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Five grounds that show why China is no longer Socialist, much less Communist

Published on October 5, 2020 in Editorial

Up until today, and probably for more decades to come, China will continue to harp on having a system of an “advanced socialism with Chinese characteristics”. But even to ordinary tourists in China, what appears to mesmerize them is China’s speedy turn towards capitalism.

This great country, founded as a people’s republic under Mao Tse Tung 70 years ago, was a blazing icon for many of the world’s revolutionaries and proletariat, including those in the Philippines. China inspired millions as it initially transformed itself from a backward semi-feudal, semi-colonial toward a progressive and socialist country.

But in no time at all after Mao’s passing, revisionism struck its ugly chord; systematically it demolished socialism and restored capitalism. Now China is a fast-emerging imperialist power challenging the heretofore lone imperialist superpower, the United States, after the unravelling of the Soviet Union towards the end of the 1980s.

What has become of socialism then? It remained in China only “in words, not in deeds”. The Chinese “communist” leadership has become a master of duplicity, hiding behind socialist slogans, yet brazenly collaborating and colluding with capitalist powers while creating its own brand of monopoly capitalism.

The first thing the revisionists did a few years after Mao’s death was to thoroughly revile the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), so much so that until now, few publications, especially in the culturally influential “West”, write about the GPCR without choice insults thrown in against it.

Were it not for the succeeding Chinese leadership’s duplicity and use of force against genuine communists, the peoples of the world would have seen how Mao’s theory of continuing revolution (as embodied in the GPCR) would have continued to make leaps and bounds in modernizing and developing not only China, but perhaps the rest of the world as well, along historically unprecedented socialist lines.

The GPCR was the Chinese communists’ endeavor to ensure that the proletariat and the people actually (not nominally) rule; that they actually own, manage, and equitably share in the nation’s production and wealth. The GPCR was designed as a national check against revisionism, against the return in various guises of parasitic exploitation by one social class of another class—be they called, in the “West” as capitalists or, in China as Party leaders and entrenched bureaucrats along with their relatives.

The continuing attack against the GPCR and the reign of duplicitous Chinese leadership represent, at once, the monumental possibility as well as the tragedy in the struggle of the world’s proletariat. Possibility because due to China’s socialist undertaking it was able to advance in so short a time. Tragedy because its advance was cut short much too soon even though Mao had emphasized early on that the revolution is a continuing one.

We all have seen, or are still reeling from, the parasitic and fatal course of imperialism. How much more hopeful and glorious our tomorrow would have been, if our revolutionary struggles continued while a truly communist party and a socialist China both remained standing tall. As things stand now, we owe it to ourselves and our future to correct the historical injustice to the GPCR, while we persevere in the revolutionary struggle to free ourselves from capitalist exploitation.

For many, capitalism or imperialism is so ubiquitous and easy to spot. But imperialism as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”? The peoples of the world have heard, or read about, the garbage spoken or written against communism. Let us not add to it by calling today’s China “communist.”

For any reader who may have been lost in, or confused by, China’s transition to capitalism, here are a few basic communist traits. Compare these traits to the real world of China today, and we can see clearly that the Chinese leadership is lying through its teeth about being communist:

1. At the core of socialism is social ownership of the means of production.

Most of the land and strategic industries were declared public property, administered by the State or by people’s collectives. But the revisionists have effected major reversals. They have dismantled collective land ownership along with collective cultivation and administration. They have broken up and emasculated the communes and turned over their former dominion as piecemeal responsibilities of individual families. The revisionist State has closed down or sold off many State enterprises. Privatization, liberalization, deregulation—all neoliberal policies— have been let loose to gain foothold in Chinese agriculture and industry.

2. Working class leadership is paramount in a socialist society.

Yet the Communist Party of China, which leads the State, has turned into a bourgeois-led party. Long before it allowed capitalists—newly-minted billionaires at that—to become party members, the party cadres themselves had become bureaucrat capitalists. They dip their hands into public funds, enjoy and dispense privileges, engage in crime and corruption. Membership in the Party has become for sale, with huge payouts especially among bureaucrat princelings and billionaires. These bureaucrats thrive in a state of monopoly capitalism.

