The crisis of the ruling political system continues to worsen as widespread graft and corruption under the Aquino regime is exposed. Behind Aquino’s endless talk of clean government, he has arrogated the right to divert billions upon billions of pesos of public funds for political patronage in favor of his partymates, political supporters and big business cronies.
Aquino’s vain defense of his pork barrel Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) further isolates his regime from the toiling masses as well as from the middle class sectors who have been disillusioned with his façade of righteousness. To the broad masses of workers and peasants, Aquino’s claims that anomalous fund diversions committed under DAP have benefited the people are empty and baseless.
After four years under the Aquino regime, socio-economic conditions have deteriorated. Ordinary Filipinos continue to suffer daily from widespread unemployment, low wages, landlessness and landgrabbing and rising prices of food and basic commodities and services.
It is clear that Aquino’s claims of “inclusive growth” are one big lie. To the Filipino people, so-called “economic growth” is a meaningless pile of statistics that elates only the big foreign banks and portfolio capitalists whose financial investments are guaranteed quick profits. Aquino has made foreign finance capitalists from China and the US ever happier with the recent signing of the all-out bank liberalization law.
The state of Philippine national sovereignty is at its lowest in over two decades with Aquino’s acquiescence to every imposition of the US military in exchange for US support and military financing. The high point of Aquino’s all-out puppetry to the US imperialists was the signing of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) which paved the way for the reestablishment of US military bases around the country. Behind his anti-China rhetoric, Aquino continues to accommodate and allow big comprador capitalists from China and the US to dominate the Philippine economy.
Aquino’s peace rhetoric is a big fakery. Military brutality and abuses continue unabated as Aquino has ordered the AFP to step up its Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression in order to protect and advance the interests of foreign mining companies and big agri-corporations. The state’s armed forces continue to commit extrajudicial killings, massacres, abductions, illegal arrests, harassments and physical abuses. They subject people to hamletting by occupying their homes and preventing people from carrying out production and commerce through food and economic blockades.
Through words and deeds, the Aquino regime has worked hard to put an end to peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). It has refused to heed the clamor for a resumption of NDFP-GPH peace negotiations in order to address the outstanding problems at the root of the civil war. After making a big show of signing agreements with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Aquino is reneging on his promises by mangling the draft of the Bangsamoro Basic Law in order to make it conform to the GPH constitution.
To the Filipino people, it has become starkly clear that the Aquino regime is no different from the past regimes. They are ever determined to put an end to Aquino’s rule and advance their national and democratic struggles.
There is a swelling protest movement against the Aquino regime in school campuses, urban poor communities, factories, market places, offices and other places. Majority of the Filipino are dissatisfied with Aquino and are increasingly vocal and active in their demand against his continued rule.
Progressive members of the Philippine congress have filed several impeachment cases against Aquino reflecting the people’s demand for Aquino’s ouster. While majority of the members of congress are pork barrel recipients and beholden to Aquino, they could not ignore how the demand for Aquino’s impeachment is fast gaining ground among the broad masses of workers, peasants, youth, women and middle class sectors. The demand for Aquino’s impeachment can swell into a mass movement involving tens of thousands of people marching in the streets.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) supports the Filipino people in their effort to intensify their struggles to oust Benigno Aquino III from power and put an end to his regime of bureaucratic corruption, militarism and human rights abuses and foreign military presence and intervention. The CPP supports the call for the establishment of a democratic council comprised of morally righteous leaders and representatives of the democratic sectors.
In the face of the Filipino people’s heightening struggle for the ouster of Aquino, the CPP orders the New People’s Army (NPA) to step up tactical offensives across the country. The NPA must continue to seize and maintain the initiative and launch increasingly frequent tactical offensives. Work to completely defeat the Aquino regime’s Oplan Bayanihan. There should be no letup in launching tactical offensives against Aquino’s armed forces in order to weaken it and provide the democratic mass movement further momentum in ousting the Aquino regime.
The NPA must take advantage of the worsening socio-economic crisis and isolation of the Aquino regime by aggressively recruiting new Red fighters and arming them with weapons seized from the enemy. The Filipino people need the NPA to grow severalfold in order to bring the people’s war to a new and higher level. Their struggle to oust the Aquino regime will serve as a dress rehearsal for the overthrow of the entire semicolonial and semifeudal system.
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