“The element of President Rodrigo Duterte’s emerging dictatorship are clear for everyone to see.”
This is the statement of militant group, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) and its allied organizations, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Anakbayan and Migrante, along with Lumad students from the Save Our Schools Network in a ‘Black Friday Protest’ held today in Mendiola.
They registered their opposition after the Palace issued Proclamation 360 that directed the Office of the Presidential Adviser to the Peace Process to terminate the peace talks of the Government of the Philippines (GRP) with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
The GRP side has yet to furnish a written notice of the peace talks directly and sent to the NDFP. Upon receipt and acknowledgment of the written notice, the termination shall be deemed effective 30 days from receipt of notice.
Bayan National Spokesperson Teddy Casiño said, “Duterte wasted the efforts and gains made by both sides over the past two months, which include the initialing of agreements on agrarian reform and national industrialization which could benefit million of Filipinos.”
Bayan also decried Duterte’s threats of a crackdown on legal mass organizations like Bayan, saying the group’s members would be arrested and calling the group a ‘legal front’ of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People’s Army (NPA) and NDFP.
Casiño said that the Duterte ‘dictatorship’ is becoming more evident as various signs have emerged.
These signs included, according to Casiño, “the effective arrogation of legislative powers to himself via supermajority in Congress; the subversion of the system of checks and balances via impeachment; threats and intimidation of the Courts, the Ombudsman constitutional commissions; the abandonment of the peace process and intensified military operations against Communist and Muslim revolutionary movements in the guise of anti-terrorism; a crackdown on the Left, the political opposition, the press and other government critics; a deluge of fake news via the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) and Duterte’s internet troll army; and the resumption of the bloody drug war via PNP’s Oplan Tokhang III.”
The real terrorist
Meanwhile, labor center KMU resisted the ‘terrorist’ tagging of Duterte against progressive groups and his accusation that such organizations are ‘conniving’ with the CPP-NPA-NDFP.
“Duterte is terrorizing the people with his crackdown threats against legal organizations criticizing his tyrannical rules, failed promises and implementation of anti-people policies,” said Jerome Adonis, KMU national secretary-general.
Adonis added, “This is Duterte’s desperate attempt to quell the Filipino people’s growing dissent and outrage over his mass murdering war on drugs, his promotion of cheap and contractual labor, rejection of free land distribution to farmers, imposition of higher taxes and failure to deliver basic social services like mass housing and mass transport”
Adonis noted, “Instead of heeding the people’s just and legitimate demands, Duterte tagged the people’s clamor for genuine change as acts of terrorism and responded with a crackdown that would only pave way to gross human rights violations, trumped-up charges, illegal arrests, abductions and extra-judicial and political killings.
KMU cited the more than 13,000 victims of Duterte’s war on drugs; the bombing of the entire Marawi City to ashes; bombing and military attacks on Lumad schools and communities in Mindanao; violent disruption of workers’ strikes; and militarization of peasant and indigenous communities, as forms of state terrorism of the Duterte administration.
“As far as facts are concerned, it is Duterte who has been committing acts of state terrorism against the people,” stressed Adonis.
Youth group Anakbayan, on the other hand, said that the crackdown on their ranks is not new as attacks and repression against leaders and members of progressive and militant organizations have been existing for the longest time now since the start of the Duterte government.
“Raids of legal offices in Mindanao, killings and arrests of activists, farmers, indigenous peoples across the country has been happening even without the crackdown threat from this fascist regime,” says Einstein Recedes, National Secretary-General of Anakbayan.
Recedes said that the revolutionary government that is being floated by the Duterte camp is nothing but an open fascist dictatorship rule.
US-Duterte regime
Recedes also said that “the rightist counter-revolution (being pushed by Duterte) is backed by US President Donald Trump.”
Bayan also noted that “Duterte’s plot to impose a fascist dictatorship has gained momentum after his meeting with Trump.”
Casiño said, “The Trump-Duterte meeting cemented the US support and financing of Duterte’s drug war, counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism campaigns in exchange for Duterte’s adherence to the Trump administration’s security agenda and expansion for free market and neoliberal economic policies.”
As response and form of rejection to what the groups called a ‘bogus’ revolutionary government being peddled by Duterte and his supporters, Bayan and KMU will be holding a rally on November 30, in time for the 154th birth anniversary of 1896 Philippine revolution leader Andres Bonifacio.
