II. Chronic crisis of the rotten system worsens
The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system continues to worsen under the impact of the crisis of the world capitalist system. More than ever before, the Philippines is dependent on the export of raw materials, migrant labor and low value-added semimanufactures, and the prices of these are now pressed down in the global market. More than ever, the Philippines is stricken by trade deficits, and is a beggar for foreign loans at more onerous terms and for portfolio investments in search of higher returns in the financial market.
The change of puppet administrations from Arroyo to Aquino does not involve any significant change. The Aquino regime clings to the dogma of neoliberal globalization, and shuns national industrialization and land reform. It remains dependent on foreign loans and grants for the continuance of an economy oriented to the export of raw materials, and infrastructure projects to serve agricultural and mining corporations. It has given first priority to selling the Philippines and luring more foreign investments through its Public-Private Partnership Program.
Like its predecessor regime, the puppet Aquino regime slavishly follows its US master's bidding in its counterinsurgency drive. The content and language of Aquino's new counterinsurgency campaign plan, Oplan Bayanihan, to succeed Arroyo's brutal Oplan Bantay Laya–is just the same brutal dog with a different collar. It is patterned after and hews closely to the latest US Counterinsurgency Guide, with the same objectives and pretentious features. Couched in new fancy slogans, it combines all forms of deception, cooptation and brute force in seeking to destroy the revolutionary forces by all means. Like other counterinsurgency campaign plans in the past, Oplan Bayanihan has the same objective of controlling and silencing the population right down to the grassroots. It purports that the "whole-of-nation" and "people-centered" approach that it now totes is genuine and is primary over the military or "enemy-centered" approach. Its new slogans sugarcoat fascist bullets and atrocities with pretensions at reaching out to the people and respecting human rights, all to provide cover for and facilitate its brutal campaigns of suppression against the people and their revolutionary forces. In intent and reality, US counterinsurgency doctrine and practice–as more straightforwardly prescribed in military manuals–hold that, in the final analysis, military and other coercive measures are primary. As the revolutionary struggle gains strength, especially amid the ever intensifying crisis, the imperialist and puppet reactionary forces invariably resort to more and more militarist and fascist means and methods.
In conformity with the US Counterinsurgency Guide, the Aquino regime has been using the catchwords of good governance, delivery of services, economic development and security reforms in order to undertake graft-ridden programs and projects, hand doleouts for counterinsurgency purposes, aggravate the underdevelopment of the economy and divert resources from education, health and other essential social services to the military, debt service and profit remittances by multinational corporations.
The World Bank, the US Millennium Challenge Corporation and other imperialist agencies have joined the charade in announcing that they would favor and support states with development projects, such as those bandied about as Millennium Development Goals and Conditional Cash Transfers that supposely would raise the quality of life of the population, improve governance and the delivery of basic services, but whose real objectives are to keep the recipient countries backward and mendicant, and to further the imperialist neoliberal and counterinsurgency agenda.
The Filipino people suffer the impositions of a regime whose chieftain Aquino has been handpicked by the US and the local exploiters. His supposed victory in the elections was predetermined by the propaganda, financing and manipulation of the foreign-controlled automated electoral system by the US and the worst of the local reactionaries. The Aquino regime is being directed by the same foreign and domestic interests that directed the Arroyo regime. It has already exposed itself as essentially similar to the Arroyo regime in terms of puppetry, corruption, brutality and mendacity.
To surpass his electoral rivals in campaign rhetorics, Aquino promised to prosecute and try Arroyo and her accomplices for corruption and human rights violations. But the promise is not going to be fulfilled as proven by the built-in weaknesses and the waste-basketting by the Arroyo-dominated Supreme Court of the so-called Truth Commission, as well as by the continuing condonement not only of the Arroyo regime's human rights violations but also those of the current regime itself.
Intense pressure, including heavy criticism of the ridiculously trumped-up charges, widespread demands nationwide and abroad, the detainees' resolute struggle for justice and freedom and their hunger strike compelled the Aquino government to drop the charges against the Morong 43 and have them released. The AFP still has to answer for the injustice, torture and sufferings inflicted on the victims. The Aquino government has still failed to clear and release hundreds more political detainees who have also been falsely charged, including those whose scurity is guaranteed by the GRP-NDFP Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG). It has not rendered justice to the thousands of victims of human rights violations.
