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From Telenovelas to the Real World of Armed Struggle

in Mainstream

A visual artist and film director finds himself in the rugged mountains of the Cordilleras and he’s loving it. “Dati teleserye lang, kathang-isip. Pero ngayon, ito ang totoong buhay (Before I was just into telenovelas, fiction. But now, this is for real. This is real life),” Ka Migo quipped.

He acknowledged he was never a serious activist as a young man. Although, as early as 1999, he was already a member of the Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth, a founding member organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines [NDFP]), it was only almost after a decade, in 2008, that he joined a formal collective. In between those years, he was studying and at the same time into “racket”, accepting various projects for a fee. There were few times though when he would join rallies to document the event “but not as an active participant”, he claimed.

Through a wide-angle lens

The disappearance of UP students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan and the testimony of the case’s witness Raymond Manalo, who was also a political prisoner who met the two in the detention center, was a turning point for this artist. He was, he recalled, stunned to learn that a “concentration camp” existed in our midst— where activists were brought and killed. “Civilian lang pero kapag napaghinalaan tinutuluyan na nila dun. ‘Yung kwento ni Manalo parang nasa Nazi concentration camp (The civilians once suspected were finished off in that place. Manalo’s story depicted that of a Nazi concentration camp.)”

While this artist firmly believes in the power of video to educate people, it was just that. It was only after he learned of the circumstances of the disappearance of the two students and how they were tortured and molested by the military that he seriously considered going into documentary films on social issues.

In 2009, a year after he took his basic Party course, he decided to join the New People’s Army (NPA). Having skills in film making, he expected it would be one of his tasks. But the NPA unit where he was assigned only learned about his artisty much later, which he said, worked in his favor.

No cuts, no edit

It was to his advantage that Ka Migo was able to immerse with the masses, do territorial work and participate in tactical offensives, “all the elements of the work in the countryside—armed struggle, base building and agrarian revolution.” The experience enriched him as a Party cadre and a red fighter.

While deep into the work in the countryside, Ka Migo realized that if only the public could see what the people’s army is actually doing then they would start to appreciate the importance of armed struggle—realistic telling moments that would definitely touch the hearts of the masses, the youth, and professionals in urban centers. “Ito yung katotohanan, na yung tao, dahil sa pagsasamantala, talagang lalaban yan, at ito yung isang itsura niya, yung armadong pakikibaka.”

This is the stark reality. Exploitation impels people to fight back through armed struggle.

Armed struggle it is. Life in the guerrilla zone affirms what Ka Migo studied in Party courses that armed struggle is the primary form of struggle. “My experience showed me how effective and important it is.”

He talked of the political power the NPA holds in the villages over the enemies of the people, which he quickly attributed to Comrade Mao Zedong’s adage, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Erring companies, for example, operating within the guerrilla zone, would cower in fear or in respect. Wala ka pa ngang sinasabi, naka-Sir na agad yung mga guard (Even without saying a word, the guards are quick to address them, ‘Sir’).”

Comparing this to filmmaking, Ka Migo explained, “When doing a documentary, the camera is the main weapon to depict how people are exploited and oppressed. You may criticize and warn the perpetrators with your films but it remains their choice to take action. But if you have a gun, you can actually restrain the perpetrators and make them account for the wrongs they committed.”

But the combination of the two—the camera and the gun—is most powerful. “Kung ipinapakita mo ang ginagawa ng armadong pakikibaka, na totoo ito, na ito ang dapat nating gawin tapos makikita ang iba’t ibang scenario ng paglaban ng tao para ipagtanggol ang kanilang karapatan, mas powerful yun (When you are able to show that the armed struggle is real and we all should engage in this; and you show various scenes of how people fight back to defend their rights, this is most powerful.”)

Without saying it, Ka Migo finds himself in the same scene with an artist he met in the Cordilleras—Ka Libre, whose real name is Artus Talastas. He was a revolutionary martyr who was killed in 2014 in a firefight with the military. He was a red fighter, a commander of the NPA. He was also a painter and a musician. He is known in many villages because he gamely indulged those who wanted a sketch of themselves or their families. His songs, mostly in the form of saliddumay (local folk song), talked about the people’s struggles.

