Duterte can rot while women and the people create a better society for all!

With the rotting system becoming more and more anti-peasant and anti-people under the misogynistic tyranny of Rodrigo Duterte, he can be assured that the Filipino women is part of the revolution that will cause his downfall.

Class Oppression

The yearlong pandemic has exposed the rottenness of the current system and the truth of the Filipino woman’s plight appears sharper than ever. In the country side, farmers and fisher folk continue to live from hand to mouth, if not in even more dire situations. Reports from the government’s own experts in the Philippine Statistics Authority reflect that the highest poverty incidence can be found in these sectors, 31.6 percent and 26.2 percent respectively. From their own records, it is an annual occurrence. Half of these sectors are women who are traditionally tasked to manage household finances.

All over the nation, they have had to put up with endless waiting for so-called social amelioration programs, which may or may not arrive at all. Progressive think-tank Ibon Foundation puts the inflation rate for the bottom 30 percent at 4.9 percent last January from 4.3 percent in December. It was pegged at 2.3 percent a mere year ago in January 2020. Conversely, the skyrocketing of prices of basic commodities and services was more certain and certainly faster than any mass testing or mass vaccination plan.

The loss and lack of employment during the pandemic, where it reached almost 11 million in the Philippines according to the International Labor Organization, means that mothers, sisters and grandmothers have to practically bend over backwards to make ends meet using whatever meager resources at their disposal. They bear this with fortitude and they bear it with the clarity that only collective revolutionary action can hold Duterte accountable.

Filipino women find his recent call to promote women empowerment hollow and pretentious in the face of attempts to discredit and disqualify the only party list that truly represents grassroots women. For them, besides exposing Duterte’s fear of women and their power, such dastardly act proves that a national democratic revolution is necessary to liberate women from the shackles of imperialism and feudalism.

A Woman’s Place

The armed struggle being waged in the country side is welcoming to all marginalized sex and genders, both from the country side and the cities. In the midst of the New People’s Army (NPA), they are treated with respect and equality. All Red fighters undergo the process of unlearning discriminatory habits insidiously absorbed from a bourgeois feudal and patriarchal socialization. The NPA, together with the entire national democratic organization, is intent on making the movement a liberating space for women revolutionaries and teaching the same to wider masses of Filipino people.

The correctness of the revolution appeals to hundreds of marginalized women and convinces them to join the NPA. Martyred women Red fighters like Enniabel ‘Ka Onor’ Balunos, Maria Filena ‘Ka Ricky’ Mejia, Pamela ‘Ka Maymay’ Peralta and many more other bravehearts like them have lain their lives for the cause of creating a socialist society without discrimination, objectification and commodification. They aspire to the eradication of all forms of oppression and exploitation against all peoples regardless of sex and gender. In the streets and in the country side, women are rising up or arming themselves to contribute to the weakening of the US-Duterte regime. While Duterte rots in his own misogyny and overall failure as a president, Filipino grassroots women are creating revolutionary history. ###