Resist and thwart CHACHA! Thoroughly expose, isolate and resist the puppet and fascist Arroyo regime!Executive Committee Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines 13 September 2006
The puppet and fascist Macapagal-Arroyo regime has intensified its maneuvers to discard the 1987 constitution and dismantle the reactionary semicolonial state's form and means of ruling despite widespread opposition from the people.
The regime insists on revising the constitution either through a fraudulent people's initiative or the initiative of the House of Representatives. Since both means are of dubious legality, either of them can only pass through the wringer with the Supreme Court's brazen complicity. The regime has been draining the nation's coffers and abusing government contracts to buy the support of congressmen, AFP and PNP generals, local bureaucrats and politicians and the mass media.
Simultaneously, it has been relentlessly riding roughshod on the Senate, manipulating the courts including the highest in the land, dividing and driving the reactionary opposition to the wall, using fascist terrorist tactics on the legal democratic movement and launching an all-out military offensive and dirty war against the armed revolutionary movement. It is fanning the flames of anti-terrorist, anti-Left and anti-destabilization hysteria to malign its enemies and cover up the regime's criminal intent and actions.
The regime has pounced on the protest movement's failure to muster enough numbers in the streets, the successive blows on military rebels and the dismissal anew of the impeachment case to seize the political initiative and push the CHACHA campaign. Nonetheless, the regime's shift towards filthier, more arrogant and more violent moves has further deepened factional strife among the reactionaries, intensified the people's loathing and resistance and exacerbated the crisis.
Like the Marcos fascist clique in 1971, the puppet and fascist Arroyo clique is using the newly intensified crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system�much of which it is directly responsible for�to justify revising the constitution but only to worsen it. The motive is to maintain the hated regime in power and concentrate even greater power in its hands along with launching a comprehensive attack on the Filipino people's national and democratic rights.
First, like Marcos, Arroyo is pushing for a shift from a presidential to parliamentary form of government to put in place transitory provisions that would concentrate greater powers with the president and place under her control the executive and parliament led by a powerless prime minister. Once in power, it would be easy for the transitional president and her allied prime minister and parliament to connive to enact laws that would grant more powers and privileges to themselves, including a longer hold on power.
In changing the form of government, the regime likewise aims to deprive of basis the issue of its having stolen the 2004 elections and the president's illegitimacy and forever consign the impeachment complaint to the grave through a constitutional technicality. It would become much more difficult to file furture impeachment complaints.
Second, the ruling regime has been pushing for further reductions in civil liberties and the reversal of the most significant influences on the 1987 constitution of the victorious antifascist people's struggle against the Marcos dictatorship. Obviously still dissatisfied with the way it has been brandishing fascist state terrorism, the fascist Arroyo regime wants to further curtail the people's democratic rights even as it makes it easier to impose military rule and use the state's iron fist against the people and the revolutionary and progressive forces.
The Arroyo regime would like to fashion the constitution in accordance with fascist doctrine and the dictates of the US-instigated anti-terrorist war that has no time limits, no borders and holds itself above the law. Like their imperialist master, the militarists, clerico-fascists and other fascists and rabid anti-communists concentrated in and lording it over Malaca�ang, Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame would like to pursue and destroy their enemies without legal or institutional contraints. They continue to sabotage the NDFP-GRP peace talks and are consumed with the desire to drown the revolutionary forces and everyone they have demonized as "terrorists" in a bloodbath.
But as what often happens during fascist onslaughts, the first and most severely victimized are ordinary peasants, workers, the urban and rural poor, students, intellectuals and professionals asserting their democratic rights but are considered obstacles or even enemies by the fascists and are thus arbitrarily classified as combatants in war or else are conveniently categorized as collateral damage so they could be deprived of all their rights and attacked without hesitation. On the other hand, the puppet and fascist state, the reactionaries in power, their killers and thugs arrogate unto themselves�in deed if not in terms of formal right�the power of discretion free from supervision and accountability. They brandish so-called dictates of national security, manufactured intelligence reports and planted evidence to attack and kill relentlessly.
Third, in accordance with US dictates and those of other foreign monopoly capitalists, the regime has been pushing for the complete domination, entry and exit of foreign investments and 100% foreign ownership of land, natural resources and all kinds of businesses. The country's economic sovereignty and patrimony are being ceded completely to foreign monopoly capital.
