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CBCP Statement and Ramos Scheme Carry Points and Implications Adverse to Arroyo
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
11 July 2005
The Arroyo regime is sinking fast and is so desperate that it is trying to grasp at straws. It hypes both the statement of the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and the Ramos scheme to phase out Gloria M. Arroyo from her ill-gotten
office in the next few months as endorsements for her to stay in power.
In fact, the CBCP statement and the Ramos scheme carry certain points and implications that are adverse to Arroyo. The
CBCP statement declares that the bishops do not demand her resignation and yet neither do they encourage her simply to
dismiss such a call from others. The Ramos scheme presumes that she must become a figurehead president, yield power to
a high commission and fade away under the cover of a chacha (charter change) towards a parliamentary form of government.
The CBCP statement is an equivocating and self-contradictory piece. But certainly it is not an outright condonation of all the
evils that the Arroyo regime has been responsible for, such as massive electoral fraud, corruption, servility to foreign plunderers
and aggressors, extreme exploitation of the people and human rights violations. The spin doctors of the regime are wrong
when they broadcast that the bishops have unanimously exculpated Arroyo.
The Ramos scheme is a thinly-veiled indecent proposal for a coup by the military-civilian gang of Ramos himself, Ermita and De
Venecia that would lord over the process of discarding Arroyo and shifting to a parliamentary form of government. Otherwise
the gang is merely in cahoots with Arroyo in dishing out to the mass media a scheme that has no purpose but to douse cold
water on the growing anti-Arroyo movement of the outraged people and allow Arroyo to stay in power. In any case, vice
president Noli de Castro is already riled.
The Ramos scheme is extremely ludicrous in envisioning a quick-fix chacha to save the face of Arroyo and to install a parliamentary
form of government. Ramos himself failed to do his chacha when he was president. The people continue to hold the view that
chacha under the ruling Lakas-MCD coalition will produce a constitution that will be far worse than the present one. The US is
interested in further imposing anti-national and anti-democratic provisions in a new constitution of the reactionary government.
Ramos has presented himself as the chief protector of the Arroyo regime because of his military background. But the people
know that Ramos is actually detested by the military officers and enlisted men for having enriched himself from the privatization
of Fort Bonifacio and the former US military bases and from the graft-ridden supply contracts in the so-called modernization
program of the military.
The CBCP statement and the Ramos scheme cannot save the Arroyo regime from falling. Since Friday, the contradictions and
splits have rapidly increased and sharpened within the reactionary classes, within the most conservative institutions, within the
military and police, within the ruling coalition and within the Arroyo cabinet. The mass movement of the people is steadily
growing in strength and advancing. The broad united front for the ouster or resignation of Arroyo has further expanded and
gained strength.
The consensus within the ruling system now is to get rid of the Arroyo regime sooner than later. The estimate is that Arroyo
would accelerate the further rotting of the entire system by staying longer in her usurped office. Indeed, the combination of
grave socio-economic crisis and the illegitimate and immoral character of the regime spells disaster for the entire ruling system.
The revolutionary forces and people recognize the favorable conditions for the national democratic revolution and are moving
forward through all forms of struggle. ###
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