Maligayang Pasko sa Inyong lahat!

December 26, 2005 at 3:59 pm · Filed under Order of the Day

Sa aking mga minamahal na kababayan, Maligayang Pasko po sa inyo lahat! Naway tayong lahat at magdasal sa katahimikan at kaunlaran ng ating bayan!

Mabuhay!

7 Comments »

  1. Gustavo said

    December 26, 2005 @ 9:03 pm Continue to Intensify Nationwide Tactical Offensives and Further Strengthen All Revolutionary Forces Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines December 26, 2005 Let us celebrate with utmost joy the 37th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Let us rejoice at the victories of our Party in leading the Filipino people’s struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords Let us congratulate all our Party cadres and members, all our Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army (NPA), all activists in the various mass organizations, all allied forces in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), all personnel in the organs of political power and the broad masses of the people for persevering and winning brilliant victories in the ongoing new democratic revolution against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Let us pay our highest respects to our revolutionary martyrs and honor them for their dedicated service to the people, their high sense of self-sacrifice and all their contributions in advancing the revolutionary struggle. They inspire us to win ever-greater victories. Let us continue to intensify the nationwide tactical offensives and further strengthen all revolutionary forces. The Second Great Rectification Movement has lasting consequences in strengthening the Party. We have rectified the revisionist, empiricist and dogmatic subjectivist errors in ideology, “Left” and Right opportunist errors in politics and the errors of bureaucratism and ultra-democracy in organization. We have firmly upheld the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We have advanced along the general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. We have firmed up our grasp of the principle of democratic centralism and followed it in building the Party organization. We are in a position to take advantage of the crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system and to lead the Filipino people in the struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. We are now in the midst of a growing mass movement to overthrow the US-supported Arroyo regime. The legal democratic mass movement is advancing. So is the revolutionary armed struggle, which is the principal form of struggle for the ultimate overthrow of the ruling system. The crisis of overproduction in the world capitalist system has devastated the forces of production in the imperialist countries and far more those in the underdeveloped countries. It has impelled the imperialist states to become ever more plunderous, repressive and aggressive. The people of the world are therefore pressed and challenged to rise up in resistance. The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system has so deepened and aggravated that the contradictions among the reactionaries have increasingly become more violent. The reactionaries are unable to rule in the old way as those in power and those out of power threaten each other with armed force. The broad masses of the people and the revolutionary forces are intensifying all forms of struggle for basic reforms and revolutionary change. Relentless Worsening of the Global Capitalist Crisis The crisis of the world capitalist system continues to worsen. The economies of the US and other industrial capitalist countries remain stagnant. They have not recovered from the economic decline since 2000. Their growth rates have merely fluctuated, with occasional spikes accounted for by factors other than a sustained rise in the level of industrial production. The majority of countries, which are dependent on raw-material exports, deficit-ridden and debt-burdened have been the most devastated by the global capitalist crisis. The Southeast Asian countries have not recovered from the 1997 economic and financial crisis resulting from the glut in semimanufactured reexports and private construction. Three billion people or half of humankind live on USD2 a day. The overwhelming majority of the people of the world live in abject poverty, despite the fact that with the available technology and with only one per cent of the world gross domestic product, global poverty can be eradicated. But the world capitalist system requires that the monopoly bourgeoisie must exact their superprofits from any going level of production and circulation of goods as well as from the manipulation of finance capital. Thus, the foreign debt of the underdeveloped countries has continuously increased beyond the level of USD 3 trillion. Higher technology is supposed to enhance the social character of production. But the private character of appropriating the fruits of labor has sharpened more than ever under the neoliberal economic policy of imperialism. Under this policy, monopoly capitalism is misrepresented as “free enterprise” and “free market” and the monopoly capitalists reap superprofits and accumulate capital by brazenly using the state to deliver to them productive and financial resources and state contracts and to cut down the incomes and social benefits of the proletariat and other working people. The crisis of overproduction has therefore worsened from one period to another. Inventories of unsold goods build up as the market contracts due to the dwindling purchasing power of the working people. Since the late 1970’s, the majority of the countries dependent on raw-material exports have been hit by the chronic global crisis of overproduction in agricultural and mineral raw materials. The surplus agricultural production in the industrial capitalist countries does not only shrink the global market for the agricultural exports of the underdeveloped countries but also invades the latter’s domestic markets and ruins their agriculture through dumping. The more efficient technology for mineral extraction has also resulted in less employment in mines and in excess supply of minerals in the world market. The ever worsening stagnation, depression and deterioration of the economies of the underdeveloped countries (now expanded as a result of the retrogression of the former Soviet bloc countries) and the erosion of wages and social benefits for the proletariat in the industrial capitalist countries have combined to contract the global market for industrial producer and consumer goods. The winners in the monopoly capitalist competition keep on increasing the organic composition of capital (by increasing the fixed capital for enhancing productivity and reducing the variable capital for wages). The economic imbalances and the falling rate of profit in their home countries have driven the multinational firms further to penetrate overseas markets. Thus, they have put up there more assembly plants for cars, home appliances and some basic industrial products and for the marginal but labor-intensive processing of semi-conductors, garments, shoes, toys and the like in the sweatshops of China, India, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The monopoly bourgeoisie is responsible for stagnating and degrading their own economies and thereafter seeking to maximize profits by putting up plants abroad. But it blames the underdeveloped client countries for the loss of jobs in the imperialist countries and drums up chauvinism and racism against the migrant workers who generally take the bottom jobs. The imperialist powers have used finance capital in the form of direct investments and loans to allow the majority of countries to cover their budgetary and trade deficits, keep most of them as raw-material exporters and a few as reexporters of low-valued semi-manufactures and reduce all of them to the status of debt peons, burdened by ever mounting foreign debt. Most of the superprofits that the imperialist powers draw from the underdeveloped countries are in the form of debt service payments and commercial profits rather than in the form of returns on investments in industrial production. Working in cahoots with their US and West European imperialist masters, the comprador big bourgeois governments in East Europe and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia have continued to degrade their countries economically, politically, culturally and morally. These countries have become semicolonial and semifeudal in character. The East European governments are glad to be absorbed by the European Union. But, their countries are mere dumping grounds for surplus goods from the US and Western Europe. The kind of foreign direct and indirect investments that they get is merely for facilitating imperialist-big comprador operations and improving the infrastructure for these. Under the auspices of “free market” globalization, the plunder, underdevelopment and poverty of the majority of countries have been aggravated. The concentration and centralization of both productive and finance capital in the global centers of capitalism (the US, Japan and the European Union) have been accelerated. Since the 1980s, the US has drawn in the most capital