The state will turn its back completely on its responsibility to secure and develop national industry and economy, the people's livelihood and welfare and social justice. Privatization and deregulation will be pursued to the hilt in favor of foreign and local big capital, with the puppet state confining itself to attracting, supporting, protecting and conceding to private capital. The further privatization and deregulation of public utilities, hospitals and other public services will be advanced and their operation made full-scale to maximize private profit.
Token provisions in the 1987 constitution on the right to a just wage, gainful employment, genuine agrarian reform and easy access to social services, among others are being undermined and will be eradicated. The welfare of workers, peasants and other poor sectors as well as small professionals will thoroughly and blindly be left to the mercy of private big capital which will merely throw them crumbs from whatever is left over from its never-ending banquet.
The national economy has never recovered from the Asian crisis of 1997. Under the administration of the puppet and fascist Arroyo regime, the destruction and collapse of industry, agriculture, the people's livelihood and even the environment have accelerated due to the onslaught of imperialist globalization, deregulation and privatization, plunder by big foreign and local banks and widespread government corruption. Thus, the peddling of the unprecedented deception that foreign investments, imperialist globalization, deregulation and privatization comprise the magic potion that would save the country. Amendments to the constitution would only fast-track and worsen the depression and deterioration of the economy and the enslavement and desperation of the people.
Fourth, provisions banning foreign military bases, foreign combat troops, nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction from Philippine territory will be erased. The goal is to do away with all obstacles to the free entry and exit, presence and basing of US troops and arms for military intervention and aggression in the country and other countries in Asia and the Pacific.
It is under the puppet Arroyo regime that US military intervention reached a breadth and intensity unprecedented in the country's entire semicolonial history. It continues to intensify and expand. For a regime that believes that everything could be bought and sold, conspiring with US military intervention is not merely a means to obtain the blessings of one's imperialist master but a bargaining instrument for bigger military and economic aid.
On the whole, the charter change scheme is a comprehensive anti-democratic, antinational and antimasses offensive by the hated puppet and fascist regime for the interests of US imperialism and a handful of big comprador bourgeoisie, big landlords and big bureaucrats represented by the puppet and fascist ruling Arroyo clique. Its overall objective is to further concentrate political and economic power in the hands of a few, oppress and further bleed the masses of the people.
The 1987 constitution, though it bears the imprints of some influences from the antifascist people's struggle against the fascist Marcos dictatorship, is in essence and in general a reactionary constitution. This is proven by continued and worsening foreign and local extortion and plunder, unbridled trampling of the masses' and people's rights and welfare and the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system that has grown ever deeper for close to 20 years. In fact, it is the current deplorable situation that is being exploited by the fascist regime to push for charter change and amendments that would worsen the constitution. Arroyo's CHACHA scheme must be resisted and thwarted without spreading illusions and mistaken beliefs over the true reactionary character of the 1987 constitution and the ruling sytem it embodies.
It is the Party's duty to exert all effort to resist and frustrate the puppet and fascist Arroyo regime's CHACHA scheme and simultaneously intensify armed and unarmed, illegal and legal, underground and open struggles to relentlessly isolate and weaken and eventually overthrow the despised ruling regime. Following are our urgent tasks on this matter:
- Thoroughly expose the anti-democratic, antinational and antimasses CHACHA and go all out in exposing and isolating the puppet and fascist regime that masterminds and promotes it. Arouse and mobilize the people in their millions to resist and repudiate CHACHA and the puppet fascist regime. Daringly expand and strengthen propaganda and agitation, the protest movement and sectoral and multisectoral campaigns and struggles.
- Link the anti-CHACHA struggle with the all-sided advance and intensification of antifascist, antifeudal and anti-imperialist struggles. The anti-CHACHA struggle must trigger the expansion and intensification of struggles against the ruling Arroyo regime, and simultaneously deepen it and raise it to a higher level.
- Daringly expand the antifascist, anti-imperialist and antifeudal united front. Form the broadest possible cooperation with all types of allies, longterm and temporary, reliable and otherwise to reach out to and mobilize the people in their millions and thoroughly isolate and weaken the puppet and fascist regime and frustrate its CHACHA scheme.
- Be daring in further expanding and intensifying guerrilla warfare. Go all-out in resisting and frustrating the puppet and fascist regime and its US imperialist master's all-out war. Hold the worst fascist murderers and butchers accountable along with their commanders and controllers.
The fight against CHACHA and the overall situation give us an exceedingly favorable opportunity to further expand and strengthen the revolutionary forces and all-sidedly advance the revolution. We must daringly seize this rare opportunity and lead the struggle of the broad masses of the people.
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