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Duterte and the Philippine Mass Media

in Countercurrent 
by Leon Castro

Since the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship, freedom of the press and freedom of expression in the Philippines have never been threatened as viciously as these are today.

As an important part of the struggle to oust the Marcos dictatorship, the 1987 Constitution of the reactionary Philippine Republic includes provisions to safeguard the mass media from attacks by succeeding regimes. Section 4 of the Bill of Rights eloquently states, “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”

Alas, such eloquence and grandness of purpose may prove no match to Rodrigo Duterte’s vindictiveness and viciousness against those he perceives to have an axe to grind against him.

Duterte’s attacks against the mass media apparently stemmed from a perceived slight. He has accused giant media conglomerate ABS-CBN of taking money but refused to run his campaign advertisements during the anomalous 2016 presidential polls. He also accused the Philippine Daily Inquirer of consistently running stories pointing out his bloody human rights record as Davao City mayor to ruin his candidacy. For these and other perceived slights, Duterte embarked on a vicious campaign and direct attacks against Philippine mass media.

A regime propped by trolls

Duterte started out by deploying his army of trolls and bloggers, led by a former broadcaster who himself had a checkered career before parlaying his political connections to land a job as presidential communication secretary. The regime hired and pays expensive social media influencers who have no qualms in putting out outright lies and disinformation to undermine the credibility of critical media outlets. The lies of the likes of Mocha Uson, RJ Nieto, Sass Sassot and other highly-paid bloggers have been consistently exposed, yet they blithely keep at it as they enjoy Duterte’s unwavering support and encouragement. They have replaced the likes of Jim Paredes, Leah Navarro, Cynthia Patag, among others, of the notorious Yellow Brigade of the past Benigno Aquino regime.

Paid online trolls under the direction of the regime’s black propaganda operators work round the clock to undermine reports of highly-regarded outfits such as Vera Files and Reuters and cyber-bash respected journalists like Ed Lingao, Raissa Robles, Inday Espina-Varona and many others with pre-formulated “comments” they did not even bother to change even as they were blasted on the same threads one after the other. Many other journalists have reported threats and harassment by either trolls or known Duterte supporters.

All too willingly Duterte does his part in undermining mass media and the journalists’ credibility in the eyes of the people. His arsenal of attacks was not limited to a steady stream of invectives but include outright false accusations as he did with Inquirer’s Karlos Manlupig. He also catcalled female journalist Mariz Umali of GMA 7 on live television. Woefully, his tirades are often met with laughter and approving applause by his blinded supporters. Duterte himself is his regime’s worst troll.

Attacks against media outfits

But Duterte’s growing tyranny has gone beyond verbal assaults. His regime is making good his threats against his perceived enemies in the mass media. Duterte’s threats to punish the owners of Philippine Daily Inquirer forced them to negotiate a sale with San Miguel Corporation tycoon Ramon Ang who is known to be friendly with the tyrant. There are rumors that notorious attack dog Rigoberto Tiglao would be appointed as the newspaper’s new editor in chief once the sale papers have been signed.

“Supermajority” minions in Congress are heroically aiding the tyrant in his attacks against the mass media. They have refused to table the bill granting a 25-year extension to Catholic Media Network’s broadcast franchise which operates 54 radio stations nationwide. In a statement, international media group Reporters Without Borders expressed concern that the “refusal” of lawmakers to renew the franchise appeared to be “politically motivated,” given the Church’s critical stance on President Duterte’s bloody campaign against illegal drugs. The Protestant group National Council of Churches of the Philippines, which consistently denounces human rights violations by the Duterte regime, is facing similar problems with its broadcast franchise extension. It too operates several radio stations nationwide.

On January 9, 2017, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) suffered a denial of service on its website, www.nujp.org. Prior to the attack, the group released a statement against President Duterte’s declaration that he was “playing” with the media. Duterte said in a CNN Philippines interview on 29 December 2016, “Nilalaro ko kayo. Mahilig talaga ako (sa) gan’un. Alam ng team ninyo mahilig ako magbitaw ng kalokohan.” The NUJP statement was flooded with hate comments from Duterte supporters.

In January this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting upon direct orders from Duterte, declared Rappler’s license as violative of the Constitutional provision on foreign ownership of mass media organizations. Despite the government’s legalese and vigorous denials by its mouthpieces, it could not be denied that Duterte wanted to punish the online news outfit for its reportage of human rights violations in the country.

