Editorial: Make the Macapagal-Arroyo regime pay dearly
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has completely ceded the Philippines� independence and sovereignty to the imperialists. She has thoroughly set aside even neocolonial republic�s pretensions to freedom.
She has once again admitted American troops into the Philippines. She defends this with a stance in imitation of her master, the bully George W. Bush. In rabid adherence to the new "Bush doctrine", she has subsumed Phillippine sovereignty to US imperialist appropriation of the right to intervene anywhere in the world in the name of the "war against terrorism." Macapagal-Arroyo has subordinated to the latter the right of the Philippines to pursue an independent foreign policy, and even her government�s constitution and laws.
She has revived the blind hysteria of the Committee on Un-American Activities (CUA) of the 1950s in the US and the Committee on Un-Filipino Activities (CUFA) and Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA) of the 1960s, where anyone who espoused patriotic and democratic aspirations was branded a "communist". Brandishing the same warped line of reasoning of the fanatic reactionaries in the US and the Philippines during the McCarthyist era, Macapagal-Arroyo has tagged as "un-Filipino", "communist" and "lover of terrorists" all the patriotic and democratic forces and people upholding national sovereignty and protesting the trespass of American troops into the country.
Macapagal-Arroyo is exploiting the widespread indignation against the Abu Sayyaf and the AFP�s inutility against it, in order to inveigle the people into accepting the intervention of American troops as saviors from hands of the Abu Sayyaf. Like the demagogue Estrada, Macapagal-Arroyo uses the harshest words against "terrorism" but conceals the truth that the Abu Sayyaf is a monster created by the AFP against the revolutionary Moro struggle. She covers up the fact that the Abu Sayyaf grew under the protection of the AFP and civilian bureaucracy, is in cahoots with the latter in criminal activities and the division of ransom payments and is always purposely allowed by the AFP high command to slip through its cordon.
To make it appear that it looks after the country�s sovereignty and to mollify protests against Balikatan 02-1, the regime sought the drafting and signing of the Terms of Reference (TOR). But, more than anything else, it is the interest of the US that was ensured. It affirmed that the leadership of the US Armed Forces (USAF) maintain independent command over the American troops in the Philippines. The US ascertained the right of its forces to "self-defense" while participating in military operations against the Abu Sayyaf. In the final analysis, the mission order from the highest command of the USAF would remain most decisive in determining the movements of the American troops.
As a mark of her utter puppetry, Macapagal-Arroyo doggedly defends US armed intervention, despite its clear illegality from the point of view of the constitution and laws of the reactionary government. Even a number of her own partymates could not stomach her all-out puppetry to US imperialism. The reactionary political opposition also assailed Macapagal-Arroyo�s brazen disregard, violation and twisting of the laws of the government.
The return of US imperialist armed troops to the Philippines and Macapagal-Arroyo�s shameless collaboration with her imperialist master again attest in the starkest manner to continuing imperialist domination of the Philippines. It shows how the US continues to use the entire Philippines as a big military base, despite the fact that the patriotic and militant forces and people have already junked the military bases agreement in 1991. Through VFA, MLSA and others, US imperialism is determinedly and continually conniving with the puppet government to contrive various ways in order to overcome the absence of a military bases agreement and make the return and intervention of US troops in the Philippines appear legitimate. The threat of more massive and more vicious US armed agression in the country looms.
The US-Macapagal-Arroyo collusion has rekindled the fires of patriotism among the people. This compels the Filipino people to tread the path of militant and revolutionary struggle for national liberatiion.
Resistance to US armed intervention in the country are fast spreading, as well as actions by the patriotic citizenry to drive out American troops. They are staunchly protesting by means of street actions, mass meetings, education, dissemination of propaganda, cultural presentations, signature campaigns and other forms of collective action. Legal bids has also been filed in the reactionary courts. Overseas, patriotic Filipinos and other anti-imperialist forces have also been launching mass actions.
At the same time, there is a need to persevere even more to reach out and explain to the people, organize and mobilize them in their greater numbers in order to achieve the broad unity of the populace in the fight against imperialist domination and intervention. We must counter the pro-imperialist propaganda being spewed out by the regime.
We must expose the nature of imperialism and its expolitation and oppression of the nation and the people: the semicolonial character of society and the puppetry of the Philippine government; the history of imperialist aggression in the country; the US' strategic economic, political and military interests in the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific; and the real objectives of the reentry here of American troops.
The revolutionary movement and the people must tirelessly fight the Macapagal-Arroyo regime�s espousal of US armed intervention. The people must act in all their capacity to make the Macapagal-Arroyo regime pay dearly for its out-and-out puppetry to US imperialism and betrayal of the Filipino people.
The people must act to prevent the Macapagal-Arroyo regime from remaining in power much longer, just as they did earlier when they brought down the Estrada regime. We must steadfastly keep up the struggle against US armed intervention and any other regime that will advocate it.
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