3. Public services and social policies are for the common good.

These are given priority in a socialist society. Yet under revisionist leadership severe cutbacks have been imposed on wages, food, education, health, housing, etc. Urban migration has ballooned as the landless, the dispossessed and the jobless migrants from China’s vast countryside converge in the cities in quest for jobs. Productivity has been prioritized over welfare and job security. Even the “right to strike” has been stricken out of the constitution.

4. Socialist and revolutionary values reign supreme in culture.

But the memories of China’s socialist revolution as well as those of other countries have been viciously obliterated. There are surmounting efforts to revise and distort Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The spirit of revolutionary solidarity and cooperation that previously reigned high has been downgraded.

5. It is socialism’s dictum to come to the aid of poor and oppressed nations and peoples towards national and social liberation.

But this is not the spirit by which China nowadays exports capital, grants aid, or lends to nations. Far from international solidarity, China has become one of the world’s biggest creditors and uses its power to amass profit and to influence and intervene in other nations’ internal affairs in furtherance of China’s imperialistic aims. It is increasingly becoming a major military power as well to protect and advance its imperialistic interests. It is expanding its influence and dominion in many parts of the world, competing more and more aggressively with other major powers for markets and territories.Though the proletariat in China and in the rest of the world have encountered this huge setback, the fact remains that, scientifically speaking, over the long haul “capitalism digs its own grave.” The capitalist/imperialist system’s inherent contradictions have been spurring recurrent crises that it cannot continue trying to avoid, to delay, or worse to downplay by mislabeling it.

These crises, which have been growing worse in each succeeding round, naturally breed resistance. Despite repression and censorship by China’s capitalist roaders, for instance, the masses continue to resist in the countryside as well as in the cities. In due time, Mao’s unfailing faith in the masses will ultimately prevail and turn the tide in favor of socialism. ###

#FightModernRevisionism

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The scourge of bureaucrat capitalism

Published on September 21, 2020 in Editorial

Through the years, the Filipino people complained of and protested against corruption in government. Every administration, without doubt and without exception, has been weighed down by corruption cases from the lowest to the highest level of public office. The only difference is in the amount of wealth and power amassed by those in position.

Corruption and bureaucrat capitalism is commonly understood as one, though the latter is more than that. Bureaucrat capitalism is the use of high public office to enrich oneself. In a way, it is a form of capitalism—with high public officials using their power and control of the government bureaucracy and enterprises, access to public funds, and the use of the country’s resources as capital.

The big compradors in public office—the highest and most powerful bureaucrat capitalists in Philippine society—include the president and some cabinet members. These high public officials collaborate with their cronies—family and friends—in the private sector or those called big compradors. They form or become part of the ruling clique, with the President emerging as the chief among all (see article Duterte: The worst ever).

In his lecture on the “Basic Problems of Filipino People” Prof. Jose Maria Sison explained, “They (families and cronies) personally benefit from the grant of concessions to exploiters of natural resources in the public domain, alienation of public land, franchises for the operation of public utilities, contracts in infrastructure building and related speculation in real estate, purchase contracts of the government, loans from state banks and insurance systems, endless perks and privileges through multiple positions and directorships in fund-rich government corporations.”

Prof. Jose Maria Sison corrected the notion that former dictator Ferdinand Marcos used his political power to industrialize the country. On the contrary, Prof. Sison explained, “all the enterprises that he (Marcos) and his cronies grabbed or built were big comprador enterprises dependent on imported equipment, construction materials, components and consumer manufactures as well as agricultural production and mining for export.”