In February, alternative media outfit Kodao Productions’ website www.kodao.org was hacked with a code injection attack that prevents its webmasters from logging in and its growing number of readers from accessing the site. Kodao said online forensic investigations it conducted lead them to believe the attack could only be the handiwork of top-tier hackers, such as those employed by governments and intelligence agencies. As the media outfit that most comprehensively reports on the peace process between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines as well as other social justice issues, the temporary loss of Kodao’s website denies the public of a chance to weigh in on the peace agenda.

Media killings continue

Much like when he was Davao City mayor, Duterte’s presidency is littered with the dead and wounded bodies of working journalists. A joint statement by the NUJP, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) last November 23, 2017, on the 8th anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre, said six journalists have been killed under the Duterte regime while eight have survived slay attempts and received death threats.

The situation can turn for the worse with the likes of blogger Nieto encouraging his fellow Duterte blogger to confront photojournalist Jes Aznar once he leaves Marawi City or trolls threatening Al Jazeera reporter Jamela Alindogan and Malacañang beat reporter Pia Rañada with rape. Just recently, Rañada was also banned from covering Malacañang simply because she is from Rappler.

Three libel cases have been filed against journalists under Duterte and four old cases have led to the arrest of the accused.
NUJP, CMFR and PCIJ have also complained that the Duterte regime puts journalists’ lives in danger by compelling them to participate in so-called raids that all too often end up in the killing of poor drug suspects. In addition, the police tries to influence how Duterte’s drug war is being reported. “Against their will, media personnel are sometimes compelled by police officers to sign on as witnesses in police anti-drug operations, supposedly as mandated by the law. Media team members are asked to sign on to the police’s inventory reports on the items that had been seized during police operations, in the form and manner that the police had prepared these,” the group said. This practice exposes media personnel to serious legal implications and real conflict of interest, they added.

On Sept. 13, 2017, the Philippine National Police, through its spokesperson Supt. Dionardo Carlos, ordered that spot reports would not be released to reporters unless the “head of office, his duly [designated] representative, his PIO (public information officer) or his spokesperson” determined that such release would not affect an investigation. Carlos reportedly said that the directive restricting journalists from obtaining spot reports was issued as early as Feb. 18, 2014. This goes against the very grain of another of Duterte’s campaign promise, that of freedom of information.

NUJP, CMFR and PCIJ said that the Duterte regime’s flow of official information has been mired in apparent propaganda. “Although a Freedom of Information policy has directed all offices in the executive branch to respond to requests for information, far too many exceptions and denied requests have rendered the supposed policy of openness a farce,” the groups said. They also complained of a remarkable scarcity of substance of the information fed them in official press briefings during milestone events, such as the most recent ASEAN Summit or during the war in Marawi. They complain of Duterte’s communication team’s cavalier stance in throwing around facts out of context, and dishing out partial truths, and even fabricated stories and photographs.

Weaponizing fake news

As the regime attacks journalists who publish critical reports, it also unleashes fake news to supplant legitimate media outfits to mislead the people from Duterte’s human rights violations, corruption, foreign subservience and other inanities. As armies of trolls bombard websites and social media platforms with lies and threats, pro-Duterte websites abound, publishing fake news that twist facts in all incredible manners.

This compelled the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to issue a list of fake news sites in January 2017, followed by a pastoral letter June of last year. After the list’s publication, some of these websites have been “killed” or their urls changed. Still, a good number of these remain.

The NUJP, in cooperation with an advertising agency, also launched in 2017 an advocacy website called Fakeblok that red-flags websites publishing fake news. This earned for the organization and the ad agency multiple national awards for confronting the fake news phenomenon that is being used with abandon by the Duterte regime.

But fake news is not confined to online platforms. Fake news is in fact wielded as a black propaganda weapon by the Duterte regime that not only victimizes netizens, it also abets the regime’s killing spree. The Philippine National Police (PNP) use these fake news sites to blame extrajudicial killings victims for being illegal drug peddlers and criminals.

But nothing beats the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in its mastery of news fakery. It starts from consistently issuing news releases filled with lies and conducting press conferences that twists facts like no other. The mercenary forces of the reactionary state use fake news to cover up both its many battlefield losses and its atrocities against civilians and their communities. This is never been more blatant in its handling of Filipino journalists covering the Marawi siege for six long months. Never was a news coverage been so managed as Marawi that very few reports actually described why an entire city has to be totally destroyed and hundreds of civilians killed just to flush out a handful of gunmen.

