"Still, the order keeps on keeping privileges"
Ever since Duterte has sworn to upheld the status quo, it seems that the president has been taking one step back after another in regards to ensuring the wefare of the people.
By being prodded by entrenched interests among his camarilla, and with the connivance of foreign overlords China and the United States, this step backward meant an ever growing skepticism towards the regime's capability to stand by his declared patriotic avowals; if not reducing all his stances as mere populism that can be resolved by throwing crumbs.
It may sound offending to his supporters, especially those who rallied under the terms "peace and order" and "inclusive development", but the reality of himself upholding the status quo diminishes the supposed goals of his statements, of bringing justice to its citizens, if not seeing an order that's based on fear- and that fear benefits interests ranging from developers depriving the communities out of their homes, compradores depriving workers for their wages and decent working conditions, and despotic landlords whose disdain for agrarian reform invoked their power coming from the barrel of the gun.
These oppressors, supported by the long arm of the order, may have assumed as for democracy and freedom, but reality meant all for the upholding of their privileges, especially in a fledging state that's capitalistic in perspective.
For knowing that the primary functions of the capitalist state are to provide a legal framework and infrastructural framework that is conducive to business enterprise and the accumulation of capital, its interpretation varies from those who favoring a state limited to the provision of public goods and safeguarding private property rights; to those who stress the importance of regulation, intervention and economic stabilization, all in providing the framework for the accumulation of capital and business. In the case of the former, the state's functions may also reduce even further to limiting the enforcement of property laws and protection from aggression, while everything be simply decided by market forces.
With this, especially in a semifeudal-semicolonial one wouldn't be surprised that in the name of "competition", "free market", "free trade", and othe related therms invoked by capitalists, that their desire for an economic order that's less or none restraint is been clamoured. Wouldn't also be surprised that in a time when people clamoured against the capitalist-order they demand a "strong state" to defend property even at the expense of people's lives. Do they think these people will succumb to the people's will? Perhaps they will toy the thought as if it is theirs the way they throw in crumbs and call it empowerment if not the classical charity. Scholarships, urban beautifications, and few hundred thousands worth of donations are proofs of these people trying to beautify themselves in front of an ever struggling populace.
And speaking of that, that present the urban poor communities at Sitio San Roque is still in a state of threat and struggle as developers like Ayala tried to occupy their site for their hotels and condominiums "all in the name of progress" that's one-sided. Of course, for the interest seeker these poor people aren't part of the market and therefore be evicted; but since their semblance of "conscience" wanted to appear themselves as righteous, they would throw in crumbs over these people just to evict them, of course there will be those who pick the crumb while the rest knows the fact that these people are trying to evict them from their homes and be sent to faraway places bereft of development. Wouldn't also be surprised when these developers use the arm of the state to threaten, coerce, even kill them because of their stubbornness, how ironic that the benefactor turns out to be a monster.
Aside from San Roque, the incident in Negros did involve interest seekers as they use the arm of the state in "controlling" dissent- simply because of farmers demanding agrarian reform and social justice, some of them even insisting that the land still controlled by interest seekers as been "under agrarian reform" yet the state chose to support the latter in upholding their interests. Wouldn't be surprised that bloodshed erupted in communities where the peasant problem remains an issue, aggravated by recent killings towards human rights advocates whose support for the farmers meant threatening their "property", and the state? Still choosing to support its fellow interest seeker.
These and more situations would say that the state as of this present is becoming an entity where interests tend to play on. Oligarch or the outside profiteer, there is no need to explain further why interest seekers tend to manipulate state affairs for the state itself is consists of these same people. Of course since they able to provide a legal framework that's conducive to business enterprise and the accumulation fo capital, they would do their best to upheld it even at the expense of the public. At times they would say regulation or intervention, but to think that in a time when neoliberalism and globalisation these demands less or no intervention nor regulation in their movements, that the "reforms" been made upon are meant to consolidate not to make changes according to the will of the people, that let alone the order to defend these "haves" even at the expense of the "have nots".
"let the market decide" as what they say,
"let the state limit their order in paying taxes to protect us" said another,
but as for those who chose to oppose their schemes:
"another world is possible, we have nothing to lose except our chains."