“In his 3rd State of the Nation Address (SONA), Marcos Jr has stuck to his old script of motherhood statements that have barely materialized within his two years in power,” said the Mount Cansermon Command-New People’s Army South Central Negros Front(MCC-NPA) in an official statement on Wednesday.

According to Ka Dionesio Magbuelas, MCC-NPA spokesperson, the ‘reactionary president’s yearly report, as expected, has failed the Filipino people once again’. He mentioned that Marcos Jr’s SONA only served to appease the ruling class he represents.

“His so-called ‘achievements’ in agriculture and land reform do not address the long-standing problem of landlessness. The World Bank-funded Support to Parcelization of Land for Individual Titling (SPLIT) program and New Agrarian Emancipation Act (NAEA) that push for individual titling is the means to force the majority of the peasantry to lose their land and eventually bolster the monopoly of big landlord-compradors,” Magbuelas added.

The rebel spokesperson pointed out that Marcos’ response to the El Niño phenomenon and now the armyworm infestation that has destroyed farmer livelihoods in Central Negros were mere ‘band-aid solutions and obvious politicking to prepare for the 2025 mid-term elections’ and that the ‘primary needs to revitalize agricultural damage has only been turned a blind eye’.

He stressed that ‘despite successive natural calamities and socioeconomic distress, the reactionary government has continued to intensify militarization to ensure and enforce the way of ‘farm-to-market’ roads and other infrastructure projects which are introductory to the neoliberal agenda of his administration.’ Magbuelas also noted the increasing presence of quarries and commercial tree-planting in South Central Negros.

“Marcos’ banning of POGOs and assertion of our territorial claim of the West Philippine Sea are not to be seen as a patriotic move but an affirmation of the widening schism between him and the Duterte clique, as he kowtows lower to his US imperialist masters which approve and even have a hand in the consistent sabre-rattling against China to prod the country into an inter-imperialist war,” Magbuelas said.

The MCC spokerspon also commented that Marcos Jr ‘conveniently left out the discussion of the armed struggle and peace talks to continue fostering the illusion of dismantling the guerrilla fronts’. He said that this is merely a ‘strongman facade due to the imperialist pressure of shifting the focus to external threats to serve as cannon fodder for war’.

“Essentially, the recent SONA was sugarcoating the legitimate fascist, neoliberal and imperialist aims of the US-Marcos II regime. His Bagong Pilipinas stint is in actuality a representation of the Old Philippines, the status quo controlled by the ruling class of big landlords and compradors along with bureaucrat capitalists. The people can no longer be fooled by his lies and are posed to militantly wage the national democratic revolution to topple the ruthless and corrupt regime and address the roots of exploitation and oppression,” ended Magbuelas.