II. The rotten ruling system is tottering
The US-directed Aquino ruling clique came to power through automated electoral cheating, mass media manipulation, and massive funding by big compradors and landlords. It continues to believe that it can ride over the grave economic and social crisis of the ruling system by depending on the inflow of foreign investments and loans and by false claims of good governance and a robust economy, pretenses at combating corruption and through a ceaseless stream of publicity gimmicks, slanted news reports and manipulated poll surveys.
Aquino’s propaganda machine is secretly managed by US and other foreign psy-war experts. It is operated by long-time hacks in the bourgeois mass media and pseudo-Left operatives also working for US intelligence.
The harsh economic and social conditions speak louder than any of Aquino’s triumphant declarations of “inclusive growth” Mass poverty is conspicuous both in urban and rural areas. The surplus population from rural areas move to urban areas, competing for odd jobs, expanding the slum areas and occupying spaces under bridges, in public markets and squares and along roads and railways.
The regime brazenly lies by claiming an economic growth rate of more than 7%. This is made up mostly of bloated figures of import-dependent consumption, upscale private construction and service sector activities. Agriculture and manufacturing have declined and unemployment has increased. The regime also lies by claiming an unemployment rate of only 7%, which is far less than the rate of 23% in the European Union. Even the pro-Aquino Social Weather Survey states a rate of 25-30% percent, more than four times the regime’s claim.
The statistics of the regime grossly understate adverse socioeconomic figures. Big mass lay-offs have occurred from year to year since 2008 in all sectors of the economy, especially in low-valued semi-manufacturing, which is adversely affected by the economic downturn in the industrial capitalist countries. Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Philippine-based semi-manufacturing has become a mere satellite of China-based final reassembly.
The much-vaunted increase of employment in the business call centers does not make up for the mass lay-offs in many other economic sectors. Private construction is still apparently booming but has reached a precarious near-bust situation after years of building an overcapacity of office and residential towers financed by foreign commercial loans. The public infrastructure projects under the so-called Public-Private Partnership Program have slowed down, despite reported large appropriations, because behind the scene Aquino’s close relatives are still trying to enlarge their cut from the contractors. Fund releases for projects are likely to speed up in the first half of 2013 to influence the May congressional and local elections.
Mining operations of big foreign companies, which the regime is promoting and protecting, provide a negligible amount of employment and engage in gross tax avoidance (including the large scale smuggling of gold, silver and other precious metals out of the country). It involves mainly open pit mining and heavy use of chemicals for a rapid plunder of natural resources, causing massive devastation of the environment. It further results in ethnocide of the indigenous people, deforestation, soil erosion, severe floods and droughts, siltation and poisoning of rivers and destruction of agricultural land. The massive export of mineral ores pre-empts future industrialization of the country. State security forces are being unleashed against minority peoples and other sectors resisting and protesting these operations, resulting in increased attacks, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, arrests and other human rights violations being committed with impunity.
The expansion of plantations for fruit export and biofuel production is prejudicing domestic staple food production, long upset and damaged under the neoliberal policy of removing agricultural subsidies and allowing food imports with little or without tariff. Altogether, the expansion of mining, logging and plantations lessen the land for domestic food production and for land reform.
The export of people for migrant work abroad is a clear proof of the scarcity of job opportunities and the lack of national industrialization in the country. The global depression and the growing turmoil and rising discrimination against migrant workers in host countries indicate a dismal future for the export of cheap labor. Through all the years, the high bureaucrats and big compradors have made sure that the foreign exchange remitted by migrant workers to the Philippines is used to promote the consumption of imported goods rather than fund national industrialization.
The Philippine economy remains agrarian, pre-industrial, underdeveloped and semifeudal. The ruling system of big compradors and landlords prevents national industrialization and land reform. While income from the export of raw materials and semi-manufactures has taken a dive, the cost of importing basic necessities and luxury goods for the exploiting classes has soared. The trade deficit keeps on rising and so does the accumulated foreign debt and annual debt service. Foreign debt has reached the level of US$ 72.22 billion but the regime tries to downplay this by making false boasts of lending to the International Monetary Fund US$ 1 billion. The Aquino brag that the Philippines contributed to efforts bail out the debt-crisis ridden Eurozone countries, is actually a spin on the obligation of member countries to invest in the IMF.
Under the current crisis conditions, the US-Aquino regime is escalating the exploitation and oppression of the toiling masses of workers and peasants and even the middle social strata. Women, youth and children suffer most from the deteriorating conditions. But with its twisted logic, the regime spreads the propaganda that the people’s resistance -- not foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureacrat capitalism -- is the cause of underdevelopment, poverty and crisis.
