Elias Dipasupil
Secretary-General, National Democratic Front
The state of the Filipino nation is that of a growing people’s resistance against intensified fascist repression and plunder by the US-Marcos regime.
The US-Marcos regime continues to ignore economic development through national industrialization while it lays open the whole country to foreign plunder, plunging the biggest majority of the population to extreme poverty and suffering. Prices soar and worker’s wages remain low. Peasants and indigenous people lose their lands to mining companies or real estate billionaires who turn fertile farm lands into enclaves for the rich. Fisherfolk lose their livelihood as the seas are taken over by warships and coastlines are reclaimed by big business. Meanwhile, the regime plunders people’s money to make Marcos’ cronies rich, while weaponizing the issue of corruption against political and economic rivals.
The Marcos regime uses its conflict with Duterte to deceive the people and distract and derail the people’s protest for genuine reforms and accountability. It has forged alliances with pseudo-progressive parties and organizations to sow division among the people and redirect the people’s outrage away from the corrupt Marcos ruling clique.
At the core of today’s present crisis is not only the contest between two reactionary cliques vying for power but US imperialism’s intensifying stranglehold on the Philippines. In its design to make the country a forward military base within the First Island Chain, it supports puppet regimes in exchange for free access to our land, air, and seas. Just this year, 500 operations were launched in the guise of military exercises, or “humanitarian and disaster response”, a Tomahawk missile has been launched within Philippine soil while US warships patrol Philippine seas.
The US has found a most willing puppet in Marcos Jr., even more subservient than his father, in militarizing the whole nation. If the previous regimes have allowed the US to claim EDCA sites for their military bases, Marcos has opened the entire Philippines, including civilian facilities, for US military use. Thousands of American soldiers are present throughout the year in the guise of “visits” and “exercises”. Radar installations, drone centers, secret missile silos, and fuel depots dot the archipelago. Military exercises, such as the Salaknib, have been turned to actual boots on the ground as US soldiers joined AFP troops in operations against the New People’s Army.
To further integrate the Philippines into the US military-industrial complex, the impending Pax Silica is designed to aggressively plunder the nation’s mineral and water resources and exploit Filipino labor. It is the US’ bid to undercut Chinese domination in the field of digital electronics, spur the production of digital war materiel for geopolitical ambitions and support Israel’s genocide against Palestine. For the success of this project, US imperialism is closely directing the Marcos regime in suppressing all legitimate opposition from nationalists, environmentalists, anti-war activists and revolutionary fighters. It has intensified its efforts to crush the national democratic movement as the most vocal opposition to US imperialist aggression. The Trump regime has labeled anti-imperialists and anti-fascists force as “far left extremists” that need to be eliminated.
The notorious National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) is on a warpath against protesters, employing red-tagging, harassments, extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances as standard operating procedure. Even schools and urban poor communities are militarized where no armed conflict has ever been recorded. In the countryside, the Philippine Army’s Retooled Community Support Programs (RCSP), besides serving as unlimited reserve fund for military corruption, turn whole villages into virtual military hamlets, employing restrictions on farming communities’ movements and severely limiting their productive activities. Aerial bombings continue, laying to waste large swathes of forests and fields, displacing hundreds of peasant families and destroying the environment even in critical protected areas.
The people continue to resist in the face of economic hardships and fascist repression. Even the attempt to whitewash the US-Marcos regime’s image by attacking corruption during the last SONA backfired into a massive multi-sectoral protest against the regime itself as the main implementer and enabler of systemic corruption. Despite fascist attacks and state media disinformation, the national democratic mass movement in the cities continues to launch basic masses immersion programs, educational fora, and protest actions with increased size, frequency, and militancy, joined by progressive and nationalist organizations and personalities from different sectors, especially the youth.
The people’s war continues to be waged in the countryside, and has belied the arrogant claims of the regime that armed resistance has been effectively neutralized. The New People’s Army, declared every year by the regime as “defeated”, has drawn in more recruits, recovered areas and expanded their guerilla zones, reorganized its units to adapt to the regime’s intensified repression, and launched successful military operations, both as tactical offensives and active defensives. The people’s martyrs inspire thousands to join the people’s army and wage revolution for national and social liberation.
More and more, the present crisis has affirmed the need for revolution through people’s war. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines continues to advance its 12-point program to advance the national democratic revolution. The NDFP allied organizations in the urban revolutionary underground are expanding and consolidating, launching lightning rallies and sticker campaigns to spread the call for revolution. Several allied members have successfully undertaken national congresses and assemblies, with their programs of action calling to sustain the momentum of their education and recruitment campaigns.
As US imperialism continues to expand plunder and fuel its war machine, as it puts the world into a state of war by its desperately insane attempts to reclaim its unipolar superiority, and while the local fascist regime continues its puppetry to US imperialism, our people’s state of the nation is a state of resistance against repression and plunder, a state of continuing protracted people’s war. ###