Composing the future

Ka Libre always told Ka Migo, “Nandito ang materyal sa paglahok sa digmang bayan. Makisalamuha ka sa magsasaka at manggagawa para ma-portray natin sila, yung kanilang pakikibaka, yung armadong pakikibaka ng malawak na masa, kung gaano ito kawasto at totoo at dapat na ginagawa ng nakararami.”

You get your material from your participation in the people’s war. Integrate with the peasants and workers so we can portray them,their struggles, the armed struggle of the broad masses of people and to show how just and true it is and that more people should engage in this.

In Ka Migo’s 10 years in the people’s army, he has cherished Ka Libre’s words. Paraphrasing him now, Ka Migo called on the artists and cultural workers, “Pumunta tayo sa sona, andito yung material para sa armadong pakikibaka, yung pinakamataas na antas. Heto sana yung gamitin nating inspirasyon ng kahit ano’ng sining natin (Come to the guerrilla zones, the material for and on the armed struggle is here, in its highest form. Let’s use this as our inspiration for our art).”

Know, learn, and muster inspiration from the life experiences of the masses, the people’s army and their lives together in the guerrilla zone to compose songs, paintings, poetry and literature. Ka Migo’s words ring true in the heart of every revolutionary artist. “Mas palapitin natin ang tagumpay (Let’s push forward to victory),” Ka Migo said as he uses his camera and his gun to serve the revolution.

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Malaya na si Maya

isinalaysay kay Ester Martires Dalawang linggo ang ipinaalam niyang “bakasyon” sa mga kakolektibo niya. Kasama na rito ang ilang araw

Weaponizing the Civilian Bureaucracy

in Countercurrent 
by Pat Gambao

Poverty, with its attendant injustices, is the root cause of the protracted armed conflict. On this basis the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Government of the Philippines (GPH), now under the rein of Rodrigo Duterte, have engaged in peace negotiations.

But when the Duterte regime arbitrarily terminated the peace negotiations it took a complete turnaround. It now points to the armed conflict—read the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-New People’s Army (NPA)-NDFP defensive armed struggle —as the cause of poverty and non-development in the country.

Indeed, it is a convenient excuse for the regime to train its guns and utilize various war resources against the revolutionary movement and the masses supporting it. Everywhere, and anywhere now, the Duterte regime sees “Red” and employs “red-tagging” to justify its clamping down against a wide range of legitimate oppositionists, critics, and ordinary civilians.

Taking off from the failed counterinsurgency program of his predecessor, Duterte took a tight grip of Benigno S. Aquino III’s “whole of nation approach” (WNA) embodied in the latter’s Oplan Bayanihan. The “whole of nation approach” readily suggests a semblance of the whole nation—the entire civilian bureaucracy, government-owned and controlled corporations, local government units, plus nongovernmental formations denoted as “other stakeholders” — mobilized against the people’s democratic revolution.

Specifically, the WNA embarked on weaponizing the civilian bureaucracy and boosted the power of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). This means blatantly placing the civilian agencies and services of the reactionary government under military centralization.

Under Duterte as strongman, a civilian-military junta, all but in name, is more apparent than ever.

From the beginning of his presidency in 2016, he has continually appointed to key positions in his cabinet and agencies retired high-ranking military and police officers. After a year, in 2017, there were already 60 former AFP and Philippine National Police (PNP) officials in the civilian bureaucracy.

To this day he continues to fill up other offices, particularly strategic ones, with ex-military officials, such as the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process (OPAPP), the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS). Recently, he appointed Gringo Honasan to head the Information and Communication Technology department, replacing another military officer Eliseo Rio, Jr. who stays as undersecretary. Duterte also named Royina Garma, Cebu’s chief of police as new head of the Philippine Charity Sweepstake Office (PCSO). There are now at least 80 former military officials in various executive offices and government-owned and controlled corporations.

