By Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
August 22, 2019

The tyrant Duterte and his political, military and police agents are labeling the critics and opponents of his regime as “communists” and “terrorists” and claiming that they are the biggest problems afflicting the country and that they deserve to be subjected to all kinds of measures to intimidate, silence and even kill them extrajudicially or under flimsy legal pretenses.

Of course, the biggest problems plaguing the Filipino nation are imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, which the chief oligarch Duterte wishes to preserve through state terrorism. And the world’s No.1 terrorist is US imperialism with the assistance of terrorist puppets like Duterte and his armed minions. All of these real terrorists are driving the people to fight for national liberation and democracy.

The criminal methods of labeling and then killing drug suspects extrajudicially by using death squads are now being increasingly used against critics and opponents of the regime in the countryside and even in urban areas. Duterte has openly instigated the campaign to red-tag, discredit, threaten and then kill them under the pretext that they “resist arrest” (nanlaban) or on the false claim that they kill each other.

The perpetuation of martial law in Mindanao and the actual implementation of martial law nationwide (without formal proclamation) are being used by the Duterte regime to intimidate the entire Filipino nation and murder those labeled as enemies of the state and thus allow the regime to engage in the most brazen acts of treason, corruption, rigging of the 2019 elections and other criminal acts.

Not satisfied with his “nanlaban” doctrine of killing any one on the pretext of resisting arrest, Duterte is trying to reinforce this license to kill by seeking to amend the Human Security Act or the Anti-Terrorism Law in order to facilitate his political and military agents in labeling his critics and opponents as “terrorists”, allow his armed agents a period of two months to make anyone disappear temporarily or permanently and remove any liability of his armed minions for the arbitrary detention of people.

There is also the move of Duterte’s agents to revive the old discredited Anti-Subversion Law as if the Anti-Terrorism Law and other repressive measures were not enough. The purpose of reviving the latter is to terrorize the people with the provisions for outlawing democratic organizations and suppressing democratic rights and imposing the death penalty on those who are deemed as criminals on the basis of guilt by association, even before they are tried and convicted by any court.

The Anti-Terrorism Law if amended and the Anti-Subversion Law if revived amount to overkill in view of the law on rebellion whose penalty has been raised to reclusion perpetua of up to 40 years. But this law has been either set aside or augmented by charges of common crimes against suspected political offenders in violation of the long-established Hernandez political offense doctrine, which prohibits complexing the charge of rebellion with charges of common crimes.

While Duterte’s political and armed agents are drawing attention to proposed amendments in the Anti-Terrorism Law and the proposed revival of the Anti-Subversion Law, the regime is actually engaged in mass murder under the “nanlaban” doctrine and under the cover of fake encounters. Duterte’s armed minions also use the method of planting firearms and explosives in making arbitrary arrests to detain indefinitely or kill extrajudicially those targeted.

Many people wonder why the US, which is still the dominant imperialist power in the Philippines, has tolerated the Duterte regime in boasting that it is becoming independent of the US and is becoming closer to China, in fact going to the extent of selling out Philippine sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea and favoring China in infrastructure-building and technology agreements.

The reason is that Duterte and his highest pro-US military advisers and officers have assured the US that they will end the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Filipino people’s democratic revolution and that the US can continue to ride roughshod over the people and can get bigger gains through charter change

But Duterte can be undone by his failure to end the CPP and the people’s democratic revolution and by his success in aggravating the crisis of the ruling system and inciting greater numbers of the Filipino people to join the armed revolution. Duterte can end up like Marcos who became more of a liability than an asset to the US and was junked in 1986.

China has delayed the implementation of infrastructure projects as a way of pressuring Duterte to declare in more explicit terms his sell out of the sovereign rights over the exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea, especially with regard to the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas resources and the several islands built and militarized by China.

Duterte can be dumped by a combination of pro-US military officers and patriotic elements in the Armed Forces of the Philippine who are opposed to Duterte’s traitorous dealings with China as well as his notorious collaboration with Chinese criminal triads in the smuggling of illegal drugs, rice and other commodities and the operation of casinos and offshore gambling.###