from abroad, especially from its imperialist allies and the oil-producing countries, and has thus become the biggest debtor in the world. At present, the US foreign debt is USD 8.5 trillion. This has been used to generate financial speculation in stock, securities and corporate mergers, overvalue corporate assets and finance the growing trade deficit caused by the heavy importation of consumer goods (especially from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China). Before the year 2000, when the US stockmarket started to collapse in March and industrial production took a sharp fall in October, the US under the Clinton regime boasted of having built a “new economy” that was inflation-free despite full employment and a high level of consumption, supposedly because of its lead role in high tech production. The US economy was being touted as the “main engine” of the global economic growth and as “the market of last resort” in view of the stagnancy of Japan and Germany. Beneath the gloss from 1995 to 2000, the US economy was lopsidedly overproducing consumer electronics and a few other items and at the same time undermining its capacity to produce and sell a wider range of consumer manufactures by using borrowed funds for importing these. The abrupt slide of the US economy in 2000 had been presaged by the Southeast Asian financial crisis of 1997. The semi-manufacture exports of Southeast Asia were squeezed by China’s export of similar goods. The private construction boom, which was financed by foreign loans from commercial banks, fizzled out because of a huge overcapacity. The speculative portfolio investments in the region flew back to the imperialist countries. The local currencies took a dive in relation to the US dollar. The Southeast Asian crisis was followed by the crisis in South Korea, Brazil, Russia, Argentina and other so-called emerging markets. Since then, the shrinking global market for consumer electronics, home appliances, cars, structural steel, planes and so on has cramped the economic growth of the US and other imperialist countries. The few underdeveloped countries producing semi-manufactures for export have been far more devastated. But the most devastated are the majority of underdeveloped countries dependent on the export of raw materials. These suffer from the ever widening budgetary and trade deficits, mounting debt burden and are forced to raise taxes even under conditions of economic depression and make further cutbacks on expenditures for even the most basic social services. The US under the Bush regime has taken advantage of the September 11, 2001 attacks to whip up war hysteria under the guise of a “war on terrorism” and to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and then Iraq in order to use up existing military stock and replenish this through stepped up war production. This is described as military Keynesianism aimed at stimulating the stagnant US economy. It is considered as the necessary complement to the continuing policy of “free market” globalization. In this regard, the US has raised the level of its annual military spending to USD 455 billion. The Bush regime does not limit itself to the immediate objective of reviving the US economy through war production. It is trying to push a comprehensive plan, the Project for a New American Century, designed by the so-called neoconservatives in furtherance of Pax Americana in the 21st century. It seeks to use the “full spectrum” of US power, especially high-tech military weaponry, to take preemptive actions against enemies and rivals, including potential ones, expand economic territory (sources of raw materials, markets, fields of investment and sphere of influence) and spread the “free market” and impose “democracy”. The US has been rapidly overreaching itself since the disintegration of the revisionist-ruled regimes and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the period of 1989-91. It has overplayed its hand as the sole superpower. It has unleashed two wars of aggression against Iraq (not to mention the unilateral US air war cum economic sanctions between these wars) with the intent of taking over its abundant oil resources and establishing bases there for tightening US control over the entire Middle East. It has instigated the break up of Yugoslavia to impose its hegemony over the Balkans, outflank Russia and gain bases in Eastern Europe and along the Mediterranean. It has gained bases and more access to the oil resources in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia in the course of aggression in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. But it is very obvious that the US has overextended itself and is showing all-round weaknesses as it is bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq. The Iraqi people are waging armed resistance, having killed more than 2,200 US troops and wounded more than 20,000 US troops and making the US spend more than USD 220 billion in less than three years. The killing of more than 250,000 Iraqis by the US has only served to stiffen the resistance of the Iraqi people. This resistance is exposing the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of US imperialist power. The US is bound to further damn itself by staying on in Iraq with its plan to keep a huge fortress of an embassy in Baghdad and an array of 14 military bases. It is obsessed with the oil prize in Iraq and the entire Middle East. Through control of Iraq, it also wishes to perpetuate the US-Zionist dominance against the Palestinian and Arab peoples. But it is being tied down by the armed revolutionary struggle of the Iraqi people and is being forced to pay less attention to its domestic social problems and to the requirements of maintaining hegemony in so many other countries. In pursuit of their own interests, France, Germany, Russia and China had serious differences with the US regarding the second war of aggression against Iraq. Subsequently, these differences became muffled as the US invaded and occupied Iraq. However, the issue of Iraq continues to disturb the relations among the imperialist allies because of the flagrant drive of the US to monopolize the spoils of war. At any rate, the imperialist allies try to harmonize their interests at the expense of Iraq and the Iraqi people. By overfocusing itself on Iraq, the US is becoming less effective in other areas of the world, including East Asia and Latin America. Even in the vicinity of Iraq, Syria and Iran are showing some defiance. The people of the world are encouraged to fight for national and social liberation, as are countries and governments to assert national independence. The people of the world hate the US today as the No. 1 imperialist and terrorist power for engaging in unbridled plunder and wars of aggression. They condemn the US and the UK governments for invading and occupying Iraq on false pretenses (regarding weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaida). They abhor US imperialism for using the 9-11 attacks to engage in its own imperialist terrorism, expand the monopoly interests of its own multinational firms and banks and to whip up state terrorism on a global scale. Under the pretext of a permanent “war on terror”, the US has promulgated the USA PATRIOT Act to curtail the civil liberties of the American people and has whipped up jingoism, racism and religious bigotry, especially against the Arab people and Islamic believers. It has pushed other countries to generate “anti-terrorist” hysteria, to build the legal infrastructure for fascism, to misrepresent national liberation movements and anti-imperialist leaders and activists as “terrorists” and to allow the US military forces and intelligence agencies to kidnap people, torture them in secret prisons and to accommodate more spy stations and military bases on their territories. The American people are outraged by the Bush policy of further reducing regular jobs, wage levels, social benefits and social services and delivering resources to the military-industrial complex and to the war machinery. They are indignant over the fact that young men and women from the working class are being sent to war, that huge state resources are channeled to war production, wars of aggression and so many intelligence agencies in the making of a US police state under the cover of homeland security; but that practically no or little money is made available for promptly fixing such infrastructures as the dikes of New Orleans and keeping the poor people safe from the hurricane Katrina. The US uses the Group of 8, the OECD, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, the UN Security Council and multilateral and bilateral military alliances to expand and reinforce its hegemony in various parts of the world and at the same time maintain its alliance with other imperialist powers against the people of the world. But the imperialist powers are bound to align and realign themselves against each other when the crisis of the world capitalist system becomes far more serious than it is now, the US is weakened by its own unilateralist arrogance and imperial overreach, the various imperialist powers and the so many countries and governments take divergent positions and courses of action, and the revolutionary forces