Under conditions of a depressed economy and increasing bureaucratic corruption, the Philippine reactionary government is weighed down by budgetary deficits and public debt. Despite this, the US-Aquino regime gives priority to expenditures for debt service, the military, the so-called Conditional Cash Transfer program and other counterproductive activities. At the same time, the regime has been carrying out an unproclaimed austerity policy at the expense of the people by laying off government employees, pressing down wages and cutting back on expenditures for social services, especially health, education and low-cost housing.
Corruption is rampant under the Aquino regime. At the highest level, some of the president’s sisters and brothers-in-law and Aquino and Cojuangco uncles and cousins take cuts from big business projects requiring presidential approval and loans from government financial institutions. They favor contractors close to the Aquino and Cojuangco families. They facilitate technical smuggling which now averages US$19 billion annualy, six-times larger than the US$3 billion annual average during the time of Estrada and Arroyo, according to findings of the IMF Direction on Trade Statistics. Aquino fudges statistics boosting agricultural production to conceal increased rice sumuggling by big traders under the protection of high government officials. The regime uses strict tax enforcement as threats to intimidate and bend Aquino opponents even as it condones the massive tax evasion of Lucio Tan, Eduardo Cojuanco and other big funders of the Aquino electoral campaign.
Even jueteng has not escaped the clutches of Aquino. A close associate of his has been exposed by an archbishop as the Aquino connection to the jueteng magnates. The Anti-Poverty Commission is chaired by a long-time NGO racketeer and US intelligence asset and misappropriates government funds as proven by a Commission on Audit report. The Conditional Cash Transfer program, including both the Pantawid Pamilya and the so-called PAMANA development and rehabilitation fund, is in fact a slush fund for politicking and for counterinsurgency campaign, and has become a scandalous feeding trough for bureaucratic corruption. Despite the exposure of corruption in this dole-out program, its funding is being increased to PhP49 billion.
The high rate of unemployment, the decline of incomes for the toiling masses and the middle social strata, the rising cost of basic goods and services, and the deterioration and rising cost of social services are generating social unrest all over the country. The Aquino regime does not address these and their root causes but tries in vain to obscure them by using the mass media and poll surveys to distract the public. Worst of all, the regime wantonly uses state violence against workers on strike and the people engaged in peaceful mass protests.
The worst forms of violence are being perpetrated by the reactionary armed forces under the US-designed and directed Oplan Bayanihan to suppress the people, especially the workers, peasants and the national minorities. Human rights violations like enforced disappearances, illegal detention, torture and extrajudicial killings are rampant and victimize leaders of the toiling masses, social activists and human rights defenders. Children are being illegally arrested, detained and murdered and then misrepresented as child soldiers to malign the NPA. On a wide scale, homes of the urban poor are being demolished to make way for real estate developers. In the countryside, military campaigns are used to force the evacuation and eviction of peasants and national minorities to benefit landgrabbing private enterprises, big bureaucrats and military officers.
Since the beginning, the US-Aquino regime has condoned the human rights violations under its predecessor US-Arroyo regime and has thus further emboldened the military, police, paramilitary forces and military assets to commit even worse human rights violations. Not a single military officer or perpetrator has been prosecuted or convicted for human rights violations, despite the strong evidence in many cases. Impunity reigns. Officers who are supposed to have command responsibility are themselves the criminals, cover up their crimes and even get promoted more rapidly. The issuance of an arrest warrant for the butcher general Palparan is a mere token and has not resulted in his arrest simply because he is being protected by the military. Moreover, Aquino has callously appointed the colonel responsible for the forced disappearance of Jonas Burgos to general and to the position of ISAFP chief.
The recent creation of an inter-agency committee touted as the superbody on human rights on top of the existing Philippine Human Rights Commission is one more publicity gimmick. The committee is an additional gadget of the regime for whitewashing human rights violations by the reactionary armed forces, police and military. The committee is composed of the secretaries of the DND, DILG, the AFP chief of staff and the PNP. The committee is headed by the secretary of the Department Of Juatice and is dominated by the secretaries of the Department of National Defense and Department of Interior and Local Government, the AFP chief of staff and the chief of the Philippine National Police. It is no different from Arroyo’s Presidential Task Force on Political Violence.
Despite the strong clamor and public attention, the trial of the Ampatuans and their accomplices for the flagrant massacre of 58 people, including 34 journalists, has yet to get off the ground. The main concern of Aquino is to be able to view the trial on television. He has not paid attention to the fact that the trial is designed to run for as long as 200 years.