Changing the president and the people around him does not end corruption and bureaucrat capitalism. Bureaucrat capitalism persisted even after the 1986 people power uprising, nor will it end with Duterte. Bureaucrat capitalism is undoubtedly one of the three basic problems in Philippine society, explicitly tied to feudalism and imperialism. The reality is that bureaucrat capitalism is so ingrained in the rotten system of semicolonial and semifeudal Philippines that no less than a people’s revolution could bring it down and effect real change in society.

Historical roots

Historically and currently bureaucrat capitalism has become a scourge of the Filipino people.

When the Philippines was still a colony of the US it needed reliable allies to advance its interests in the country. So bureaucrat capitalism is practically a handiwork of imperialist US. It found them among the principalia (local elite) of the old Spanish rule. The US colonial government made them pensionados while being “trained on governance” to lead the neo-colonial State. The US was then preparing to grant bogus independence to the Philippines and needed loyal docile puppets of the US. In exchange, the US showered them with favours, such as loans to the reactionary government and investments. It also trained and enhanced the arms and equipment of the reactionary armed forces and assured the reigning regime of support for as long as it was not a liability to the US.

What arose was a bureaucracy represented by big bourgeois compradors and landlords. They managed to rise to power through bogus electoral exercises where money, goons, guns, and influence by the US were decisive.

Obviously, up until today the government is run like a personal business enterprise. They use the machinery and resources of government for their political aggrandizement and economic interests. They extend the benefit to their relatives and friends under their political patronage. All these are at the expense of the people, who dutifully pay their taxes and other exactions for licenses/permits, services, etc.

Corruption and plunder

Graft, corruption, and plunder are among the obvious features of bureaucrat capitalism, swallowing up the whole government bureaucracy. Bribery is a norm. For every law, executive order or decision, including those of the courts, big sums of money lead to the pockets of corrupt officials. Allotting a large percentage of funds for public works for corruption is considered SOP (standard operating procedure). Many of these SOP are established part of the bureaucracy and strengthened by law.

Political patronage is very much ingrained, especially in public works projects. Relatives and friends of government officials bag hefty projects for considerable profit. Corrupt bureaucrats enact laws and implement projects and programs for the benefit of their crony-bourgeois compradors/landlords. These include land reform laws and building of roads, seaports, airports, dams and bridges. These cronies enjoy and served as dummies of bureaucrats for mining concessions and business corporations. They also corner huge public lands that they turn into subdivisions, condominiums and malls.

Lawmakers appropriate for themselves huge amount of funds from the government budget, for example the Priority Development and Assistance Fund (PDAF), a discretionary fund no different from the old “pork barrel.” They just keep on changing its name to deodorize it and deceive the people. The revelation by a whistle blower of the Janet Lim Napoles’ ghost projects funded by the PDAF and the list of legislators who shared from the loot had opened a stinking “pandora’s box”. This disgraceful and contemptible plunder of billions of pesos of the people’s money had exposed Congress and outraged a nation. Yet, years after, the plunderers went “scot-free” and even ran for public office again.

Bureaucrat capitalists also gain from government debts, dollar allocation, price control, import-export control, illegal entries and naturalization of foreign nationals, concessions in mines, ranches, timberland, stock market manipulation, disaster relief and rehabilitation funds. They engage in money laundering and stash their loot in Swiss or other foreign banks.

These bureaucrats are leeches who suck out the lifeblood of even the poorest and marginalized sectors of society. They grab the land from settlers, as well as the ancestral domain of indigenous people, through manipulation of registry and titles.

Under the current system in the Philippines, graft and corruption will persist.

Prof. Sison elaborated, “(the) acts of graft and corruption involving the violation or circumvention of the law or even the legalization of what is illegal and immoral can be restrained to some extent and within a certain period by criticisms from the opposition party that has loyalty to the ruling system and expects to take its own turn at engaging in graft and corruption. But very often, the competing factions of government officials can compromise among themselves and take their shares of the bureaucratic loot at the expense of the people. Even the biggest plunderers already convicted and in prison know how to pay for their freedom and proceed to gain more power and wealth.”

