1. The people's victory against the Estrada regime
The Filipino people and the revolutionary forces are joyous over the overthrow of Estrada and his ruling clique. This is a brilliant victory. It demonstrates the power of the people to isolate and topple a corrupt and repressive regime that is servile to US imperialism.
The Party was certain of this victory when on its 32nd anniversary of reestablishment it made the call, "Mobilize the broad masses of the people to deliver the death blow to the Estrada regime!" Since October last year, the regime had become thoroughly isolated and had gone into a process of rapid disintegration.
This is a result of the resolute and militant struggle of the people and the broad united front against the regime. The broad masses of the people rose up against the servility of the regime to US imperialism and against its extreme corruption and repressiveness.
The legal democratic mass movement had long persevered in the struggle against the US-directed Estrada regime since the beginning. It would eventually mobilize 1.8 million people at Edsa, millions nationwide and the 75,000 that marched on to and encircled the presidential palace to compel Estrada to abandon his throne. Most of them were young people.
The call for at least one million people to lay siege on the palace worked effectively to break Estrada�s bravado. Upon sight of tens of thousands of people, who ignored the call of the reactionaries to keep away from the palace, Estrada turned tail and hastily fled the palace. Had he tried to stay a day longer, he would have been directly encircled by more than a million people and probably arrested. | The Party was certain of this victory when on its 32nd anniversary of reestablishment it made the call, "Mobilize the broad masses of the people to deliver the death blow to the Estrada regime!" |
He fell from power completely on January 20, 2001, four days after the pro-Estrada Senate majority ignited overwhelming public indignation by voting against the opening of a second envelope containing his secret bank accounts. But he would have been removed from power earlier within December had resources been available to the forces of the national democratic movement to mobilize a big core of organized masses from Metro Manila, Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog to encircle the presidential palace.
The process of overthrowing Estrada involved not only political and organizational methods like issuing political statements, holding buildup meetings, marching to converging points and delivering speeches. Cultural groups made a major contribution by producing songs, band music, theatrical performances on the streets and on stage, cartoons and murals in order to raise the awareness and fighting spirit of the people.
Old and new methods of communications were used. Printing presses and photocopying machines worked overtime. Radio and TV broadcasts covering the issues and events related to the movement to oust Estrada held the attention of tens of millions of people daily. For several months, one radio station dedicated itself to the broadcast of anti-Estrada statements and music. Cell phone texting rapidly spread slogans and satirical jokes. Through e-mail, newspaper websites and webcasts, developments in the anti-Estrada movement reached national and international audiences.
The campaign to isolate Estrada was thoroughgoing. Progressive members of the clergy carried the anti-Estrada message in their sermons and liturgy. They neutralized El Shaddai as the main crowd supplier of Estrada. People blockaded and picketed the mansions of his mistresses, the offices of crony firms and banks and the houses of his diehard political cronies. Unable to bear the heat of mass protests, his closest friends of convenience turned against him.
Since the beginning of his regime, Estrada had earned the people�s outrage for flaunting the patronage of the hated Marcoses and the biggest of Marcos cronies and enriching himself and his wives with public funds and bribe money from criminal syndicates. He had grievously violated national sovereignty and territorial integrity through the ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement.
He attempted but failed to have the 1987 GRP constitution amended and he pushed legislation to further sell out economic sovereignty and national patrimony to the foreign monopolies. He allowed the oil firms and other foreign monopoly firms to ride roughshod over the people.
The despicable characteristics of the fallen regime are all manifestations of the rottenness of the entire ruling system. While Estrada feasted on the spoils of power, he was actually vulnerable to being overthrown because of the ever-worsening crisis of the system, the increasingly bitter contradictions among the reactionaries and the upsurge of the revolutionary mass movement.
Estrada served the interests of US imperialism and was given the latitude for corruption and cronyism. But he was also predetermined and circumscribed by the neoliberal dogma of "free market" globalization and by the rapidly dwindling resources. The economy was laid prostrate by superprofittaking by the imperialist firms and banks, the aggravation of local exploitation and oppression, bureaucratic corruption and mounting budgetary and trade deficits and local and foreign indebtedness of the state.
After 20 years of wanton foreign borrowing by the Marcos regime under the Keynesian policy dictates of the IMF and World Bank for public works and raw-material production-for-export, the Philippines has been subjected to the more rapacious "free market" policy dictates of the IMF and WTO.
The Aquino regime laid the ground for liberalization, privatization and deregulation and abused local public borrowing. The Ramos regime went full blast on making an artificial boom with low value-added semimanufacturing and private construction by going into unprecedented rates of local and foreign borrowing until the bubble of the "emerging market" burst in the Philippines and the whole of Southeast Asia in 1997.
