It is immoral for Aquino and others to condone the crimes of Arroyo

By Professor JOSE MARIA SISON
NDFP Chief Political Consultant

It is immoral for Corazon Aquino and others to condone the crimes of Gloria M. Arroyo and help to keep her in power. Aquino is the least qualified to advice Susan Roces on the rule of law. She never filed an electoral protest to prove legally that she had been cheated by Marcos. Neither did she undertake impeachment proceedings against him. She became president in 1986 through the successful democratic mass actions of the sovereign Filipino people who ousted Marcos from power.

By Professor JOSE MARIA SISON
NDFP Chief Political Consultant

It is immoral for Corazon Aquino and others to condone the crimes of Gloria M. Arroyo and help to keep her in power. Aquino is the least qualified to advice Susan Roces on the rule of law. She never filed an electoral protest to prove legally that she had been cheated by Marcos. Neither did she undertake impeachment proceedings against him. She became president in 1986 through the successful democratic mass actions of the sovereign Filipino people who ousted Marcos from power.

Right now, Susan Roces who is the widow of the main victim of massive electoral fraud in 2004 has the moral ascendancy over the usurper of office Arroyo and likewise over Aquino. She has all the right to participate in the broad united front and mass movement for the ouster of the immoral and illegitimate Arroyo regime. Moreover, unlike Aquino in 1986, she has no immediate personal interest in becoming president. Her current main interest is in fighting for truth and justice and demanding that the wrongdoer Arroyo give up the presidency that she has stolen.

The Arroyo regime and its closest loyalists spread certain fears that are calculated to discourage the people from mobilizing against them. They claim that the ouster of Arroyo by the people’s direct democratic actions would undermine and destabilize the entire ruling system and merely open the door to a coup d’etat by the military.

They say that the people must simply condone the high crimes of Arroyo because impeachment proceedings cannot succeed against her and because anyway her constitutional successor is a corrupt nincompoop. They boast that the people have no choice but to tolerate Arroyo and her cohorts despite their grave crimes, including treason, corruption and gross violations of human rights, because supposedly no individual or set of individuals from among 84 million Filipinos can replace her.

But the longer the Arroyo regime remains in power, the more rotten and more unstable the entire ruling system of big compradors and landlords would become. The failure of the legal democratic mass movement to oust the Arroyo regime would further polarize the reactionary political and military factions of the ruling system and would fuel the flames of the people’s democratic armed revolution.

At the moment, there are at least four major groups of military and police officers working for the withdrawal of military and police support from the Arroyo regime. They wish to shift their support to a new civilian government. They express allegiance to the principle of civilian supremacy, respect democratic rights and disdain military rule. At any rate, not one of such groups is ready to take power for itself and offend the other groups and the broad masses of the people.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has already announced through its official publication that the New People’s Army is intensifying its armed tactical offensives in the countryside but is encouraging the broad united front of legal opposition parties and mass organizations to mobilize the people for legal mass actions in urban population centers. The current core of such legal forces has the high potential of becoming the gigantic force for ousting the Arroyo regime.

To break the grip of the Arroyo regime on all the branches of the reactionary government and to oust this regime completely from power, it is necessary to mobilize the people in the millions. Thus, the opposition parties and the patriotic and progressive mass organizations are now rapidly raising the level of their common understanding, cooperation and coordination in a broad united front. On the basis of the rapidly growing mass movement, they can in due course hold a people’s consultative assembly to elect a council of leaders and ratify a program of government.