"Expect the laboring folk fighting back
against Duterte's intimidation, repression, and injustice"
(Or: "All after the recent intimidations, arrests, and actions
that justifies the need for a people's resistance")
By Kat Ulrike
As in the past, the Duterte administration are presently engaged in the most aggressive advances against the Filipino working-class. In this continuing past of enslavement through the unequal treaties, growing crisis brought by rising costs of commodities and services, low wages and unemployment, and the misery of the masses, these fascists attempt, through unbridled demagogy and the shrieking of radical phrases under the banner of change and development, to win over the masses. This partial successes of Duterte-style agitation are the result of the past asministrations, which, through suppression of the revolutionary movement, participation in capitalist rationalization through neoliberalism and globalisation, and complete capitulation before the imperialists, have prepared the ground for this kind of demagogy.
It may sound strange at first, but with a truth such as an ever continuing past of oppression would say that with Duterte himself shedding its earlier "socialist" pretension to an orderist tyrant that benefited the elites he detested from his speeches. And to think that he is the Duterte who promised less taxes, take home pay, and more infrastructures that is, a continuity of past projects, He is the same Duterte who condones and encourages the elites the transfer of its burdens onto the working masses, by assisting in the implementation of unjust tax laws, by attempting to forestall and stifle all strike movements against contractualisation and unjust labour policies, the peasant question that still continues to aggravate in the plantations and in the haciendas, and the developmental aggression that trumps down rights of the indigenous folks and of the environment.
Quite praising to see numerous achievements like making infrastructures to those of free tution and health care, but to think that the legacy of this present administration still mimics those of its predecessors, the programs being bragged about are less to do with the promise of change, but instead that "change" being preached may've been a continuity of the past, of a debt driven fact that's full of compromises with the elites and of the moneylenders that forced the country to be at their mercy.
And now, with repression that's ever looming by its attack dogs and supported by its apologists, blaming the ones demanding justice for the "woes", is this the peace being presented as such? The recent strikebreaks and the intimidations, the imprisonments, and of various extrajudicial acts, these that pointed against the concerned folks is the "democracy" they all wished as such.
Obviously, given the use of social media and other mediums it takes long time for the people to get aware as these repressions in the name of the order continue to aggravate. With the recent events that showeth how the administration as just continuing the past, it becomes a duty for a concerned to resist. For history tells that the people will never yield to an order that's oppressive and regressive- and Duterte, who was once a "self proclaimed socialist" who trieth to appease people left and right has made the entire reactionary government bureaucracy into a counter-revolutionary, psywar, and spin machinery with his “Whole-of-nation approach” in an attempt to silence a resurgent people's struggle. Furthermore, he has piled up more than 60 former military officers to fill up his cabinet and other key positions which virtually transformed his government into a defacto civil-military junta. This venture diminishes the president's appeal of making change to the people through outright reforms, and instead reinforces the order that benefits his camarilla of interest-seekers.
And to think that with these people comes to herald their supposed concern for people's interests and welfare, the people, especially those who sought bloodied truths and repressions will not buy their rhetoric: For contrary to their supposed welfare and adherence to national sovereignty, these interest seekers seek to take public lands to investors, of giving up sovereign rights for so-called "agreements" with big power countries, of twisted people's interests to favour the interests of rapacious multinationals. Kaliwa dam in Rizal is one example, which trieth to trample the rights of the indigenous and the environment whilst presenting itself as a solution to the water crisis; the disuptes in Scarborough and the Spratlys with its so-called agreements with the Chinese exposeth the administration's reluctance to defend its sovereignty as opposed to its earlier "jetski" promise; what more that it did promised land reform in the provinces to end the peasant question- but only to be aggravated that feudal matter by the recent killings on landless farmers demanding land; And the ever-continuing matter of human rights that's haunting Duterte himself and his camarilla with his extrajudicial killings and be justified by its apologists as necessary bloodshed even it includes innocents.
Expect apologists dare to deny the atrocity altogether or justify this bloodied acts and repressive policies as a "necessary catharsis" that meant collateral damages. But in every action they've taken comes a response from the people themselves especially those of its victims. Be it from the drug war to those of the forced evacuations from their homes, expect a myriad of criticisms, protest actions, or even driving the broad masses to join the revolutionary underground with its offensives as they assert justice against those who stood against them, what more of distorting their view of justice.
Obviously, given the use of social media and other mediums it takes long time for the people to get aware as these repressions in the name of the order continue to aggravate. With the recent events that showeth how the administration as just continuing the past, it becomes a duty for a concerned to resist. For history tells that the people will never yield to an order that's oppressive and regressive- and Duterte, who was once a "self proclaimed socialist" who trieth to appease people left and right has made the entire reactionary government bureaucracy into a counter-revolutionary, psywar, and spin machinery with his “Whole-of-nation approach” in an attempt to silence a resurgent people's struggle. Furthermore, he has piled up more than 60 former military officers to fill up his cabinet and other key positions which virtually transformed his government into a defacto civil-military junta. This venture diminishes the president's appeal of making change to the people through outright reforms, and instead reinforces the order that benefits his camarilla of interest-seekers.
And to think that with these people comes to herald their supposed concern for people's interests and welfare, the people, especially those who sought bloodied truths and repressions will not buy their rhetoric: For contrary to their supposed welfare and adherence to national sovereignty, these interest seekers seek to take public lands to investors, of giving up sovereign rights for so-called "agreements" with big power countries, of twisted people's interests to favour the interests of rapacious multinationals. Kaliwa dam in Rizal is one example, which trieth to trample the rights of the indigenous and the environment whilst presenting itself as a solution to the water crisis; the disuptes in Scarborough and the Spratlys with its so-called agreements with the Chinese exposeth the administration's reluctance to defend its sovereignty as opposed to its earlier "jetski" promise; what more that it did promised land reform in the provinces to end the peasant question- but only to be aggravated that feudal matter by the recent killings on landless farmers demanding land; And the ever-continuing matter of human rights that's haunting Duterte himself and his camarilla with his extrajudicial killings and be justified by its apologists as necessary bloodshed even it includes innocents.
Expect apologists dare to deny the atrocity altogether or justify this bloodied acts and repressive policies as a "necessary catharsis" that meant collateral damages. But in every action they've taken comes a response from the people themselves especially those of its victims. Be it from the drug war to those of the forced evacuations from their homes, expect a myriad of criticisms, protest actions, or even driving the broad masses to join the revolutionary underground with its offensives as they assert justice against those who stood against them, what more of distorting their view of justice.
Therefore, in response to this ever existing onslaught, it is a duty call upon all working people who are still under the spell of the cunning fascist swindlers to break unflinchingly and conclusively with their delusion of order, to call for justice against their repressive policies and actions, and to intensify the struggle for national and social liberation. And also from this message it is a call for all workers to break with this cycle of old politics, unequal agreements, imperialist-feudal-capitalist trio that aggravates Duterte's continuing orderism and the slavery of the working Filipino masses.