In the guise of Cabinet reorganization, Duterte issued Executive Order No. 67 placing more agencies under military supervision in two departments. The EO purportedly aims to “strengthen the democratic and institutional framework of the executive department,” and eliminate “roadblocks and impediments” in pursuing the government’s agenda. Among these agencies are:
National Commission on Muslim Filipinos – transferred to the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG)
Philippine Commission on Women – transferred to DILG
National Youth Commission – transferred to DILG
National Anti-Poverty Commission – transferred to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)
National Commission on Indigenous Peoples – transferred to DSWD
Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor – transferred to DSWD

The move was followed by Executive Order No. 70 which created a National Task Force (NTF) to provide mechanism and structure to the WNA approach. President Duterte nominally chairs the task force with his national security adviser as vice chair. Certain cabinet members, agency heads, the AFP chief of staff, and two representatives from the private sector sit as members.

More telling, Duterte appointed the notorious retired Colonel Allen Capuyan as executive director or head of the NTF national secretariat. Capuyan’s notoriety dates back to the time of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration, when he headed Task Force Gantangan, which carried out a vicious “internal security plan” against the Lumad (indigenous people) of Mindanao. With his recent appointment as NCIP chairperson, Capuyan now holds two significant offices, one for “counterinsurgency”, the other to facilitate the entry of big business in IP areas such as mining and plantations. Like a number of Duterte appointees, Capuyan has been implicated in a multi-million-peso shabu trade.

More insidiously now, government services are organized into several “operational clusters” (obviously a military parlance), namely: (1)Government Empowerment Cluster; (2) International Engagements Cluster; (3) Legal Cooperation Cluster; (4) Strategic Communications Cluster; (5) Basic Services Cluster; (6) Livelihood and Poverty Alleviation Cluster; (7) Infrastructure and Resource Management Cluster; (8) AFP-PNP Peace and Development Cluster; (9) Situational Awareness and Knowledge Management Cluster; (10) Localized Peace Engagement Cluster; (11) E-Clip and Amnesty Program Cluster; and (12) Sectoral Unification, Capacity Building and Empowerment Cluster.

These clusters serve to support military operations against the revolutionary movement as well as groups and personalities perceived to be opposing Duterte.

Legal Cluster

Take the case of the Legal Cluster. Apart from the justice department, which has control over the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and prosecutors, the cluster consists of government security sectors such as the National Security Council (NSC), AFP/PNP, National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), Intelligence Service of the AFP (ISAFP), Intelligence Group of the PNP, the NBI, and the NCIP. The latter was thrown into the cluster apparently to watch over Lumad communities and other national minorities who are deemed prime recruits of the NPA.

With the termination of the peace talks on November 23, 2017 and Duterte’s Proclamation No.360 declaring the CPP-NPA as terrorist organizations, the legal cluster immediately set into action. The DOJ followed with a list of 656 names alleged to be “terrorist” leaders and members of the CPP-NPA including Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and former chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The list was later trimmed down to eight, but only after arrests had been made and several NDFP consultants incarcerated.

To replace Arroyo’s notoriously-vicious but inept Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), which filed trumped-up cases against her critics based on planted evidence and false witnesses, the Duterte regime formed the Inter-Agency Committee on Legal Action (IACLA). Victims of this new body are NDFP consultants Vicente Ladlad, Rafael Baylosis, and Rey Casambre. Ladlad and Casambre are still under detention awaiting trial of their cases. Baylosis, however, has been freed after his arrest was deemed illegal, rendering the consequent case filed against him null and void.

Under IACLA, a remnant trumped-up murder case initiated by IALAG in 2006 was revived against the four progressive former legislators, dubbed by media as “Makabayan 4”: former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, former Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casino, former Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. and former National Anti-Poverty Commission Secretary Liza Maza, and former Anakpawis Rep. and former Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano. Warrants of arrest were issued against the four. However, the trial court judge found no merit in the case and summarily dismissed it.

This cluster is likewise working for the legislation of repressive laws, specifically amendments that would water down the Human Security Act (HSA).

