The US-Duterte regime have made fools out of the Filipino people. To display his supposed altruism, he ordered the increase of the P200 monthly ayuda to P500. The catch is, what would have been a year-long distribution of ayuda will now just cover three months. So instead of receiving P2,400, Filipinos will only receive a total of P1,500 in government assistance. This is how low Duterte thinks of the masses: that he can get away with this brazen act of deceit without the people reacting. But Duterte is grossly mistaken for thinking that the meager P500 ayuda is enough to silence the masses instead of him suspending the excise tax for oil and ending deregulation. This only fuels the public demand for genuine solutions to the oil crisis.

For Filipino women, basic arithmetic shows that the P500 ayuda will not be enough to counteract the devastating effects of oil price hikes. According to them, “mapapamura ka sa mahal ng mga bilihin ngayon.” They have for the longest time learned to scour so many ways just to make ends meet. But they are not magicians who can produce food out of thin air to assuage their growling stomachs.

The US-Duterte regime only tightened the shackles of mendicancy by giving out inadequate ayuda which the masses need to wait for months, even years before they can even claim it. Many more end up with not even a centavo of this so-called ayuda. Worse, the neoliberal regime uses this to evade their obligation in implementing concrete and apt solutions such as the junking of the Oil Deregulation Law with regards to the oil issue.

The Filipino women’s stance is clear: the US-Duterte regimen is inept in protecting its citizens from the destructive effects of crises it brought upon itself through exhaustive neoliberal policies. The women will never accept that as they wallow in the quagmire of poverty, capitalists and their master imperialists swim gladly in the fruits of the masses’ labor. They will never accept the fate of lifelong destitution the US-Duterte regime wants them to be cursed with.

MAKIBAKA-Bikol challenges all women to unite and become one strong voice that will echo throughout the lands and the ears of the seemingly deaf regime. They must flood the streets and call for the suspension of oil excise tax, complete repeal of the Oil Deregulation Law and demand their other democratic interests. To fully attain socioeconomic justice, these women must join the revolution.