Nearly two months have passed since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. gave his State of the Nation Address in the wake of the devastation of habagat rains and Typhoons Crising, Dante, and Emong. While the House, Senate, and the oligarchs clapped, Marcos washed his hands of his crimes and declared to the country that a few corrupt officials and erring flood control contractors were responsible for a deluge that killed 40, displaced nearly 200,000, and forced millions to wade in often neck-deep floodwater. The political zarzuela culminated last week, when House speaker Martin Romualdez, Marcos crony and builder of a vast business empire, resigned and was replaced by scandal-ridden dynast Bojie Dy.

Yet this circus has failed to suppress popular outrage by students, civil society, and the clergy. Tens of thousands of students have walked out of class while jeepney drivers have gone on strike in solidarity with them. NGOs are out in force and the CBCP has pledged to be out on the streets today.

Yet the billions of pesos squandered on ghost flood control projects remain unaccounted for. Under a regime of landlords, compradors, and bureaucrat capitalists, the masses stand to gain nothing. Eight senators, 71 governors, and 212 congressmen belong to political dynasties, while over a third belong to three parties bankrolled by oligarchs Manny Villar, Enrique Razon, and Ramon Ang. All the so-called investigations in the House, Senate, NBI, DPWH, and the “independent commission” are Marcos’ latest ploys to distract the public from the fact that he is the largest user of confidential funds and the illegal recipient of P21 million in campaign donations from firms owned by tycoons Rodulfo Hilot Jr. and Jonathan M. Quirante.

The Dutertes pose as formidable opponents of bureaucrat capitalism, but Rodrigo Duterte filled the pockets of POGO crony Michael Yang and Pharmally’s officers with anomalous government projects and procurements while retaining the Visiting Forces Agreement, breaking his vow to end contractualization, and protecting oligarchs like gambling lord Atong Ang and landgrabber Fernando Zobel de Ayala. Meanwhile, Sara Duterte squirreled away P612.5 million in confidential funds, and received P19.9 million during her vice presidential bid from corporations owned by construction magnate Glenn Escandor, according to a report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

The liberals and social democrats similarly laud themselves as resolute opponents of corruption, crying that the popular outrage unleashed on September 21 is not anti-Marcos but simply “anti-corruption.” Yet they fail to realize that corruption roots precisely in the semifeudal, semicolonial exploitation of the country primarily by US imperialism and its allies.

While the Dutertes pretend to fight for the masses, Marcos, the liberals, and the social democrats acquiesce to the imperialist grip of the US as evidenced by the funding of military atrocities against peasants and indigenous peoples and the acceptance of Trump’s tariffs, which will crush Filipino families with inflated prices. No matter who is president, they continue the constant and impoverishing payment of huge debts to superpowers and the World Bank-IMF.

Meanwhile, as Marcos poses as the softer alternative, de facto martial law prevails in the countryside, in provinces such as Mindoro, Quezon, and Samar, where the peasantry is bombed and hamletted. In Mindoro, the torture and killing of two red fighters, Ka Junel and unarmed Ka Esing, violates the International Humanitarian Law. The humanitarian team sent to investigate and examine the bodies was continually surveilled, physically harassed, and threatened at gunpoint, while the 203rd Infantry Brigade spirited the bodies away.

To top this all off, Marcos’ kowtowing to US imperialism has allowed the entry of tens of thousands of foreign troops onto Philippine soil as pretext for an imperialist war against China that will spare landlords, bureaucrat-capitalists, and the comprador bourgeoisie. Instead, it will kill millions of workers, peasants, and youth.

The deepening social crisis is even more intensely felt by students, trained either as counterinsurgents to manage dissent or as cheap, expendable labor to fatten capitalists’ pockets. Worse, starvation, malnutrition, and unbearable flooding continue to afflict them while Marcos, Duterte, and the oligarchs feast in Washington, the Hague, and elsewhere. On August 30, Katipunan Avenue went underwater as an hour of rainfall exceeded Typhoon Ondoy in 2009. Espana and Taft also drowned in floods, as rotting facilities and lackluster teaching materials prevent students from studying society.

Contrary to ruling-class propagandists, who to save their own skin desperately blame a few contractors for the misery and starvation of the masses, the entire fascist and reactionary regime is rotting and corrupt. So to patriotic workers, peasants, and youth across the country, the facts are resolutely clear: Fifty-three years since the declaration of Martial Law, the US-Marcos regime remains the number one enemy of the Filipino people.

Thus the urgent task of the youth: Go to the workers and peasants at the picket lines, jeepney terminals, farmlands, and urban poor communities, and defend all those starved, strangled, and drowned by the US-Marcos regime at Kawasaki Motors, Malatabako, Smokey Mountain, and elsewhere. Seek not only to mobilize large protest actions in the cities, but paralyze the factories, offices, and thoroughfares of the compradors and bureaucrat-capitalists through strikes, barricades, and the relentless defense of the masses.

Finally, the youth must go to the countryside, where the peasantry suffers under landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists such as the Cojuangcos and Ayalas, and there join the armed, revolutionary struggle of the masses. The sole way forward is the national-democratic revolution of the majority, not bourgeois elections nor a few reactionary bureaucrat-capitalists playing telenovela roles as saviors and street parliamentarians while groveling to fascism, oligarchy, and imperialism.

So the peasant masses, supported by the most advanced detachments of workers, professionals, and youth, will in the last instance be the most valiant fighters in toppling feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucrat-capitalism. They will carry out the agrarian revolution and try in people’s courts all those who have committed crimes against the masses. They will encircle the fortresses of the enemy, destroy the capabilities of its mercenary army, and paralyze the cities from the countryside. With them, the tottering, reactionary US-Marcos regime, as well as the barriers to the aspirations of the masses for social justice, genuine democracy, and national liberation, will finally come crashing down.

Ibagsak ang Imperyalismo, Pyudalismo, Burukrata Kapitalismo!
Ibagsak ang Rehimeng US-Marcos!
Sumapi sa Kabataang Makabayan!
Sumapi sa Bagong Hukbong Bayan!
Isulong ang Demokratikong Rebolusyong Bayan!