II. The Philippines in the vortex of crisis
Like the pseudo-development policy of the big comprador-landlord Marcos regime, the series of post-Marcos regimes have aggravated and deepened the semifeudal character of the Philippine economy under the US-instigated neoliberal economic policy since the 1980s. The ever worsening crisis, itself generated by the basic laws of motion of the world capitalist system and its supposed remedy, neoliberal economic policy, has pushed the Philippine economy into the vortex of an unprecedented crisis.
The current Aquino regime has been in power for more than a year already. Like its imperialist masters, it clings dogmatically to the neoliberal economic policy. The regime has not put forward any policy proposal to assert national independence and carry out economic development through genuine land reform and national industrialization. Instead, it has adopted a policy of keeping the agrarian and underdeveloped character of the economy.
Its so-called Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016 pushes primarily the private-public partnership program of infrastructure projects. These projects are calcula/ted to draw away resources from any potential for industrial development. However, global financial restraints prevent the projects from being implemented as fast as expected. Thus, the US stands out with its Millennium Challenge Corporation grant of US$434 million funding for infrastructure and so-called community development projects within the “counterinsurgency” scheme Oplan Bayanihan.
Lacking a program of national industrialization, the Aquino regime has practically limited itself to touting business call centers, pushing the plunder of our natural resources by foreign mining companies and doling out cash under the so-called Conditional Cash Transfer program which is misrepresented as an antipoverty program but is actually a palliative for psywar purposes being pushed and funded by US imperialism through the World Bank.
The Philippine economy is depressed. It is under the stress of the protracted and worsening crisis of global capitalism. The global demand for the kind of exports that the Philippines produces–raw materials and semi-manufactures–has fallen drastically. The growth of remittances of overseas contract workers is slowing down. The bubble in private construction is bursting as effective demand for housing is decreasing.
Unemployment is rising rapidly with mass layoffs in the sectors of low value-added manufacturing and in private construction. Production of food staples like rice and corn have been cut down by decades of liberalized imports and reviving it is difficult as prices of imported agricultural inputs have risen. The regime is carrying out an unannounced severe policy of austerity at the expense of the people, with cutbacks on government expenditures for education, health and other social services.
Even as incomes of the working people have plunged, the prices of basic goods and services are soaring. Despite the depressed condition of the economy, the Aquino regime is raising the tax burden. The Aquino psywar machine continues to prate about fighting corruption. But until now, the regime runs too slow in going after the crimes of corruption under the Arroyo regime. It continues to provide tax cuts to the big corporations and the wealthy and is blind to the grand corruption of the big compradors and former Marcos cronies (e.g., Eduardo Cojuangco and Lucio Tan) simply because they were big contributors to the Aquino electoral campaign. It has carried out successive demolitions of urban poor settlements to clear valuable real estate for Aquino’s big business friends.
The biggest corruption of the Aquino regime is letting the foreign monopoly firms and banks run rampant in plundering the economy and making superprofits. Even as international credit is tightening, debt service on accumulated debts continues to drain the country of precious funds. The reactionary government continues to waste tax revenues through bureaucratic corruption, military expenditures and doleouts of cash in a futile attempt to undermine and counter the revolutionary movement.
As a result of the economic crisis, conditions of hunger and poverty have worsened and afflict more people than ever before. But the National Statistical Coordination Board manipulates the data and changes the terms for determining poverty to reach the false conclusion that the Aquino regime has reduced the incidence of poverty. Underscoring the fakery in official statistics, the rate of unemployment in the Philippines is also made to appear much lower than that in the industrial capitalist countries. The truth is that the real unemployment rate in the Philippines is one of the worst in the region and in the world, coupled with rapidly increasing numbers of underemployment, low quality and unpaid work.
As economic conditions deteriorate and the regime fails to solve the growing problem of unemployment and poverty, the popularity rating of Aquino is made to rise through the ceaseless hype generated by the Lopez-owned mass media and poll surveys manipulated by Pulse Asia, owned and controlled by Aquino relatives. Aquino’s recent attacks on Arroyo and the Supreme Court are calculated to deflect public attention away from the worsening economic and social crisis and the continuing gross violations of human rights as well as to boost his popularity rating in poll surveys. The Aquino regime seeks to thrive on sheer manipulation of the media and poll surveys.