Thankfully, these fake news sites and its entire machinery under the Duterte regime is being exposed and the people are already starting to dismiss them as nothing more than lies, albeit dangerous.

Militating the press

Duterte is making the same mistakes his idol Marcos did during his dictatorship. He is not only alienating the mass media, he is making them his enemies. His toxic mix of tyrannical power and violence and public censure against legitimate mass media, on one hand, and lies and misinformation peddled by his trolls and paid hacks, on the other, will likelly revive the phenomenon called the “mosquito press” which contributed to Marcos’s downfall.

Responding to attacks against media outfits and reporters, journalists from all over the country are bonding together—organizing forums and rallies to condemn attacks against press freedom. More and more journalists are publishing articles reporting on the regime’s corruption, subservience to foreign powers, human rights violations and even the Duterte family’s incredible and tasteless sense of entitlement.

All these would only help bring the current Malacanang tyrant to his knees and help cause his eventual and inevitable downfall.

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REVOLUTIONARIES NOT TERRORISTS: Terrorist-tagging is old hat

in Mainstream 
by Vida Gracias

In early December, days after he terminated the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte formally declared as “terrorists” the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA).

But for those who have grown with the revolution in the country for almost 50 years, the demonization of the CPP-NPA started way back since Marcos’ martial-law dictatorship. In fact the reactionary military—then and now—never stopped using the tag “Communist Terrorists” against real, suspected or imagined revolutionaries.

The terrorist tagging has resulted in an all-out war waged against not only the CPP-NPA but against the entire Filipino people—a war that has combined all the worst features of past and present counter-insurgency programs.

People in the countryside have been inured to seeing slogans on billboards, streamers on walls of houses and trees pointing to the NPA, and even to legal organizations, as “terrorists”. The media, including social media, has been utilized extensively to malign the CPP-NPA. But no matter how zealous current and past regimes have been in such demonization campaign, they have failed to make the tag stick on the CPP-NPA.

Why so? Because the CPP-NPA as a revolutionary force is a far cry from terrorists, who employ armed violence and brutality in wantonly killing people and destroying public facilities and private property to foment widespread fear among the populace. The CPP-NPA uses armed force in a revolutionary war against the reactionary state to seize political power and bring about fundamental social, economic and political changes beneficial to the people that would lead to attaining just and lasting peace.

All past regimes have failed to crush and defeat the CPP-NPA. Duterte, after all, was never a good student of history.

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Mindlessly Mishandling the GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations

in Mainstream 
by Leon Castro

Like a poker game that he plays all by himself, whimsically rigging the rules, is how Rodrigo R. Duterte now apparently treats the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. He has mindlessly cast aside all the hard work that both his government’s negotiating panel and that of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have painstakingly undertaken.

Twice did Duterte arbitrarily cancel the fifth round of formal negotiations, in May and August 2017. But in both instances (as he had done earlier) he subsequently resorted to back-channel talks and agreed to continue the negotiations.

Up till the last minute, all looked rosy for the peace talks. In two discreet back-channel discussions in October and early November—to which Duterte had given explicit go-signal—the GRP and NDFP panels worked furiously to hammer out three draft documents. They had agreed, at the minimum, to refine and initial the documents at the fifth round and, at the maximum, to finalize and sign them at the sixth round in early 2018. The heads and members of both panels were already in Oslo, Norway, when Duterte’s order to cancel the talks came.

The three draft documents were: a draft agreement on agrarian reform and rural development and on national industrialization and economic development (the prime aspects of a Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms or CASER); a draft Coordinated Unilateral Ceasefire Agreement; and a draft General Amnesty for political prisoners.

Had the fifth round of formal negotiations proceeded and achieved its set objectives, 2017 would have ended with high hopes for continuing peace negotiations. And the Duterte government would have looked good in the eyes of the Filipino people.

Hundreds of hours of meetings cum negotiations by the Reciprocal Working Committees for Social and Economic Reforms (RWCs-SER) went into the drafting of the first document, which could have accelerated the entire peace process towards addressing the root causes of the nearly 50 years of armed conflict and attaining just and lasting peace in the country.

