#title:The US-GMA Regime Must Be Overthrown To Realize National Unity, Justice, and Peace<br>
@@@@@<h1>The US-GMA Regime Must Be Overthrown To Realize National Unity, Justice, and Peace</h1><!--Simon "Ka Filiw" Naogsan, Spokesperson, Cordillera Peoples' Democratic Front, August 10, 2005 </em><br><br>
The Filipino people have had enough of "Goliar" Macapagal-Arroyo and the entire rotten system. The people desire change - not just the removal of GMA from power - but fundamental change in the entire ruling system which has long been inflicting untold suffering on the masses.<br>The recent jueteng payola scandal involving the Arroyo family and the "Hello Garci" wiretapping scandal are merely the latest evidences of the regime's inability to rule in the old way, and the final straw in a long series of anti-people governance. The people are clamoring for truth and justice, marching the streets of Metro Manila and other major cities in the country to condemn GMA's high crimes and demand her resignation or ouster.<br><br>
Cabinet members and other officials within the Arroyo regime who were scandalized with GMA's gross dishonesty and corruption left their posts, withdrew their support for the president, and joined the growing waves of protests throughout the land. Arroyo's false apology and diversionary tactic of reviving the issue of Charter Change may have given her some breathing space. As the days wear on, however, new and more damning evidences are coming out showing GMA's willful acts of deceit and fraud in the 2004 elections which she committed right in her La Vista home. The amoral and reactionary GMA regime, entangled in its own web of lies is now crumbling fast. No amount of support from its apologists from the big business, the Church, the fascist military, and their US imperialist masters, can save her from the surging people power. The more she holds onto power, the more that the political crisis will persist, the more that the economy collapses.<br><br>
The hypocrisy, arrogance, and bullheadedness of GMA are inflaming the Filipino people, especially the masses of workers and peasants who have been impoverished further by numerous anti-people programs and policies of the Arroyo regime. GMA's claim of economic growth under her rule is a big fat lie. The people are tired of GMA's promises and rhetorics. The people who live the daily reality of economic hardships know better - the workers whose wage rates have been nailed below the poverty line, the landless tenants who are mired in usury, the students who pay for higher and higher tuition fees every enrolment, the urban poor who are driven from their homes, the teachers and government employees who are overworked and underpaid, the businesses which are on the verge of bankruptcy. The masses are bearing the brunt of GMA's burdensome taxes and constant price increases of petroleum products and basic commodities. The people know that behind all these is a corrupt system that enriches the few and impoverishes the many. The people are denied basic social services in contrast with the increasing allocations for the military and debt servicing. Those who protest and resist are subjected to police brutalities and military atrocities. There are widespread and systematic killings of political activists and journalists, and militarization continues to intensify in the countryside.<br><br>
In the Cordillera, national oppression being suffered by the national minority people has worsened under the US-GMA regime. In gross violation of the ancestral land rights of the Cordillera people, GMA bargained their lands and resources to big foreign mining companies and comprador capitalists for wanton plunder. She facilitated the entry of the mines and processed their applications through her Mining Action Plan. Almost 80% of the Cordillera land area is now covered by mining applications. In order to completely satisfy the greed of her imperialist masters, upon the declaration of the Mining Act of 1995 as constitutional by the Supreme Court, GMA aggressively enticed mining applications at the International Mining Investment Conference in February 2005 and parceled out mineral areas to foreign mining companies, in utter disregard and violation of the people's rights to their ancestral lands, customs and traditions.<br><br>
The regime has shamelessly declared the Cordillera as one of the three regions in the country for commercial logging. GMA's policies have opened up indigenous water sources for grabbing by foreign mining firms and other entities for bulk water projects, threatening many communities in the Cordillera with the loss of their watershed, drinking water, and irrigation. Indigenous people's small-scale mining in their own ancestral and tribal lands is declared illegal and is offered to big foreign mining claims instead.<br><br>