The economic and social crisis generates a political crisis of the ruling system. However at the moment, it appears that all major political parties and coalitions of factions of the exploiting classes are happily united in serving the interests of the US and the exploiting classes and in opposing the revolutionary movement of the people. Behind the scenes, the US advisers and Aquino’s uncles, Eduardo and Jose Cojuangco, conjure the illusion of unity by using President Aquino and Vice President Binay to form coalitions that hog the political road and block the rise of any significant opposition party.
Aquino’s ruling Liberal Party has coalesced with the Nationalist People’s Coalition, the Nacionalista Party and some elements in the former ruling coalition under Arroyo for the 2013 elections. Likewise, Binay’s PDP-Laban has coalesced with Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino of Estrada and Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino to form the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA). The ruling coalition and UNA are actually close collaborators. There is no significant mainstream opposition party or coalition within the ruling classes, except the residue of the Arroyo ruling coalition which persists due to the strength of its leaders in local bailiwicks.
The US is promoting the unity of the reactionary forces in order to push anti-national and anti-democratic amendments to the 1987 constitution, enable further US military intervention and press for the debilitation of the legal democratic movement and the outright armed suppression of the revolutionary movement of the people under Oplan Bayanihan. Plans are afoot to rig the automated electoral system to prevent the election of patriotic and progressive candidates.
At any rate, the contradictions among the reactionaries over their share of power and spoils will continue to sharpen beneath the surface of current appearances of unity. The reactionary political factions never cease to maneuver for advantages in political and economic terms and in having private armed groups and access to corresponding factions within the military and police.
The fakery in the Aquino claim of good governance, uprightness and honesty is becoming exposed. With the fractious and corrupt character of the rotten ruling system, the revolutionary movement can take advantage of the contradictions among the reactionaries. Ever applicable is the policy of the united front to coordinate and synergize the basic forces of the revolution, take advantage of reactionary splits, isolate and destroy the power of the enemy.
The temporary alliances that the Party can have with certain reactionary forces may relate to the reactionary elections, the conduct of the reactionary government, the peace negotiations and other matters. As a matter of united front policy, the Party encourages the patriotic and progressive forces to participate in elections even as these are farcical and subject to the power and finances of the major reactionary political parties. It is important for the people to have representatives who will vigorously pursue their patriotic and democratic demands even within the reactionary institutions and processes.
Like the unlamented Arroyo regime, the Aquino regime and its retinue of military officers keep on boasting that most areas of the Philippines have become insurgency-free. They keep on repeating the lie that in the mid-1980s the NPA had an armed strength of 25,000 high-powered rifles and now has only 4000. The fact is that the NPA armed strength in 1986 was only 6,100 rifles.
They wish to downplay the fact that NPA Red fighters and other revolutionary forces can move freely in more than 90% of Philippine territory. The enemy has only enough armed force to concentrate on a few guerrilla fronts at every given time. The reactionary government is bankrupt and incapable of making any significant increase in military personnel and equipment without substantial military support of the US government. Even within guerrilla fronts under concentrated enemy attack, there are wide gaps between enemy units and the NPA units are able to maneuver and launch tactical offensives to wipe out one enemy unit after another.
Furthermore, NPA units deployed by regional or inter-front commands are able to counter-attack enemy units on a wide scale. The enemy offers so many weak points that the NPA can discover and exploit or create and attack at will. The broad masses have cheered several NPA offensives against mining, logging and plantation enterprises, especially in the northeastern, southern and northcentral regions of Mindanao. Most embarrassing to the enemy are NPA offensives carried out in areas previously declared insurgency-free by the reactionary armed forces. These are the ambuscades on enemy units in Abra, Ifugao, Isabela, Aurora and Leyte. NPA offensives have also been done in Camarines Norte, Sorsogon, Catanduanes, Masbate, Iloilo, Zamboanga del Norte and other provinces.
Corollary with waging people’s war, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in representation of the Filipino people and the revolutionary forces negotiates with the reactionary government. The peace negotiations are a process of propagating the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution, exposing the anti-national and antidemocratic character of the reactionary government and challenging its better elements to join the revolutionary forces in a united front against foreign and feudal domination and for the completion of the people’s struggle for national liberation and democracy.
In peace negotiations, the NDFP undertakes a form of struggle for a just and lasting peace that is based on negotiated and mutually agreed basic social, economic and political reforms to address the roots of the civil war. So far, one ruling clique after another in the reactionary government has tried to use the peace negotiations in order to cause the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces and to preserve the rotten ruling system. Over the past two years, the US-Aquino regime has paralyzed the peace negotiations by seeking to undermine The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 and by refusing to comply with the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).