Common agrarian reform and national industrialization drafts

Over seven months of peace talks with four formal rounds of negotiations, the NDFP and the GRP panels were able to forge ahead in crafting common drafts for agrarian reform and rural development and for national industrialization and economic development. They held bilateral meetings during the second, third and fourth rounds—in Oslo, Norway (October 7-8, 2016); Rome, Italy (January 22-24, 2017); and Nordwijk an Zee, The Netherlands (April 4-5, 2017), respectively. In addition, there were no less than 10 bilateral meetings in the Philippines and abroad by the NDFP and GRP RWCs-SER between April 25 and November 17 last year.

On agrarian reform and national industrialization, there were nine sections in the common draft signed in Manila by the RWCs last November 20 and witnessed by the Royal Norwegian Government third party facilitator. These are:

Free distribution of land to tillers, farmers, farmworkers and fisherfolks and writing off of the arrears in amortization payments by earlier land reform beneficiaries;

The agreement includes coverage of plantations and large-scale commercial farms with leasehold, joint venture, non-land transfer schemes (e.g. stock distribution option);

  • Immediate and expedited installation of farmer beneficiaries;
  • Implementation of agrarian support services on production, harvest, post-harvest, insurance, credit and free irrigation;
  • Elimination of exploitative lending and trading practices;
  • Fisheries and aquatic resources reforms;
  • National land and water use policy aligned with agrarian reform;
  • Develop rural industries and domestic science and technology; and
  • Building of rural infrastructure, such as irrigation, post-harvest, transport, communication, power facilities.

Signed on the same day, the NDFP and the GRP RWCs common draft on national industrialization listed 10 agreed-on sections, as follows

  1. Use of the term “national industrialization”;
  2. Explicit mention of economic planning;
  3. Development of specific industries, industrial sectors, and industrial projects;
  4. Nationalization of public utilities and mining;
  5. “Filipinization” of minerals processing and trade;
  6. Regulation of foreign investment;
  7. State intervention and regulation;
  8. Creation of workers’ councils;
  9. Breaking foreign monopoly control of industrial technologies; and
  10. Financing through higher taxes on the rich and lower on poor, as well as revenues from gambling, luxury goods, tobacco/alcohol, and tariffs. The parties also agreed to set up an industrial investment fund.

The agrarian reform and rural development and the national industrialization and economic development accords, are parts of the prospective Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) Part III, under the title Developing the National Economy. These are mutually acknowledged by the NDFP and the GRP as the most important aspects of the peace negotiations. When finally approved by the principals and implemented, they are expected to alleviate poverty and inequality in the country—addressing the root causes of the armed conflict.

From both sub-agreements, the social and economic reform negotiations are expected to move on to the next issues, which are environmental protection, rehabilitation and compensation. The other parts of the CASER agenda include the following:

Part IV. Upholding people’s rights 
A. Rights of the working people
B. Promoting patriotic, progressive and pro-people culture
C. Recognition of ancestral lands and territories of national minorities

Part V. Economic sovereignty for national development 
A. Foreign economic & trade relations
B. Financial, monetary & fiscal policies
C. Social & economic planning

Part VI. Overall implementing mechanism

Part VII. Final provisions

Negotiations on the above issues are expected to be easier and faster, compared with those on agrarian reform and national industrialization which are deemed to be the hardest part of the entire negotiations.

Volatile GRP president

Apparently, all it took for Duterte to mindlessly cast aside these great achievements of the negotiations was his seeing on television militant activists protesting US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Philippines for the Asean summit last November. Were imagined personal slights arising from such protest action against one he probably considered a soul mate, more important to him than assiduously working to achieve peace?

Not long after seeing ASEAN protest videos on television, Duterte ordered his negotiators to cancel “all planned meetings with the CPP/NPA/NDFP.” Subsequently, he issued Proclamation 360 (November 23) terminating the GRP-NDFP peace talks. This was followed by Proclamation 374 (December 5) declaring the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) as “terrorist organizations” under both the Human Security Act of 2007 (RA 9373) and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (RA 10168).

Under the law, the proscription of the CPP and NPA as terrorist organizations doesn’t instantly take effect. The government needs to first file a petition with a Regional Trial Court to proclaim the CPP and NPA as terrorist organizations, which petition will have to undergo hearings before the court can issue a ruling. Yet Duterte’s proclamation and his military minions’ relentless campaign to slander the revolutionary organizations have opened the gates to more human rights violations, as happened in his notorious Oplan Tokhang against suspected drug users and peddlers.