take the initiative to strengthen themselves and advance. The economic competition and political rivalry among the imperialist powers are likely to intensify because in the first place the US seeks to monopolize the spoils of war. This has been exposed by the contradictions among the US, UK, France and Germany on the question of launching the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003. The super-greed of the US signals other imperialist powers to look after their own interests and to maneuver against US voracity. The ground for friendly accommodation among the imperialist powers is bound to diminish with the ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and as the revolutionary struggles of the people increase in number and intensity and as more countries become assertive of their national independence. At the moment, contradictions are increasing between the US and other imperialist powers over economic, financial, trade, political and military issues. These are manifested in bilateral and multilateral discussions. So far, the differences are settled at the expense of the underdeveloped client states. But at the same time some countries are assertive of the right to national independence and development, as they react to the excessive impositions of the imperialists, they recognize their own importance in the world capitalist system or they are moved to act in defense of national self-interest. In this context, we see China, India, Pakistan, Brazil and smaller underdeveloped countries banding together against the exploitative and oppressive impositions of the US and other imperialist powers. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are among the staunchest in defending their national independence and social aspirations. China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been submissive to but are wary over US penetration of Central Asia. Thus, they have banded together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China and Russia do collaborate with the US and other imperialist powers on as many issues as possible but they also try to look after their national interest. They are such large countries with a significant amount of industry and nuclear weapons that they cannot be easily imposed upon. In fact, they can even maneuver and play off the more powerful and richer countries against each other. The US touts China as a great success in capitalist development and eyes it as a prospective rival in the world, especially in East Asia. But China describes itself modestly as a developing or underdeveloped country relative to its huge population. It has privatized its state-owned industrial enterprises and the agricultural communes. The economy has been redirected by foreign investments. It has a huge foreign debt (USD 233.3B) even as it has a large holding of US securities. It is much vaunted for its huge exports, more than 70 percent of, which are low-value, added semi-manufactures for consumers in imperialist countries. But 60 to 80 per cent of the value of the exports belong to China-based foreign companies. Ten per cent of the Chinese population is living it up but ninety per cent are impoverished. Workers thrown out of state enterprises and peasants are among the most impoverished and discontented. Thus, more than 74,000 clashes between the masses and the authorities have occurred since last year. At any rate, China has been assertive of its own national interest with regard to Taiwan and other issues. On several instances it has stood in opposition to the US. It has helped the US in the convening of conferences to negotiate with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea regarding nuclear weapons. But so far the DPRK on its own has been able to stand up firmly against US nuclear blackmail, threats of aggression and impositions. The ASEAN countries have also found it necessary to develop economic and trade relations with China by way of countervailing US dominance in East Asia. The broad masses of the people are rising up to resist US imperialism as their No. 1 enemy as well as other imperialist powers and puppet states that are the closest allies of the US on a global or regional scale. They are building mass organizations on the basis of class, interclass, sectoral or multisectoral interests as well as on the basis of issues such as national and social liberation, economic development, human rights, opposition to war, racial equality, gender equality, protection of the environment, and the like. They are engaged in movements on national, regional and global scales. The International League of Peoples’ Struggle is today the broadest progressive mass movement, paying attention to eighteen major concerns. It contrasts sharply in its anti-imperialist character and objectives with reformist and “civil society” formations, including the imperialist-funded World Social Forum, dedicated to reformism and improving the imperialist system. Philippine democratic mass organizations are outstanding in developing bilateral and multilateral relations with people’s organizations in other countries. On the starting ground of anti-imperialist solidarity, the Party develops relations of equality, mutual respect and cooperation with as many communist and workers’ parties as possible. On its own account as a united front formation and in representation of the people’s democratic government, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines is developing friendly relations and cooperation with governments abroad, their agencies, nongovernmental institutions and organizations, national liberation movements and other revolutionary movements. The Party is active in relating to and cooperating with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and progressive mass organizations. These are developing in various countries of the world to fight for national liberation, democracy, socialism and world peace against imperialism and all reaction. They are striving to promote the strategic line of protracted people’s war as the way to fight and ultimately defeat the imperialists. Armed revolutionary movements of the people for national and social liberation are growing in strength and advancing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Nepal, Philippines, Turkey and other countries. They are bound to increase as the global economic crisis worsens and the US gets bogged down deeper in one or several countries and is compelled to loosen its control over the world. Rotten Regime in a Rotten Ruling System The semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines is in a chronic crisis. The semicolonial aspect refers to the indirect rule of US imperialism through puppet officials, from the national level downwards. The semifeudal aspect refers to the domestic class dominance of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class. The oppression and exploitation inflicted on the Filipino people by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism has caused the ruling system to be in a constant process of rotting. The objective conditions are fertile for building the subjective forces of the revolution and mobilizing the broad masses of the people. The Arroyo ruling clique is today the principal puppet of US imperialism, the principal representative of the local exploiting classes and the principal exponent of bureaucrat capitalism. Confined to the parameters of the rotten ruling system, the regime of the Arroyo clique cannot be but rotten. It follows rabidly the political and economic dictates of the US and the local exploiting classes to humiliate and impoverish the people. It is well paid for its servility through bureaucratic corruption. Under the auspices of US imperialism, the Philippine economy has been kept agrarian and semifeudal. Its principal forces of production are more than 13 million hectares of agricultural land and the peasantry, which comprise about 75 per cent of the population. The proletariat is only about 15 percent of the population (9 per cent in manufacturing and the rest in mining, public utilities and so on). Industry is completely dependent on imported equipment, fuel and other inputs. The lack of national industrialization and land reform has kept the Philippines in a state of underdevelopment and rampant poverty. The comings and goings of overseas contract workers, who come from the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie do not change the basic proportions of classes in the Philippines. Under the policy of “free market” globalization, the reactionary government has ignored the people’s demand for land reform and national industrialization. Foreign monopoly capitalism is taking advantage of the denationalization of the Philippine economy, privatization of profitable state assets, liberalization of trade and investments and deregulation of protection for the working people, women, children and the environment. The reactionary government has backtracked even on its bogus kind of land reform and is openly promoting private accumulation and concentration of land. The certificates of land ownership amortization, certificates of land transfer, emancipation patents and stock distribution in agricultural corporation are simply being discarded or bought off cheaply. To