The starvation and destitution the US-Duterte regime inflicts on the peasants and the fisherfolk who feed the society has reached its limit. The nonstop increase in oil prices is yet another burden for the farmers who have been striving to keep their living despite existing anti-poor policies such as the Rice Tariffication Law.

Whatever guarantee the US-Duterte regime doles out, the taxes to be collected from RTL will never be the answer especially as it will only be used for ayuda limited to only a few who own lands. The farmers and fishermen know that Duterte’s incapacity to solve the oil crisis is not because of the strife between Ukraine and Russia. The truth is, Duterte tied his own hands by completely serving the big bourgeois compradors and their imperialist matters.

Because the ayuda does not include farmworkers and land tenants, Duterte pits the ranks of the peasantry against each other. When in truth, this ayuda is not enough to alleviate poverty in the first place. Their basic problems remain the same: landlessness, commercialization of products and neoliberalism’s stronghold in pricing of agricultural products.

Meanwhile, fishermen are forced to reduce fishing from four times a week to only twice. This is onerous for the fisherfolk especially with the continuous enforcement of the Philippine Fisheries Code Amendments of 2015 and the unfair competition between small fishermen and those owned by foreign and local bureaucrat capitalists. Even the fish that they catch need to compete against imported products.

In these conditions, the organized peasantry and fisherfolk do not have any recourse but their own unity and cooperation in the face of poverty. They continue with their organizing work especially among their own ranks. Through these efforts, luyu-luyo, mutual aid groups and small cooperatives are bourgeoning in order to help provide for their needs.

The inutile regime cannot prevent the farmers and the fisherfolk from storming the streets and gates of DAR and Malacañang. The regime must tremble in the face of the irrepressible rage of the peasantry who are now ready to take up arms to further strengthen the revolutionary movement that shall bring an end to the oppressive ruling class. Duterte must fear the peasantry’s growing consciousness of the truth – that the power to advance and achieve victory for the class war lies in their own hands.