Involvement in criminal activities

Still, with insatiable greed, bureaucrat capitalists engage in illegal and criminal activities such as smuggling, drug trade, gambling, kidnapping for ransom, bank robbery, prostitution, gun-for-hire, etc., in collusion with criminal syndicates, drug lords and gambling operators. They are either directly involved or served as protectors of these criminal activities, the proceeds from which, glut their coffers to the brim as these are one of the biggest sources of their income. In fact they are accountable for the proliferation of criminality and anti-social activities as well as the spread of immorality in the country.

PUPPETRY AND TREACHERY

Puppetry and treachery

As puppets of the US, bureaucrat capitalists have served their masters well. Unequal and oppressive agreements and treaties, such as the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) were like prize trophies. These agreements give the imperialist US the right to continue its control and exploitation of the Filipino people.

In addition there are also grant of incentives and privileges, mining concessions, and land use for plantations. Economic zones for foreign business enterprises are allowed to take advantage of cheap Filipino labor. This is apart from existing oppressive labor laws—contractualization of labor and restrictions to union organizing and strike—as incentive to both foreign and big bourgeois compradors’ businesses. Adherence to the imperialist neoliberal policies of liberalization (retail, finance, etc.), privatization (strategic utilities such as water and power) and deregulation (especially of the oil industry) practically and permanently nailed the people on the cross. Prices of commodities and services skyrocketed and local investors lost their business or opportunities.

Apart from the US, another imperialist master is being served. National patrimony is also being surrendered to China. Government’s inaction is as clear as day on China’s encroachment in the West Philippine Sea (WPS). This despite the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in favour of the Philippines’s claim to WPS as a Philippine Economic Zone and that China has no historical rights to it.

Fascism

“Bureaucrat capitalism is the basis of local fascism,” stated Prof. Sison.

“More than any other section of the capitalist class they (bureaucrat capitalists) are in the best position to take initiative in acquiring despotic powers in fascist dictatorship in order to protect the wealth that they have already accumulated and to increase it further through the exercise of said powers,” he expounded.

Employing the dual tactics of terror and deception is a means to hold on to power and reinforce their rule.

Bureaucrat capitalists make use of the fraud election process to show a semblance of democracy as well as to earn legitimacy for their rule.

Likewise, by controlling the education system and the dominant mass media, they spread erroneous ideas about freedom, human rights, development and good life. They advance the idea that change emanates from within, with the person’s discipline and lofty ambitions, such that self-love is foremost. They divorce the individual from society. Marcos the dictator, during his time, even popularized the call “revolution is in the heart.” Bureaucrat capitalists impress the ideas of subservience and veneration to the ruling class and its imperialist masters. On the other hand, they continue to disparage the revolutionary movement and keep the people away from the revolutionary path.

To conceal their dubious intent, bureaucrat capitalists deluge the people with reformist ideas such as profit sharing, federalism, charter change, human security. They would appropriate public service projects in their names, e.g. Malasakit Centers that are well-funded while public hospitals and health centers have inadequate medicines and facilities and far-flung barrios completely neglected of, even just, primary health care.

However, when challenged, bureaucract capitalists resort to fascism in all its brutal forms as the masses dissent, act and advance their own struggles. This is the ultimate defense to shield themselves and their imperialist benefactors, their power and wealth, from the people’s wrath. In so doing, they bolster the repressive instruments of the reactionary State (the military army, the police, courts, jails and laws) to wield them against their adversaries.

For its part, the US beefs up the capacity of the reactionary army and police through training, provision of arms and equipment, and use of drones for surveillance and attacks. Likewise, the Philippine military operational plans are patterned after the US Counter-Insurgency (COIN) Guide. It is not surprising how assiduously the police would protect the US Embassy, and how violent and vicious were the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations and rallies held there.

The reactionary government turns rabid when the dissent is growing and the people’s revolution is advancing. It unleashes its most violent and brutal attacks not only on the Red fighters but also on progressives, activists, as well as innocent civilians. It passes laws or uses and twists existing ones to carry out, with impunity, raids, arrests, harassments, intimidation and extrajudicial killings.

