Editorial:
The people could no longer stand the Macapagal-Arroyo regime

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been quickly isolated from the people. In a span of a few months, disgust for the ruling regime has become widespread due to Macapagal-Arroyo�s failure to decisively address the fundamental problems of the people. The regime is becoming even more isolated from the Filipino people for its outrightly fascist, puppet and thoroughly antipeople moves.

The ruling reactionary political system continues to suffer worsening instability. There have been several indications that Macapagal-Arroyo will not be able to stay beyond 2004. It is in fact likely that she will not be able to finish her term and will be forced to step down even before 2004. This will result from the confluence and intensification of several issues, including US armed intervention, the economic crisis, corruption and conflicts among reactionaries and fascist violence against the people. All these issues fuel people�s action and resistance.

Macapagal-Arroyo and her technocratic economic "experts" cannot deny the existence of the intensifying economic crisis and the people�s worsening poverty. IMF-WB and WTO dictates continue to be enforced without letup. To deodorize her image, Macapagal-Arroyo has resorted to statistical sleight of hand and has issued lofty declarations and promises to the people.

Local export-oriented production continues to plunge along with plummeting industrial production worldwide. Unemployment especially in export industries is worsening. The reactionary regime�s "emergency employment" program is useless, with its creation of nothing but temporary, contractual and unproductive work.

Despite the intense economic crisis, the regime stubbornly refuses to grant immediate social benefits demanded by the people. It has junked the long-standing demand for a P125 wage increase and merely granted in November an insulting P30 emergency cost of living allowance. It has not taken any steps to implement genuine land reform. Instead, it enforces policies that favor big foreign agricultural corporations. Even its much-vaunted housing program is no different from that of previous governments in its resort to demolitions of urban poor communities to give way to the interests of big foreign real estate companies.

Macapagal-Arroyo has shown that she is one of the most rabid puppets of US imperialism in the history of the neocolonial republic. For the first time since the Second World War, American troops have been deployed to a combat zone within Philippine territory, which is violative of even the reactionary government�s constitution.

The regime has subsumed both its domestic and foreign policies to the US-led "war on terrorism". Macapagal-Arroyo secretly negotiated with the US and she and US president George W. Bush hurriedly cooked up the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) that further buttresses previous agreements that trample upon the Philippines� national sovereignty.

In its first year alone, the Macapagal-Arroyo regime has surpassed the Estrada government�s record in violating human rights. Macapagal-Arroyo has unleashed with full ferocity the reactionary military and police forces to suppress the people�s resistance and struggles.

Military campaigns are being relentlessly waged in the countryside. In many areas, deceptive "civilian-military operations" have been set aside. Barefaced fascism reigns and large-scale terror is being sown among the people. Growing numbers of people are forced to flee their farms due to massive military operations.

The regime, led by its military officials, has been relentlessly sabotaging and obstructing the peace talks. The Macapagal-Arroyo regime has suspended the conduct of formal talks and has substituted back channel negotiations to limit the extent of what the revolutionary movement may gain from the peace process. (See related article on the peace talks.)

The people are particularly incensed with persistent worsening corruption, especially with cases involving coercive business deals, anomalous negotiations and secret arrangements with big cronies like Danding Cojuangco and Lucio Tan and compromises with the Estrada camp.

Macapagal-Arroyo uses bureaucratic power the same way Estrada and other presidents did in the past, to grant favors to her own relatives, friends and business partners. Macapagal-Arroyo herself and her husband Mike Arroyo have been involved in such anomalies.

Within the short span of a year, it is becoming ever clearer to the masses that the Macapagal-Arroyo regime bears no fundamental difference from the deposed and despicable Estrada regime. Macapagal-Arroyo�s popularity has dropped at an even faster rate than that of previous presidents in their first year in office. Even the various surveys bear this out.

During the commemoration of the first anniversary of EDSA 2, only the government observed the occasion with rejoicing. The forces behind the huge demonstrations of January 2001, in particular, the organizations allied with Bagong Alyansang Makabayan and the Bayan Muna party, poured out into the streets to condemn what they termed as Macapagal-Arroyo�s betrayal of EDSA 2. Soldiers and policemen blocked thousands of demonstrators from holding a rally along Ortigas in an attempt to stifle the cries of a people agonizing from the suffering and brutality inflicted by the Macapagal-Arroyo regime.

Her out-and-out fascism, complete opening up of the economy, brazen bureaucratic corruption and especially her shameless puppetry, are pushing the people to oust the ruling regime even before 2004.

In this situation, it is important to clarify that the more important factor in any endeavor to peacefully overthrow the ruling regime is the establishment of the broadest possible front of democratic forces, as broad as, if not broader than, that which overthrew Estrada in January 2001.

Such a broad front must emphasize anti-imperialist issues and the problems and grievances of the broad masses of the people, especially the toiling masses; and encourage massive street actions by hundreds of thousands up to millions of people. We must be vigilant of those who would provoke us into joining coups d��tat or putsches with the objective of preempting the people from exercising their initiative and unleashing their strength.

It is likewise important to pay attention to winning over personalities within the ruling regime itself to unite with and join anti-imperialist and propeople struggles.

More than anything, the revolutionary forces, including the New People�s Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, must strengthen the armed struggle in the countryside.

The Party and the revolutionary forces are aware of their and the people�s capability to overthrow any reactionary ruling clique through peaceful means. But above all else, the Party is aware that in order to attain fundamental changes for the interests of the toiling masses, it is necessary to overthrow not only whatever reactionary ruling clique there is, but ultimately, the entire system they represent. This can only be accomplished through armed struggle, which will smash the machinery and bureaucratic-military structure of the entire reactionary system.

January 2002
English Edition

	Editorial: The people could no longer stand the Macapagal-Arroyo regime
	Conflicts within the ruling classes further intensify
	Macapagal-Arroyo regime relentlessly obstructing the peace talks
	With the affront to the principle of national sovereignty: The Peace Talks are in Peril
	Armed intervention by US Imperialism in the Philippines: A Reprise
	American troops: Basing themselves anew in the Philippines
	Opposition to Entry of Armed US troops spreads
	Mutual Logistics Support Agreement: New name for an old agreement
	Reports from correspondents: The 5th ID�s abuses in Isabela
	Reports from correspondents: 5TH ID Involved in illegal loggings
	News