The evolution of social movements in the Philippines, with Philippine political and the Economic History

Long and final draft:

Introduction

We always take the socialist vantage point in studying the history of Philippine society, i.e., the standpoint of the working peoples of our society and the rest of the world. Our main objective is not merely to interpret our history’s past in order to neither maintain nor extrapolate its trajectory—our main intention is to intervene in political praxis at every step of the way in order to change it along the socialist road.

The socialist vantage point sees class struggle as pivotal. In this era of neoliberal globalization and post-Cold War, we see other spheres of society such as ethnicity, race, gender and other social categories asserting themselves and intertwining with class issues. We are now afforded to examine the class struggle alongside the basic or natural issues of humanity—all in relation to the state.

In terms of historical periodization, we can use the development of the Philippine nation-state as a relative locus to review the changes of Philippine society from feudalism to capitalism. We will focus on the motion of three interrelated spheres of society;

1) the state,
2) class relations and class struggle, and
3) nation—as they weave into the progression of world capitalism from the Industrial Revolution and the recent Technological Revolution

In this chapter, it would help if we define certain concepts that have gained renewed force in our contemporary study of history.

A nation-state is a specific form of state that exists to provide a sovereign territory for a particular nation, and derives its legitimacy from that function. In the ideal model of the nation-state, the population consists of the nation and only of the nation: the state not only houses it, but also protects it and its national identity. (A country is a geographical area that connotes an independent political entity.)

There are many definitions of the state. One of the most common is that: a state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, possessing internal and external sovereignty, and normally exerts monopolization of the legitimate use of force, compulsion, or other types of hegemony.

The term nation, while an ethical and philosophical doctrine in itself (and is usually the starting point for the ideology of nationalism), is distinguished by a common identity of its members, and usually by a common origin, in the sense of ancestry, parentage or descent, and ethnicity. The national identity refers both to the distinguishing features of the group, and to the individual’s sense of belonging to it.

There are also many definitions of social classes. In Marxist political-economy, class is defined in terms of the extent to which an individual or social group has control over the means of production, i.e., the physical, non-human, inputs used in production (factories, machines, tools and materials, and other non-human capital). Examples are relations between the capitalists (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat), the landlords and peasants. Other classes in this category are the lumpen-proletariat, the middle class and the intelligentsia. If the dominant class relation in a given society is the capitalist-worker relations, then capitalism is the dominant economic mode in that given society.


General Background

Since the Spanish colonization of the 1500s, the formation of the Philippine nation-state and development of the working peoples’ movements were largely influenced by the onslaught and resistance against colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and by both the World Wars 1 and 2.

The La Liga Filipina and the Katipunan, respectively founded and led by Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, both wished for nationhood, patterned after the anti-monarchial and anti-feudal shifts in Europe during their time.

The Spanish-American and the subsequent Philippine-American War (1899-1913) and American-Moro Wars (1899 to 1912), led to the direct annexation of the Phiippine Islands to the United States. Inspired by the workers movement like the Union Obrera Democratica and the initial successes of the Russian Revolution, a new type of working class movement arose from the Philippine labor movement.

The Communist Party of the Philippines was established in 1930 (that later merged the peasant-based Socialist Party of the Philippines, which was founded in 1932, in at the start of the Second World War). The merger party formed its armed wing, the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, to take the direct brunt of armed resistance against Japanese occupation.

US neocolonialism after World War 2 led to a wave of national liberation struggles in Asia, africa and Latin America. Jose Ma formed a new type of communist party that was inspired by the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949. Sison. The Maoist communist party formed the New People’s Army and mounted a guerilla resistance against Pres. Ferdinand Marcos’s martial rule that lasted from 1972 until 1983.

Martial rule also saw the rise of new political movements that challenged the Marcos regime and opt for socialism. The Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa (BISIG) is one of such major formations.

The collapse of the Soviet system that started with internal problems during the 1980s marked the end of the Cold War by 1990. The ousting of Pres. Marcos in 1986 by a combination of military mutiny and the so-called “people power” revolt preceded this.

The mid-1980s and onwards highlights the onset of neoliberal globalization’s effects in Philippine economy and politics. US veered away from anticommunism to “anti-terrorism” against militant Islam. The monopoly over the Left spectrum of the Communist Party of the Philippines (Maoist) was shattered with the severance of many of its leaders and some party organs by 1992.

Socialist and communist movements worldwide were admittedly on an ideological and political retreat and are seeking new ground for a rebound. The world also saw the rise of ethnic, national and religious fundamentalist tensions that led to pogroms, genocide and terrorism.

The Philippine state since the 1986 revolt remained weak. Its economy is in near shambles, and is in fact the most backward in Southeast Asia. Key state institutions as the presidency, legislature, the Supreme Court, the electoral commission and the defense establishment are so damaged that elite political legitimacy hounds society and warns of permanent crises.

Progressive and patriotic political forces from the ranks of junior officers down to the rank-and-file are rising from the Armed forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP). Moro revolutionary movements for self-determination persist, such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and its breakaway Moro National Liberation Front (MILF).

The Philippine socialist movement is now reckoning with a local working class that is becoming more and more stratified, and punctuated by the rise of the service sector, stunted industrial and agricultural sectors, and increase in the number of out-migration whose numbers are over 7 million today.

The Genesis of Southeast Asian Nation-States: An Overview

What we know as the “Philippines” today was carved out of early European colonialism. During the 1500s and 1600s the Europeans were able to take control of the international trade of Asia, thereby diverting the profits from this trade to Europe. As a result, the Europeans became stronger while Asian empires and kingdoms became weaker. By the 1800s the Europeans were in a position to establish their authority over much of Asia, particularly the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia is dominantly Malay by ethnicity with significant presence of Chinese, Indians, aborigines and other immigrants from the rest of the region and the world. In a generic sense, anthropologists use the name "Malay" to describe all the numerous related groups inhabiting the Malay Archipelago, and which are not of older aboriginal stock. These include the Aceh, Minangkabaus, Bataks and Mandailings who live in Sumatra ; Java and Sunda in Java ; Banjars, Ibans, Kadazans and Melanaus in Borneo ; Bugis and Torajas in Sulawesi ; the various dominant ethnic groups in the Philippines such as the Tagalogs, Ilocanos and Ifugao of Luzon island, the Visayans of the central Philippines, the Maguindanao, Tausug and Bajao of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago ; and the people of East Timor (again, excluding those of older Papuan stock).

Western powers carved out colonies from the so-called “Malay Archipelago” during the 1500s. Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and the United States all collected colonies in this part of the globe. Various national-liberation struggles have commenced since then, traversing both World Wars 1 and 2.

The Portuguese had the least impact on Southeast Asia. They captured Malacca in 1511, holding it until the Dutch seized it in 1641. Otherwise, they maintained only a small piece of territory on the island of Timor, southeast of Bali.

Spain ruled the Philippines from its conquest of Cebu in 1565 and Manila in 1571 until its defeat in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Many ethnic Moro tribes, especially in Mindanao, were not fully hegemonized though by Spanish and American colonialisms.

Dutch colonialism falls into two periods. The first, that of the V.O.C., or Dutch East India Company, lasted from 1605 to 1799. The V.O.C. had little interest in territorial administration; its primary concern was to maximize profits through trading monopolies.

When the V.O.C. collapsed in 1799, the Dutch government took control of its assets in 1825, after the Napoleonic Wars, and began to bring the Indonesian archipelago under its administrative authority. This process was completed during the 1930s.

At the end of the Second World War, the Dutch had hoped to retain the Netherlands East Indies as a colony, but the Indonesians opposed the return of the Dutch, setting up a republic in 1945. In 1949, after four years of fighting, the Indonesians gained their independence with the assistance of the United Nations which served as a mediator between the Indonesians and the Dutch.

The British conquered Burma, fighting three Anglo-Burmese Wars in 1824-26, 1852, and 1885-86. Unlike other colonies that maintained their ethnic identity, Burma was a province of British India. The Burmese, therefore, had two sets of rulers, the British at the top with the Indians in the middle. In 1935 the British agreed to separate Burma from India, putting this agreement into effect in 1937. Burma was able to negotiate its independence from Great Britain in 1948.

Penang (acquired in 1786), Singapore (founded by Raffles in 1819), and Malacca (Melaka, acquired in 1824), were governed by Britain as the Straits Settlements. The Straits Settlements served as a base for British expansion into the Malay Peninsula between 1874 and 1914. When the Malay States entered into negotiations for their independence--achieved in 1957--Penang and Malacca became part of Malaysia as did Singapore in 1963.