His ordering the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the reactionary government’s intelligence branches to arbitrarily list down suspected officers and members of underground revolutionary organizations and of their alleged aboveground “fronts” can only be interpreted as orders for increased intimidation, abduction, torture and murder of legal democratic activists and other civilians.

In the latter part of 2017, Duterte did these things that expose himself as a fraud and a liar disinterested in peace as well as a tyrant in the exact mold of his idol Ferdinand Marcos.

NDFP determined to fight for just peace

Duterte’s lies and slander against revolutionary organizations, however, failed to gain traction among the Filipino people. The people have become aware of and disgusted over Duterte’s mass murder of suspected drug users and peddlers. More and more have also wisened up to his obvious subservience to capitalist and foreign interests, plunder of the environment, attacks against peasant and national minority communities, and his own family’s connections with underworld groups. And his lies against the revolutionary forces are increasingly being dismissed as hot flashes of a drug-addled mind.

NDFP chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison has remarked that the US-directed Duterte regime is daydreaming that it can discredit and destroy the sovereign revolutionary will of the Filipino people by proscribing the revolutionary forces as terrorist organizations, by requiring them to submit themselves to the sham processes of the reactionary state, and by unleashing gross and systematic crimes of terrorism and human rights violations.

The Filipino people and the revolutionary forces, he said, are determined to fight for national and social liberation, people´s democracy, economic development, cultural progress and just peace.

While the Duterte fascist regime may have terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, Sison pointed out, “it cannot be too sure that it will last long [in power] because the Filipino people and even those in the GRP detest the monstrous crimes of the regime, especially mass murder, corruption and puppetry to the US.” The crisis of the ruling system continues to worsen and the resources of the regime for violence and deception are limited.

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PEACE HAWKS LIE, Here’s Why

by Pinky Ang The on again off again peace negotiations—scuttled by the Duterte regime—can still be saved if the people

Challenge to the open democratic mass movement: OPPOSE A NEW DICTATORSHIP VIA CHARTER CHANGE!

in Mainstream 
by Angel Balen

On February 24, on the 32nd anniversary of the ouster through popular uprising of the 14-year US-Marcos dictatorship, coordinated protest actions nationwide centered on the call: Oppose the Duterte fascist regime’s Charter change proposals, frustrate the scheme to install a dictatorship!

The proposed charter changes, now pending in the House of Representatives (dominated by a “supermajority” of mostly traditional political turncoats belonging to political dynasties), are correlated with President Duterte’s drive to shift the form of government from the current unitary to a federal system. Such a shift has by itself raised doubts and concerns over the perils of the big rush to push it through. The latest target is before the end of 2019.

What perils? Three interrelated matters: The shift to federalism would enable all the incumbent elective officials (legislative and executive), so many of them corrupt and abusive, to remain in their posts throughout—and most probably even beyond—the transition period from unitary to federal. It would break up the Philippines into regional states that would add a new layer of bureaucracy, red tape, and political largesse and expand the powers of entrenched political dynasties and warlords; and it would enshrine in the prospective constitution the discredited pork barrel system, which would fatten these greedy politicians to no end.

From where does the threat of dictatorship emanate? It would be during that transition period—suggested at nearly 12 years by the PDP-Laban ruling party proposal—that President Duterte (as the incumbent) would be granted oversight power over all branches of government (executive, legislative, and judiciary), constitutional bodies, independent bodies, departments, agencies and offices of the government. In effect, he could exercise absolute powers as the dictator Marcos did for 14 years.

All the above should not be allowed to happen.

Other pernicious proposals

Moreover, highly pernicious to the national interest and the people’s welfare are the many proposals to delete or water down provisions of the 1987 Constitution. These provisions largely embody the sovereign, libertarian, democratic, and humanitarian principles and aspirations of the Filipino people that impelled them to struggle hard to oust the US-Marcos dictatorship. Among the proposals are the following:

  • Delete or water down progressive and protectionist provisions on the national economy and patrimony, including limits on foreign ownership of land, public utilities, media and educational institutions, and preference for Filipino enterprises and professionals;
  • Delete or water down provisions on social justice and human rights, particularly the right to security of tenure and living wage [for workers], agrarian reform [for peasants and farmworkers], and urban land reform and housing [for the urban poor];
  • Limit the exercise of the people’s sovereign will to mere suffrage [voting in elections], and the freedom of the press, free expression, assembly and redress of grievances to their “responsible” exercise; and
  • Delete or water down provisions prohibiting foreign military bases, troops, facilities as well as nuclear weapons in the country.