pay for imports of producer and consumer goods, the Philippines has to depend on income from the export of primary agricultural and mineral products, the remittances of overseas contract workers and an ever-growing amount of foreign loans. With the tariff walls being brought down under the terms of “free market” globalization, the country is wide open for dumping of agricultural surpluses from other countries, bankrupting the peasants and destroying national food security. Production of agricultural exports is also cut down as these cannot compete with the heavily subsidized produce of the imperialist countries. The cost of imported manufactures is ever rising relative to the faster fall in the prices of the Philippine primary exports, especially because of the prolonged glut of agricultural and mineral products in the global market. Thus, the chronic trade deficit keeps on growing and leading to ever-larger amounts of foreign debt. The extremely high import content and the deliberate overprice (transfer-pricing) make the net export income from the low-value added semimanufactures extremely minimal. This is further minimized by the prolonged big fall in demand for the semiconductors (yielding 75 percent of gross export income) and other semi-manufactures. Over eight million overseas contract workers (close to 10 per cent of the population) earned as much USD 8.5 billion and are expected to earn more than USD 10 billion next year. This outstrips the net income from the reexport of semiconductors and the export of primary crops. However, it is used mainly to pay for consumer imports. Thus, the trade deficit is growing fast and the foreign debt burden is ever mounting. The foreign debt is now officially at the level of USD 56.047 billion, excluding those loans still considered as part of gross international reserves. New debts now carry more onerous terms and are hardly enough to cover debt service. With foreign funds dwindling, the reactionary government has rapidly increased the local public debt to more than 3 trillion pesos in order to cover budgetary deficits. All in all, the total public debt has exceeded Php 6 trillion. To service the public debt last year, the reactionary government spent 81 per cent of tax revenues. This year it is expected to spend 94 per cent. Without any doubt, it is in a state of bankruptcy. But government deficit spending continues to go to graft-ridden infrastructure projects and the upkeep of the military and police. Less funds are available for social services, like education, health and urban housing The tax burden is being increased under conditions of economic depression. The coverage of the value-added tax has been expanded and increased by 20 per cent. The depression of the economy is manifested not by official statistics but by the actual high rate of mass unemployment, the continuing layoffs and closure of factories, the sinking real incomes of working people and middle class, the soaring prices of basic commodities due to scarcity and higher import costs, the endless oil price hikes and higher charges for the ever deteriorating services of public utility firms (especially electricity, water and transport). The increase of beggars and street children in urban areas and the excessive number of farm workers and oddjobbers in the rural areas reflect the worsening conditions of poverty. Social discontent and social unrest are widespread. In protesting against the oppressive and exploitative policies and in making their multisectoral and sectoral demands, the workers, urban poor, peasants, fishermen, women, youth, government employees, professionals and church people keep their rallies peaceful. But the Arroyo regime reacts arrogantly by ordering the military and police to intimidate and attack the people who exercise their right to speak and assemble. Demonstrating people have been violently dispersed and massacred, as in Hacienda Luisita. The regime has adopted and implemented the policy of “calibrated preemptive response” by which the military and police can arbitrarily use force on the basis of mere presumption and preemption. Under the direction of the US, the Arroyo regime planned Bantay Laya in 2001 as a five-year national offensive campaign, similar to Lambat Bitag I, II, and III, for the purpose of destroying the revolutionary movement from year 2002 to 2006. Since 2002, military forces and mobile police forces have concentrated on a number of guerrilla fronts, used special operation teams for the purpose of psywar and intelligence and have inflicted all kinds of atrocities on the people, including kidnappings, torture, summary executions, arson, pillage, bombardments from planes, artillery fire and forced mass evacuations, in a vain attempt to destroy the revolutionary movement. The scale and magnitude of the human rights violations are comparable to the worst under the Marcos fascist regime. To cover up its culpability for the policies that result in terrible hardship and suffering for the people, the regime blames the revolutionary forces as well as the patriotic and progressive legal mass organizations and party-list groups for the rise of protest rallies and marches. Worst of all, the regime is using death squads and special operatives from the military and police to kidnap, torture and murder people it regards as key leaders or defenders of the mass movement. The victims include priests, pastors and other religious, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, labor leaders and progressive party-list members and mass leaders of workers, peasants, women and youth. The escalating human rights violations in the urban and rural areas are inspired by the US policy of “war on terror” which the Arroyo regime rabidly follows. No less than Arroyo herself and her cabinet oversight committee on internal security (COC-IS) are directing the systematic violent acts against the patriotic and progressive forces and are emboldening and protecting the perpetrators of the human rights violations from the level of commanding generals to that of the death squads and motorcycle and car- riding assassins. The broad masses of the people detest the Arroyo regime for being extremely servile to US imperialism, for being extremely corrupt, brutal and mendacious and for cheating in the 2004 presidential elections. They demand the overthrow of the regime. Thus, since June 2005, a broad united front of anti-Arroyo conservative parties, the legal democratic mass movement and the anti-Arroyo sections of the military and police has been developing to remove the Arroyo ruling clique from power. The political crisis of the ruling system has rapidly worsened since the surfacing of the hard evidence that Arroyo connived with the Commission on Elections, especially an election commissioner, and certain senior military officers in fixing the vote count in her favor and in reversing the count of winning votes for the late Fernando Poe, mainly in the Visayas and Mindanao. The related issues of electoral fraud and illegitimacy of rule have triggered the people’s outrage and have inflamed the cheated opposition parties and frustrated candidates. Within the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP), a significant number of officers and lower personnel are enraged over the rapid promotion of pro-Arroyo officers who are notorious for corruption, human rights violations and complicity in electoral fraud. Ranged against the Arroyo ruling clique (Lakas-CMD) are the conservative political parties, coalitions and movements headed by former president Joseph Estrada (Partido ng Masang Pilipino), the widow of the cheated presidential candidate Fernando Poe (Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino), Panfilo Lacson (Pwersa ng Masa and Be Not Afraid Movement)), Eddie Villanueva (Bangon Pilipinas Movement), Senator Aquilino Pimentel (PDP-Laban) and Jejomar Binay (United Opposition). These are seeking to replace the Arroyo clique with a transitional governing council through a combination of people’s uprising and withdrawal of military and police support from the regime. The former president Corazon Aquino is rallying her own political following and her friends among the Catholic church bishops, business associations and military groups. Having failed to persuade vice president Noli de Castro to junk president Arroyo, Ms Aquino and her supporters (including a major part of the “social democrats”) wish Senate President Frank Drilon (the biggest faction in the Liberal Party) to assume the presidency. Former senator Loren Legarda is also pursuing her electoral protest against de Castro. The Lakas-CMD coalition of parties is openly supporting Arroyo. But she tends to depend more and more on her small party (Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino or KAMPI) and on her own trustees in the government. She has been abandoned and denounced by a number of her cabinet appointees and by Senate president Drilon who was previously her supporter. Former president Fidel Ramos and House speaker Jose de Venecia (key leaders of LAKAS-NUCD) have supported Arroyo against the opposition but have at the same time publicly advised her to ease herself out of the presidency by the middle of 2006 through an amendment of the constitution that