Editorial:
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, number one hypocrite

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Statement by
Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal
Spokesperson, Communist Party of the Philippines
October 4, 2003

Macapagal-Arroyo is a foremost hypocrite for saying that she has been forced to change her mind due to "a higher cause" and make a "huge sacrifice" in accepting the decision to run in 2004. Her brazen mendacity before the people who suffer tremendously from her regime's puppetry, militarism, corruption and inutility is execrable. The Filipino people are painfully aware of the enormous privileges that Arroyo and her cohorts in power enjoy as she sits in Malaca�ang.

There is nothing new or surprising about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's announcement of her decision to run in the coming 2004 polls. The entire country has long known about her addiction to the power she has thoroughly benefited from. Thus, her erstwhile allies who know how to think have turned their backs on her. The truth is that it is Arroyo who cannot turn her back on the millions of pesos she and her husband have appropriated from corruption and huge business privileges. She cannot turn away from the whisperings of her god US President George W. Bush whom she blindly worships and serves, even as his own position has also become shaky.

And what will the Filipino people gain from Arroyo's desire to remain in power for another six years? Undoubtedly, it will bring more poverty and further suffering to the Filipino people. It will mean worse cases of corruption and more indulgences for the Arroyos, their children and cohorts. It will be tantamount to intensified puppetry to US imperialism and the exacerbation of state terrorist violence and military brutality against the people.

Arroyo's announcement will surely be met by the people's all-out resistance. As far as the people are concerned, Arroyo's close to three years in power is already insufferably long, considering the gravity and number of the problems that have weighed heavily on their shoulders under her regime.

Arroyo has betrayed EDSA 2. The cases of corruption involving her family, closest friends and political coterie are as foul-smelling as the grand-scale corruption cases of the despised and ousted Estrada regime. Even as the ruling clique wallows in lucre, not once did it raise the wages of workers and ordinary employees. It has consigned land reform to oblivion and has instead paved the way for large-scale landgrabbing by big landlords and foreign corporations and the reconcentration of land ownership in the hands of landlords, usurers and the comprador bourgeoisie.

Arroyo has betrayed the national interest. She has auctioned off the nation's sovereignty just to pander to the desires of her imperialist master and his armed troops. She has further laid bare the economy to rapacious plunder by big foreign capitalists.

Arroyo has betrayed democracy and peace! She has scuttled peace talks with the National Democratic Front and junked all signed agreements. She has made way for the will of the militarists in accordance with US imperialism's "anti-terrorist" doctrine. Demonstrations have been violently suppressed. Those who express themselves are forcibly silenced.

The people will surely repudiate Gloria Arroyo in 2004 — that is, if she even lasts till then. The people have manifested their extreme loathing for her, even as they have not much to choose from.

Only a miracle wrought by massive fraud, violence, bribery and maneuvers by the US can make her win the 2004 elections. Nonetheless, it is the perpetuation and exacerbation of the policies and measures she has been enforcing that will precipitate a worsening of the national economic and political crisis, rock her regime and ignite more intense and widespread people's resistance. Arroyo's obstinacy to remain in power will all the more challenge the people to overthrow her regime, and in the process, further weaken the entire ruling system.

07 October 2003
English Edition

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