In less than ten days, the country will witness one of the most loathful and embarrassing historic event: the oath-taking of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as the 17th president of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.

After more than 36 years since being ousted from Malacañang, the utterly detested Marcos family will be back at the apex of political power. For close to two decades, they satiated themselves and basked in power. The assumption of Marcos Jr as Philippine president is like rubbing salt on the people’s unhealed wound.

The Marcos II regime is illegitimate. It is founded on the basis of the rigged elections. Marcos Jr colluded with Duterte to use the Comelec and the company running the automated counting to fake a “landslide victory.” Experts are convinced that the 31.5 million votes was conjured by electronic magic. For the first time, the highest vote of a winning senator was topped by that of a presidential candidate, especially of a dawdler who in the past years was known only as losing vice presidential candidate. To cover-up the widespread and systematic fraud, some people claim that the Marcoses succeeded in dumbing the Filipinos.

But the Filipino people will not be fooled. They repudiate the Marcos II regime and are determined to resist all efforts to reverse their historical judgement of the Marcoses and advance their demands for justice. The people are aware how Marcos Jr plans to use state power to render moot all the cases of corruption and plunder against Imelda and allow her to completely evade justice and continue to lavish on their $10 billion ill-gotten wealth.

People are aware how Marcos Jr will use state power to suppress and silence all who resist his rule. Even now, police have declared it will not allow “illegal rallyists” on June 30 and will stop anyone to denounce the illegitimate regime.

As the Marcoses have declared, they will use power to change how history is written, to falsely describe the period of martial law as “golden years” and obscure the fact of widespread corruption and plunder, mass detention, torture and killings of those who fought the dictatorship. Those who assert the truth about the dark days of Marcos’ reign are now being threatened. They are being tagged as “communists” and threatened to be made counterinsurgency targets.

The people are aware how Marcos Jr will use the six years to completely frustrate attempts to recover the Marcos wealth, and to further accumulate bureaucrat capitalist wealth through arm-twisting of and bribe-taking from big business, pocketing percentages of government contracts and enlarging and perpetuating their political dynasty.

The Filipino people are aware how the US-Marcos II regime will prolong the neoliberal policy dictates of foreign banks and monopoly capitalists led by the US. Amid government bankruptcy (with the 2022 budget already used up) and mountains of debt left by Duterte, there are threats of more onerous taxes being imposed on the people. With false promises of development, all favors are being extended to foreign monopoly capitalists, especially in large plantations and mining operations which plunder the country’s natural wealth, grab land and prevent progress.

Under Marcos Jr, state subservience to the imperialist US and China, especially the US, is certain. The reactionary state will continue to kowtow to the counterinsurgency doctrine that favors waging a war that relies on firearms and bombs sold by American companies.

The putrefaction of the ruling system is clearly shown by the assumption of Marcos Jr at the head of the reactionary state that serves primarily to defend the interests of the ruling classes and the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system.

The worsening crisis of the ruling system under Marcos Jr will generate conditions favorable for advancing the Filipino people’s mass resistance and armed revolution. Workers, peasants and other oppressed sectors are being compelled to get organized and fight for grievances and defend their well-being amid rising prices and fees, low wages, unemployment, landlessness and land grabbing, grossly low prices of farm products, and dumping of foreign agricultural surpluses.

Under Marcos Jr, the division of Philippine society between the minority ruling classes and the majority of the oppressed and exploited people who are wallowing in poverty and hardships, will become more pronounced. The Filipino people must be tirelessly aroused, organized and mobilized in order to stengthen and expand their mass struggles.

As Marcos Jr bows to the US and China, especially the US, the absence of genuine sovereignty will be more pronounced and make people more aware of the need to fight for national freedom.

The worsening political repression and blocking the avenue for all other forms of expression will push more and more people to effectively fight recognition of their basic rights. They must militantly and courageously resist all forms of repression and fight for their rights—including the right to March against Marcos’s inauguration—and oppose all attempts to take away their right to free expression.

Shutting the doors to legal forms of struggle is further pushing the Filipino people to the path of revolutionary armed struggle. Under the illegitimate US-Marcos II regime and trampling of the people’s democratic rights, the justness and necessity of armed resistance becomes more and more indubitable.