International Cluster

The International Engagement Cluster was also set to work. Government security officials were sent “on a caravan” abroad for two objectives: 1) to counter the effective information campaign by human rights organizations critical of the Duterte government’s human rights violations — tagged by the regime as “CPP fronts”— and 2) to “cut their ties”with foreign governments, the United Nations, and international solidarity groups. The trip was an intelligence mission as well as a psyops aimed at maligning the CPP-NPA-NDFP and leaders of the progressive legal organizations. However, its main aim was to sever financial assistance coming from foreign agencies and governments to human rights defenders and legitimate NGOs branded as “communist fronts.”

Earlier, Duterte tapped the state’s own civilian agencies to do surveillance. For one, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued in November 2018 Memorandum Circular Order 15 giving itself the authority to look into the finances of NGOs. It sought to know their sources of funds purportedly to track “money laundering to terrorist funding.” The said Memorandum likewise provides that SEC could ask the police and military to investigate the NGOs without prior notice.

Also, a news report, dated June 3, 2019, quoted Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. as saying in his tweet: “Over a month ago I fired off a memo to all our European embassies to tell their host governments to clear any and all donations to their NGOs in the Philippines with the DFA. Or we will deregister them in the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission]. If that hasn’t been done do it now.” He did not provide details. His statement came after Duterte claimed that foreign governments have been supporting so-called communist fronts.
The Philippine government, through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), has submitted to the EU and the Belgian embassy in the Philippines documents supporting claims that NGOs are used to funnel funds to the communist movement.

Immediately, international NGOs who have long supported organizations such as human rights watchdog Karapatan and Lumad school ALCADEV (two of those red-tagged organizations) countered the government’s accusation and firmly stood by their support to these organizations.

After the “international caravan” in January, the Duterte regime sent another group last June 2019 as a follow up to its lobby effort to discredit people’s organizations, specifically, human rights defenders and the Lumad in Mindanao. The Duterte government, spending millions of people’s money, sent its apologists/defenders to Belgium and New York (where they were met with protest actions) and at the recently concluded 41st session of the UN Human Rights Council UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland. To the regime’s chagrin, the UNHRC adopted the Iceland-initiated resolution calling on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to make a comprehensive written report on the human rights situation in the Philippines to be discussed in the next UNHRC session.

Communications Cluster

Under the Communications Cluster, promotional work for the Duterte regime also includes demonizing the revolutionary movement as “terrorist”. Duterte’s fear of the revolution has extended to media being critical of his regime, with personalities being red-tagged, placed under surveillance, harassed, arrested or killed. In three years, 13 journalists have already been killed. The Freedom for Media, Freedom for All Network reported that from June 30, 2016 to April 30, 2019, a total of 128 cases of threats and attacks against the media have been documented. The attacks were unrelenting. From the “Red October” plot to the egregious “Oust Duterte matrix,” clearly the administration is not on a “wait and see” mode but rather on an overactive frenzy. The goal: mass intimidation. The regime is deploying all weapons in its arsenal to police even the opinions of the public: from the employment of a massive “troll army” and other forms of astroturfing or the attempt to bloat supposed public support for policies, resulting in an era where genuine reports and fake news are difficult to tell apart; the ramped-up surveillance of perceived critics of the administration; to imposing martial law in Mindanao, and similar thinly-veiled military efforts in provinces in the Visayas and Luzon.

Alternative media such as Bulatlat, Kodao, Pinoy Weekly, AlterMidya Network and others have been victims of worse cyberattacks known as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) where their sites have been repeatedly attacked, apparently for reasons that they have boldly criticized the regime and covered even developments in the revolutionary movement.

Also, libel and criminal cases are filed against mainstream media with threats of revoking their registrations and franchises, such as in the case of Rappler and ABS-CBN.

Basic Services Cluster

Government agencies providing basic services and programs are clustered together—the DSWD, Housing, TESDA, Education, OPAPP, NAPC— almost all under military domination.

The target of these services and programs are said to be the strongholds of the NPA. Schemes are aimed at plugging the support of the communities to the armed revolution, as well as to draw surrenderees from the people’s army. It is intertwined with the reactionary government’s programs for surrenderees, the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP), and “localized peace engagement.” All of these schemes are ridden with deception and corruption.

