent the most despicable political dynasties in politics, which are expected to clash and devour each other in the upcoming elections.
The people’s anger towards the entire ruling system is growing sharper as the rampant corruption and crimes of those in power—both the Dutertes and the Marcoses—are exposed. While billions of pesos of the people’s money are being squandered daily by the Marcoses and the Dutertes, millions of workers, peasants, the poor, ordinary employees, and small professionals are suffering daily from rising prices of goods and services, low wages and inadequate income, joblessness and lack of livelihood, land grabbing and economic displacement, debt and other burdens.
As the Marcoses and Dutertes clash, the people must take action to fight for their economic welfare, defend their rights, hold the Dutertes accountable for their crimes against the people, and make Marcos pay for his collusion with the Dutertes to gain power, and for using state terrorism to suppress the people’s resistance. The people must continue to shake the ruling Marcos regime with growing protests.
The move of scores of organizations to file an impeachment case against Sara Duterte in Congress is worthy of the broad masses’s support as a way of expressing their outrage against corruption and the squandering of the public funds. This must be pushed by the people, especially after Marcos said it should not or never be pursued, fearing reprisal by the Dutertes. Alongside the ouster of the vice president, the people must vigorously pursue the case filed against Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court, and push for his arrest, imprisonment, trial, and punishment for his crimes against humanity.
As Duterte is held accountable for his crimes against the people, the Marcos regime must also be made to pay for its widespread corruption, such as the hundreds of billions of Maharlika Fund, the recovery of the Marcos family’s ill-gotten wealth, the wastage of billions of pesos in “intelligence funds” and “unprogrammed funds,” the incessant increases in the prices of rice, oil, and goods, the wage freeze, anti-people and anti-poor policies, and the suppression of democratic rights.
The collective expression of the people’s outrage against the treacherous Marcos and Duterte cliques, must be unleashed and given form. Mass assemblies, forums, town hall meetings, and other forms of mass gatherings must be launched in campuses, factories, communities, offices, markets, churches, and other places of convergence to serve as a venue for a study movement to tackle the issues and problems of the nation, and means of expressing the people’s grievances.
The people must be united in various forms, levels, and scope of networks, alliances, and organizations. The unions and mass organizations that serve as the core of building a broader people’s unity must be continuously strengthened.
For the masses to become a material force of resistance, hundreds to thousands of cadres, propagandists, and organizers must resolutely step forward, devote all their intelligence and abilities, fully immersing themselves among the masses and wholeheartedly embracing their lives and struggles.
Alongside participating in battles in Congress, courts, government agencies, and other fields of struggle—and more than these—the people must bring the fight to the streets, where they can demonstrate and utilize their strength based on their broad and solid unity. In street protests, the people can express their grievances with full force, and fight for their demands.
Bureaucratic capitalism, along with imperialism and feudalism, forms the three basic problems of the Filipino people, which are chiefly represented today by the oppressive and fascist US-Marcos regime. These must be to to an end by advancing the national-democratic revolution through armed struggle in line with the strategy of protracted people’s war, to achieve genuine national freedom and democracy.