By the time Estrada came to power in 1998, the economy had been bankrupted by previous regimes and had sunk deeper into semifeudal underdevelopment. The illusion of "high" growth rates during the Marcos and Ramos regimes were conjured by rapid foreign borrowing and overconsumption by the exploiting classes. Estrada�s political vulnerability, as a result of the worsening socioeconomic crisis, was aggravated by the shameless rapacity of his clique.
His pro-poor populist demagoguery was a big joke from the very start. He could not even pretend to be for national industrial development, land reform and improving the livelihood of the people. His imperialist masters prohibited him from speaking against the "free market" dogma. Thus, his program of "development" stood out as one of plundering the economy, promoting gambling and building mansions for his several families.
The crisis of the world capitalist system generated the socioeconomic crisis of the domestic ruling system. In turn, the latter crisis generated the political crisis and made the contradictions among the reactionaries more bitter than before. Amidst the socioeconomic and political crisis, the corruption of the Estrada ruling clique became conspicuous.
Indeed, the ruling clique tended to monopolize the spoils of power against other sections of the exploiting classes. The comprador big bourgeois patrons of the bureaucrat capitalists recovered their sequestered assets, raided the public treasury and pension funds, cornered state contracts, engaged in technical smuggling and evaded taxes.
In the military and police, a small clique of police officers in a presidential task force became favored in the most scandalous manner with huge intelligence funds and opportunities for criminal enrichment. Their task was supposedly to combat organized crime but they operated or coddled criminal syndicates engaged in gambling, drug pushing, kidnap-for-ransom, smuggling, prostitution and other vices.
Estrada�s personal rapacity knew no bounds. He required his cronies to give him advance payments of huge kickbacks amounting to far more than his "fair share" of the loot in pork barrel fund distribution, state purchase contracts, corporate mergers using pension funds, stock market scams and illegal numbers game (jueteng) and other criminal operations.
It was only a matter of time before a crony or gangmate would feel threatened and aggrieved enough to stand up and blow the whistle on him. Thus did governor Luis Singson, one among his innermost circle of cronies. From the very depths of his venal rule, Estrada was turned inside out. Public indignation led to the rapid disintegration of his ruling clique. It became possible for the House of Representatives to impeach him and the Senate to put him on trial.
Peaceful, militant and gigantic mass actions brought down the regime in so short a time because the line of the broad united front succeeded in uniting various political forces of the Left, Middle and anti-Estrada Right to concentrate their fire on Estrada. All of them agreed and moved to demand his ouster or resignation. The consistent mass protests of the national democratic movement provided the broad united front with a strong foundation.
The patriotic and progressive forces of the Left and Middle included the Erap Resign Movement, Bayan, Bayan Muna, Kilusang Mayo Uno, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Pamalakaya, Migrante, Gabriela, Erap Resign Youth Movement, Anakbayan, League of Filipino Students, National Union of Students of the Philippines, College Editors� Guild of the Philippines, CONTEND, ACT, Karapatan, Promotion of Church People�s Response, Kairos, OUSTER, Health Alliance for Democracy, Concerned Artists of the Philippines, ProGay and so many organizations of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie. In scores of countries, Bayan International and Migrante International led a wide range of organizations of overseas Filipinos under the banner of the Erap Resign Movement.
The anti-Estrada reactionary forces included the high officialdom of the Catholic and other churches, the Makati Business Club and other business organizations, Kompil II (a small group capitalizing on the name of Cardinal Sin and former president Aquino), the Council of Philippine Affairs (associated with Jose Cojuangco, Jr.), the People�s Consultative Assembly (associated with former president Ramos), the Federation of Retired Commissioned and Enlisted Soldiers (also Ramos-lining), Kangkong Brigade (anti-Estrada local officials in Metro Manila, Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon) and the United Opposition, a makeshift combination of such political parties as Reporma, Promdi and the Lakas-NUCD which then vice-president Macapagal-Arroyo put up to show that she had some base to stand on. | To avoid the pitfall of Right opportunism, the forces of the national democratic movement maintained their independence and initiative. |
Clandestine work was conducted among the military and police officers in order to turn them against Estrada and a few diehard loyalists headed by Gen. Panfilo Lacson. Key personalities of the anti-Estrada Right worked on officers at the highest level. So did key activists of the Middle and Left forces on officers at all levels, especially at the middle and lower levels. The officers were urged to withdraw support from Estrada, respect the people�s right to assemble and not to take power into their own hands.
As in the overthrow of Marcos, the US and the US-controlled multilateral agencies, like the IMF and World Bank, decided to drop Estrada like a hot potato in the face of the broad united front against him. The US called some generals to Washington in October 2000 for a crisis management meeting and sent out the word that the military and police forces would not attack peaceful mass actions. The US gave the advice to vice-president Macapagal-Arroyo to resign from the Estrada cabinet.