The E-CLIP has turned out to be one of the regime’s milking cows, because millions of pesos end up in the pockets of military officials. For one, there have not been, if not a few, genuine surrenderees. Most of the so-called rebel returnees were ordinary civilians threatened, coerced and/or herded in plazas and presented to media as “surrenderees”. The Task Force Balik-Loob is said to have spent Php 520 million to Php 715 million in 2018 supposedly for the 8,000-11,000 “NPA surrenderees”—figures that are way beyond the regime’s own estimated current number of NPA members.

Sectoral Cluster

The youth, workers and urban poor groups have been identified as among the breeding grounds of the revolutionary movement. But, among the many sectors, the Lumad of Mindanao and other indigenous people’s groups have been the actual target of the sectoral unification cluster because they reside within the guerrilla fronts in Mindanao and Cordillera.

As planned, the militarized government institutions aim to lure the indigenous peoples with socio-economic programs and pretend to enhance their culture, whereas in fact they rob them of their ancestral lands for the benefit of foreign transnational corporations engaged in mining and oil palm plantation. It is small wonder that martial law was declared and extended in Mindanao where the Lumad and the Bangsamoro carry out revolutionary struggles in defense of their ancestral lands.

The age-old divide and rule tactic has always been employed by the State and is manifested through the “creation” of fake datus, initiated by the NCIP, who become conduits in the plunder of ancestral lands. The existence of AFP-backed paramilitary groups not only divides the indigenous people’s communities but has also caused countless human rights violations among those who stand their ground in defense of their ancestral lands and right to self-determination.

The NTF-ELCAC’s latest bid to subvert the Lumad’s right to self-determination was the order to close 55 Lumad schools in Southern Mindanao based on fabricated information that these schools have been teaching communist ideology to Lumad children. The Philippine government has not spent a single centavo on these schools, yet it has the gall to rob hundreds of Lumad children of their future.

In the end, weaponizing the civilian bureaucracy will only worsen the crisis within the regime and doom it to failure. On one hand corruption, patronage and inefficiency will mar the implementation of the regime’s “counterinsurgency” program as proven many times in the past; on the other hand, the regime will create more enemies than friends as it fails to silence the revolutionary movement and the broad opposition.

By now, more victims of the regime, threatened or otherwise, are joining the ranks of the revolutionary underground and the NPA. On the legal front, even organizations of different political persuasions are closing ranks and have become more emboldened in raising real-time and long-term issues against the regime.

Duterte has got it all wrong. The problem is not the CPP-NPA-NDF. It is still poverty, stupid. Duterte, like his hero Marcos, poorly understands the problems of Philippine society as their lens are clouded by their own self-interests to perpetuate themselves and their families in power.

Duterte’s ambitious and vicious reverie to crush the revolution, sustain “peace” and rule like the grand dictator will never succeed no matter how he masked his counterinsurgency program—earlier named Oplan Kapayapaan and now, a more off-key Oplan Kapanatagan— with a weaponized civil bureaucracy and deodorized by rhetoric of “development” and “humanitarian.” The convoluted reasoning, that the armed conflict is the cause of poverty, and the non-development peddled by Duterte and his armed minions to deceive and win over the people will blow on their very faces.

For as long as the root cause of the armed conflict is not addressed, for as long as the semicolonial and semifeudal state of the Philippine society stays causing abject poverty to and unfettered bondage on the masses, for as long as repression and oppression persist, all of the US-Duterte regime’s schemes are bound to fail. The revolution, which the masses look up to as their sole salvation, will continue to rage and advance to greater heights. #

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How Duterte Serves Two Imperialist Masters and Offends the People Until His Ignoble End

in Statements 
Jose Maria Sison, NDFP Chief Political Consultant
July 15, 2019

The tyrant Duterte recognizes that the US is still the most dominant imperialist power in the Philippines and does not to dare to offend it in any serious way. The US is privileged and well-entrenched by a comprehensive range of unequal treaties, agreements and arrangements that give it full-spectrum dominance (economic, social, political, military and cultural).

It is not true that the Duterte regime has become independent of the US. It is even more untrue that it is opposed to the US. It is a puppet regime dependent for its tyranny and mass murder of poor people on a military and police force indoctrinated, trained and armed by the US.