would allow a shift to the parliamentary form of government. The offer of convening Congress as a constituent assembly to change the 1978 GRP constitution is being used to fend off popular demands for the ouster of the Arroyo regime. Thus, Arroyo formed a so-called consultative commission, consisting of her stooges, to prepare proposals for changes in the constitution. This commission has already submitted its proposals, which include retaining her as president to supervise the interim prime minister until 2010, calling off the 2007 elections in order to extend the terms of office for all elective officials, dissolving the Senate by absorbing the senators into the unicameral parliament and removing all national restrictions on foreign investments. There are strong indications of Senate opposition to the convening of the constitutent assembly. The broad masses of the people and the broad united front regard the entire offer of constitutional change as a maneuver not only to prevent the ouster of the regime but even to expand the powers of the president and give additional privileges to the US monopoly firms and military forces. Former president Ramos has expressed shock over the proposed cancellation of the 2007 elections. The other Lakas-CMD leader, speaker Jose de Venecia, is confident that the Arroyo regime can ram the proposed amendments through a constituent assembly. The Arroyo regime has the illusion and even boasts that it can maintain the chain of command in the military and police. This is because it allows its favorites in higher echelons to engage in corruption, to commit human rights violations and even to sponsor or operate criminal syndicates. But the majority of active and retired military and police personnel are disgusted with the regime’s corruption and its failure to fulfill its promise in 2001 to raise their salaries and pensions. They are outraged that the sale of military camps and the conversion of former US military bases have enriched former president Fidel Ramos and that even their savings funds and budgetary allocations for food rations, clothing, shoes and the like are being stolen. The regime underestimates the fact that the rank and file of the AFP and the PNP are deeply discontented and disgusted with it. It has been using the AFP and PNP to attack the urban-based legal democratic mass movement and the revolutionary movement in the rural areas. This is obviously a way of preoccupying and keeping the AFP officers and lower personnel committed to the regime. But the AFP officers and enlisted personnel in the field are doubly disgusted by the economic difficulties suffered by their families and the shortage of supplies and field rations. Thus, various anti-Arroyo groups are growing rapidly within the military and police. The AFP and PNP rank and file are in ferment. They are divided into three groups: the Arroyo loyalists, the anti-Arroyo reactionaries among senior officers and the anti-Arroyo progressives among the younger officers. The anti-Arroyo group of reactionary officers consists mainly of senior officers and retired flag officers who are pro-US and do not want the ruling system to be changed. They have formed various groups. A retired officer usually heads each group. The best known groups are those headed by general Fortunato Abat, commodore Aparri, general Panfilo Lacson, and colonel Billy Bibit. General Abat heads the Coalition for National Salvation and has tried to draw a popular and military following by proclaiming his own government. But so far he has been less effective than when he formed and headed the FORCES that successfully called for the withdrawal of military support from Estrada in 2000 and 2001. The anti-Arroyo group of progressive officers consists mainly of junior officers who wish to develop a patriotic and progressive position and who desire basic democratic reforms. They pledge to uphold the principle of civilian supremacy like those who withdrew military support from the Marcos and Estrada regimes in 1986 and 2001. They actively seek the alliance of the legal democratic forces and wish to play a major role in the broad united front by spearheading the withdrawal of military and police support from the regime or by arresting the key members of the Arroyo ruling clique. They are open to truce and alliance between the GRP, AFP and PNP on one side and the CPP, NPA and NDFP on the other side upon the establishment of the revolutionary governing council. They are the positive product of the ferment within the AFP and the PNP. The US is taking advantage of the desperate economic and political situation of the Arroyo regime. It is constantly pressuring the regime to become more servile to the dictates of the IMF, World Bank and WTO and the US multinational firms and banks and to pursue further the line of permanent “war on terror”, promote continuous US military presence and expand US military facilities in the country and unleash campaigns of suppression against the revolutionary forces of the people, including the Bangsamoro. The Arroyo regime sometimes makes it appear that the “war on terror” is directed against the CIA-created Abu Sayyaf and other related groups. In fact, it is hellbent on rushing an “anti-terrorist” law directed against the revolutionary forces of the people, including the Bangsamoro, against dissent, against the legal opposition and against the broad masses of the people. The Arroyo regime has connived with the US in putting the CPP/NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant in the “terrorist list”, in escalating military campaigns of suppression against the revolutionary movement and in assassinating hundreds of leaders and activists of the progressive party-list groups and mass organizations at the regional, provincial and local levels. Complementing the main objective of seeking to destroy the revolutionary movement militarily is the US-Arroyo objective of pressuring the NDFP to capitulate to the GRP and to convert the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations into surrender negotiations. The COCIS and the Office of Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process have done nothing but to paralyze the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and wait in vain for the destruction or capitulation of the revolutionary movement. Despite the operationalization of the Joint Monitoring Committee, the Arroyo regime has brazenly disrespected the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) by escalating human rights violations. The complaints against the GRP’s military, police and irregular armed personnel for human rights violations remain unacted upon. It has violated the Hernandez political offense doctrine and has accused revolutionaries of common crimes and even of terrorism. It has stolen the money for the indemnification of the victims of human rights violations under the Marcos regime and has used it for electioneering purposes in 2004 under the guise of distributing free fertilizers. So long as the Arroyo ruling clique remains in power, GRP-NDFP peace negotiations cannot proceed to address the roots of the armed conflict and reach agreements on basic social, economic and political reforms. The Arroyo regime has the foulest of intentions against the Filipino people. It is pushing the anti-terrorist bill in order to supress all kinds of opposition to its anti-national and anti-people policies, to seek the destruction of the revolutionary forces (including those of the Bangsamoro) and to impose a fascist dictatorship on the people without having to declare martial law or emergency rule. The people and the revolutionary forces are challenged to engage the reactionary state in a life and death struggle, with no space whatsoever for peace negotiations. With tyrannical powers, the regime expects to change the 1987 GRP constitution in order to further dilute or delete provisions with regard to the protection of civil liberties, the national restrictions on foreign investments and the prohibition of foreign military bases, troops and weapons of mass destruction in Philippine territory. The broad united front of the legal forces of the national democratic movement, the anti-Arroyo conservative political parties, coalitions and movements and the anti-Arroyo military and police commands and units have been developing since June 2005. It has the potential of ousting the Arroyo regime before the middle of 2006. The regime can be ousted as soon as the aforesaid three major parts of the broad united front do their best in mobilizing their respective forces and coordinating altogether for the decisive moment. The conditions are rife enough for the overthrow of the Arroyo regime. In the weeks and months to come, they will become more so. The broad masses of the people cry out not only for the ouster of the Arroyo regime but for the overthrow of the entire ruling system. But there are stages to go through before the new democratic revolution of the people can succeed to overthrow the entire ruling system. In accordance with its revolutionary mission, the CPP has directed the New People’s Army to intensify guerrilla warfare on a nationwide scale and on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. It is also calling on the revolutionary