In addition to the numerous codified forms of national oppression imposed by previous oppressive regimes such as P.D. 705 under Marcos and the Mining Act of 1995 under Ramos, GMA introduced EO 364 putting the NCIP under the Department of Land Reform on Oct 2004 (with the added pretext of cost-cutting). This law facilitates the easier circumvention of ancestral land claims, expansion of the use of "protected areas" for mining, waste disposal, and eco-tourism. By virtue of these unjust laws, the peoples of the Cordillera are virtually squatters in their own land. The supposed safeguard of Environmental Compliance Certificates (ECC) and Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) of communities can be rendered useless with the onslaught of destructive mining, logging, and damming.<br><br>
Under the GMA regime, the breakout of tribal conflicts and enmities in the Cordillera have increased alarmingly, resulting in many deaths and dislocations in the production and other economic activities of the indigenous communities. The cause of this can be traced to the regime's continuing implementation of the CALC-CADC/CALT-CADT provisions of the IPRA Law, the IRA provisions of the LGU code, the recruitment and arming of bandit groups like the CPLA, and the propping up counter-insurgency vigilantes and extortion groups like the Kalinga Bodong Council (KBC). The imposition of reactionary political structures and agencies is in violation of indigenous socio-political systems and has marginalized the tribal and indigenous community elders and leaders.<br><br>
In spite of the wealth plundered by the US-GMA regime and the foreign capitalists from the Cordillera, and despite its large contribution to the national wealth, the region continues to receive the lowest budget allotment to this day. Social services are continuously denied by the reactionary government.<br><br>
As in previous regimes, the Arroyo regime continues to brutally suppress the worker's right to strike. It has deployed massive AFP and PNP troops to disperse, harass, and maim the striking workers in Lepanto. To add insult to injury, Lepanto vice-president and Resident Manager Augusto Villaluna derisively mocked the Lepanto mine workers several times as "Mga Igorot na unggoy, mga Igorot patay-gutom."<br>
The commercialization and vulgarization of the Cordillera indigenous culture have also worsened under the Arroyo regime, through cultural festivals, showcases, and eco-tourism.<br><br>
National oppression in the Cordillera has reached ethnocidal proportions, especially because of development aggression and militarization which alienates the people from the land which is their life, threatening their very existence and identity as a people.<br><br>
GMA is trying to cajole a few elitist elements among the national minorities of the Cordillera in order to continue supporting her reactionary, anti-people and anti-national program in the region. But her regime cannot fool the people of the Cordillera. The Arroyo regime is fast moving to its end.<br><br>
The people of the Cordillera shall add its thousand voices and lock its arms with the hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, students, government employees, church people, and various opposition forces who are now building the widest possible united front to bring about the ouster of GMA.<br><br>
The CPDF enjoins all the people of the Cordillera who aspire for self-determination and equality, to unite with the rest of the Filipino people and wage a resolute fight, engage in all forms of struggle - armed and unarmed, legal and illegal, open and secret - to bring about the end of this despicable Arroyo regime.<br><br>
While the revolutionary forces under the CPDF strive to build organs of political power in the mountains of the Cordillera, wage tactical offensives against the fascist forces of the reactionary state, and carry on the struggle for national freedom and democracy to the very end. At this juncture, we support the popular call to form a transitional revolutionary government from among the capable and honest leaders of the broad anti-GMA forces especially from the ranks of the workers and peasants, democratic middle class, members of the opposition parties, pro-people and patriotic retired AFP officers, and other personages of good track record. This council is to effect a national election within a reasonable period of time, bring about a new government with a genuine mandate from the people and draft a new democratic and nationalist constitution. This council must adhere to the fundamental principle that sovereignty resides in the people, promote civilian supremacy and political democracy, unite and work on a program of genuine industrialization and land reform, and end imperialist domination. This transitional council should respect the right to self-determination of the national minorities in the Cordillera and throughout the country.<br><br>
The longing of the broad masses of the Filipino people for political power to be in their hands and not in the hands of embezzlers and the exploitative and oppressive classes must start to be realized now. #$$$$$