Social discontent is widespread and deep-going. The broad masses of the people are conspicuously restive. Mass protests are increasing against the worsening economic and social conditions. The tactics of the global Occupy movement, which have been familiar to the Philippine mass movement since the 1960s, are now intensifying. The people’s mass uprisings cannot be stopped so long as there is a revolutionary political leadership that is resolute, militant and does not fear the coercive actions of the regime.
The revolutionary forces and the people are persistently growing in strength. The social and economic crisis is pressing hard on the ruling classes and the rival political factions and is resulting in a political crisis of the ruling system. At the national level, the Aquino ruling clique is challenged by the Arroyo, Marcos and other factions. The contradictions among them are reflected between and within the three branches of the reactionary government (executive, legislative and judiciary). At lower levels, the internal contradictions within the ruling class are also intensifying.
The contradictions between the Aquino and the Arroyo factions have taken center stage for the time being, especially since Arroyo’s attempt to leave the country under the pretext of seeking medical care. Aquino is going through the motions of running after Arroyo for electoral sabotage and corruption but not for gross and systematic violations of human rights. Behind all the sound and fury is Aquino’s resentment over the decision of the Supreme Court, dominated by Arroyo appointees, to invalidate the stock distribution option as a way of cheating the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita.
The competing factions of the ruling class have armed strength by having followers within the reactionary armed forces and police and by maintaining private armed groups. The worst reactionary factions build their private armed groups under various legalized methods such as so-called force multipliers of the army and police with such names as CAFGU, CVO, CAA, bodyguards with special gun permits and private security agencies.
The intensifying competition for bureaucratic loot and the political rivalry among the reactionary factions are objectively favorable to the revolutionary movement as they split and weaken the ruling system. Under the current circumstances, the revolutionary forces can augment their own strength by employing broad united front tactics to oppose the worst reactionary faction, which is targeted as the enemy.
The mass movement of workers, peasants, fisherfolk, the national minorities, urban poor, women, youth, teachers, lawyers, health professionals and other patriotic and progressive forces is surging. The various mass organizations are determined to give voice to the socio-economic and political demands of the people and to act militantly in pursuing compliance with these just and reasonable demands.
The workers demand respect for their trade union and other democratic rights, for job security and better wage and living conditions for stopping the ceaseless layoffs and for national industrialization so that employment expands and they do not have to leave their families to seek employment abroad. The mass layoffs in low value-added semi-manufacturing for export and in private construction and the dismal trend abroad against foreign migrant workers are pressing hard on the entire Philippine economy.
The peasants demand genuine and thoroughgoing land reform, not the bogus land reform law CARPER; recovery of staple-food production, credit and technical assistance, and development of production for industrial processing. The revolutionary forces and the people are carrying out minimum land reform as the general line and maximum land reform wherever possible.
Many people are pleased that the protracted struggle of farm workers to own Hacienda Luisita has been rewarded as a result of the final decision of the Supreme Court, though belated, to scrap the Stock Distribution Option and allow the distribution of the land to the farm workers. However, it is still unclear how much the farm workers would be made to pay for the land. Aquino and his Cojuangco relatives are demanding so-called current market value, absolutely way beyond the paying capacity of the farm workers. The farm workers, on the other hand, see the immeasurable misery they had to endure and the unearned largess appropriated by the Cojuangcos over the decades as more than enough payment for the land to be distributed to them.
The fisherfolk demand respect for their rights, a stop to the preemption of fishing areas and markets by the big fishing corporations, the right of small fishermen to operate and the provision of credit and technical assistance. They oppose the reactionary government’s policy of allowing the fishing magnates to monopolize fishing in lakes and bays, and foreign fishing vessels and factory ships to encroach on the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines in violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The national minorities demand respect for their right to self-determination and ancestral domain. They demand that their land must not be taken away from them, that they are not displaced from their home grounds by foreign and local corporations that plunder the forest, mineral and water resources. Together with the rest of the people, the national minorities applaud the NPA offensives to dismantle and shut down the operations of foreign and big comprador mining firms in Mindanao and throughout the country.
The urban poor that include workers, oddjobbers, small vendors and poor self-employed demand their right to livelihood, housing and other democratic rights. They demand that they must not be subjected to eviction, demolition of their dwellings and deprivation of nearby sources of livelihood as well as to all kinds of indignity, harassment, physical attacks and dispossession. They fight to oppose the demolition of their dwellings to make way for the interests of real estate developers and actively resist the deployment of police and military to intimidate and attack them.