The IMF loudly decried Estrada�s inability to collect more taxes and to stay within limits in defi cit spending. It declared an international credit squeeze on the regime. The World Bank also decried the excessively high rate of corruption, eating up nearly half of the government budget. It sounded as if corruption were not the reward for puppetry. Even the spokesmen and analysts of investment houses and banks spoke out against the regime through the international and domestic bourgeois mass media.
The Party correctly promoted the line of the broad united front in order to arouse and mobilize at the soonest possible time the broadest possible range of forces against the narrowest target. The full range of the united front went into play: the basic alliance of the workers and peasants, the progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the positive alliance of the progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie and alliance with the anti-Estrada reactionaries for the purpose of taking advantage of the splits among the reactionaries and isolating and destroying the current enemy. | No NPA combat unit went directly into play in the urban mass actions. But the NPA played a major role in weakening and overthrowing the Estrada regime by continuing and accelerating tactical offensives against its forces in the countryside and encouraging the rural masses to participate in mass actions all over the country. The NPA launched major offensives while nationwide the number of people joining mass actions increased dramatically. |
The policy of broad united front allows the revolutionary movement to fight, isolate and destroy one enemy after another and in the process gain strength until it becomes capable of overthrowing the entire ruling system. As a result of the victorious struggle against the Estrada regime, the revolutionary movement has indeed become ever stronger than before and is ready to enter into a new round of struggle.
As the Party correctly predicted, the "Left" and Right opportunists of the past, who became blatantly counterrevolutionary (like Romulo Kintanar, Arturo Tabara, Nilo de la Cruz, Horacio Morales and Edicio de la Torre) and who became open agents of the Estrada regime, found their political graveyard. Even such grouplets (Siglaya, KDP, RPA-ABB and RHB) that collaborated with them but pretended to be critical of the Estrada regime are on the throes of extinction.
The ultra-Left call of Popoy Lagman�s Sanlakas, demanding the resignation of all top officials of the reactionary government, was an attempt to save Estrada and was roundly rejected by the people. The call was meant to draw fire away from the narrowest target and would have run against the clear objective of overthrowing the ruling clique in four months� time.
To avoid the pitfall of Right opportunism, the forces of the national democratic movement maintained their independence and initiative. They cooperated with the unstable and unreliable reactionary allies but they avoided or refused to enter such organized frameworks as the People�s Consultative Assembly, Council of Philippine Affairs and Kompil II.
The Party made it a point to stress publicly that the NPA should stay in the countryside to launch tactical offensives and not to join in the mass actions in urban areas. The Party�s purpose for doing so was to dispel the fear of reactionary allies about joining mass actions, to deprive Estrada of any pretext for rallying the troops against unarmed demonstrators and to reinforce the calls of the broad united front on the reactionary military and police to withdraw support from the Estrada ruling clique and respect the people�s democratic right to assemble and express themselves.
No NPA combat unit went directly into play in the urban mass actions. But the NPA played a major role in weakening and overthrowing the Estrada regime by continuing and accelerating tactical offensives against its forces in the countryside and encouraging the rural masses to participate in mass actions all over the country. The NPA launched major offensives while nationwide the number of people joining mass actions increased dramatically.
While the legal mass movement surged to overthrow the Estrada ruling clique, the New People�s Army intensified its guerrilla offensives nationwide, dealt lethal blows to the enemy forces and rendered Oplan Makabayan futile. In the second half of the year 2000 alone, sixty-six (66) tactical offensives were successfully launched in 32 provinces in various regions of the country. The main targets were Philippine Army regulars and Special Action Forces, CAFGU, military assets and informers. Nineteen (19) raids were carried out on PA, PNP, Coast Guard, CAFGU detachments and police headquarters.
Through ambushes and raids, a large number of casualties was inflicted on the enemy forces and military and police vehicles were destroyed. High-powered rifles and short arms, .50 caliber and .30 caliber machineguns, 81-mm mortars, M203 grenade launchers, portable and base radio equipment and other war materiel were captured.
One puppet regime has fallen and has been replaced by another. As in the successful struggle against the Marcos fascist regime in 1986, the ruling system remains intact. But it is stricken more than ever before by crisis. And the subjective forces of the revolution have emerged stronger than ever before.
The people and revolutionary forces are satisfied that they have punished a puppet regime and in the process have gained strength. We have finished off the Estrada regime before it could realize its vow to destroy the revolutionary forces before 2004. With increased strength and high confidence, we are prepared to confront and fight the new puppet regime as circumstances demand. We shall win ever greater victories in the continuing revolutionary struggle.
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