Fascism is not a sign of the reactionary government’s strength. It is a manifestation of its weakening power and waning hope. Fascism intensifies in a desperate bid to stem the masses’ unrest and the surge of the people’s democratic revolution.

The bureaucrat capitalists have never learned their lesson. The people united will never be defeated. Ultimately, bureaucrat capitalism shall be swept in the tide of the people’s revolutionary fervor as the reactionary state is overthrown and the people’s democratic government shall rise in its stead. ###

Marcoses’ political rehabilitation bodes more tragedy for the nation

Published on September 20, 2020 in Editorial

Three decades have gone by since February 1986, when the Filipino people’s unified will and action ousted the Marcos dictatorship. Ignominously, the US imperialists plucked the tyrant and his family—along with their loot—out of Malacañang by helicopters, subsequently flying them to safe exile in Hawaii.

Yet today the Marcos heirs are back in the high circles of power. And the dictator’s embalmed remains—publicly displayed in Batac, Ilocos Norte for over two decades—was deceitfully ensconced in the Libingan ng mga Bayani in November 2016, courtesy of President Rodrigo R. Duterte.

Yet they haven’t returned much of the estimated $10-billion they had stolen during their corrupt, abusive and repressive reign. With such a huge war chest that can only grow bigger over time (even at conservative interest rates in what Imelda Marcos flaunts as over 100 secret bank accounts), they are being served/protected by a platoon of lawyers. They have allies and toadies at various levels of the reactionary government, besides a fleet of PR people, false historians, and keyboard warriors.

They thus feel secure moving freely within the same bureaucrat capitalist system that nurtured them in power.

The rotten system enabled them to amass wealth at the cost of thousands of Filipino lives and the stunting of Philippines’ agricultural and industrial development. It allowed them to spend five years of lavish and vulgar exile in Hawaii. Upon their return, towing the embalmed body of their dictator patriarch, this system welcomed them back into the fold as they gradually carved anew their fiefdom.

Twice did Imelda Marcos attempt to run for President: in 1992 when she lost and in 1998, when she withdrew her candidacy. In between her two presidential bids, Imelda won a seat in Congress where she served as Leyte representative for three years (1995-1998). In 2010, she again won a seat in Congress, this time representing Ilocos Norte, the late dictator’s home province and political base.

Starting from their Ilocos Norte base, the two elder Marcos siblings took turns being the province’s governor and congressional representative from 1992 to 1998. It was 24 years since dictator Marcos was ousted when Bongbong Marcos entered the Senate in 2010. Imee Marcos took longer entering the national scene. She came into the Senate in 2019.

It was in Bongbong Marcos’s first stab at the vice-presidency in 2016 that the family tasted their first defeat in what some accounts call their “spectacular comeback.” Unaccustomed to setback, Bongbong lodged an electoral protest he wouldn’t let go even after three years.

The family has now repositioned itself back as close as possible to Malacañang. But for Bongbong’s defeat at the 2016 national polls, he would have been just a heartbeat away from the presidency, a very real threat to the Filipino people considering Duterte’s multiple acknowledged illnesses. Had Marcos Jr “won” the vice-presidency, Duterte would have—as he has publicly expressed a number of times—opted to yield the presidency and thus pave the way to the Marcoses’ total political rehabilitation.

Undoubtedly, the Marcoses are a veritable example of bureaucrat capitalism. To this day articles are being written about how the dictator Marcos and his wife “smartly” looted the national coffers, put up opaque companies and seized stakes in strategic businesses, and how he “transformed” the military and the police into a unified armed forces to back up his fascist rule, rendering the armed services deeply partisan (for him) and more corruptible than ever.

