So they’re at it again. Or rather, they are still at it and getting worse.

After opening the year with aerial bombing that killed Mangyan children in mining-contested Mindoro and following up with the violent dispersal of anti-mining Igorots’ barricades in Nueva Vizcaya, the US-Marcos Regime continues its wholesale sell-out of Philippine land and patrimony by signing the recent agreement with the US to exploit critical minerals and rare earth elements.

Amid the undying clamor of people’s protests against landgrabbing, corruption and impunity of political dynasties; or people’s movements calling for land to till, higher wages and relief from skyrocketing prices of basic commodities and services; and the all too-real threat from rival political factions, Marcos wastes no time in insinuating his US imperialist lord’s hegemonistic agenda into Philippine policy in the hope of securing support for his beleaguered administration.

This adherence to the martial law pattern of fascism and shameless puppetry to US imperialist dictates in exchange for maintaining power is only too obvious. Before, Marcos Sr allowed unhampered use of more than 20 US bases and installations in Philippine territory for the US war of aggression against Vietnam. He expanded foreign plunder of land and natural resources by the Investment Incentives Law. He used the full might of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to implement brutal US “Counterinsurgency” Programs on the Filipino people, enjoying the full-backing of the US for his dictatorship. Until the people toppled him.

And now, the second version of the US-Marcos Regime allows the US to update and upgrade its already overarching military and economic control of the Philippines in the recently concluded US-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue. In the name of interoperability, it assigns more Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites and facilitates US control of the AFP. The regime has agreed to host more frequent and bigger bilateral and multilateral military exercises, sneak in more “US cutting-edge missile and unmanned systems missiles”, “expand… military cyber defense capabilities” and data centers, do its share to “disrupt terrorist travel”.

The agreement also ties the Philippine economy to drive new private foreign investments on strategic industries focusing on transport, critical minerals, energy and digital infrastructure “necessary to advance joint defense co-production capabilities” in coordination with Japan.

In line with the US National Security Strategy and the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, the regime obediently increased the military budget and strengthened the NTF-ELCAC to spread its bloody claws all over the cities and countryside, continuing aerial bombings, massacres, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, harassment and illegal arrests. On top of militarizing urban poor communities, red-tagging unionists, lawyers, teachers, students, weaponizing the law through planted evidence and trumped-up charges against anyone critical of government policy, the National Capital Region is now made the NTF-ELCAC’s focus of repression through its Ground Zero program. This is fascism in its most blatant form, eerily reminiscent of Martial Law.

In following his ignominious father’s puppet footsteps, Marcos should be reminded that it was his father’s dictatorship that was toppled by the people, and it was his father’s imperialist masters that “cut and cut cleanly” when they had no more use of him.

The 40th year-anniversary of EDSA People Power is a reminder to both the reactionary ruling power and the Filipino people. That a dictatorship, even backed by the most powerful imperialist country in the world, is no match for the people’s wrath. It is also a reminder that merely toppling the local ruling power without liberating the country from the clutches of imperialism will achieve relief so fragile that US imperialism will continue and even intensify its exploitation and oppression through new bureaucrat-capitalist puppets. Thus, the need to overthrow not only the local ruling administration but US imperialism itself.

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines salutes the revolutionary Filipino masses and the martyrs who waged life-and-death struggles during the whole duration of martial law to lay the groundwork for the EDSA people power Revolution, even as we salute the present crop of progressive and democratic activists who now march for genuine democracy and systemic change. It is with this past and present demonstration of determination and courage that we continue to strengthen the New People’s Army, establish revolutionary mass organizations and develop revolutionary bases to fight for national democracy and freedom against landlords, big bourgeois-compradors, and bureaucrat-capitalists. And we will continue to fight until the most comprehensive people power revolution gains victory against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism not only in EDSA but in the whole Philippines.