Duterte has proven his puppetry to the US by scuttling the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and pledging to it the destruction of the revolutionary movement. He has assured the US of charter change to allow US and other foreign corporations 100 percent ownership of land, natural resources in all types of businesses.

Thus, the Duterte regime continues to receive military aid under Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines in the name of “anti-terrorism” and beyond US congressional oversight. It still maintains close economic and financial relations with the US, the IMF, World Bank and the WTO and subjects the Philippines to a neoliberal policy regime.

The US estimates that Duterte is still more of an asset than a liability and that there is yet no urgent need to change him as when Marcos outlived his usefulness to the US in 1986. The US keeps in reserve the issue of human rights violations as potential cause for junking him when the Filipino people rise up to a certain high point and when he thereby becomes more of a liability than an asset.

The US appears to tolerate Duterte in trying to enrich his own family and cronies by taking commissions and other payoffs from onerous loans and overpriced infrastructure projects from China and by keeping shady relations with the Chinese criminal triads engaged in illegal drug smuggling and in gambling.

But the US has no choice but to consider seriously how threatening to its interest is China’s drive to turn the Philippines into a debt colony and field of investment and to have at the same time the artificial islands China has built in the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as its military bases in the West Philippine Sea.

The US observes that China is making a big headway into the Philippines with the collaboration of Duterte who has exposed himself as a traitor and paid agent of China by deliberately refusing to enforce the judgment of the Arbitral Tribunal in favor of the Philippines under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea against the false ownership claims of China over 90 percent of the South China Sea.

The exposure of Duterte as a traitor and paid agent of China is one more potential cause for the US to instruct the pro-US military and police officers to withdraw support from him at the time and circumstances it chooses.

The broad masses of the Filipino people are already outraged by Duterte’s failure to take the appropriate diplomatic steps to consolidate the legal victory of the Philippines against China since the judgment of the Arbitral Tribunal on July 12, 2016. They are deeply insulted by Duterte’s constant attempt to scare them with war by China.

Duterte has failed to follow the advice of Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio for the Philippines to make agreements with Vietnam and Malaysia to define the boundaries of their extended continental shelves and to ask the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to confirm the boundaries of the Philippine continental shelf west of Luzon.

Duterte has also failed to go to the UN and the appropriate courts to complain against the transgressions of China in the Philippine EEZ in the West Philippine Sea and to demand justice and compensation for the building of artificial islands and the destruction of the marine environment.

Instead, Duterte does not conceal his self-serving and traitorous scheme to surrender to China the rich marine resources as well as the trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and other mineral resources in the Philippine EEZ in the West Philippine Sea. These resources are vital for the sustenance and development of the Philippines.

It is in the interest of the US and all other countries of the world to have the freedom of navigation in the high seas of the South China Sea and to secure from any harassment, interference, threat or attack from Chinese military forces that are illegally occupying the artificial islands built in the Philippine EEZ.

It is a source of wonder why the Duterte regime and the US government have not combined strongly enough to complain against China’s violation of the sovereign rights of the Philippines and have not formally invoked against China the US-RP Mutual Defense Treaty even only as a warning or deterrent to any act of aggression.

As much as the US has not shown any inclination to wage war with China over the West Philippine Sea, China has so far shied away from threatening to wage war with the US and the Philippines because this would completely negate China’s line of peaceful rise. China is also known to fear internal economic and political instability, especially at this time that the US has instigated a “trade war” with it, abandoning the many decades of US-Sino collaboration in pushing neoliberal globalization.

There are times to focus on issues against US imperialism. And there are also times to focus on issues against Chinese imperialism. Thus, there is currently a focus on the issue of the West Philippine Sea vis-a-vis China. This is an urgent issue that cries out for a patriotic stand and action. Otherwise the corrupt Duterte regime would have a free hand in selling out Philippine sovereign rights to China. It is necessary to assert the Filipino people’s sovereign rights under the UNCLOS and international law and it is even permissible to avail of US-Sino contradictions in order to uphold such sovereign rights.

