A Billion Pesos Cannot Kill Crush a Revolution

Martin Montana
Spokesperson
Chadli Molintas Command
NPA Ilocos- Cordillera Region
July 6, 2006

The Arroyo regime persists with its bloodthirsty campaign against its perceived enemies despite growing outcry on the international and local fronts. Close to 700 people lost their lives to right-wing death squads since Gloria Arroyo assumed power in 2001.
Gloria Arroyo's arrogant public statements, and her release of a billion pesos to fund the Oplan Bantay Laya counter-insurgency campaign, gives free rein to her vicious attack dogs to continue killing, maiming, torturing, and abducting their fellow Filipinos.

Oplan Bantay Laya shows the narrow, selfish, and despotic character of the Arroyo regime. Gloria Arroyo epitomizes those who get absolutely corrupted by the lust for power. She thinks nothing about sacrificing hundreds of lives to keep in her grasp the power she stole through massive electoral fraud and misuse of public funds.
Arroyo proclaims herself a champion of the masses, and yet her regime has opened to imperialist plunder the natural wealth of the country. Lately, she favored Lafayette Mining over the environment and the poor fisherfolk of Albay. She accuses the revolutionary movement, its supporters, and her sundry critics of being terrorists and terrorist-lovers. But it is her death squads who continue to sow terror among the people. Arroyo's shaky throne is set on bloodied ground and upon the bones of her victims.

Oplan Batay Laya is yet another version of US imperialism's historical response to people's struggles against oppression. It is directed towards crushing the revolutionary movement and eliminating the legal and democratic opposition. It uses brutal tactics similar to those of the Phoenix Program that killed 400,000 Vietnamese and the Salvadoran Option that cost the lives of an equally appalling number of El Salvadorans.

The Philippines now goes through a period worse than during martial law under the Marcos dictatorship. The unlamented dictator at least had the sense to show a semblance of judicial processes. Arroyo has shown total disregard for humanitarian conventions and the institutions of bourgeois democracy.

The continued rule of the US-Arroyo regime endangers the people's lives, national sovereignty and patrimony, and even the institutions of bourgeois democracy.
It is the duty of all patriotic Filipinos to relentlessly act for the ouster of the hated Arroyo regime. Each act of defiance, each courageous stand pushes this despised regime closer to the edge of the cliff.

Arroyo can only rule through violence and coercion. We call on all enlightened and patriotic members of the military, police, and civilian bureaucracy to disobey all orders that would make them spill the blood of their countrymen to defend this corrupt and heartless regime. Arroyo and her favored generals cannot be allowed to wallow in wealth and power while they drive the country into the ground.

We commend the initiative of the growing number of military and civilian personnel who daringly launch protest actions against the Arroyo regime. We invite them to link with and assist the revolutionary movement in ousting this detested regime, and to seek a just and lasting solution to the causes of the armed struggle.

We serve warning on all who took part and continue to pursue the bloody campaign against mass activists and critics of the Arroyo regime. Revolutionary justice will be served at the opportune time. There surely will be a day of reckoning, for no sea of blood can drown the fighting will and spirit of freedom-loving Filipinos.



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