PRESS STATEMENTS & INTERVIEWS, 2001 - Present

By Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines

The Filipino people suffer from two kinds of terrorism. One kind involves the daily violence of exploitation by US imperialists and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. Another kind involves the outright use or threat of violence by the armed forces and other coercive apparatuses of the imperialist master and ithe puppet state.

The terrorism of both the imperialist and puppet states is being completely exposed as the socio-economic and political crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system worsens and engenders wars of aggression and the widespread repression of the people. We are again living under conditions in which the US imperialists and Filipino puppets are even showing off their mailed fist policy of terror.

It is appropriate and necessary for the Filipino people to recall the imposition of martial law and the fascist dictatorship on them by the US-directed Marcos regime on September 21, 1972 and to carry out mass protests against the system of oppression and exploitation, the worsening crisis and the escalating terrorism unleashed by the US and the Macapagal-Arroyo puppet regime.

A people’s uprising in 1986 overthrew Marcos.. But the presidents and ruling cliques that have come after him come from the same exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. Even the Marcoses and their big cronies are back in stride within the ruling system, sharing power with those reactionaries who benefited from the 1986 overthrow of the fascist dictator. There has been merely a rearrangement and redistribution of power and wealth among families and cliques within the exploiting classes.

In a recent launching of the book, At Home in World (Portrait of a Revolutionary) at the UP Bahay Kalinaw, my co-author pointed out that the Marcoses and their big cronies have enjoyed immunity and are back in power. This fact shows clearly how rotten is the ruling system and how much needed is the cumulative exercise of the people’s power in order to bring about a just social system.

I rejoice at the resoluteness and militancy of the broad masses of the people in carrying out the protest actions and in expressing their national and democratic demands. I stand in solidarity with the masses and the patriotic forces undertaking the mass mobilization. We must continue to stand up and fight for our national and democratic rights and interests.

Unemployment is running high. The incomes of the toiling masses and the middle social strata are being pushed down. The peso is being devalued rapidly. And yet the reactionary regime is allowing prices of basic commodities and charges for basic services to rise and is imposing ever more onerous taxes on the people and adopting austerity measures in order to continue chanelling resources to debt service, bureaucratic corruption and higher military spending.

The Macapagal Arroyo regime’s answer to the people’s increasing protests is the escalation of brutal acts of repression against protesting workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, small and medium businessmen, religious, the ethnic and religious minorities and other people. The regime wants to stop the people from struggling against neocolonialism and lifting themselves from poverty, underdevelopment and indebtedness to foreign finance capitalists.

The current severe economic and financial crisis is the consequence of exploitation by the forces of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The bureaucrat capitalists, acting as true puppets, obscure the accountability of foreign monopoly capitalism for keeping the country semi-colonial and semifeudal, for deepening its underdevelopment, for encouraging bureaucratic corruption and for generating deficits and foreign debt.

In the vain hope of getting some concessions from the US, including further military and financial assistance, the regime goes further in puppetry and is scheming to amend the 1987 constitution in order to eliminate all national restrictions on foreign investments, to diminish and undermine basic democratic rights and to allow the US imperialists to establish military bases and deploy military forces in the country.

Under the mutually acceptable principles of national sovereignty, democracy and social justice, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) has taken the pains of negotiating with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) in order to work out comprehensive agreements on human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms and the end of hostilities and redeployment of forces.

As the US and the GRP under the Macapagal-Arroyo regime continue to obstruct the progress of the peace negotiations, the people and the revolutionary forces firm up their resolve and struggle harder in order to strengthen themselves. Even as they have constituted a revolutionary government of workers and peasants, they are prepared to discuss the goal and methods of bringing about a new democratic government with all willing positive forces.

The Filipino people must keep on waging all forms of resistance against the current rigors of crisis and the terrorism of US imperialism and the puppet state and thus move forward in the long-term struggle for a new Philippines that is completely independent, democratic, socially just, progressive and peaceful.###