By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
23 February 2008
I am happy to observe that the broad united front of patriotic forces is determined to arouse and mobilize the broad masses of the people in the national capital region as well as on a nationwide scale, including provincial centers and localities, in order to further isolate the Arroyo regime and cause the resignation, impeachment or ouster of the fake president, Gloria M. Arroyo.
The people are deeply outraged by the Arroyo regime’s servility to foreign interests, its corruption and plundering mania and its wanton violations of human rights. The task of the broad united front is to bring to the surface and to the streets the people’s outrage and thus overcome the regime’s campaign of mass deception and intimidation.
It is possible to remove the Arroyo ruling clique from power mainly through the people’s exercise of their democratic right to speak and assemble, as in 1986 and 2001. The issuance of statements, indoor meetings and localized rallies against the regime can generate the gigantic mass actions. The peaceful uprising of the people in great numbers can encourage the bureaucracy and military to withdraw support and can thus cause the Arroyo regime to implode.
According to reliable information, the patriotic military and police officers and the overwhelming majority of enlisted personnel will manifest their withdrawal of support from the regime as soon as 100,000 people converge in any of the protest rallies either in Manila or Edsa in the coming days, weeks and months. Such level of mass participation is expected to ignite the peaceful uprising of the people in their millions nationwide.
The patriotic military and police officers uphold the principle of civilian supremacy and are not interested in taking power for any military clique. They want a triumvirate of officials of the Supreme Court, Senate and the executive to be the caretaker leadership for running the government until a new president is elected in a snap election within four months from the removal of Arroyo from power.
In its website and through its official spokesman Ka Roger, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has repeatedly declared that it is encouraging the people to exercise their democratic right to speak and assemble and that the armed units of the New People’s Army are keeping out of the protest mass actions in the urban areas in consonance with the legal and defensive character of these actions.
According to the CPP, the NPA is intensifying armed tactical offensives in the countryside in order to seize more arms and strengthen itself for ultimately overthrowing the entire ruling system. In that connection, it is targeting Arroyo loyalists among the reactionary military and police, the most notorious violators of human rights and the plunderers of the natural wealth of the Philippines.
Generals Esperon and Yano are merely exposing their state of panic when they keep on barking that the NPA will join the protest mass actions and that the military and police of the reactionary state will always follow the pro-Arroyo chain of command. The real big problem of these running dogs of the Arroyo regime is the simultaneous growth of the protest mass actions of the people in the cities, the tendency of the regime to implode and the intensified tactical offensives of the people’s army in the countryside. ###