None of the above proposals should be allowed to pass. These are the most anti-people changes to the constitution ever put forward.

Three previous presidents—Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Estrada, and Gloria M. Arroyo—attempted to change parts of the 1987 Constitution. The first two attempts sought mainly to enable the sitting president to remain in power, the third aimed to allow foreigners to own lands in the country and open foreign participation in fields reserved only to Filipinos. Each attempt was frusrated by a show of strong popular opposition.

Because the Duterte regime’s charter change is far worse than the previous three, all the more must the open democratic mass movement endeavor to harness all available means to stop it.

Movement Against Tyranny

The above proposed changes to the 1987 Constitution are among those cited in a unity statement of the No to Cha-cha Coalition, formed on February 13, 2018, through the initiative of the Movement Against Tyranny (MAT). The unity statement bears a long title: “Uphold democracy, sovereignty, social justice and human rights! No to Charter change!” It has been circulated for signatures of endorsement for anyone interested to join the fight.

The MAT itself was formed only on August 28, 2017. Its aim: “To unite all freedom-loving Filipinos against tyranny and build a broad front to counter the increasing fascism and militarist rule of the Duterte government.” Its formation at the national level, with counterparts being organized at regional level around the country, was a timely response to the need for more unified and vigorous popular actions in confronting the Duterte fascist regime.

The formation of the MAT was coordinated by the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, which has been the mobilizing center for the multisectoral progressive forces in the open/legal democratic mass movement since its founding on May 5, 1985 (in the waning days of the US-Marcos dictatorship).

As soon as it was formed, MAT’s convenors announced its initial mass protest action: a broad-based huge rally at the Luneta Park on September 21, coinciding with the 45th year of the declaration of martial law by Ferdinand E. Marcos.

The September 21 protest rally at the Luneta Park proved to be a magnet that attracted people from all walks of life to join. Over 21,000 organized progressive forces were mobilized, but the unorganized and those not within the loop of the progressive mass movement exceeded their number. At the height of the activity, and despite the rain, the crowd rose to 44,000.

Students from various schools, colleges and universities constituted the bulk of the crowd. The rally also served as a reunion for veteran anti-martial law/anti-Marcos dictatorship activists and former political prisoners, who exchanged recollections of their experiences and enthusiastically chanted: “Never again! Never again to martial law!”

A report on the gathering by the online Bulatlat news website said in part:

“The crowd was a friendly, cheerful mix of old and young. There were school kids, millennials, middle-aged and seniors. Their placards and printed-out tarpaulins were witty, yet angry and committed to fighting the return of, or tendencies toward, martial law, against extrajudicial killings, corruption and tyranny. They clapped, chanted and sang as a group and many stayed despite the rain towards the end of the program.”

Movie and stage actors, professional singers, musical bands, and a full contingent of theater artists of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) performed. They launched a Filipino version of the Les Miserables musical piece, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” and capped the rally with the signature protest song, “Bayan Ko,” of the 1986 “people power” uprising.

The next big rally under the auspices of the Movement Against Tyranny was the December 10 International Human Rights Day march-rally. The bulk of the marches first gathered at Liwasang Bonifacio, then marched to the Andres Bonifacio Shrine near the Manila City Hall, where fiery speeches were delivered, interspersed with songs and cultural presentations. Before dusk the animated protesters marched with lighted torches to Mendiola near Malacanang Palace. There Duterte’s effigy was burned amidst chantings and flag waving of the various participating organizations.

It was at the Bonifacio Shrine program where a group of artists, journalists and other media practitioners made a call: “Let us organize for democracy and integrity.” From that call was born an organization named LODI, which has vowed to challenge Duterte’s public information machinery, fact-check his pronouncements and those by his aides and supporters who command an online following. LODI’s initial statement said:

“Duterte himself has led the assault on freedom of expression and disinformation campaigns, aided by a well-oiled machinery of disinformation peddlers and digital storm troopers. Duterte’s attacks on media companies whom he had accused of unfair reportage have been amplified by a well-funded social media army, in part underwritten by taxpayers.”

“It is not enough to call for a halt to government-led disinformation campaigns,” LODI emphasized. “We will expose these deceptions,” it vowed.

