Editorial:
People's protests and NPA armed offensives will rock the Arroyo regime in 2005

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Intense protests and armed offensives will rock the antipeople Arroyo regime in 2005. Ever spiralling mass struggles and escalating armed offensives of the New People's Army (NPA) are the Filipino people's response to the relentless suffering wrought by the Arroyo regime.

The Arroyo regime is even more rapidly disintegrating from within because of furious conflicts among rival factions inside the reactionary state's armed forces. More and more forces are ready to join an anti-Arroyo united front.

This further weakens and isolates the Arroyo regime and may eventually lead to its downfall. The overthrow of the Arroyo regime is the only just response to four years of suffering for the broad masses of the people, especially the toiling masses.

It is the Arroyo regime itself that accelerates the process of its own collapse. The puppet regime is subservient to the dictates of US imperialism and the international agencies under the latter's control. It incites the widespread anger of the masses because laws, policies and programs favorable to big foreign businesses and their local partners have wrought unprecedented suffering on the people.

The Arroyo regime plans to further punish the people with a slew of new onerous taxes that come on top of incessant increases in the prices of petroleum products and other basic goods and services. The intense unemployment problem and wages of workers and salaries of government employees pegged at miserably low levels are intolerable to the people.

Amid the people's abject poverty, the Arroyo regime's foreign imperialist masters indulge themselves, extracting superprofits, interest and loan payments. The ruling Arroyo regime itself rakes in hundreds of millions worth of ill-gotten wealth from the national treasury and projects of the reactionary government.

Any opposition to these shameless and oppressive acts is met with further state repression, using the "war against terrorism" as a pretext. The past year has been stained with the blood of scores of victims of massacres and summary executions, whose targets have been unarmed civilians in the countryside. Brutal military operations, torture, bombings, ransacking of homes, forced evacuations and other serious human rights violations go on unabated.

There is even a plan to raise the level of the antipeople war by inviting intensified US military intervention in the Philippines. The political and material support that the regime receives from its imperialist master emboldens it to carry out more dastardly violations of human rights.

The merciless massacre of strikers and their supporters in Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) on November 16, the murder of peasant leader Marcelino Beltran in December, and the renewed attack on the HLI picket line this January where two strikers were shot are but the latest of the Arroyo regime's most despicable and cruel crimes.

Arroyo's hands are bloodied with the massacre in Hacienda Luisita. In the final analysis, Arroyo and her slogans "strong republic" and "anti-terrorism" actually incite military and police officials and personnel to shoot down workers and poor peasants. Arroyo is determined to suppress the struggle for genuine land reform.

In response, peasant mass campaigns and struggles are being boldly expanded and strengthened in the face of further repression, such as the massacre perpetrated in Hacienda Luisita. The call for genuine land reform reverberates throughout the Philippines.

The legal democratic movement is being boldly expanded in the cities and countryside. The worker masses are in the forefront, struggling for wage hikes, higher salaries of government employees, jobs for the unemployed, housing for the poor, and a decent and humane life for all. They wage resistance against policies and measures that cause widespread unemployment, casualization, violation of democratic rights and other hardships on the workers.

The broad masses oppose the unabated increases in oil prices and commodities. They seethe in anger over attempts to impose additional tax burdens and to trample on their social welfare. They invigorate their struggles to defend the livelihood, welfare and democratic rights of workers, peasants, other urban poor, professionals and intellectuals, small businesspeople and other classes and strata aggrieved by imperialism, reaction and fascism.

All these stoke the anger of the exploited and oppressed masses, raising their readiness to wage resistance. They are overcoming their fear of state coercion and violence. The people's widespread and intense discontent must be harnessed and given direction, and their anti-imperialist, antifeudal and antifascist struggles boldly expanded and strengthened.

They deliver their most powerful blows on the reactionary US-Arroyo regime to isolate and overthrow it.

The revolutionary forces expand linkages and alliances with groups and elements among the ranks of the ruling classes and reactionary armed forces that stand ready to cooperate to further the welfare of the masses of the people and to put an end to the Arroyo regime.

The Red fighters of the New People's Army are ready to boldly expand and intensify the revolutionary guerrilla war. The people's army is being expanded and strengthened. It will launch more frequent and more widespread winnable tactical offensives this year to further weaken the Arroyo regime and contribute to the efforts of the people to overthrow it.

We will turn 2005 red with the banners of a people in protest and the flames of the people's army's intensified armed offensives.

07 January 2005
English Edition

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