However, Singapore was asked to withdraw from the federation in 1965. Singapore has been an independent city state since that date. Sarawak and Sabah which joined Malaysia in 1963 continue to remain members of the federation.

France moved into Vietnam in 1858, capturing Saigon in 1859. Using the south, then called Cochin China, as a base the French moved west and north completing the conquest of Indochina by 1907. (Indochina--the five territories under French authority: Cochin China, Annam, Tongking, Laos, and Cambodia.) The French also wanted to retain their colony after the Second World War. The Vietnamese rejected French rule, and after defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu, obtained their independence at the Geneva Conference in 1954.

The United States moved into the Philippines as a result of the peace settlement with Spain in 1898. The Filipinos were granted a Commonwealth (internal autonomy) government in 1935, and their independence in 1946.

Thailand continued to be independent. It was the only Southeast Asian state to remain independent during the colonial period.

World War I (between 1914 and 1919) proved to be the decisive break with the old world order, marking the final demise of absolutist monarchy in Europe. Four empires were shattered: The German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, and the Russian. Their four dynasties, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the Romanovs, who had roots of power back to the days of the Crusades, all fell during or after the war.

World War 1 also meant the emergence of the modern nation-state as Europe began to reconfigure itself along economic and “ethnic maps”. The Southeast Asian colonies carved out by the western powers proceeded independently in nation-state building by embarking on renewed national liberation struggles along the Euopean republican or parliamentary models.

1st Period: Spanish Colonial Period (1565-1898)

Before Spanish colonization circa 1500s, ethnic groups in the “Philippine archipelago” were scattered, and groups of 50 to a hundred families into pre-state independent barangays, or groups of 50 to a hundred families. The barangays ruled by chiefs or datus. The datus comprised the nobility. Then came the maharlikas (freemen), followed by the aliping mamamahay (serfs) and aliping saguiguilid (slaves). With no monetary system in place, barter was predominant with rice used as the medium of exchange. We cannot yet speak of a unitary nation during the pre-Hispanic era.

Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, the commander of the fourth Spanish expedition, named the islands after Philip, heir to the Spanish throne. The Philippines Islands was formally organized as a Spanish colony until 1565 when Philip II appointed Miguel Lopez de Legazpi the first Governor-General.

By the Circa 1600, the “Philippine archipelago had a population of only 900,000 and grew to around four million by 1850. With the exception of many Moro ethnic groups in Mindanao, Roman Catholicism (through the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Recollects and Jesuits) forced its away against local animism, Islam, and Hinduism throughout the rest of the archipelago.

Under the weight of Spanish empire-building and mercantilism in this part of the world—the combination of the sword and ideological rule of the Spanish Catholic friars—Spanish colonialism began to impose the rising European trend of the nation-state upon the archipelago prior to the impending break up of old Empires in Europe.

Spanish governors brought with them their feudal notions of land tenure—the encomienda system (Royal Land Grants)-- with encomienderos and subordinate vassals. The traditional village chiefs became a class of landed nobility wielding considerable local authority. This system grants that encomienderos must defend his encomienda from external attack, maintain peace and order within, and support the Catholic friars. In turn, the encomiendero acquired the right to collect tribute from the indios (native).

Later on, the encomienda system degenerated into abuse of power by the encomienderos. The tribute soon became land rents to a few powerful landlords. And the natives who once cultivated the lands in freedom were transformed into mere share tenants.

The "friarocracy" of the religious orders and the oligarchy of the landholders were the twin pillars of colonial society. The Spanish did not develop the trade potential of the Philippine's agricultural or mineral resources. The colony was administered from Mexico and its commerce centered on the galleon trade between Canton and Acapulco in which Manila functioned secondarily as an entrepot.

Smaller Chinese junks brought silk and porcelain from Canton to Manila where the cargoes were re-loaded on galleons bound for Acapulco and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The Chinese goods were paid for in Mexican silver.

The Spanish hold on the Philippines first began to weaken in 1762 when the British briefly captured Manila during the Seven Years' War. In support of the British invasion, the long persecuted Chinese merchant community rose in revolt against the Spanish authority. The Treaty of Paris returned Manila to Spain at the end of the War but with increasing diversion of the China trade to Britain.

The king of Spain (Charles III ) issued a royal decree in 1780 establishing a government monopoly in tobacco in the Philippines. This monopoly took effect in 1782.

When the economic of laissez faire of Adam Smith accepted by many European countries, Spain also adopted this doctrine and opened Manila to foreign trade in 1789. (Laissez faire is a French phrase meaning "let do, let go, let pass." Smith was an economist who advocated the doctrine that is generally understood as opposing economic interventionism by the state beyond that which is perceived to be necessary to maintain peace and property rights.)

Governor general Felix Berenguer de Marquina encouraged foreign merchants to come and invest in the Philippines. By the middle of the 19th century there were already a number of English, American, German, French, and Swiss trading companies in the Philippines. As a result trade and commerce increased greatly and the Philippines began to experience a period of economic development.

More Philippine ports were established and opened to foreign trade. the opening of the ports of Sual in Pangasinan, Iloilo and Zamboanga, Cebu, Legaspi and Tacloban accelerated the economic growth of the Philippines.

To support the growing trade, the improvements of transportation and communication. An international telegraph communication system was established in 1888 through an undersea cable between Zambales and the British Colony of Hong Kong. In 1837, the first domestic telegraph line was opened and the telephone line in 1890.

For over 333 years, the Philippines was a crown colony of Spain. Until 1821 when the Mexican's revolted and won independence from Spain, the Philippines was a dependency of Mexico, being administered by the viceroy in the name of the king. From 1821 to 1898, the country was a distinct government unit under the direct control of the home government in Madrid. The king issued cedulas for the administration of the colony and appointed a governor, member of the royal audiencia and other high officials.

The La Liga Filipina and the Katipunan were formed to struggle for Philippine nationhood.

It became clear to the Filipinos that the peaceful campaign for reforms would not materialize. The abuses and injustices of the colonial leaders left the Filipinos with no alternative but to stage a different campaign -- armed revolution and finally political separation from Spain. This campaign began when Bonifacio left La Liga Filipina and activated his secret revolutionary organization, the Kapitunan.

The first real battle of the revolution took place on August 30 when Bonifacio led 800 Katipuneros in attacking the Spanish arsenal in San Juan del Monter. Bonifacio lost 150 katipuneros in the encounter. Many more were captured, some of whom were executed by the Spaniards. The fires of the revolution spread to other parts of the archipelago. Uprisings were reported as far as Iloilo, Negros, Aklan, and Palawan.

As the revolution spread, thousands of Filipinos in Manila were imprisoned on suspicion of being rebels. Many were exiled to Spanish colonies such as Guam and Africa.

When the Cuban civil war broke out in 1895, Rizal offered to serve as a doctor in the Spanish army in Cuba. He left his exile in Dapitan and proceeded to Cuba via Spain. But he was arrested on charges of rebellion and sedition. He was returned to Manila and faced trials. The Spanish military court sentenced him to death by firing squad.

The early Katipuneros were beefed up by non-Katipuneros, like Gen. Edilberto Evangelista (from the University of Ghent in Belgium) and most of his troops. By December 1896 also, Filipinos in the enemy infantry regiments had begun defecting to the revolution.

At the time of the revolution there were two provincials councils of the Katipunan in Cavite. One was Magdiwang Council in Noveleta under Mariano Alvarez, the uncle-in-law of Bonifacio. The other was the Magdalo council in Kawit under Baldomero Aguinaldo, a cousin of Emilio Aguinaldo.

The Magdiwang faction asked Bonifacio to settle the Katipunan leadership in Cavite. A meeting was held in Imus on December 31,1896. Later on, as the Spanish forces continued to win in the battlefields, the Katipuneros decided to settle the issue of what to do with the Katipunan. A meeting was held in Tejeros, San Francisco de Malabon. The Magdalo group won. Bonifacio lost the leadership in Revolution. The Katipunan which he established was dissolved and replaced by a revolutionary government. Aguinaldo was elected President of the revolutionary government.

Bonifacio was not elected to any minor post in the revolutionary government because he was not a lawyer. He left Tejeros and decided to continue the Katipunan under his leadership. In Naic, Bonifacio and his followers signed the Naic Military Agreement under which the Katipunan would have its own army separated from the revolutionary government forces of Aguinaldo. General Pio del Pilar was appointed commander of the Bonifacio army.

The Katipunan supremo was charged of treason and sedition by the Aguinaldo government and was sentenced to death on May 4,1897. Bonifacio and his brother Procopio were executed on May 10,1897 in the Maragondon.

The revolutionary forces of Aguinaldo suffered a series of defeats as the Spanish forces were strengthened by reinforcements from Spain. The Spaniards were in control of Cavite by the of June 1897.

