PRESS RELEASE
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines

US' close monitoring of Philippine elections is blatant interventionism and poses dangers -- CPP
May 1, 2004

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today said that the dispatching by the US of 120 agents to closely monitor the May 10 elections is blatant US interventionism and an outright insult to Philippine sovereignty.

According to a US Embassy announcement dispatched by Malaca�ang, representatives from US institutes and the US embassy are "to observe the conduct of election, identify best practices and recommend changes in the future." The US election observers will meet and coordinate closely with the Commission on Elections.

CPP spokesperson Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal said that the actual objective of the US in sending their so-called monitoring team is to throw its weight where it would be crucial to determine the outcome of the elections and ensure its interests. Rosal said that the US' keenness to closely monitor this particular election is due to its apprehensions of a tight race between the incumbent president and her main opponent and the likelihood of progressive party-list organizations significantly winning in the polls and affecting the outcome of the national elections.

Rosal noted that aside from the 80 US observers, most of whom will come from US embassy personnel already in the Philippines, 40 other "observers" are being fielded by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), a front of the right-wing AFL-CIO labor federation in the US, and the International Republican Institute (IRI), a front of US Pres. George W. Bush's Republican Party.

Rosal disclosed that these two ultra-rightist institutes are used as channels of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which does the exact opposite of what its name says. Rosal disclosed further that the NED serves as a supposedly discreet conduit of the US Central Intelligence Agency's "soft funding" of subversion and interventionist activities in "strategic hot spots" of the globe to ensure the hegenomy and interest of the US.

The CPP spokesperson stated that the NED through the NDIIA and the IRI were the ones who funded the so-called Democratic Convergence in Haiti to effect the overthrow of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide last February. Rosal added that these three subversive US institutions have also so far channeled more than $1 million to various opposition groups in Venezuela to foment trouble and overthrow the anti-US imperialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

"These institutes' close 'monitoring' of Philippine elections is actually a subversive type of intervention and poses various kinds of political dangers to the country," said Rosal. "The US should be condemned for meddling in internal Philippine affairs using such subversive institutes in the guise of monitoring elections."

Reference:
Anne Buenaventura
Media Officer
Cellphone Number: +63910-240-3553



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