Throughout that process, the US imperialists propped up his dictatorship. They armed, trained and guided the establishment of the armed forces for their own imperialist ends and those of their puppet tyrant. Marcos, “our ‘son-of-a-bitch’” (as then President George Bush referred to him) only became a “problem” to them when the people began protesting against the dictatorship in evergrowing number and frequency. The armed communist-led revolution was growing by leaps and bounds and had led the fight against the dictatorship and its imperialist master.

Marcos’ ouster will always be a historical triumph of the Filipino people’s collective power— both armed and unarmed, in the underground and in the open democratic arena of struggles. The ongoing turbo-charged rehabilitation of the Marcoses under Duterte, however, is as loud a reminder as we all can get that, no, the people cannot stop at merely ousting the current, abusive tyrant. The system that breeds such ilk needs also to be smashed. This system has proven to have merely continued the puppet presidency and imperialist domination of the country.

A corrupt system is bound to rehabilitate the Marcoses

The Communist Party of the Philippines, in a 2018 statement, sharply pointed out that the “successive reactionary regimes failed miserably to address the clamor of the Filipino people for swift justice.” “Every ruling regime allowed the Marcoses to return stage by stage,” it said. “None carried out a decisive act of justice, fearing this will rouse demands for the same measures to be meted against them over the same crimes they themselves commit while in power.”

At the outset, Cory Aquino, responding to insistent public demand, established the PCGG (Presidential Commission on Good Government) to go after the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth. But her administration emasculated the PCGG by ordering it to seize nothing directly and work instead through the courts. What the agency recovered, of course, was peanuts for the dirty-moneyed Marcoses.

The US imperialist’s rescue of their once serviceable puppet continued even after the Marcoses returned to the Philippines. The US government redacted transactions involving US organizations in their records. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) refused to disclose what they knew, reportedly prompting a veteran of PCGG to call the US and Marcoses “partners in theft.”

Most probably, the US possesses loads of damning information on the kleptocracy and rights abuses of the Marcoses. Not only does it exercise control of the Philippine state forces, it’s also been known to keep tabs on even its “allies,” according to a declassified report on the CIA’s eavesdropping on conversations of government leaders such as those of the Philippines.

With clues from the US and their latest puppet on how the Marcoses were to be cossetted since the late 1980s, Marcos died in Hawaii without being punished by the Filipino people, through their supposed government’s justice system. His widow, Imelda, returned to the Philippines with her three adult children in 1992. She was greeted by an avalanche of graft cases. But with their political allies regaining government posts, she never had to worry about jail time or threats of warrants of arrest.

Imelda was convicted at least twice for graft, once in 1993 for a fraudulent land deal and in 2018 for illicit financial dealings with Switzerland-based NGOs. But she remains free to this day. In her 2018 conviction, under Duterte’s watch, she was asked to put up bail of only P300,000, despite the gravity of the case and the amount of what’s been stolen. The conviction is turning out into a ploy to fast track the movement of the case.

After more than five administrations (including two Aquinos), more than 90 lawyers and personnel of PCGG placed at the increasingly frustrating trail of seeing signs of billions of hidden wealth — only for these to be whisked away before their eyes — and the precious length of time that’s gone by, the Marcoses still harbor much of the ill-gotten wealth. Some of it was divulged in the upheaval of disclosures regarding what are called the Panama papers, where the ultra-rich keep their money away from taxes and prying eyes.

By now it’s clear the graft cases against the Marcoses have been filed only to placate the angry masses.

Dictator’s final rehab under a Marcos clone

The impact of the people’s victory in ousting Marcos and the underlying desire for genuine democracy was such that it took the Marcoses more than three decades before bureaucrat capitalism could ease them back into Malacañang as “honored” guests. The Marcoses managed to do it under another imperialist puppet president they financially supported as candidate, who publicly claims he idolizes Marcos and looks back at his father’s political career as one that had benefited from the Marcoses.

And, yes, before we forget, a president who evidently wants to be another dictator and tyrant. He himself has already reprised many Marcosian tactics.