No more turnarounds for Duterte?

Since he unraveled himself as a fascist—a fascist compliant to US imperialism—early in his second year as president, Rodrigo R. Duterte appears to hold no thought of turning back or reconsidering the often rash actions he took on specific occasions. This is specifically so with regard to his curt statement, addressed to the revolutionary movement and the organized masses with whom he had earlier avowed a long-running friendship, even affinity: “I am your enemy!”

No more falterings and turnarounds that characterized his first year in office?

Duterte’s fascist regime has unrelentingly pushed its “all-out [counterinsurgency] war” against the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) since February 2017. That month saw the abrupt ending of five months of tenuous reciprocal unilateral ceasefire declarations, during which period three rounds of formal negotiation in the GRP-NDFP peace talks (that had begun in August 2016) were successfully held in Europe.

After a relatively successful fourth negotiation round in April (with the GRP failing to comply with an agreement, during the back-channel discussions in March, to restore the reciprocal unilateral ceasefires), Duterte began playing a go-stop-go-stop game on the peace talks.

He cancelled the fifth round as it was scheduled to start in May. He set back-channel discussions for the fifth round in August but cancelled these in July. With his go-signal, two productive back-channel discussions took place in October and early November, hammered out three documents prepared for initialing or signing. But on November 22, as the fifth round of formal negotiations was about to begin in Oslo to take up the three documents, Duterte ordered the cancellation of “all talks with the Left.” The following day he issued Proclamation 360 formally terminating the peace talks.

However, the GRP has not sent a formal notification to the NDFP Executive Council, as protocol requires, terminating the 1995 Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG). Once acknowledged by the NDFP, the notice of termination of the JASIG and the peace talks will take effect 30 days after such acknowledgment. Absent that, the GRP-NDFP peace talks are deemed to be indefinitely suspended.

Tagging the CPP-NPA as “terrorist”

On December 5, 2017, Duterte issued Proclamation 374, formally declaring the CPP-NPA as a “designated/identified terrorist organization” in accordance with two anti-terrorism laws of the reactionary government, legislated at the instance of the US government. That presidential act has upped the ante of state antagonism towards the Left revolutionary movement and the virulence of its “all-out war.”

However, the terrorist tagging or “proscription” cannot instantly take legal effect, no matter that it’s a presidential proclamation. According to the anti-terrorism law it invokes, the GRP justice department must first file a petition before a regional trial court seeking the latter’s approval. The process entails going through public hearings (purportedly to hear both sides, similar to public trials) before the court can issue a decision. (Such a process took five years to conclude, for instance, before a Mindanao RTC branch declared the Abu Sayyaf group as a terrorist organization.)

Up to this writing, the GRP justice department hasn’t filed a petition. Yet the state security forces have already exploited Proclamation 374 to intensify their villification attacks on the CPP-NPA and against legal progressive organizations that they obdurately tag as “fronts” or “supporters” of the CPP-NPA. During a successful jeepney drivers’ strike against the government’s costly motor vehicle modernization program, called by Piston and supported by the Kilusang Mayo and the human rights alliance Karapatan, Duterte himself accused the three organizations of being allied with the CPP-NPA. He erroneously threatened to charge them with rebellion—of rising up in arms against the government).

Pleased with himself

As matters stand, Duterte appears pleased with himself and with what he has been doing and saying (repeatedly before various audiences around the country) to harass, insult and threaten his perceived enemies. Among his frequent targets for vitriol are human rights defenders, within the country and abroad. He brushes aside their call for a stop to the extrajudicial killings (both in carrying out his “war on illegal drugs” and the counterinsurgency campaign) and for justice to the victims of human rights violations.

When peasants from Mindanao, Visayas, and Luzon undertook a 10-day journey to Manila to demand fulfillment of his promises to them and to stop the killing of farmers (at the time the victims numbered 99, now 111), Duterte desisted from meeting with them. He didn’t make any statement at all. He also ignored the pleas of the Moros and indigenous peoples of Mindanao (Duterte’s home region), who had likewise journeyed for several days, encamped at the University of the Philippines Diliman campus for over a month, and rallied before the AFP headquarters and various government offices. They demanded positive actions on their problems, among others an end to the militarization of their communities, the shutdown of their schools, and the lifting of martial law in Mindanao.

Vis-à-vis organized labor, Duterte has hedged on signing an Executive Order abolishing contractualization (one of his electoral campaign promises), which he had asked the combined conservative and militant trade union formations to draft and which the secretary of labor has already approved.