Aguinaldo fled to Biak-Na-Bato in Bulacan in July 1897 and established a new revolutionary government which came to be known as the Biak-na-Bato Republic.

A peace pact, the Pact of Biak-Na-Bato, which was signed on December 14 and 16, 1897, stipulated the end of the Filipino-Spanish Revolution. The forces of Aguinaldo were given amnesty and Aguinaldo and his top officials went on exile to Hongkong. Aguinaldo left for Hongkong on December 27,1897 with 25 revolutionary leaders.

But the peace pact did not last long. Soon fighting between Spanish and Filipino forces erupted in various parts of the archipelago namely in Zambales, Bulacan, Ilocos Sur, Caloocan, Camarines Norte. General Francisco Makabulos of Tarlac established a revolutionary government for Central Luzon in April 1898.

As the war went on, the United States of America declared war on Spain.

This Aguinaldo-led government that was established in Malolos, dissolved the Katipunan in July 1898 and established the Army of Liberation of Filipinas. The indigenous Filipino Military Academy or Academia Militar (different from the Philippine Military Academy which was formed by the American colonizers), was also established in Malolos, on October 25, 1898 to train officers in the revolutionary army for service in the army of the Republic. On September 15, 1898, in Malolos, President Aguinaldo formally declared the victorious conclusion of the war of liberation against Spain, paying due tribute to the Army of Liberation of Filipinas.

2nd Period: American Colonialism, the Second World War, and Japanese Occupation (1899-1945)

In December 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines and other territories from Spain at the Treaty of Paris for the sum of 20 million United States dollars, after the U.S. defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War.

McKinley re-issued his old orders on December 21, 1989 to take over the whole archipelago as America’s colony . The American Admiral Dewey, in contrast to the antic of McKinley’s “benevolent assimilation” of the archipelago’s peoples, wrote in his autobiography (written 1913) that the American negotiators in Paris: ...scarcely comprehended that a rebellion was included in the purchase... Now, after paying twenty millions for the islands, we must establish our authority by force against the very wishes of the people whom [we claimed] we sought to benefit.

Some Americans, notably William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and other members of the American Anti-Imperialist League, strongly objected to the annexation of the Philippines.

The American thus launched two wars to claim the whole archipelago. The more well-known is the “Christian Filipino-American War” in Luzon and the Visayas, and the least understood are “American-Moro Wars” in Mindanao and Sulu.

The American-Moro Wars in Mindanao and Sulu lasted from 1899 to 1912. An increasing number of historians today see these wars as more of massacres. Gen. Leonard Wood, who labeled the Muslims as “moral degenerates”, was the U.S. Army commander in this less-documented war. The wars formally ended in the Battle of Bud Bagsak in Sulu, in June 11-15, 1913. But stiff Moro resistance persisted until 1916.

Before the battle of Bud Bagsak was the Battle of Bud Dajo in Sulu on March 5-7, 1906. The Moro fighters led by Datu Uti were defeated by Col. J.W Duncan. Nearly 1,000 Moro fighters perished.

The four-day Battle of Bud Bagsak in 1912 was personally led by U.S. Brigadier General John "Black Jack" J. Pershing of the 8th Infantry and Philippine Scouts against Moro resistance fighters, who were led by Nakil Amil and armed mostly with kris, barongs, spears and few guns. It was the fiercest battle Gen. Pershing experienced, he admitted to his wife.

(The Moro National Liberation Front today notes that in many other battles in the Morolands, the Moro fighters were proven to be unstoppable by the 0.38 caliber pistol and other rifles which led the Americans to invent the more powerful U.S. Army Colt M1911 0.45 caliber pistol. This battle was considered a massacre. More than 2,000 Moros died including 196 women and 340 children.)
As to the “Christian Filipino-American War,” the Filipinos in Luzon and the Visayas, fighting for their independence from Spain since 1896, had already declared their independence on June 12. On August 14, 11,000 ground troops were sent to occupy the Philippines.

On January 21, 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo was declared the first President. He later organized a Congress at Malolos, Bulacan to draft a constitution. The Malolos Constitution included provisions intended to confiscate large estates, especially the so-called friar lands. However, as the Republic was short-lived, Aguinaldo’s plan was never implemented due to the Philippine-American War.

On the same year, Aguinaldo ordered guerilla warfare to fight the Americans. The Army of Liberation of Filipinas, weakened by the American military onslaught, was dissolved and supplanted by former Katipuneros and fresh rescruits around the old Katipunan (which was previoulsy abolished in July 1898).

In 1901 the United States occupation government in Manila enacted the Sedition Act. This was at the height of the guerrilla war. The law made advocacy of Filipino independence by whatever means punishable by law. The display of the Philippine flag was a criminal offense.

There were only a few Philippine victories out of the more than 17 recorded battles during the Philippine-American Wars between 1898 and 1906. The most notable are the following:

1)“Battle of Paye”, (December 19, 1899) -- In Morong (now Rizal) Filipino General Licerio Geronimo routed an American brigade under General Lawton, in which Lawton was killed.

2)“Siege of Catubig” (April 15, 1900) -- Filipino guerillas launched a surprise attack against a detachment of American soldiers, and, after a four-day siege, forced them to evacuate the town of Catubig in Samar.

3)“Battle of Makahambus” (June 4, 1900) -- In Makahambus in Maguindanao, Filipinos routed an Americans regiment and inflicted heavy casualties. It was one of the most one-sided Philippine victory during the war. The Filipinos were under the command of Colonel Aploninar Velez in the Maguindanao Battalion. All of them were volunteers, and were not part of the regular Army of Liberation of Filipinas.

4)“Battle of Pulang Lupa” (September 13, 1900) -- In Torrijos in Marinudque, 40 Filipino resistance fighters under Colonel Maximo Abad ambushed 100 Americans and killed, wounded, or captured all of them.

5)“Balangiga Massacre” (September 28, 1901) -- Over 50 Americans were killed in an ambush in Samar in the most infamous incident of the Philippine-American war.

6)“Battle of Mabitac” (September 17, 1900) -- Filipino forces outmaneuvered and routed American forces in Laguna. It was a decisive victory for the forces under General Juan Cailles against the American force commanded by Colonel Benjamin F. Cheatham.

7)“Massacre at Dolores” (1904) -- In Samar, 47 Philippine Constabulary Scouts commanded by American Lieutenant Hayt were ambushed by 1000 pulahanes and were nearly all killed. Indigenous in Samar highlands, the pulahanes lived a simple religion based on a basic worship of both nature. They peaked to 15,000 during the war. They are known for their fanatical combat.

During the war, 4,324 American soldiers were killed and 2,818 were wounded. There were also 2,000 casualties that the Philippine Constabulary suffered during the war, over a thousand of which were fatalities. Philippine military deaths are estimated at 20,000 (16 thousand actually counted) while civilian deaths numbered in 250,000 to 1,000,000 Filipinos.

In 1908, Manuel Arellano Remondo, in a book entitled General Geography of the Philippine Islands, wrote: "The population decreased due to the wars, in the five-year period from 1895 to 1900, since, at the start of the first insurrection, the population was estimated at 9,000,000, and at present (1908), the inhabitants of the Archipelago do not exceed 8,000,000 in number."

In monetary terms, the American wars to colonize the archipelgao began with the $20,000,000 paid to Spain by virtue of the Treaty of Paris. As of 1907, according to an estimate in the New York Evening Post (March 6, 1907), the cost of the wars to the United States had reached $308,369,155.00.

Gen. Malvar’s surrender on April 15, 1902 formally ended the “Christian Filipino-American War”. Sporadic fighting continued elsewhere in the archipelago. The occupation of Leyte Island by five U.S. Army battalions in June 1906 decisively ended the war. While some measures to allow partial self-government were implemented earlier, the guerrilla war did not subside until 1913 when US President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a change in policy that would, after a transitional period, grant the Philippines full independence.

Meanwhile, the Taft Commission swept away three centuries of Spanish governance and installed in its place the laws and institutions of a modern civil state. It established a code of law, a judicial system and elective municipal and provincial governments.

Direct American colonialism forcibly introduced their own brand of “land reform”. They introduced the following:
1)Philippine Bill of 1902: set the ceilings on the hectarage of private individuals and corporations may acquire: 16 has. for private individuals and 1,024 has. for corporations.
2)Land Registration Act of 1902 (Act No. 496): provided for a comprehensive registration of land titles under the Torrens system.
3)Public Land Act of 1903: introduced the homestead system in the Philippines.
4)Tenancy Act of 1933 (Act No. 4054 and 4113): regulated relationships between landowners and tenants of rice (50-50 sharing) and sugar cane lands.