The women demand respect for their right to gender equality, enjoyment of equal opportunities in all socio-economic activities, a systematic stop to violence against women and to women trafficking. They demand respect and support for the children who suffer victimization under the dire economic and social conditions and campaigns of military suppression. They demand the right to gender equality and against discrimination that extends to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered.
The youth demand their right to education, an increase of state appropriations for public education at all levels, a stop to the wastage of public resources on military spending, debt service and bureaucratic corruption. They oppose the soaring prices of basic commodities, unemployment, the rapid rise of poverty, and the reduction of public funds for public schools. They demand respect for the democratic right to speak and act in the interest of the students, youth and the entire people. They condemn and oppose the increasingly violent reaction of the Aquino regime to mass protest actions, as exemplified by the repeated brutal dispersal of the youth attempting to hold a camp-out protest at Mendiola earlier this month.
The professionals, small entrepreneurs and the entire middle class demand a stop to the imposition of higher taxes, fees and other onerous burdens, the judicious use of their tax and other contributions, instead of being wasted on bureaucratic corruption, military expenditures and debt service. The urban petty-bourgeoisie is ever more ready to join the toiling masses as a revolutionary force. The middle bourgeoisie is concerned about the surrender of national rights to foreign powers and monopoly firms.
More than ever, the crisis conditions are providing fertile ground for the growth in strength and advance of the people’s war and the people’s army. The escalation of oppression and exploitation incites the people to engage in mass protests and to rise up in arms against the reactionary state and to build the people’s democratic state. The conditions for armed revolution are exceedingly favorable.
The people and the revolutionary forces represented by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) are willing to negotiate with the reactionary government to address the roots of the armed conflict by forging agreements on social, economic and political reforms in order to lay the basis for a just and lasting peace. But the Aquino regime is hellbent on using the US-instigated Oplan Bayanihan to destroy the revolutionary movement of the people. It is obsessed with using the peace negotiations as a mere tool for psywar and as a way to seek the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces.
The Aquino regime is not seriously interested in peace negotiations with the NDFP. It is preconditioning the peace negotiations with demands for the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary movement. It is backtracking on and invalidating previous bilateral agreements by qualifying and putting them aside. It has not rectified the Arroyo policy of abducting, torturing and murdering NDFP consultants in the peace negotiations. It has condoned and upheld the actions of the Arroyo regime to have the NPA, the CPP and the NDFP chief political consultant in the peace negotiations maintained in the terrorist list of the US and other foreign governments; and likewise to have the NDFP chief political consultant arrested and detained in 2007 by the Dutch government for criminal charges, which the Dutch court in The Hague dismissed as baseless and politically motivated. It refuses to release imprisoned NDFP consultants and to comply with the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG).
It has condoned gross and systematic abuses of human rights in violation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) under the Arroyo regime and is emboldening the military, police and paramilitary forces to further commit atrocities. It refuses to release hundreds of political prisoners who are accused of participation in the revolutionary movement but are falsely charged with common crimes in violation of the CARHRIHL and the Hernandez political offense doctrine.
The reactionary government recurrently demands ceasefire for this or that reason in order to avoid negotiating the substantive agenda of the peace negotiations and in effect obtain the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary movement. But it refuses the NDFP offer of truce and alliance on the basis of a ten-point general declaration of common intent regarding national independence, democracy, economic development, social justice and other important demands of the people.
It conducts sham peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) like it does with the NDFP by backtracking on previous agreements and nullifying them and ever wishing to trick or bend the opposite party towards capitulation and pacification. It has blocked real progress in the peace negotiations with the NDFP as well as the MILF. The GPH has gone as far as scamming and racketeering by recycling the CPLA and the RPA-ABB surrenderees and hirelings as rebel groups and using their names to malverse public funds.
It is advantageous for both the NDFP and the MILF to continue fighting against their common enemy. Although waged separately, their revolutionary armed struggles support each other. The reactionary government has increasing difficulties in trying to fight on two major fronts. The crisis will further reduce the capabilities of the reactionary state and all its coercive apparatuses. The reactionary state and its armed forces will further weaken upon the growth in strength of the NDFP and the MILF separately and simultaneously.
The broad masses of the Filipino people are acutely aware of the growing US military intervention in the Philippines under the US-RP Mutual Defense Treaty and the Visiting Forces Agreement. Such intervention is aimed at perpetuating US control of the Philippines and using the Philippines as a strategic base for securing US hegemony in East Asia. The Filipino people and their revolutionary forces are prepared for the escalation of US military intervention and to wage a war of national liberation against US imperialism.