Despite his anti-corruption posturing, Duterte early into his term stunned the nation by allowing Marcos’ embalmed remains to be buried, after at least two postponements due to public protests, at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in November 2016. The most brazen of post-Edsa puppet presidents at helping the Marcoses, he nevertheless balked at personally witnessing the undeserved public pomp reserved only for a hero’s and former president’s burial. It took him a year before he set out again to glorify Marcos: commemorated him in postage stamps. The Duterte regime has timed its actions idolizing Marcos on the last quarter of the year.

Under Duterte the corruption cases against the Marcoses that dragged on for more than three decades are being thrown out one by one.

In August and October 2019 several ill-gotten wealth cases against the Marcoses, 27 to 31 years in court, were dismissed allegedly for lack of probative evidence (government lawyers only submitted photocopies of documents, whose originals are supposedly kept in the Bangko Sentral vaults), or for the lawyers’ failure to attend court hearings.

The bulk of their massive loot remains beyond reach of the government and the people from whom they stole it. Estimates of what the PCGG managed to recover ran from just one to two billion dollars. The precious works of arts bought with stolen money inadvertently would show in Imeldific photographs in her posh digs, but they always disappear whenever the investigators come knocking.

The billions they extorted from coconut farmers were partially recovered but each succeeding administration has made it difficult for the coconut farmers and real owners of the fund to fully recover it.

People must clip the Marcoses’ greed

Thus, looking at the Marcoses’ rehabilitation into power, it is not true that horror repeats itself. It gets more horrendous in Part 2.

Unapologetic, flushed with their success, the Marcoses are greedy for more. They’re spoiled believing they can get away with it, again and again. They’re coming back to do more of the same on a vehicle much bigger and ratcheted up by their original loot; oiled by the blood, sweat and tears of injustices of those they had oppressed; and covered by the same imperialist power that continues to lord over the country as long as their puppets dutifully run it to the ground for the benefit of their businesses and military interests.

More than three decades since the world applauded the Filipino people’s uprising that booted them out, the Marcoses have not been made to account for the thousands of human rights violations and humanitarian crimes they committed to maintain the dictatorship.

Now the maturing children, beneficiaries of the Marcos loot and their network of allies and cronies, are hovering about for another chance to take over Malacañang. They are intent as well in whitewashing their family’s crimes; Imee Marcos chose to head the Senate committee on culture. Like father like daughter, as he had faked his wartime medals, she faked her academic achievements (so did Bongbong, too). Whenever confronted about their family’s crimes, Imee perfunctority tells the Filipinos: “Move on.”

Against the Marcoses’ rehabilitation and whitewashing, against the current president’s desiring to be another Marcos, the CPP 2018 statement declares that theFilipino people “have no other recourse but to take revolutionary action and overthrow the ruling system and class rule of big bourgeois compradors, big landlords and bureaucrat capitalists.”

“Only by wielding revolutionary power—democratic people’s power—can they subject the biggest criminal and fascist oppressors to just punishment with full decisiveness and dispatch,” the CPP statement concludes. ###

#NeverAgain
#NeverForget

—–
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CRACKS ON THE WALL: COVID-19 Edition

Published on September 11, 2020 in Editorial

Instead of a clear direction and plan on how to protect the people, the Duterte regime is stuck on its militarist approach, no thanks to the generals that dominate the fight against the virus. Pres. Duterte issued a shoot to kill order against quarantine violators while protecting the VIPs of the ruling clique. He acted like a burdened leader looking for funds even as the government’s debt reached more than Php 9 trillion, acquired at least Php 6.5 billions of donations from private entities. He and his clique now keep a COVID war chest of at least Php 1 trillion.

Fully exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the crumbling Duterte regime kept blaming the people, especially the poor, to cover up its criminal negligence and its accountability in dealing with the health and economic crisis. Sooner, the Philippines may become Southeast Asia’s Covid-19 hotspot even as the economy plunged in recession, the worst in eight decades—more than enough reason why the people should OUST DUTERTE, NOW!

#OustDuterte