American authorities, however, could not touch the Friar Lands because the Treaty of Paris of 1898 bound the US government to protect the property interests of religious orders. The Philippine Organic Act of 1902 imposed the strict separation of church and state and eliminated the Roman Catholic Church as the official state religion. In 1904 the administration paid the Vatican US$7.2 million for most of the lands held by the religious orders. The lands were later sold back to Filipinos. Some tenants were able to buy their land but it was mainly the established estate owners who could afford to buy the former church lands.

The Torrens system, which the Americans instituted for the registration of lands, did not solve the problem completely. Either they were not aware of the law or if they did, they could not pay the survey cost and other fees required in applying for a Torrens title.

Land disputes began and agrarian troubles worsened during the American rule because of the defective land system rooted in Spanish times, and of the pervasiveness of feudalism throught the archipelago.

In the labor front, it was in the early years of the Philippine-American War that the labor movement started to take shape.

After a certain period of “preparatory organizing,” the first formal Philippine trade union – the Union de Litografos y Impresores de Filipinas (UIF) – was established on January 1, 1902, led by Isabelo de los Reyes and Hermenegildo Cruz. The UIF evolved from the different Gremios de Impresores and the first “informal” Union de Impresores y Litograficos de Filipinas (abbreviated also as UIF) formed in 1899 in San Fernando, Pampanga. The gremios ( akin to “craft unions” or “guilds” in old Europe), were considered as “proto-unions” or “embryonic unions” in the country; many from their ranks, especially the impresores bacame core members of the Katipunan.

Delos Reyes and Cruz went beyond the UIF by launching the following month (February 2, 1902) the first labor federation of unions from various occupations, the Union Obrera Democratica (UOD) at the Teatro Variedades in Sampaloc, Manila.

Wage and trade union rights issues were flatly rejected under US colonialism resulting in labor strikes. The first general strike was on August 2, 1902, that crippled many factories and offices in Manila and its neighboring towns. This incident, in turn, resulted to the first systematic state repression against organized labor in the Philippines: The strikes were suppressed; UOD was tagged as “anarchist” or “subversive”; several union leaders, including de los Reyes, were incarcerated.

After this initial blow against labor, the UOD was immediately reestablished on October 12, 1902, and aptly renamed Union Obrera Democratica de Filipinas (UODF). Aside from continuing UOD’s work, the UODF would lead the country’s first unofficial celebration of the International Labor Day on May 1, 1903, held near the Malacañang Palace. Thousands of workers marched from Plaza Moriones in Tondo to Malacanang to demand complete independence from US colonialism. Dr. Dominador Gomez, a key UODF leader, was arrested for sedition and illegal association and was tried and sentenced to one year hard labor. Herminigildo Cruz succeeded in the federation’s leadership.

After UODF came the Congreso Obrero de Filipinas (COF) which was launched May 1, 1913. Among its prominent leaders ar Felipe Mendoza, Lope K. Santos, Crisanto Evangelista, and Hermenegildo Cruz. The COF ushered in a new era of trade unionism where the unions achieved relative stability and social legitimacy, heightened labor struggles and further expansion of union membership.

COF finally broke up in 1929, giving birth to the Katipunan ng mga Anakpawis ng Pilipinas (KAP, or Proletarian Labor Congress of the Philippines) on May 12 on that same year. This new federation would usher in the Philippine labor movement’s radical or leftist tradition, inspired to a significant degree by the victory of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Among its leaders, most were already converted to Marxism, include Crisanto Evangelista, Antonino Ora and Jacinto Manahan.

These KAP leaders would also lead the establishment on August 26, 1930 and the formal launching on the following November 7 of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) as the legal political arm of the workers.

August 26, is the 34th anniversary of the beginning of the national revolutionary armed struggle against Spanish colonialism (the 1896 Revolution). November 7, 1930 [Gregorian calendar] was the anniversary of the Russian October Socialist Revolution [Julian calendar].

The PKP’s founding convention was held at the Templo del Trabajo (“Temple of Labor”) Plaza Moriones in the working class district of Tondo in Manila, attended by almost 6,000 workers and peasants and represented by 60 delegates who were leaders of labor federations, trade unions and peasant associations affiliated to the KAP. The peasant-based Pambansang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KPMP) also joined the PKP.

On May 1931, the Quezon colonial government tried to suppress the worker’s organization (PKP). The military dispersed the marching workers in Caloocan with water cannons and attacked a worker’s meeting held by the laborers. Evangelista was arrested and accused of sedition, rebellion and illegal assembly.

American military authorities raided the KAP Congress. Several KAP leaders were arrested and the Court of First Instance declared PKP and KAP illegal. The Supreme Court upheld the decision.

The period from 1935 to 1946, or the so-called Commonwealth Period, is seen as a twist from direct American colonialism to American neocolonialism. President Manuel L. Quezon espoused the "Social Justice" program to arrest the increasing social unrest in Central Luzon.

Peasant unrest in Central Luzon ushered in the formation of the Philippine Socialist Party, founded by Pedro Abad Santos in 1932. Two years later, he creates and heads the Aguman Ding Madlang Talapagobra (AMT). The Abad Santos compound in Barangay San Jose becomes the focal point of the peasant movement. The peasant-based Philippine Socialist Party was to merge later with the worker-based Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas before the start of the Second World War.

The Second World War II started in Europe in 1939 and in the Pacific in 1941.

Japan had already been at war in Manchuria (1931) and China (1937) long before the Second World War started in Europe when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. By 1941, Japanese military expansion in the Asia-Pacific region had made confrontation and war with the United States increasingly certain.

Japanese troops landed at the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941 and advanced across central Luzon towards Manila. On the advice of President Quezon, General MacArthur declared Manila an “open city” on December 25, 1941 and removed the Commonwealth government to Corregidor. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.

Upon the arrival of the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942, peasants and workers organizations grew strength. Many peasants took up arms and identified themselves with the anti-Japanese group, the more than 30,000-strong HUKBALAHAP (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon) led by the PKP.

Many PKP and KAP cadres contributed a lot in the resistance movement during Japan’s invasion of the country in 1942. Their “shadow people’s government” and HUKBALAHAP guerrillas were a sharp contrast to the generally wavering and US-dependent forces directed by the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East) and its local counterparts. Evangelista and many of his comrades would be martyred by the Japanese fascist military.

Led by Luis Taruc, the HUKBALAHAP controlled whole areas of Central Luzon; landlords who supported the Japanese lost their lands to the peasants, while those who supported the Huks earned fixed rentals in favor of the tenants.

On January 9, 1945 the Americans landed unopposed at the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon and closed on Manila. The Japanese fought desperately, street by street, to hold the city, from February 3 to 23 in the fiercest urban warfare ever. When at last the fighting ended in the old Spanish citadel of Intramuros, Manila was in ruins. Manila, once touted as the “Paris of the Orient”, joined the company of Warsaw as the most devastated cities of World War 2.

The battle left 1,010 U.S. soldiers dead and 5,565 wounded. An estimated 100,000 Filipinos were deliberately killed by retreating Japanese forces. About 16,000 Japanese soldiers died, mostly sailors from the Japanese Manila Defense Force.

The Japanese made their last stand entrenched in northern Luzon. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, did not surrender in Baguio until September 2, 1945; the same day as General Umezu surrendered formally for Japan on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

World War II in the Philippines was costly. Overall, the Americans lost 60,628 men and the Japanese an estimated 300,000. Filipino casualties are estimated at over a million.

By war’s end, the HUKBALAHAP had a strength of 20,000 armed regulars and 50,000 reservists, supported by mass base of more than half a million people in the Central and Southern Luzon towns and provinces where former feudal estates have been redistributed and where Provisional Revolutionary Local Governments had been set up.

However, the United States intended to restore the pre-war Commonwealth government. Luis Taruc and the Huks had well known socialist sympathies and communist associations. The U.S. Army military police set out to disarm them as dangerous insurgents. Gen Douglas MacArthur had Taruc arrested and jailed.

After the establishment of the Philippine Independence in 1946, the problems of land tenure remained. These became worst in certain areas.

The period from 1946 until 1986 was marked by the dependence of the Philippines to the United Sates. Six presidents managed the neocolonial state: Manuel Roxas (1946-1948), Elpidio Quirino (1948-1953), Ramon Magsaysay (1953-1957), Carlos P. Garcia (1957-1961), Diosdado Macapagal (1961-1965), and Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1972). (Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972 and he was ousted in 1986.)