In violation of the JASIG, the regime has prevented the proper investigation of the enforced disappearances, illegal arrests and detention, and surveillance and harassments of NDFP consultants and personnel in the peace negotiations. It stands by the lie of its predecessor in denying that the GPH had instigated and was fully complicit with the US and Dutch governments in the raids by the Dutch police on the NDFP offices and the residences of its negotiating panel and staff, and in the arrest and detention of Prof. Jose Maria Sison on the basis of false charges.It continues to block the release of 14 NDFP consultants and members of the NDFP Negotiating Panel. In violation of the CARHRIHL, the regime continues to hold the release of more than 400 political prisoners falsely charged with common crimes despite allegations of involvement in the armed conflict/civil war. The big comprador-landlord president is not interested in serious peace negotiations and is motivated by class vengeance against the revolutionary movement for the demand of farm workers to subject Hacienda Luisita to land reform.
Aquino continues to heed the wishes of the clerico-fascists and military agents who have disrupted the peace negotiations since the time of the Arroyo regime. They use the negotiations as a vehicle for psy-war and for broadcasting their demand for the revolutionary forces to surrender. They vainly wish for the permanent ending of hostilities before the comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms are forged. They are obsessed with trying to break the will of the revolutionary forces and compel them to accept the rotten ruling system and its reactionary constitution.
The Manila government has signed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro. In crucial provisions of the agreement, the MILF submits to the authority of the oppressive state based in Manila and gives up the possibility of seceding and establishing an independent Bangsamoro state. Essential points for four annexes on transitional arrangements and modalities, power sharing, wealth sharing and normalization are stated in the agreement and confirm the submission of the MILF to the sovereignty and constitutional processes of the Manila government.
The Transition Commission that would be responsible for formulating the Bangsamoro Basic Law is to be created by an executive order by Aquino and subject to approval by Congress and further subject to processes ordained by the Manila government. The Manila government provides a certain measure of concessions to the Bangsamoro on power and wealth sharing but can limit or even retract such concessions. Not soon after the much ballyhooed signing last October, the talks on the annexes has hit an impasse reportedly due to the Manila government attempt to renegotiate the Framework Agreement provision on the chairmanship and composition of the Transition Commission.The provisions on normalization subjects the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) of the MILF to decommissioning while allowing the continuing presence AFP troops in Bangsamoro lands.
The Manila government may go through the motion of realizing the Framework Agreement and its annexes because after all the MILF has submitted itself to its supreme authority, as the Moro National Liberation Front had done previously in the process of establishing the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The main objective of the Manila government is to pacify and subordinate the MILF and use it for the political and economic purposes of Manila and Washington.
The reactionary government expects that with the MILF and BIAF pacified, more troops of the reactionary armed forces could be deployed to crush the NPA and the revolutionary movement. This is a pipe dream. The Marcos fascist dictatorship could not destroy the NPA when it was still small and weak, even after Marcos obtained a permanent ceasefire with the MNLF under the Tripoli Agreement in 1976. Moreover, were the MILF to capitulate completely, other existing and potential armies could continue the armed struggle of the Bangsamoro and still tie down a big number of enemy forces in south-western Mindanao.
The growing US military intervention in the Philippines involves the violation of national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Philippines. It constitutes an assault on the Filipino people and their revolutionary movement. It uses pretexts that are clearly obnoxious, such as the frequent joint military exercises, the so-called global war on terror and refocus on the East Asia region to contain China.
The US is hell-bent on entrenching its military forces in the Philippines and is using the Philippines as a strategic base to service US military forces and to serve as entry point and host storage facilities for US nuclear, chemical, biological and other weapons of mass destruction. On a daily basis, US military advisers and troops participate in intelligence, psy-war and combat operations of the Philippine reactionary armed forces. They provide the latest high-tech military equipment and directly operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called drones, whose technology the US military intends to monopolize and control.
At any rate, the US is already overextended as it refocuses on East Asia. China continues to cooperate with the US in the region and in the world and is astutely avoiding any hostility with the US. Contrary to the belief of some Filipino reactionaries that the US provides protection to the Philippines against China, the US has clearly declared that it is neutral on issues concerning territorial controversies over the sea between China and its neighbors. In fact, the US has more interests in relations with China than in relations with the Philippines. Moreover, the US-RP Mutual Defense Treaty does not carry any provision for automatic retaliation in the event of a third-party attack on the Philippines.
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