forces of Bangsamoro to intensify their armed struggle, as the enemy forces are compelled by the NPA to stretch themselves thinly in the archipelago. The NPA tactical offensives are meant to strengthen the armed revolution and to weaken the Arroyo regime. They are best directed against the pro-Arroyo elements of the military and police and the worst of the human rights violators. Within the broad united front, it is possible to agree on arrangements and methods for the NPA and anti-Arroyo sections or units of the AFP and the PNP to avoid clashes between them and to coordinate and cooperate against the Arroyo regime. At the appropriate time, the Party would be willing to openly enter an alliance that includes the anti-Arroyo military and police forces not only for the purpose of ousting the Arroyo regime but also for the purpose of resuming the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and paving the way to basic national and democratic reforms and a just and lasting peace. Party Situation and Achievements The Second Great Rectification Movement (SGRM) has enabled the Party to grow stronger from year to year in an all-round way. We have won brilliant victories in ideological, political and organizational work. These have established a sound basis for the fulfillment of our ongoing Three-Year Plan. This Plan has resulted in significant achievements and has been extended to 2006 in order to achieve greater results. The level of revolutionary consciousness is high among the Party rank and file because they study and apply the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in their revolutionary practice. The Party has propagated the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method against subjectivism, including empiricism, revisionism and dogmatism. It has done so through the dialectical materialist analysis of history and current circumstances, further social investigation, summings-up of revolutionary work and the clarification of what is to be done. Party cadres and members have undertaken theoretical education, the study of rectification documents, social investigation reports and analysis and periodic and timely assessment and evaluation of work. Every Party member has taken the primary course to learn the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as these are applied in the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution, in the Party Constitution, in Philippine Society and Revolution and other important Party documents. Cadres have taken the intermediate course to learn the teachings of Comrade Mao Zedong in connection with the Philippine revolution and other revolutions for comparative purposes. Cadres from the provincial level upwards have taken the advanced course to gain comprehensive and profound understanding of the great communist teachings in philosophy, political economy, strategy and tactics and the international communist movement. The formal study courses ensure that Party cadres and members raise their revolutionary consciousness from one level to another. But apart from the formal courses they are also encouraged to read and study Marxist-Leninist works and related materials in connection with current problems inside and outside the Party and the Philippines and in connection with the current work and problems in one’s Party organ or unit. The books and articles in various forms for study and reading are available and are adequate. Study materials, teaching aids and syllabi have been made to suit comrades who come from the working class and peasantry and who have limited reading ability. In the course of the Second Great Rectification Movement and thereafter, the Central Committee and lower Party organs and units, as well as the conferences held on various fields of work, have generated an abundance of study materials. These have resulted from the summings up and analysis of experience. They are a rich source of knowledge for recognizing our achievements, errors and setbacks and for guiding us to work and struggle more arduously than ever, overcome errors and shortcomings and obtain better and bigger results. The work of summing up and analyzing our experience is ever continuing. The Party has sharply demonstrated the petty bourgeois class basis of the subjectivist errors that ran rampant within the Party in the 1980s and until the Central Committee launched the SGRM in 1992. The petty bourgeois subjectivists wanted to win the revolution the easy way and invented or misrepresented data to support their wishful thinking. They asserted that the imperialist-funded big comprador operations of the Marcos fascist regime had industrialized and urbanized the country to an extent that invalidated the strategic line of protracted people’s war. The dogmatists adopted as model or paradigm the petty-bourgeois-led people’s uprising against the autocratic Somoza regime in Nicaragua and were beside themselves in blaming the line of protracted people’s war for supposedly delaying the victory of the revolution. Their impetuosity led them to inflict serious damage on the revolutionary movement and even to commit serious crimes against the Party and the people. The empiricists proposed taking out the proletarian leadership from the national united front and carrying the sedan chair for bourgeois leaders as their own easy way to power. They based themselves in foreign-funded NGOs. And they fell prey to the influence of Gorbachovism and other anticommunist petty-bourgeois trends of thought. The Party has won ideological victory in combating and defeating dogmatist and empiricist trends within the Party and in upholding the cause of scientific socialism and condemning modern revisionism from Khrushchov through Brezhnev to Gorbachov. It has also successfully contended with the various anti-proletarian and petty bourgeois trends of thought espoused by the incorrigible subjectivists and opportunists that sought to attack and wreck the Party first from within and then from without as they openly turned into rabid anticommunists. These trends include barefaced bourgeois liberalism, Trotskyism, Gorbachovism and social democracy. The process of integrating the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the concrete conditions of the Philippines continues. The Party cadres and members are well-trained and well-experienced in analyzing the international, national and local situations. They are ever conscientious in doing social investigation in order to learn from the toiling masses of workers and peasants, become close to them and become well-rooted among them. They are deeply committed to serving the people and they do their best in advancing the revolution. They assess and evaluate their work, look at the positive and negative aspects, draw lessons and engage in criticism and self-criticism in order to correct errors and improve their work. The Party resolutely pursues the general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war against the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class, which are subservient to US imperialism. The leading force of the revolution is the working class whose advanced detachment is the Party. The main force is the peasantry, which is the majority class in the Philippines and whose demand for land is the main content of the revolution. The demand of the entire Filipino nation for national liberation is inseparable from the democratic demand for land reform. Both demands can be completely realized only by waging armed struggle and overthrowing the ruling system. Upon the seizure of political power by the people, the people’s democratic revolution is basically completed. Bourgeois democratic reforms will be carried out through to the end but at the same time the socialist revolution will be started on the basis of the working class leadership in the people’s democratic state and the nationalization of the strategic industries and the economy as a whole. Through the SGRM, the Party has completely defeated the “Left” and Right opportunist lines that ran counter to the line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. It has criticized and repudiated the “Left” opportunist lines such as the impetuous and adventurist line of “strategic counteroffensive” and “Red Area-White Area (RAWA)” urban insurrectionism. It has also condemned and adjudged as crimes the executions and brutalities committed against the Party and the people in the name of anti-infiltration campaigns. It has criticized and repudiated the “Right opportunist” line of subordinating the revolutionary forces and masses to the bourgeoisie and engaging in reformism within the ruling system. The Party is vigorously integrating the building of the New People’s Army with land reform and building the mass base. The NPA is growing in strength and advancing because it is deeply rooted among the masses of peasants and farm workers and draws strength from them. The peasants and farm workers join and support the people’s army because it is their instrument for ensuring the success of the current level of land reform and ultimately the agrarian revolution. The advances in armed struggle and land reform are interconnected with the building of the organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, cultural activists