On The June 12 Declaration Of Independence
Statement of Armando Liwanag
Chairman, Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
June 12, 1998
In the old democratic revolution, the Cry of Pugad Lawin of 1896 was the signal act of declaring Philippine Independence. It is the more meaningful and honorable act than the Kawit declaration on June 12, 1898, which was tainted by the expression of subservience, "under the protection of the Mighty and Humane North American Nation."
The Aguinaldo leadership was inclined to make the Philippines a protectorate of the United States. But the rising imperialist power, the United States, was hellbent on grabbing the Philippines as a full colony. While pretending to help the Philippine revolution, the US was engaged in arranging the transfer of colonial power from Spain, through the mock battle of Manila Bay in August 1898 and the payment of USD20 million for the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris on December 20, 1898.
Having brought large numbers of troops to the Philippines, the US provoked the outbreak of the Filipino-American War on February 4, 1899. The Filipino people and the revolutionary government and army fought valiantly for national independence against the US war of aggression and colonial conquest.
Certainly, the Kawit declaration reflected the people�s revolutionary movement and aspirations for national independence and democracy. It would also inspire a series of revolutionary actions, including the resistance to US aggression, the Malolos congress and the proclamation of the Malolos republic. But the reference to US protection manifested an unpatriotic and counterrevolutionary tendency in the liberal bourgeois leadership.
The liberal bourgeois mentality was incapable of comprehending and confronting the newly-rising phenomenon of monopoly capitalism, which deceptively used the concepts and language of liberalism. The leadership of the revolution was bourgeois liberal by virtue of enlightenment rather than being the product of the development of capitalism, as in the French revolution. The leaders of the revolutionary government were categorically against Spanish colonial rule and the feudal holdings and medieval obscurantism of the foreign religious corporations. But many of them belonged to the landlord class and could afford higher education.
June 12, 1898 is definitely a better day than July 4, 1946. The Kawit declaration of independence was in the flow of the revolutionary process of seizing political power and overthrowing Spanish colonialism through armed revolution. July 4 signifies the US imperialist pretense of "granting" independence and converting the Philippines from a colony to a semicolony.
In the series of celebrations of the old democratic revolution since two years ago, the Filipino reactionaries have denigrated the revolutionary will and courage of the Filipino people in waging armed revolution for national liberation and democracy against colonialism and feudalism.
In 1996, the Filipino reactionaries undertook special efforts to deprecate the people waging armed revolution, slander Bonifacio, blame him for the martyrdom of Rizal and counterpose the image of Bonifacio as an impulsive man of violence and Rizal as the "self-sacrificing man of peace and high education." Perversely, the clerical and secular advocates of "civil society" insinuated that reformism under Spanish colonialism was the better option than armed revolution, which they decried as self-defeating or even worse than the armed counterrevolution.
In 1998, the Filipino reactionaries have expended all efforts and a huge amount of money to celebrate June 12, by hyping the role of the ilustrado ancestors of the current reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords and by glossing over the heroic revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses, the duplicity of US imperialism, the persistent domination of the US over the Philippines and the need to continue the national-democratic revolution against foreign and feudal domination.
In accordance with their class bias, the Filipino reactionaries seek to rob the old democratic revolution of its revolutionary essence and are leading to a glorification of the US policy of �benevolent assimilation�, the ultimate capitulation and cooptation of the ilustrado leadership and the continuing acceptance of US imperialist domination. They do so in the counterrevolutionary spirit of decrying the revolutionary violence of the people and obscuring the counterrevolutionary violence of imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
The prevalent bias of the Filipino reactionaries merely reflects the reality that the people�s revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy remains frustrated and needs to be continued. Behind the US lie of �granting� independence, US imperialism has persisted in dominating the Philippines in an all-round way through the puppet politicians belonging to the local exploiting classes.
US imperialism owes the Filipino people a blood debt of hundred of thousands of lives in the course of its war of colonial conquest and millions of lives wasted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants in the course of more than 40 years of direct colonial rule and more than 50 years of indirect colonial rule which persists to this day.
The conversion of the Philippines from a colony to a semicolony or neocolony has allowed US imperialism to oppress and exploit the Filipino more violently and more deceptively than ever before through the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords and their reactionary politicians.
The bureaucrat capitalist puppets in the reactionary government are the conspicuous taskmasters of the Filipino people. But US imperialism, together with other imperialist powers, continue to control the economy and finances of the country, extract superprofits, impose an intolerable debt burden on the people, reduce them to a life of poverty and misery and supply the weapons for suppressing revolutionary resistance.
Under the current global regime of "free trade", with its slogans of liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the stranglehold of foreign monopoly capitalism over the Philippine economy is tighter than ever before. The imperialists and local reactionaries reject the peoples demand for the protection of the national patrimony, national industrialization, genuine and thoroughgoing land reform and social justice.
The US retains military control over the Philippines through the persistent US Military Assistance Agreement and the USRP Mutual Defense Treaty and is imposing on the Philippines the Visiting Forces Agreement to make the entire country a US military base in subordination to the US strategy of world domination and the USJapan security partnership.
The US imperialists and their Filipino puppets have been proclaiming, sometimes brazenly and at other times subtly, that the struggle for national sovereignty and independence is passe and that the Philippines only needs to keep its beggarly place in the global "free market" upon assignment by the multilateral agencies (like the IMF, World Bank and WTO) and by the multinational firms and banks of foreign monopoly capitalism.
The crises of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system are wreaking havoc on the lives of the broad masses of the people and are inflicting on them suffering far more intolerable than ever before. There is no choice for the Filipino people but to wage the new democratic revolution through peoples war.
The old democratic revolution was defeated through violence and deception by US imperialism as well as through betrayal by the local reactionaries. Thus, there is the need to continue the Philippine revolution. At this time, in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the working class and its revolutionary party lead the newdemocratic revolution in the Philippines. In fact, the revolution is surging forward.
The Communist Party of the Philippines has inherited from the Katipunan the mantle of revolutionary leadership. Under the leadership of the CPP, the Filipino people persevere in their struggle for national liberation and democracy against foreign and feudal domination. They continue to carry out the unfinished tasks of the Philippine revolution.
The new world disorder is generating the conditions for the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movement. Favored by such conditions and learning the positive and negative lessons from previous revolutionary struggles of the working class, the CPP is in a position to lead the Filipino people in the national-democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution and make significant contributions to the advance of the world proletarian revolution.
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