On Bello and Akbayan's views on the recent rash of political assassinations and attacks by the US-Arroyo regime against progressive leaders and activists

Communist Party of the Philippines
April 17, 2005

Since March, the Communist Party of the Philippines has issued statements and published articles condemning the series of political assassinations and acts of state terrorism perpetrated by the US-Arroyo regime against activists and leaders of mass-based organizations which are among the forces most vigorously opposed to the regime's corruption, oppressive economic policies and subservience to the US government.

Subsequently, the CPP issued a statement citing how Walden Bello's tirades against the CPP and Red-baiting of mass-based organizations since December dovetail the rash of political assassinations by the Arroyo regime's armed minions against the progressive movement which have intensified since the first quarter of 2005.

Bello's statement issued in December 2004 that Red-baited organizations such as Bayan Muna, Kilusang Mayo Uno and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, among others, achieve the same psywar objectives as the AFP's briefing paper "Knowing the Enemy". They both link these organizations to the revolutionary armed movement in order to set them up as targets of the Arroyo regime's fascist attacks and justify the use of armed force against their leaders and members.

Fearing further political isolation due to their attacks against the revolutionary movement and the legal mass movement, Bello and his Akbayan party have issued a belated response to the series of political assassinations.

Yet, in issuing these statements, they have succeeded only in further exposing themselves as apologists of the Arroyo regime and its fascist onslaughts against activists and leaders of mass-based organizations.

Bello and Akbayan acknowledge the indubitable fact that it is the Arroyo regime's military and paramilitary forces that are behind the killings. Yet in the same breath, they come up with nothing more than a mild rebuke of the Arroyo regime for its failure to issue a "categorical denunciation" and for its "inaction to stop the killings".

All that Bello and Akbayan have done is issue a lame appeal to the Arroyo government to use its "human rights mandates, vast resources, and intelligence network to make a breakthrough" in solving these cases.

They completely muddle the fact that it is the Arroyo regime that has been carrying out this violent and systematic campaign to suppress the people's mass-based organizations.

In making the feeble admonition to the Arroyo regime that "ignoring these assassinations" will make the government "accountable for gross violations of human rights", Bello and Akbayan conceal the fact that the Arroyo regime and its armed minions in the AFP have in fact endorsed and perpetrated the successive killings of activists they have branded as "enemies of the state" and targets of its US-inspired "war against terrorism". On the one hand, they purport to condemn the assassinations. But on the other, they appeal to the perpetrator of these assassinations to "provide for the physical security of its citizens." Bello and Akbayan's objective is none other than to confuse the people politically and placate their seething anger regarding the Arroyo regime's fascist attacks against the people.

Bello and Akbayan's recents statements that redound to a defense of the Arroyo regime provide further elucidation on the real objectives of the attacks against the CPP and progressive organizations that have escalated since December. Since then, Bello and Akbayan, together with an international network of Trotskyiste and imperialist-funded NGOs, have been carrying out a worldwide campaign to demonize the CPP as "fascist" and have demanded that the mass-based progressive organizations which they have witchhunted as "associates" of the armed revolutionary forces, condemn the CPP and NPA.

Bello and his associates are laboring under the mistaken belief that by undertaking this international psywar campaign, they could preempt the aboveground mass-based progressive forces from denouncing the terrorist attacks of the AFP, PNP and other armed minions of the Arroyo government.

The tables have turned against Bello and his ilk. Significantly, despite their pretensions to being "Left", Bello, Akbayan at the retinue of counterrevolutionary groups are not included in the AFP's list of "enemies of the state" in its "Knowing the Enemy" briefing paper (of which Bello and Akbayan are also conspicuously silent about).

They obviously pose no threat to the powers that be and have proven to be tame citizens of the oppressive and exploitative ruling system. Their insidious attempt to eliminate both the revolutionary and progressive forces in one fell swoop has backfired as they more and more expose themselves as nothing but reformist flatterers of the ruling reactionary state.

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