and children. The NPA operates in more than 100 guerrilla fronts, consisting of guerrilla bases and wider swaths of guerrilla zones. The number of guerrilla fronts is lower than before because of the merger of a number of contiguous guerrilla fronts for the purpose of consolidation and because of concentrated enemy attacks on and temporary occupation of a few others under the enemy’s Oplan Bantay Laya. The guerrilla fronts are in a continuous process of expansion and consolidation under the direction of the Party cadres within the NPA and the localities. NPA armed strength in a guerrilla front is typically 75 to 120 full-time guerrilla fighters with high-powered rifles. Augmenting the guerrilla units are militia units serving as the local police force and the self-defense units in the mass organizations. The full-time Red fighters nationwide are in the thousands, the militia members in tens of thousands and the members of self-defense units in the hundreds of thousands. The guerrilla fronts cover millions of people in about 750 municipalities out of 1500 municipalities. They are in more than 70 of the 79 provinces. The NPA is currently engaged in extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. The middle phase of the stage of strategic defensive in the people’s war is now being developed. Since September 13, the NPA has launched more than 200 tactical offensives nationwide. These have resulted in the capture of a significant number of high-powered rifles and inflicted hundreds of casualties (both killed and wounded) on the enemy. The offensives include ambushes, raids, arrest operations and sniping. The objectives include seizing weapons, punishing, interdicting and harassing the enemy. Depending on the target and objective, companies, oversized platoons, platoons, squads and teams carry them out with flexibility according to plan or guidelines. The NPA is intensifying the tactical offensives in order to strengthen itself by seizing weapons from the enemy and to further weaken and isolate the Arroyo regime. It is punishing the worst of human rights violators and plunderers. It is also forcing the enemy to take defensive positions and divide his forces by guarding his own fixed positions, supply and transport lines, vital installations, depots and enterprises. At the same time, the NPA is offering friendship and alliance with AFP and PNP officers and units that are opposed to the Arroyo regime and that wish to join the broad united front against it. The NPA has seized the initiative from the enemy by intensifying the tactical offensives. It takes advantage of the fact that the enemy has far more exposed weak points than the NPA. NPA units can in fact raid or ambush anytime at their own choosing such enemy weak points as the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU), police stations, small army detachments, supply and transport lines, installations and the like. They offset their own weak points by taking the initiative and preventing the enemy forces from using to their advantage such methods as periphery control by large units and infiltration by small units (SOTs and ranger teams) and whatever else they have, such as powerful weapons and abundant ammunition, superior means of transport (by land or by air) and new gadgets like night vision goggles, trackers, cell phones, armor vests and the like. By seizing the initiative and intensifying the tactical offensives, the Party and the NPA have confronted the longrunning problem of conservatism: always evading the enemy military forces, minding only the need to do mass work and not minding the need to carry out tactical offensives by way of advancing the armed revolution. The Party and NPA have also confronted the problem of guerrillaism or roving rebel band mentality: constantly operating in the dispersed mode of the armed propaganda teams or squads and not minding the need to plan at the levels of the region, province and guerrilla front and to concentrate a platoon, oversized platoon or company to accomplish an offensive operation. To intensify the tactical offensives on the scale of the whole country and therefore also on the scale of regions and provinces, the corresponding leading committees of the Party and commands of the NPA gather sufficient information about the strength and deployment of enemy forces, take stock of the strengths and resources of the NPA and plan out tactical offensives. From a higher to a lower level of decision-making and planning, what is relatively a generalized plan becomes more specific. At their operational level, the offensive units of the NPA have the necessary intelligence and reconnaissance and the personnel and equipment adequate to overwhelm and hit enemy targets by surprise. In waging revolutionary armed struggle, the NPA undertakes only those offensive operations or battles that it can win, using superior force and surprise at the tactical level. It does not take chances blindly. It relies on mass support, ample intelligence stock and timely reconnaissance. It gives priority to the seizure and accumulation of firearms and ammunition. While intensifying the revolutionary armed struggle, the NPA smashes or thwarts the offensive campaigns of the enemy, forces him to take defensive positions and opens wide opportunities for mass work. It ensures that land reform and mass base building are carried out. The enemy forces can concentrate on any area at anytime and occupy it for a short or long while. But the NPA has the flexibility of using the tactics of concentration to make its own offensives against the weakest points of the enemy, the tactics of shifting or evading the concentrations of enemy strength and the tactics of dispersal to do propaganda and mass work. Under Bantay Laya, the enemy forces have never been able to occupy more than 10 per cent of the existing guerrilla fronts because of the limited personnel and resources and because the people and revolutionary forces keep them blind and deaf. Thus, in at least 90 per cent of the guerrilla fronts, the revolutionary forces are free to develop. Now, that the NPA seizes the initiative and intensifies tactical offensives nationwide, the enemy is dazed and bleeding from so many wounds. The NPA arouses, organizes and mobilizes the peasant masses to carry out land reform. In general, the land reform being carried out is of the minimum kind. It involves the reduction of land rent, control of interest rates, raising the wages of farm workers, improving the prices of farm products at the farm gate and promoting agricultural production and sideline occupations. However, actions are taken to cause the restitution of land taken away from the peasants through sheer landgrabbing or through the nullification of emancipation patents, land transfer certificates, certificates of land ownership amortization and stock distribution agreements. The barrio organizing committee whose members are appointed by the Party within the NPA unit concerned is still the quick way for establishing an organ of local governance and gathering mass support. But in due course, the full development of local mass organizations for workers, peasants, women, youth, cultural activists and children from the level of people’s organizing committees and groups paves the way for the election of the barrio revolutionary committee (BRC) by the representatives of the mass organizations or by the entire village, depending on the security situation. The BRC is assisted by working committees on organization, education, health, land reform and production, defense, arbitration and cultural affairs and is supported by the mass organizations. As the advanced detachment of the leading class, the Party continues to build the united front by building an echelon of alliances. First is the basic alliance of the toiling masses of workers and peasants. Second is the progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie. Third is the patriotic alliance of the progressive forces and the national bourgeoisie. Fourth is the broad united front of the patriotic forces and sections of the reactionary classes against the worst reactionaries who take on the character and role of the enemy. The basic alliance of the working class and the peasantry is going strong. The Party is successful in leading the mass struggles of the working class and developing the links of the working class with the New People’s Army and the peasant movement. The progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie is best manifested by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. This has a comprehensive array of 17 revolutionary formations. The patriotic alliance is strong mainly because of the basic alliance and the progressive alliance, despite the economically weak and politically vacillating character of the national bourgeoisie. The broad united front is conspicuously gaining in strength against the Arroyo regime. It consists of the legal forces of the national democratic movement, the bourgeois opposition parties and enlightened officers of the military and police forces of the enemy. It is working to overthrow the regime in the same way that it did the Marcos fascist regime in 1986 and the corrupt Estrada regime in 2001. Both regimes were overthrown by a combinat
    Reply

