Editorial:
Lead the emerging anti-Arroyo united front!

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo�s successive measures and policies that she has implemented with no regard whatsoever for the people�s welfare are further stoking the people�s anger. With the intense suffering she has wrought, it is Arroyo herself who pushes the people to take action to oust her from power.

Feeling the most anger at the Arroyo regime are the workers and peasants. Also incensed are people from the middle social strata like students, teachers, government employees and professionals who are angry at the Arroyo regime�s rampant corruption and their inability to cope with the intense social crisis.

Arroyo gravely fears the formation of a broad united front against her regime. Thus she relentlessly exerts efforts to divide the political opposition through secret deals and offers of positions in the bureaucracy. The fractious anti-Arroyo forces find it difficult to unite because they suspect their fellow reactionary oppositionists of having entered into clandestine deals with Malaca�ang. As for the generals in the AFP and PNP, Arroyo has gone all out to take care of them and is therefore assured that their loyalty would preempt any attempt to stage an uprising or a coup d��tat.

It is not the anti-Arroyo elite opposition that will supply the forces and leadership necessary to oust the regime. The broad alliance that will topple Arroyo will emerge not from the efforts of elite politicians, but from the surging people�s protest movement.

The broad anti-Arroyo forces will be unified only through the efforts of national-democratic mass organizations found at the core of the anti-Arroyo protest movement. It is they who have been the most militant and steadfast in opposing the corrupt, antipeople and puppet Arroyo regime. It is they who possess widespread influence and the capability to unite the various sectors, groups and parties to form a broad anti-Arroyo alliance.

There is deep basis for the people to unite in a broad anti-Arroyo front and launch a powerful surge of protests that will oust the regime.

This January, the Arroyo regime imposed a new series of burdens that further incense the people:

Through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the regime ordered the dismissal of 35 leaders of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU) in accordance with the Cojuangco family�s desire to crush the union and retaliate against the strikers. The regime�s neutral stance was proven to be a pretense when it used the full might of anti-labor laws to declare the strike illegal. It has likewise discarded the workers� firm demand for a `100 increase in the daily wage and instead ordered an insulting `12 wage increase.

This will not only further fire up the CAT workers to continue their strike, but will elicit broader sympathy and support for their struggle.

The Arroyo regime is going all out in pushing for a 20% value added tax (VAT) on top of other antipeople tax measures in accordance with the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and other foreign creditors. The move will only further raise the prices of goods and services. Meanwhile, the government continues to prioritize military expenditures and the servicing of its onerous debts�moves that will surely lead to the further deterioration of public services.

The Arroyo regime is likewise blocking the passage of a bill calling for a `125 increase in the daily wage. It is plain for all to see that the Arroyo government upholds the interests of big foreign capitalists to the detriment of the Filipino people.

The Arroyo regime has further clamped down on Moro communities in Metro Manila and other areas in a frenzied move to push its alleged campaign against terrorists. It unleashed terror and trampled on the political rights of the Moro people when it arrested without warrant 17 residents of Moro communities in Manila and brought false charges on them regarding an alleged plan to bomb the Quiapo fiesta procession last January 9.

The Arroyo government wants to create a rift between the Filipino and Moro peoples by intentionally inciting religious, cultural and political discrimination against the Moros. But Arroyo is powerless to prevent the growing unity of the Filipino and Moro peoples who both see the need to confront a common enemy�the oppressive Arroyo government.

These successive antipeople measures merely add to the Arroyo regime�s growing list of crimes against the Filipino people. The prices of oil and other basic commodities are relentlessly on the rise; bureaucratic corruption has worsened, from the military top brass all the way to the Arroyo clan; expenditures for social services suffer continuing cuts and social services have been left to rot; wages and salaries are pegged at extremely low levels; genuine land reform is denied the peasantry; militarism has intensified; and the ferocity of human rights violations is unparalleled.

Conditions are ripe indeed to provide direction to the people�s overwhelming anger. It is the national-democratic forces� responsibility to lead the Filipino people�s struggle and unify the broadest possible forces to oust the despised Arroyo regime.

21 January 2005
English Edition

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