By all indications, the Aquino regime is hellbent on using the slogan of human rights in order to continue the gross and systematic human rights violations. It is obviously going to use the peace negotiations with the NDFP and the MILF as an occasional propaganda device and to block the demands of the people for basic social, economic and political reforms to address the roots of the armed conflict and lay the basis for a just and lasting peace. So far, most important to the Aquino regime is beefing up the military, police and paramilitary forces and unleashing them against the people and the revolutionary forces.
The contradictions between the Filipino people and the Aquino regime will sharpen. The people will resent Aquino for failing to fulfill his promise to solve the problem of poverty by eliminating corruption. The regime has practically condoned the crimes of corruption committed by the Arroyo clique and allows the continuing rampage of corruption. To end poverty, it is not enough to stop corruption. Social justice and development through national industrialization and land reform are necessary. But the Aquino regime is opposed to these as well, as proven by his actuations on the Hacienda Luisita issue and his policy pronouncements and acts that exceedingly tout foreign investments and favor the imperialist policy of neoliberal globalization.
The people cannot tolerate extreme forms of exploitation and oppression inflicted on them. Social discontent is more widespread and intense than ever before. The mass organizations of the toiling masses and the middle social strata are girding for concerted mass actions. Strikes and mass demonstrations have begun to break out and are bound to spread. The armed revolutionary struggle is intensifying. The people's army is launching more tactical offensives than ever before in order to realize the objective of advancing from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate in five years.
As the crisis worsens and the people's resistance rises, the contradictions among the reactionaries intensify. The economic and financial basis for mutual accommodation among the reactionaries has further narrowed. The ruling reactionaries headed by Aquino tend to monopolize the spoils of power. The reactionaries in the opposition are pushed to expose the corruption and other crimes of those who are in power. They are obliged to criticize the ruling clique in order to seize the political initiative and prepare for the next electoral contest.
At various levels of the political system, the competing reactionaries build their respective armed strength by cultivating factions within the military and police and by organizing their own armed body guards and private security agencies and militia units. GRP president Aquino as commander-in-chief of the armed forces has the advantage over his political opponents in using the military and police chain of command and his own private security corporation. But the regime is vulnerable to the changing alignments among the armed factions that struggle for power and spoils, especially in lucrative official assignments and criminal activities.
There is no sign whatsover that the war between the Manila government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would be resolved under the Aquino regime. The regime and its imperialist master seek the capitulation of the MILF so that they can exploit and plunder the natural resources in Bangsamoro land in Mindanao. But the MILF is unwilling to give up the right of the Bangsamoro to self-determination and to their ancestral domain.
While the war continues in Bangsamoro land, the Manila government has less deployable military forces against the New People's Army. At the same time, while the people's war advances throughout the Philippines, the MILF and the Bangsamoro have better prospects of achieving their revolutionary aspirations. The revolutionary forces and people led by the Communist Party of the Philippines have always recognized the right of the Moro people to national self-determination. The Moro people have the right to secede from an oppressive state as well as to opt for autonomy in a centralized or federal state that is nonoppressive.
The contradictions between the US imperialists and the Filipino people are sharpening in every field–economic, political, military and cultural. The US has tightened its grip on the Philippine economy under the policy of neoliberal globalization. At the same time, it has increased its military intervention under its policy of "global war on terror" and particularly under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the US Counterinsurgency Guide. Under various pretexts, the US has realized the permanent basing and deployment of US military forces in the Philippines. US military officers have openly acted as the bosses of the Filipino puppet forces.
The US is bent on escalating its military intervention to a war of aggression against the Filipino people as the revolutionary forces gain strength towards the strategic stalemate. But US military forces are being adversely affected by the domestic US economic and financial crisis, by being sucked into the quagmires of two wars of aggression and by being overstretched in overseas deployment.
The possibility of a US war of aggression against the Filipino people can be diminished by the rise of more armed revolutions in the world and by diplomatic actions taking advantage of growing contradictions between the US and certain countries in East Asia, like China and the DPRK. But the most important consideration is that the Filipino people and the revolutionary forces shall have gained a great amount of strength and experience from advancing towards the strategic stalemate and shall have prepared to fight a US war of aggression.