By this time, the Philippine economy remained highly dependent on US market--more dependent, according to United States high commissioner Paul McNutt, than any single state was dependent on the rest of the country. Thus a severance of special relations at independence was unthinkable, and large landowners, particularly those with hectarage in sugar, campaigned for an extension to free trade.

The Philippine Trade Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1946 and commonly known as the Bell Act, stipulated that free trade be continued until 1954; thereafter, tariffs would be increased 5 percent annually until full amounts were reached in 1974. Quotas were established for Philippine products both for free trade and tariff periods. At the same time, there would be no restrictions on the entry of United States products to the Philippines, nor would there be Philippine import duties. The Philippine peso was tied at a fixed rate to the United States dollar.

The most controversial provision of the Bell Act was the "parity" clause that granted United States citizens equal economic rights with Filipinos, for example, in the exploitation of natural resources. If parity privileges of individuals or corporations were infringed upon, the president of the United States had the authority to revoke any aspect of the trade agreement. Payment of war damages amounting to US$620 million, as stipulated in the Philippine Rehabilitation Act of 1946, was made contingent on Philippine acceptance of the parity clause.

3rd Period: The Authoritarian State, and the Cold War

Ferdinand Marcos and his running mate Fernando Lopez defeated the incumbent president Diosdado Macapagal and Gerardo Roxas of the Liberal Party in a landslide victory in the 1965 presidential election.

At this time, the Philippines was the second best performing economy in Asia after Japan. Meanwhile, during the 60s raged the Chinese Cultural Revolution led by the Gang of Four. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, animated by a wild arms race, was leading dangerously to a thermonuclear confrontation. A shaky armstice, forged in 1956, still held between northern Korea and southern Korea. The Vietnamese national liberation war against United States aggression was also in full swing.

A heated polemic was also ensuing between the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Washington’s policy was to “contain communism” in Asia, and the Philippines strategic geographic location was perfect to host US military forces in Subic in Olongapo City and Clark Air Base in Angeles City.

Inspired by the success of the 1949 Chinese revolution and the 1960s Chinese Cultural Revolution, Jose Maria Sison broke away from the pro-Soviet Communist Party of the Philippines and proceeded to build a Maoist party in 26 December1968. Sison established the New People’s Army (NPA) in 29 March 1969 to launch a “protracted people’s war”.

Throughout his 20-year tenure, Pres. Ferdinand Marcos maintained close neocolonial relations with the United States. He was a close friend of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. He launched major military campaigns against the NPA and Moro revolutionary forces. He was an outspoken critic of communism. In support for the U.S. military efforts in South Vietnam, he agreed to send Filipino troops to that war zone.

Marcos was re-elected in 1969, along with Fernando Lopez, becoming the first president of the Republic of the Philippines to be elected to a full second term.

In 1971, Marcos called for a Constitutional Convention for the purpose of revising the 1935 Constitution. The Convention was composed of 321 elected delegates headed by former Presidents Carlos P. Garcia and Diosdado Macapagal. However, the Convention's image was tarnished by scandals that included the bribing of some delegates to "vote" against a proposal to prohibit Marcos from staying in power under a new constitution.

Marcos' second term was marked by increasing civil strife known as the "First Quarter Storm." The phenomenon was a period of unrest in the Philippines, composed of a series of heavy demonstrations, protests, and marches against the government from January to March 1970, two years before the Philippines were placed under martial law.

The movement was led by college students, as well as labourers, who protested against graft and corruption in government, and the decline in the economy caused by high oil prices. The storm ended up being violent especially when the police used tear gas and even armed weapons to quell the demonstrators.

In Plaza Miranda, Manila, a bomb exploded in the Liberal Party campaign rally on 21 August 1971 with several anti-Marcos political candidates injured. After the series of bombings in Manila claimed to have been carried out by the New People's Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Marcos warned of imminent Communist takeover.

On September 21, 1972, by virtue of Proclamation No. 1081, Marcos declared martial law over the entire country, thereby remaining in office past limits imposed by the 1935 Constitution as amended. Five days after the proclamation of Martial Law, the entire country was proclaimed a land reform area and simultaneously the Agrarian Reform Program was decreed. By 1973, he had assumed dictatorial control—ushering in a so-called constitutional authoritarianism.

His vision of a "Bagong Lipunan (New Society)"—similar to the “Orde Baru (New Order)" that was imposed in Indonesia under dictator Suharto—was pursued during the martial law years. On March 1966, Suharto permanently banned the Communist Party of Indonesia and its alleged front groups, purging the parliament and cabinet of Sukarno-loyalists, eliminating labor unions and instituting press censorship.

There are parrallelisms, too, in the case of Pres. Park Chung Hee of South Korea. Just after being sworn in for his third term, Park declared a state of emergency "based on the dangerous realities of the international situation." He then dissolved Parliament and suspended the Constitution. In 1972, he introduced the Yusin Constitution, which dramatically increased his power and made him a virtual dictator.

During martial rule in the Philippines, Marcos broke up monopolies that were traditionally owned by Chinese and Mestizo oligarchs to Filipino businessmen. Marcos' family members and close personal friends took over the said businesses and used them as fronts to launder proceeds from institutionalized graft and corruption in the different national governmental agencies. He broke the old oligarchy and, through nepotism, created a new one. "Crony capitalism" was the term used to describe this practice, which includes graft and corruption via bribery, racketeering, and embezzlement.

Meanwhile, the Moro National Liberation Front ( MNLF) led the Bangsamoro War of secession in the 1970 where more than 100,000 (estimate) perished. The Organizatioin of Islamic Confrence (OIC) recognizes the MNLF as the “sole and legitimate representative of the Bangsamoro people,” and accorded it an observer status in the OIC.

Nur Misuari formed the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), formed in the late 1960s following the Jabidah Massacre.

Jabidah Massacre occurred on March 1968 under the Marcos presidency, when sixty-eight (68) Moro men died in the hands of the military in Corregidor Island. Based on accounts from a lone survivor, 68 Moro men who were oblivious to the real military mission were recruited and put under military training in order to execute the Marcos’s Oplan Merdeka, an operation aimed at planting rebellion in the State of Sabah. This would give way for the Filipino military’s intervention and eventual conquest of Sabah. But when the Moro men found this out, they refused outright to cooperate and were subsequently murdered.

On 23 December 1976, the OIC brokered the “Tripoli Agreement of 1976” between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the MNLF. This OIC-sponsored agreement has become the "mother agreement" that brought an end to the war of secession and paved the way for the Bangsamoro autonomy within the territorial integrity and constitutional processes of the country.

However, since 1976, the Tripoli Agreement had been the subject of disagreements, controversies, charges and counter-charges not only between the two principals but also among the various stakeholders of peace in Mindanao.

By 1978, fissures within the MNLF led to the formation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which aimed towards the formation of an Islamic state in Mindanao. Thus in the same year, three major factions surfaced that largely followed the three major ethnic groupings of the Bangsamoro people (Tausug, Maguindanao and Maranao). The MNLF, the MILF under Ustadz Salamat Hashim and and the MNLF Reformist Group under Commander Dimas Pundato were the three groups that had initially emerged from internal debates.

Over the years, President Marcos' hand was strengthened by the support of the armed forces, whose size he tripled, to 200,000 troops. Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, Chief of Staff of the Philippine Constabulary Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos, and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Gen. Fabian Ver, were the chief administrators the martial law regime from 1972 to 1981, and the three remained President Marcos' closest advisors until his ouster in 1986.

Marcos can be considered the quintessential kleptocrat, having supposedly looted billions of dollars from the Filipino treasury. Much of the lost sum has yet to be accounted for, but $684 million has been recovered and returned to the government. The Marcos regime was marred by human rights violations, widespread corruption and political mismanagement by his cronies, which culminated with the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. on 21 August 1983.

The political opposition blamed Marcos for the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., while others blamed the military and his wife, Imelda. The 1985 acquittals of Gen. Fabian Ver as well as other high-ranking military officers for the assassination were widely seen as a miscarriage of justice.

By 1984, his close personal friend, President Ronald Reagan, started distancing himself from the Marcos regime. The leftist movement of the Maoist CPP peaked to about 20,000 armed fighters by 1985. The US had lost in the Vietnam War. Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge. The Russians were in Afghanistan. The Cold War was still on. It was to the interesst of Washngton that the Philippines must not fall under Maoist control.

To ease the unemployment problem and earn foreign exchange, Marcos instituted the diaspora of workers to work abroad, especially in the Middle East. But this was not enough. Massive corruption, loss of legitimacy and the debt crisis were taking their toll on the economy. World market for Philippine exports such as coconut and sugar declined, by1983 real GNP per capita fell 17 percent from its high point in 1981, and debt repayment had ceased due to troubles in borrowing on the international capital market.

