People's Struggles
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) congratulates the Filipino people and their mass organizations and alliances, for yesterday’s massive protests against government corruption under the Marcos regime. Reports indicate that at least one hundred thousand people converged at the Luneta Park in Manila, forming the main bulk of protest rallies which include the Church-led EDSA gathering, as well as big and small mass actions in scores of cities and provinces across the country.
The mass demonstrations yesterday and the growing number of protest actions days prior possess profound historical significance:
1. The demonstrators marked the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law. This is a manifestation of how the Filipino people have not forgotten the abuse of power and thievery under the 14-year dictatorship of the Marcoses. The rallies are a reaffirmation of their determination to resist the legacy of corruption and repression that has been passed on to Marcos Jr.
2. The mass actions yesterday and the weeks prior saw the widespread participation of students and youth who were roused from the pandemic and social media disconnection and stupor by the brazen corruption of Marcos and his cohorts. There is now a burgeoning youth rebellion against bureaucrat capitalism and the rotten ruling system. They were joined by religious leaders and groups, urban poor communities, including victims of flooding, as well as small professionals, workers and other sectors fed up with the malignant system.
3. Protesters denounced Marcos as the King of Corruption and Fascism, for having enabled and funded the anomalous flood control and other infrastructure projects, in exchange for political patronage and billions of pesos in kickbacks. This goes to show that all of Marcos’ carefully schemed “anti-corruption” PR campaign to shield himself from the people’s ire has miserably failed—not even with the help of Akbayan and other accommodated politicians who have raised the spectre of Sara Duterte presidency to suppress the people’s clamor to hold Marcos accountable.
4. Marcos’ thievery has started to unravel with reports of him and Sara Duterte receiving millions in “campaign contributions” from contractors, later rewarded with large government contracts. While Marcos tries to expose the Dutertes for having pocketed billions in kickbacks from flood-control projects, he himself is now being exposed as having connived with senators and congressmen in their “pet projects” which saw funds released by Malacañang. With the complete loss of the people’s trust, it is only a matter of time that protests will further groundswell demanding the resignation or ouster of Marcos, Duterte and all their cohorts.
5. Demonstrations and other forms of action were held throughout the country, in the main cities and provincial centers, drawing the spontaneous participation of tens of thousands from all sectors and ages. In the coming months, the mass actions are bound to spread even to the rural areas, especially in areas where people have suffered from massive flooding caused by ill-planned and anomalous infrastructure projects for kickbacks. These so-called “development projects” serve the entry and expansion of plantations and mining operations, grab land, plunder the environment and bring about great hardships to millions of people.
6. As organized rallyists in Mendiola were about to end their speeches, a group of several hundred youths, mostly unemployed people, from working class communities, broke from the ranks and started throwing rocks at police, smashing billboards and lighting fires along Recto Avenue. This is by way of expressing their anger and fighting back against the fascist police who protect Marcos and his band of government thieves. These are the same police notorious for locking down communities and abuses against the downtrodden youth. On Marcos orders to punish the protests, the fascist police responded with brutal force and repression, arbitrarily arresting around two hundred protesters, with scores suffering injuries from police manhandling. These acts of suppression succeeds only in adding fuel to the youth’s fire of justified rebellion. Their acts of defiance yesterday at Mendiola were a desperate, but brave display of resistance to the death, despair and violence inflicted by the corrupt and fascist state on them and their families. Through political education, they can easily realize the need for militant organized resistance, and revolutionary violence as a means of fighting fascist state violence.
7. Yesterday’s massive demonstrations mark a strong resurgence of the mass protest movement with the national democratic forces at the core. These are the biggest demonstrations since the 2013 protests against the Aquino 2 government over the issue of pork barrel and the Marcos No Hero protests of 2016. This resurgence is profoundly significant because it comes after relentless efforts by state security forces to suppress, harass, Red-tag and violently attack mass leaders and activists over the past several years. The massive demonstrations are a product of both the objective conditions of economic and political crisis, and the painstaking work of patriotic and democratic organized forces. Even in the face of violent state repression, they have persevered in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the people and building broad alliances and networks, in order to advance the people’s aspirations for social justice and genuine democracy.
8. Marcos’ pseudo-investigation aims to cover-up the real extent of corruption and his direct involvement in the nefarious activities of bureaucrat capitalist and syndicates. The more that Marcos tries to avoid being exposed, the more that he pushes the people to go to the streets. The upsurge in the anti-corruption movement of the people is bound to gain even greater ground in the coming weeks and months. And Marcos himself will be at the cross-hairs of the people’s protests.
9. The widespread protests can accumulate so much strength that it can turn into a massive people’s upheaval and topple the Marcoses and Dutertes and all their accomplices in corruption from power. The Filipino people have twice exercised such power, in the EDSA uprisings of 1986 and 2001. The Filipino people must prepare for such prospects. They must also learn from past experiences and be ready to fight for genuine justice and greater democracy to allow them to exercise their power to fight corruption and abuse, until they have accumulated enough revolutionary strength to topple the entire system.
10. The rising protests reflect the deep-going discontent of the Filipino people in the face of economic and political crisis that beset the ruling system. It is a manifestation of the widespread sentiment of the broad masses of the people who suffer from corruption and worsening maladies of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. Amid the worsening social crisis, the oppressed sectors of Philippine society are actively responding to calls to end imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and struggle for national democracy.
11. The September 21 mass demonstrations form part of the growing rebellion of youth and peoples across the world. The Filipino youth drew inspiration from the recent demonstrations of young people across Indonesia and Nepal, and earlier, in Kenya and several countries in Africa, over the same issues of government corruption of high bureaucrats, gross social inequity, grave injustices and political repression. In turn, the September 21 demonstrations and growing movement against bureaucrat capitalism will also inspire and impel the youth and people across the world to rise up against their power abusers, oppressors and exploiters.
12. The protests against corruption will gain even greater strength as more sectors join in, especially the workers, the semiproletarian masses of unemployed in the communities and peasants masses in the countryside. They are the ones who make up the majority of the people. It is a certainty that they will rise up in numbers as they become more and more exposed to cultural and education activities that link the outstanding issues of bureaucrat capitalism and corruption to their concrete problems of low wages, unemployment, land grabbing, and economic dispossession.
13. The students and youth will continue to play a crucial role in the current upsurge of protests. To gain strength, they must go beyond their classrooms, learn from the masses, and unite with the people in the urban poor communities and factories. They must also go to the rural areas where they can have an ever broader perspective of the state of Philippine society. They must investigate and see for themselves, in the concrete, the ills caused by the rotten bureaucratic capitalist, imperialist dominated and backward semifeudal system. By doing so, they can transform their intellectual outrage against corruption into a fuller and long-term commitment to serve the people and fight for the aspirations for genuine freedom and democracy.
14. Beyond indicting the Marcoses, the Dutertes and all the corrupt state criminals, the protest demonstrators yesterday and in the past weeks are clearly seeking a change in the ruling bureaucrat capitalist and neocolonial regime. Their demand to change the system is indubitable proof of the favorable conditions for waging a national democratic struggle in the Philippines. The widespread protests have further strengthened the resolve of revolutionaries. They must work vigorously to conduct political education and expand the different underground revolutionary organizations of the National Democratic Front. Red fighters of the New People’s Army (NPA) are also inspired by the mass demonstrations and are even more determined to wage people’s war in order to realize the people’s aspiration for revolutionary change.
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