The Marcos government yesterday announced plans to lift the mandatory face mask policy, purportedly “to give our country the opportunity to thrive.” This reasoning was made to confuse people and obscure social realities, and must be exposed, criticized and rejected. The rapidly deteriorating social conditions of the people and heightening economic crisis have nothing to do with the mandatory face mask policy or other standard health protocols.

Lifting the face mask policy will not raise wages nor lift the purchasing power of millions of workers and ordinary income earners. It will not bring down prices of fuel and food that daily erodes the people’s standard of living. It will not create jobs. It will not raise agricultural production that continue to be battered down by import liberalization, nor will it raise farmgate prices or the income of the deeply-indebted peasant masses. It will not stop the peso from further devaluation, nor solve the growing foreign trade imbalance.

The Marcos regime’s strategy of further “opening up the economy” to make the country “attractive” to foreign investors will fail, as it has failed over the past four decades in enabling the country’s economy to grow and raise the people’s standard of living. It will utterly utterly fail especially now that the international capitalist system continues to rapidly deteriorate, with leading capitalist countries rushing towards recessions.

Marcos is wasting public funds with his plans to “kickstart” the economy with foreign-funded, grandiose, anti-people and destructive infrastructure projects, which have long served as milking-cow of corrupt bureaucrats. He is squandering the people’s money in billions upon billions of pesos worth of military hardware for waging a war of state terrorism against the people, especially in the countryside.

Lifting the face mask policy is a mere distraction. Marcos wants to draw away attention from his continuing failure to lift the country up from economic crisis and heed the cries of the downtrodden masses. His is displaying utter subservience to policy-dictates of imperialist banks and multinational corporations which are pulling the country deeper into crisis.

The Filipino people, especially workers, peasants and other toiling people must defend their interests and put forward their urgent demands for wage and salary increases, jobs, agrarian reforms (lower land rent, lower prices for agricultural inputs, production subsidies, fair farmgate prices and so on), for free health services and free education. They must urgently get organized and wage widespread militant struggle.