In the face of escalating public discontent and under pressure from foreign allies, Marcos resigned the presidency conditionally to run for office during 1986 snap elections. He declared Arturo Tolentino as his running mate. The opposition united behind Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino and her running mate, Salvador Laurel. Both Marcos and Aquino declared themselves winners, the administration and opposition accusing each other of rigging the elections.

Meanwhile, the forces led by the Communist Party of the Philippines opted to boycott the snap elections and were sidelined for from the political mainstream in the unfolding political drama.

Jaime Cardinal Sin, who previously assumed a “critical collaborationist” stance vis-avis Marcos was moving closer in an alliance with Corazon Aquino. Despite the separation of the Curch and the State, the late Cardinal Sin and the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines assumed the role of an influential political force during last few years of the Marcos era.

The de-professionalization of the military under Marcos’s 21 year rule not only created juicy posts for retired senior officers within the government bureaucracy. It also alienated, politicized and radicalized a segment of junior officers, mostly coming from the early 70s batch of the Philippine Military Academy. In 1982, junior officers close to Defense Chief Juan Ponce formed the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM). The RAM was openly critical of Marcos's domination of the military and of senior officers' corruption and incompetence.

Popular sentiment sided with Aquino, leading to a massive, multi-sectoral congregation of protesters, at Epifanio delos Santos Avenue, also known as EDSA, Metro Manila’s main thoroughfare during the 1980s. A gradual defection of the military to Aquino followed, led by then-Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile whose arrest for graft and corruption charges was about to be served, the RAM led by Gringo Honasan, and Fidel Ramos, then-military vice-chief.

Cardinal Sin urged the people to join the protests. Due to the massive unrest, Pres. Ronald Reagan, through US Se. Paul Laxalt, told Marcos to “cut and cut clean”. This so-called "People Power movement"—or “”EDSA Revolution”-- drove Marcos into exile, and installed Corazon Aquino as president.

4th Period: The EDSA State—From Corazon Aquino to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Marcos’s 23-year rule completely altered the predisposition of the state institutions, like the elections and military establishment. The EDSA Revolution also emboldened non-state actors, like the churches and other civil society organizations, by way of insitutionalizing “people power”.

From 1986 until today, the post-Marcos EDSA state foisted an elite democracy that is propped up by contentious elections, and punctuated by insurrectionary episodes of “people power” in between. The EDSA state is also characterized by the continued deterioration up to the near failure of key state institutions.

The post-Marital Law EDSA state regimes and their respective tenures are as follows: President Corazon C. Aquino (1986-1992); President Fidel V. Ramos (1992-1998);
President Joseph E. Estrada (1998-2000); and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2000-present [2006]):

The late 1980s up to the 1990s also saw a major reconfiguration of global political and economic relations that had profound impact on Philippine society.

For one, the EDSA state was greeted by globalization. In generic terms, globalization is generally understood as to the worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges, brought about by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure as well as the political choice to consciously open cross-border links in international trade and finance.

The definition of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hews more closely with the “free trade” fundamentals of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The IMF defines globalization as: “the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, freer international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology”.

Former US President Reagan’s “supply side economics” was transformed into “neoliberalism”. Reagan’s paleoconservative (old conservative) supply side economics basically encourages increased production to stimulate demand. It is often blended with “trickle down economics”, which advocates letting businesses flourish, believing their profits will ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals and the rest of the economy.

On the other, neoliberalism is actively promoted by the US Bush administration through the influence of neoconservatives like World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Neoliberalism emphasizes unregulated trade and markets, and the expanded corporate world provided by the end of the Cold War, or globalization. It argues that free markets, free trade, and the unrestricted flow of capital will produce the greatest social, political and economic good. It is at odds with “fair trade”.

Through neoliberalism, EDSA state regimes have been pursuing privatization, deregulation, “free trade”, and the like. Phlippine agriculture has become stunted. The service sector keeps on increasing relative to the industrical and agricultural sectors. Overseas migration of Filipino workers and professionals (like nurses) keeps on increasing. The jobless growth phenomenon is rearing its ugly head.

In politics, the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. US foreign policy has since then shifted to combatting “terrorism” and militant Islam, especially agains the Al Qaeda led by Osama Bin Laden.

Under Pres. Clinton, this shift was mirrored when, in the aftermath of the Mount Pinatubo eruption, US forces abandoned Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base after the Philippine government voted not to renew a basing agreement in 1992. The Philippine Senate vote ended US’s almost a century of military presence in the Philippines.

The end of the Cold War, signaled by the collapse of the Soviet Union, also coincided with the weakening of the Philippine communist movement by 1992. Plagued by bloody internal purges in the latter half of the 1980s, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) splintered to at least two major factions, with the largest one preserved by Armando Liwanag, who is believed to be Jose Maria Sison. The RAs (or “Reaffirmists”) upheld CPP’s 1968 decision for a Maoist protracted people’s war, while the RJs (or “Rejectionists”) opted for other revolutionary strategies.

Following are some highlights of the respective EDSA state regimes.

Pres. Aquino’s term was directed towards restoring pre-Martial law elite democracy in the country. Upon her ascent to the presidency, briefly established a revolutionary government (e.g. abolishing Marcos’s Batasang Pambansa (parliament) and relieving all public officials) under the terms of a provisional "Freedom Constitution", legally establishing the structure of the government pending the adoption of a permanent, democratically-drafted constitution. In late 1986, the Aquino administration appointed a Constitutional Commission to draft the new constitution. It was ratified on February 7, 1987. Congressional and local elections soon followed, setting up a government based on popular and democratic mandate.

The all Aquino-appointed 1986 Constitutional Commission submitted to the people a new Constitution which was overwhelmingly ratified on February 2, 1987 and went into effect on February 11. The new constitution crippled presidential power to declare martial law, proposed the creation of autonomous regions in the Cordilleras and Muslim Mindanao, and restored the presidential form of government and the bicameral Congress.

Despite the Aquino government's attempts to depoliticize the Philippine military, the February 1986 rebellion against Marcos was not the last uprising. Marcos loyalist units mutinied in Manila only months after Aquino took office, and by 1991 there had been six open rebellions against her rule.

The RAM officers that had previously helped bring her to power led the two most serious coup attempts, in August 1987 and December 1989. In 1991, discontented elements of the AFP, led by fugitive RAM founders, still threatened to unseat the president.

A sore mark on Aquino’s record is land reform. On January 15, 1987, thousands of peasants belonging to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) decided to proceed to Malacanang to demand genuine land reform. A phalanx of anti-riot police and Philippine Marines blocked their way. As they marched their towards the palace gates, policemen and soldiers opened fire on the marchers. Thirteen peasants and fisherfolks were instantly killed, while 62 others were wounded.

President Ramos legalized the Communist Party of the Philippines and created the National Unification Commission (NUC) to lay the groundwork for talks with communist insurgents, Muslim separatists, and military rebels. In June 1994, Ramos signed into law a general conditional amnesty covering all rebel groups, and Philippine military and police personnel accused of crimes committed while fighting the insurgents.

A peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) under Nur Misuari, a major Moro revolutionary organization fighting for an independent Bangsamoro homeland in Mindanao, was signed in 1996, ending the 24-year old struggle. However an MNLF splinter group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) under Salamat Hashim, continued the armed Muslim struggle for an Islamic state.

Estrada's brand of governance, coming under the cloud of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, took a heavy toll on the economy. Unemployment worsened, the budget deficit grew, and the currency plunged. The economy recovered but much slower than its Asian neighbors.

In contrast to Ramos, Estrada waged in 1999 an all-out war against the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Central Mindanao, which displaced half a million people.

In October 2000, Ilocos Sur governor Luis "Chavit" Singson a close Estrada friend accused the President of receiving collections from jueteng, an illegal numbers game. On November 13, 2000 the House of Representatives impeached Estrada on grounds of bribery, graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the constitution. He was the first Philippine President to be impeached.

His impeachment trial in the Senate began on December 7 but broke down on January 17, 2001, after 11 senators allied with Estrada successfully blocked the opening of confidential bank records that would have been used by the prosecution to incriminate the President.

In response, the so-called “EDSA Dos” ensued where an estimated hundreds of thousands of people, with many coming from the middle class, massed up at the EDSA Shrine demanding Estrada's immediate resignation. Estrada's cabinet resigned en masse and the military and police withdrew their support.

On January 20, the Supreme Court declared the presidency vacant and swore in Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the country's 14th President. Estrada and his family evacuated the Malacañang Palace soon after.

Estrada challenged the legitimacy of Arroyo's government, claiming he did not resign from office and Arroyo was just an Acting President, but the Supreme Court twice upheld its legitimacy.