  2. Gustavo said

    December 26, 2005 @ 9:06 pm

    http://www.pilipino.org.ph/

    The Military is a Bogeyman
    The military is often painted as a bogeyman, and the prospects of a military takeover raised as a specter to frighten people into silence. Yet the past two successful revolutions in which the military participated show us that in both cases, the military only intervened, just enough to tip the scale of power. Then they went back to their barracks.

    It is unfortunate that there are officers among the military who harbor political ambitions, and sometimes use the powers of their office-and the prestige of the military-to influence political events. But ordinary soldiers do not support such actions.

    Politicians are quick to point at the seven attempted coups during the Aquino government, and our own short-lived activities, as attempts to take over the government. The government has called what we did in Oakwood a mutiny, but we had no plans to seize power, then or now. We thought then – naively – that exposing government anomalies would be enough to stop them from happening again.

    This is not to deny the military’s role during martial law, or the atrocities some of its members committed then, and continue to commit now. This is simply to point out that the military, as an institution, as a group, have always held the civilians in respect and followed civilian authority.

    Past presidents and politicians have corrupted some military officers, and instituted a system that promotes and rewards the corrupt. But the ordinary soldier, when you get down to it, remains committed to serving his country. For regardless of what we are, and what we are said to be, everyday we leave home prepared to die, fighting not our own personal enemies, but the enemies of the people.

    What is the military’s role?

    The role of the military is to protect the people. The protection extended to the State is given because it represents and takes care of the people. But the bottomline is that all the institutions we know – the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, and even media – enjoy what powers and prestige they have because they represent and serve the people.

    But what we have now is a situation where these institutions no longer represent and serve the people. Neither do they enjoy the trust of those whom they claim to represent. In a situation where the State does not represent the people, it does not deserve the protection of the military.

    We are now in a legal bind: the military is enjoined to protect the executive because the president claims she won the elections fairly and squarely. When this mandate was questioned, however, she hid behind Congress and used technicalities to protect herself. She insists that the people take as a fact something she has failed to prove, and she has closed all avenues for investigation.

    What then is the basis for the protection she expects the military to extend to her, except the assumption that everything is normal until proven to be wrong, that a person is innocent until proven guilty? But when you refuse to allow others to prove you guilty, what can people do? And what is the legal basis to claim innocence, when there is no chance to prove you guilty?

    We do not go into arguments like these because we fear anarchy. We fear that which we do not know, and the government is quick to exploit this fear by conjuring up visions of soldiers marching into the streets and taking over government, a military who is more violent, corrupt, and unresponsive to the people as this government is.

    But the reality is what government fears: that everyone is a citizen first, and those soldiers who leave home everyday ready to die facing unknown enemies are more likely to side with the people against the government.

    This has been proven twice, in the past two uprisings we have had. The government is raising the specter of a military takeover because that was what they planned against Estrada, had Estrada not left Malacanang. They fear a military whose officers will listen to the people, not to them. They fear officers whom they cannot bribe, or confuse with their twisted logic. They fear a group of people against whom technicalities will not work.

    Reply

  3. Fritz Dacpano said

    December 29, 2005 @ 4:02 am

    What a phony blog of crap. This is not the President’s blog!

    Reply

  4. Ligaya Sampalpuke said

    February 3, 2006 @ 9:25 pm

    Ang hilig mag-publish nang manifesto nitong mga komunistang ito sa free press. Pero pag sila naman ang gobyerno lahat nang press, censored. Look at China. Hypokritos!

    Reply

  5. Comrade Glory said

    April 14, 2006 @ 1:00 am

    PRESS RELEASE
    Information Bureau
    Communist Party of the Philippines

    Arroyo is the ultimate traitor – NDF
    April 12, 2006

    “The people have no one to blame for their interminable sufferings but the bankrupt and rotten US-Arroyo regime,” Rubi del Mundo, spokesperson of the National Democratic Front (NDF) – Southern Mindanao said on Wednesday, in time for the observance of the Holy Week by the Filipino masses.

    While the bankrupt regime, like a broken record, repeatedly claims that the country is ready for “economic take-off,” Filipinos continue to reel from anti-poor economic policies such as the Expanded Value Added Tax, starvation wages and the never-ending increase in the prices of oil and basic commodities. Poor peasants are deprived of their right to a genuine land reform while lumads are forcibly evicted from their ancestral domains.

    “Mrs. Arroyo would do everything to entrench herself in power,” Del Mundo said. Del Mundo added that Mrs. Arroyo and her cabal of puppets are doing this by pushing for Charter Change (Cha-cha) and by continually violating the people’s basic rights through its such repressive legal instrumentalities such as the Calibrated Preemptive Response, Executive Order 464, Proclamation 1017 and even the Anti-Terrorism Bill.

    According to the NDF’s regional spokesperson, Cha-cha will “open the gates of total economic liberalization.” This means foreign and bureaucrat capitalists will have greater power to plunder the country’s rich resources while the masses are left with nothing. Del Mundo criticized Mrs. Arroyo for “openly embracing this unconscionable violation against the country’s sovereignty and national patrimony.”

    “Mrs. Arroyo, is no doubt, the country’s greatest traitor. Like Judas, she has sold the Filipino masses, time and again, to the imperialist United States. She is its ultimate puppet,” Del Mundo said.

    Reference:
    Rubi del Mundo
    Spokesperson
    National Democratic Front – Southern Mindanao
    E-mail:rubidelmundo@hotmail.com

    Reply

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