Expressing irritation over media reports critical of his governance and pronouncements, Duterte routinely made veiled threats to certain journalists and media establishments, and caused the issuance of an order to close down a leading online news website, Rappler.

Duterte has spoken most venomously and disparagingly against the New People’s Army, accusing the latter of continually killing “my soldiers and my policemen.” After dining in Malacanang with alleged “former leftist rebels,” he facetiously suggested that women revolutionary fighters shouldn’t be killed but should be shot in their genitals to render them “useless”. And speaking to representatives of indigenous people’s tribes assembled by the military in Davao, he instigated them to kill NPA Red fighters, instead of joining or supporting them. He even offered to pay P20,000 (later increasing it to P25,000) as reward for every NPA member they could kill—who could very well be a fellow tribesman. (Duterte had earlier claimed that 90 percent of the NPA members in one Mindanao area are indigenous people.)

Puppetry to US imperialism

Regarding the fascist Duterte being a compliant vassal or puppet of US imperialism, here’s a stark proof.

A US government report issued last month confirmed that, back in September 2017, the Trump administration had launched Operation Pacific Eagle as the US military’s “new” overseas contingency operations in the Asia-Pacific region. And it got the Duterte regime to complicitly agree to allow American special operations forces to accompany AFP troops in ALL their missions against violent “extremist” or “terrorist” armed groups, especially in Mindanao.

Actually, Operation Pacific Eagle is a revival of George W. Bush’s Operation Enduring Freedom in his notorious “war on terror” that began in the last quarter of 2001.

During the so-called siege of Marawi by alleged Islamic State affiliates, the Maute and Hapilon-led Abu Sayyaf groups, the US military played a key role in using sophisticated aircraft and drones to identify targets for the daily aerial bombings and artillery bombardment that flattened Marawi City. Duterte was fulsome in thanking them. The Americans has exploited as a convenient justification for launching Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines the need for US troops to continue supporting the Duterte regime in suppressing the remnants of the alleged IS affiliates that it claims have regrouped and are aggressively recruiting new members in Mindanao.

In turn, having declared the CPP-NPA as a “terrorist organization,” the Duterte regime likewise has found it convenient to allow fully-armed American special operation troops to be directly involved in carrying out its counterinsurgency program, deviously misnamed Oplan Kapayapaan, against the CPP-NPA. It so happens that the bulk of the armed strength of the CPP-NPA is in Mindanao. Thus, it’s there where the AFP has been concentrating much of its counterinsurgency resources and operations. Oplan Kapayapaan will now be conflated with the “anti-terrorism” campaign against the alleged IS affiliates.

Taking advantage of martial law

Those who launched Operation Pacific Eagle in a low-key manner in September, without publicly announcing its nature and implications, took advantage of the extended implementation of martial law in Mindanao. Martial law has been in effect in the whole of Mindanao since Duterte imposed it in May 2017 in connection with the “siege of Marawi.” Despite the ending of the five-month devastating war in Marawi, military rule has been extended up to the end of 2018. Although the claimed regrouping and recruitment of the alleged IS affiliates was invoked as primary basis, the strong presence of the NPA in the region has been anomalously added as basis to justify the extension.

Duterte has even warned that if the CPP-NPA stepped up armed operations elsewhere in the country he wouldn’t hesitate to declare martial law nationwide.

With these developments, more American troop infusions and more military facilities construction inside Philippine military bases and camps (allowed under the EDCA) can be expected in the coming months or years. It’s not farfetched that such military facilities buildup will be utilized as platforms by the Trump administration for launching military interventionist actions in any country in Asia-Pacific. Such US aggression from US facilities here can implicate the Philippines. Extended US military basing in the country (without a formal bases agreement) can also boost America’s capability for military maneuvers vis-à-vis its rival China over military and geopolitical dominance in the South China Sea and further in the Asia-Pacific region.

Definitely, these developments pose a challenge to the open democratic mass movement to strengthen its anti-imperialist flank before Operation Pacific Eagle can put in place its military interventionist programs. A vigorous campaign against Trump’s reviving in Asia-Pacific Bush-era’s Operation Enduring Freedom can logically be fused with the No to Charter Change campaign, specifically as it connects with the existing constitutional ban on foreign military bases, troops and facilities in the Philippines.###

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