On April 25, 2001, two weeks before the mid-term senatorial elections, the Sandiganbayan—the Philippine anti-graft court—issued an arrest warrant for Estrada. Estrada's supporters mostly coming from urban poor ranks staged the so-called "EDSA Tres", or third People Power Revolution at the EDSA Shrine, which on May 1 attempted to overthrow Arroyo's government.

Arroyo supported the US led Invasion of Iraq and sent a contingent of troops to Iraq. The troops were withdrawn in July 2004 as a condition for the release of a Filipino worker hostaged by Iraqi militants.

Complaining of high-level corruption in the military, Magdalo which a group of about 300 junior military officers staged a mutiny on July 27, 2003 occupying the Oakwood Premier in Ayala Center in Makati City and rigging the vicinity with bombs. The mutiny ended 22 hours later after the surrender of the mutineers.

In the controversial May 10, 2004 elections, retracting previous pronouncements that she will not run anymore in the presidential race, Arroyo (Lakas-CMD) ran against popular movie actor and Estrada buddy Fernando Poe, Jr. (KNP), Senator Panfilo Lacson (independent), her former Education Secretary Raul Roco (Aksyon Demokratiko) and evangelist Eduardo Villanueva (Bangon Pilipinas).

After a long canvassing in Congress, Arroyo was proclaimed the winner on June 24 with over 1.1 million votes over her strongest contender Poe. Her running-mate Senator Noli De Castro won the vice-presidency, and the administration party, the Lakas-CMD secured a majority in both houses of Congress.

More controversies hounded the Arroyo presidency. For one, her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, and her son were accused as illegal gambling lords.

The most serious of the Arroyo scandals so far revolved around allegations of massive cheating in the previous presidential elections. In the now infamous “Hello Garci!” tapes, military intelligence operatives wiretapped her conversations with a Commission on Elections (COMELEC) official, Virgilio Garcillano. She was recorded instructing the latter to increase the votes for her in Mindanao island. Her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, went on a voluntary exile to the United States.

On June and July 2005, the country saw massive protests calling for President Arroyo's resignation due to alleged election fraud. Left organizations such as the Laban ng Masa (Fight of the Masses), led by Francisco Nemenzo, and other Left organizations challenged Arroyo’s policies that bans street rallies and stifle dissent.

Philippine hardcore politicians, such as Senate President Franklin Drilon, Former President Corazon Aquino, and many of Arroyo's cabinet members who resigned also urged the President to resign. On July 9, the police and military alert was raised to full alert throughout the Philippines.

On 24 February 2006, a coup reportedly designed to oust the current President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from power was foiled. The alleged coup prompted a nation-wide state of emergency, though Presidential Proclamation 1071, which lasted until March 3.

Since then, Arroyo has implemented tough measures that smacks of Marcosian tactics during the Martial Law days. Her administration is also pushing for a constitutional change (Charter Change) by 2006 that seeks to transform the current presidential system to a parliamentary form of government, thereby extending her rule until 2010.

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Si Vincent “Enteng” Gueco ay isang democratic activist at political consultant ng Laban ng Masa. Isang independent Democratic Left political Coalition na nananawagan ng pagbabago sa lipunang Pilipino. Hiwalay ito sa CPP-NPA-NDF na naglalayong ibagsak sa pamamagitan ng armadong pakikibaka ang kasalukuyang rehimen Macapagal Arroyo.

The Youth on the Political Turmoil

The Youth on the Political Turmoil
by: Enan Flores


Redefining the Youth

The youth has always been known for its idealism and zeal towards its goal. This has been the basis for saying that the youth is “the hope of the future” - “a potent agent for change”. However, some sections of the society view this as a mere illusion and hypocrisy. The need to indispensably hope that “change” will someday come to our society brought us to believe to this antique.

Nonetheless, the ever-constant characteristic of the youth in general, in all existing society and all era, will still hold the truthfulness that inevitably indeed, and still, the youth is the future of the society.

Curiosity, rebellion and complexity describes what the youth are today. Their questions are never-ending usually resulted in experimenting unusual and risky things if unable to be answered by their elders or find the latter's answers unsound to their imagination. Rebellion usually described as making errors because of whimsical reasons but for many youth, it is the showing of discontentment and assertion of what they think is right.

Complexity is proven by the peculiar characteristic of the youth showed in history. In Marxist analysis, the oppressed sector- the working class is the moving force towards change and all others are only to be considered as subordinates in general sense. However in many parts of the world, history proved that the youth (Marxists classify as petty bourgeois) as a sector shared with all other sectors the capacity and power to change the course of history despite the view that it does not possesses the “prerequisite” of being oppressed and alienated to be such force.

Moreover, the illogical complexity of the youth towards responding to situations is another view. In Philippines for example, the great First Quarter Storm happened in the time when the economy relatively is healthy and the education is relatively superior over other countries in Asia. This time, beginning from the establishment of Gloria administration, in time when the situation is highly intolerable as to the extent of shocking the moral sense of the community, the force of spontaneous action of the youth is nowhere. This only shows that youth in its simple characteristic is complex and uncanny.

The youth, because of its innate curiosity and its natural characteristic of searching new and truthful things, it paves the way to the opportunity of using its bursting energy productively. The time and vigor to read and be educated is viewed to be highly probable in this sector.

In this stirring moment, where “change” is just around the corner, it gives the youth the opportunity to prove its worth and fulfill its fate. But even they do not act on this given situation what is definite is that change will surely come to happen more even right now that discontentment is widespread, as what many surveys says about the approval rating of the GMA administration and the system as a whole . Pent-up demands and pressures from below, and the incapacity of the country's democratic institutions to address them with any degree of effectiveness has added to the problem. We have come to the period where activism is very inviting and it is important for the young to seize the moment together with all other sectors

In doing this challenge, it is very important to have an overview of the prevailing options that the different political forces in the Philippines has been offering, their possibilities and impossibilities as well as their tendencies and what each offers to the youth sector.


On GMA's Cha-cha

The basic presumption is that GMA has already exhausted all the opportunities that the people has given to her, set aside the argument that even from the start people dislike her. Now, the efforts to change the Constitution is her (GMA) do-or-die option that nevertheless has the force to change the course of politics in the Philippines.

The need to change the constitution for system change is already recognized by many, even some left organizations. The week political institutions, unsecured economic provisions, hypocritical gender and cultural tolerance, and among others produced the so-called “democratic deficit” which is a sufficient reason to change the Constitution. Added to this is the view that the “antiquated” republican concept can no longer respond to the pressing needs of the Philippine politics vis-a-vis its relation to the South-East Asian region.

The basic question in this matter is: Will Charter Change make a difference? In the youth sector for example, does change in the Philippine Constitution will answer the basic problem of the sector? Will it solve the decade-long call for the accessible, quality and relevant education?

If we take a look back to our Constitution (the 1987 Constitution), it already guarantees the prioritization on education. The only problem is that our Government officials specially the Chief Executive are not that serious in this constitutional mandate. In short, this matter is beyond judicial question but a political question. It is a matter of willingness and seriousness of our leaders to execute what our Constitution has mandated.

Also the problem on youth employment which is directly connected with what the education had been provide and the “political space” to ensure youth participation in the governmental process is another theme.

The issue of fraud, corruption and political repression committed by GMA are serious matters that should be settled first before we talk about Charter Change. She should be held accountable to all atrocities of her regime and give justice to every drop of blood that spilled on the ground.

The only point here is that although the dance of Cha-Cha is very inviting, it lacks rhythm and timing. For us youth, we prefer dancing in the rhythm of punk-metal music and slam and kick Gloria out of Malacanang.


On Military Coup

Unsurprisingly, among us youth who are impatient for system change, “left-military” intervention in this political crisis really excites us. It captures our militant and rebellious imagination on the tradition of “righteous bravery”: our youthful dream and drama of offering our lives for the country and for rightful cause - all these romantic and idealistic thoughts without minding its danger.

The observations and criticisms on the Philippine society presented by these left-military elements and the alternatives that they are offering in response to it is actually the same as what the broad social movement are advocating for. One is the view of the need to advance the effectiveness and efficiency of our education system. However, the truth is that still, we can not deny the fact that firearms mean power, and power, if not rooted in deep moral and philosophical principle is vulnerable to abuse.

The Chavez-left-military phenomenon in Venezuela, according to Walden Bello, is unfeasible and very risky to happen here in the Philippines precisely because of the big difference of the characteristic of the military in Venezuela brought about by the historical facts and circumstances that happened there in contrast with what the military in the Philippines has gone through. This maintains the doubt that military can be a “safe” potent agent for change, more even, when not working hand-in-hand with other democratic forces.