It is safe to predict that the Duterte regime will meet an ignominious end as a result of its gross and systematic human rights violations, its acts of treason in puppetry to two imperialist powers, unprecedented corruption, economic plunder and so many grievous crimes that are now inciting the people to rise up in defense of their national sovereignty and democratic rights and in pursuit of social justice and all round development.

As in the fall of the fascist dictator Marcos in 1986, the disgraceful end of Duterte is bound to come when gigantic mass actions of the people shake the ruling system from base to rafters and his own military subordinates withdraw support from him either upon instruction of the US and/or upon their own sense of patriotism and desire to shake off the indignity of being the instrument of Duterte’s tyranny and treason. ###

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On Duterte’s Double Puppetry to US and Chinese Imperialism

in Statements
Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant

Duterte engages in double puppetry to US imperialism and Chinese imperialism. So far, he seems to benefit from his servility to each power. It remains to be seen what will be the crisis impact on the Philippine ruling system and his regime as the inter-imperialist contradictions between the US and China intensify.

Contrary to the impression that he occasionally tries to make, Duterte is not really distancing himself from the US in order to be closer to China. For his selfish benefit, he is subservient to each imperialist power in a definite way.
He does not dare to challenge or change the most dominant role of the US over the Philippines. He has maintained the treaties, agreements that have allowed the US to be the most dominant power on the economy, politics, culture and security aspects of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.

He is highly conscious of maintaining support for himself from the US in order to keep the loyalty of the pro-US military and police officers. In fact, he has deliberately kept US support for his rule with his policy of rabid anticommunism and proclaimed goal of wiping out the revolutionary movement of the people.

He and his principal political and security subalterns take orders from their US masters as regards red-tagging patriotic and progressive forces, misrepresenting communists as terrorists and murdering suspected revolutionaries, social activists and even human rights defenders.

The Duterte regime is actually in cahoots with US imperialism in using mass intimidation and mass murder in order to preserve the US-dominated ruling system of big compradors, landlords and corrupt officials. Under Oplan Pacific Eagle-Philippines, the US actually provides funds and arms that are beyond US congressional oversight.

While Duterte’s puppetry to US imperialism is determined by his greed for power and his desire to be secure from the threat of ouster, his puppetry to China is mainly determined by his greed for lucre and desire to avail of the opportunities for quick money from high interest loans and overpriced infrastructure and other contracts in dealing with China well as from expanded drug smuggling and distribution in collaboration with criminal Chinese triads.

In both types of puppetry, the Duterte regime cannot avoid the historic role of being a butcher and mass murderer. It has been quite easy for Duterte to kill the poor drug suspects by the tens of thousands in order to install himself as the supreme protector of drug lords and to subordinate the local drug market to the Duterte drug syndicate. The poor victims and their families are silenced by the acts of murder and threats of further harm to them.

For obvious reasons, it is far more difficult to engage in the mass murder of organized social activists and human rights defenders, suspected revolutionaries from the intelligentsia and even worker and peasant activists who belong to patriotic and progressive organizations. But the killing has started and can gain momentum.

There is now a system of mass intimidation and mass murder well- established and protected by Duterte and this is now generating the criminals in power in the civil officialdom and in the security agencies at various levels. State terrorism is now flourishing and is now on the way to a full-blown fascist dictatorship.

The brazen line of the counterrevolutionary butchers in power is that all problems of the nation are not due to foreign monopoly capitalism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism but due to the communist revolutionaries and the people’s resistance to oppression and exploitation.

Of all regimes that have arisen since the time of the Marcos fascist dictatorship, the Duterte regime is the one that has complete contempt for the Filipino people and their revolutionary movement and is hellbent on using violence with impunity in order to suppress them.

It is not at all surprising that Duterte holds the highest regard for the Marcos fascist dictatorship. He is oblivious of the fact that it is precisely because of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the subsequent US-designed strategic operational plans implemented by their Filipino puppets that have given the patriotic and progressive people no choice but to take the road of armed revolution.

While he stays in power, Duterte runs the high risk of being destabilized and overwhelmed by his own abuse of political power as in the case of Marcos or by the crisis impact and debilitating consequences of the escalating contradictions between the US and China on economic, trade, financial, political and security matters.

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