The Authoritarian Left Option

The Democratic People's Council offered and peddled by the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front inspired organization Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) together with its allied organizations is considered as the authoritarian left option in their response to the weakening GMA administration. Its author, the CPP is considered as one of the major oppositions strengthened by having a clear direction and characterized by disciplined and dedicated members. Moreover, it has the coercive arm to support somehow its cause. In short, relatively it has the capacity to seize power.

With regard to its platform on youth concerns such as education and job creation for the sector, it is almost the same as what other democratic left movement has been offering. It also proposing for accessible, scientific and nationalistic system of eduction and the generation of jobs for the young labor.

What is negative about them, among others, is the dogmatism that rooted in their tradition anchored with the proven potentiality of abusing powers as showed in many human rights violations they committed against their oppositions, even worst, against their own former comrades. These hinders many to join in to their force.

Likewise, there is an in-depth critique on their political and economic platform in general that tickles many political scientists and economists to react strongly against them. There is the probability of instead of having a better life out-of a national democratic alternative with strong anti-US and state-intervention policy in all aspect of human life, we ended up eating our tongues. Set aside the fact of their Maoist cultural agenda that may result to wars and civil outbreaks.

Like other rightists elements and GMA herself, this left forces should be held accountable first to all their victims before the youth should intelligently open their doors.


The Pluralist Left Prospect

The Laban ng Masa (LnM), a broad coalition of different progressive movements inspired by its banner of pluralism and promotion of a new democratic left activism which is actually composed of organization from old national democratic tradition, social democratic movement and some middle forces is a great breakthrough for the whole left movement in general.

For us youth left activists, it is a good example of postering unity and democracy as what our elders had told us when they were convincing us to join the progressive forces. Because until now for some youth, the popular sentiment is that it is self-contradicting to claim such principle when in fact the left itself is fragmented and some are undemocratic. In short, from the perspective of a youth inside the LnM, it inspires us a lot to continue in pursuing the idea of pluralism and democratizing left process as well as it gives us the inspiration to work harder than before.

With regard to the concerns of the youth movement, the Laban ng Masa has a clear platform on improving the education system, job generation and recognizing the youth as one of the stakeholders of the society. However, this is being criticize because it only gives general and abstract statement of its platform. But it is understandable that LnM just finished its discourse only on the level of addressing some “basic” issues.

Also among others, the still unfaded dynamics between groups rooted from deep diverse tradition and historical conflict, the diversed ideological perspectives, and failure to effectively mobilize middle forces are the criticisms on this emerging left unity.


Probing the Youth

“The youth today has come to an era when activism is not the vogue”. This is a usual defensive statement of some in making an excuse in the matter of talking about youth participation in social transformation. But even this has been true, social conscience dictates and presses us that it is the duty of the youth to fulfill their destiny – to take part in the broader struggle for a better society.

Some of the explanations to the foregoing statement is the information-and- Communication-Technology (ICT) phenomenon- the computer, Internet and text messaging technology to be specific. According to some, the “alternative world” created by these technology paved the way for the youth to scape from the “impurities” of the society and resorted to instead of facing the challenge of changing it, they just directed their angsts and other sentiments to the “other world” which will definitely give no direct negative effects to them (e.g. Depression and further disillusionment due to failure in the attempt to face the challenge).

Likewise, there is a view that this culture of skepticism is perhaps due to the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the youth left movement to capture their imagination and to prove its worth. The phrase “wala ng pag-asa ang Pilipinas" is very familiar today perhaps because of the failure of the youth left organizations to show proof of worth, winning basic sectoral issues and creating “new activist way”. This led to the intolerable silence of the sector. Disenchantment due to disenfranchisement on political issues, chosen or unchosen.

Added to these reasons is the failure of the mainstream political institutions, the Sangguniang Kabataan in the Baranggays and Student Councils in the universities and colleges, to show its effectiveness as an alternative center of power and to deliver expected services to their constituencies resulted to political disillusionment.

Undeniably, the youth today is being used for various political agenda of the different parties. From electoral machineries to street mobilization. From authoritarian right to “progressive / libertarian” right groups; from extreme left to democratic left groups. Sometimes joining for food or money that resulted to the awkward conception of youth activism today.

In this given situation, where are the youth left organizations? According to an informant, progressive sections of the military who are planning to topple down the GMA administration are waiting for a big and spontaneous actions specifically from the youth to give their complete blow. The basis of this probably is for the security of popular support that is necessary to completely win the coup.

Many youth left organizations inherit the conflicts of their predecessors and awakened in the culture of hatred and ideological and political divisions. Even from the pluralist initiative of the left organizations within the LnM, there is an “untold” political and ideological division.

Still again, the weakening political imagination within the left movement in capturing the hearts and minds of the youth of this generation and the weakening strict education tradition of the left movement are the major determining factors.

In the end, I would like to go back to the very basic reason why the youth take an active part in changing the course of history towards a just and humane society, the “idealism” as an absolute concept and the determining principle of youth participation. If the left could just only properly use and maximize this concept using variety of sound and relevant techniques, it would be easy for all of us. In this era when youth seized to imagine, it is our main task to make them imagine once again.

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Si Enan ay kasalukuyang kalahok sa Activist School. Kasalukyan siyang kasapi ng BISIG-YOUTH at mag-aaral ng kursong Abugasya sa PUP (Polytechnic University of the Philippines). Ang artikulong ay mula sa Punlayan, ang Opisyal na Pahayagan ng Activist School.

Ang Alegorya ng Balon at ang Kaliwa

Ang Alegorya ng Balon at ang Kaliwa
ni Jamir Niño Ocampo

Noong unang panahon, may tatlong palakang nakatira sa loob ng balon. Sila ay si Nadem, Sodem at Hindidem. Lahat sila ay naniniwala na ang langit ay kasing laki ng butas ng balon. Isang araw, napatalon si Sodem sa isang bahagi ng balon. Bigla niyang nakita ang araw na dumaan sa kalangitan na kasing laki ng butas ng balon. Binalikan niya ang mga kasama at buong sigasig na kinuwento ang kanyang nakita.

“Mga kasama, may nakita akong bolang apoy sa langit!”, sigaw ni Sodem.

“Ano?! Hindi totoo 'yan, wala kaming nakita dito”, sambit ni Nadem habang tahimik lang si Hindidem.

Patuloy ang diskusyon ng dalawa hanggang napagdesisyunan ni Nadem na tumalon sa pinuntahan ni Sodem. Nang makarating si Nadem, sa halip na araw, nakita niya ang buwan sa butas ng balon kaya buong galit na bumalik si Sodem sa mga kasama.

“Nakita mo, sabi ko sa iyo tama ako”, sabi ni Nadem.

“Anong tama! Mali ka, wala naman akong nakitang bolang apoy sa halip ay isang kalahating bola ng liwanag”, sambit ni Nadem.

Patuloy ang debate hanggang tuluyang nagkasamaan ng loob ang dalawa. Dahil sa matinding pag-aaway na kadalasa'y nagbubunsod sa pagkakasakitan, minabuti ng mga palaka na maghiwalay na lang ng tahanan. Lumipat ng tirahan si Sodem sa pinagkakitaan niya ng araw habang si Nadem ay nanirahan sa lugar na may buwan. Nanatili na lamang sa kanyang dating lugar ang litong-litong si Hindidem.

Lumipas ang maraming panahon, nagkaroon ng maraming anak at apo ang tatlong palaka. Ngunit sa pagdaan ng panahon mas lalong nahati ang tatlong pamilya sa kani-kanilang paniniwala tungkol sa langit. Mas lalo pang naging magulo ang buhay sa balon, nang ang mga anak at apo nina Nadem, Sodem at Hindidem ay nakakita pa ng ibang mga bagay sa kalangitan. Hindi na bumalik ang dating katiwasayan sa balon.

Sino nga ba ang tama sa tatlong palaka? Hindi naman natin maaring sabihing mali si Sodem dahil nakita niya talaga ang araw ngunit tama rin si Nadem sa pagkakita niya ng buwan. Buti pa si Hindidem na kahit nalilito ay nagbigay ng posibilidad sa dalawa.

Isang bagay ang lumilitaw, biktima si Nadem, Sodem at Hindidem ng pagkakataon at lokasyon. Kung nasa tamang sitwasyon lamang ang tatlong palaka sa pagtingin sa langit, marahil wala nang nangyaring pagkakahati-hati ng paniniwala. Ngunit ito ang kabalintunaan ng katotohanan, hinati na ng mundo ang mga taga-tingin ng langit sa iba't ibang lokasyon at pagkakataon.

Hindi malalayo ang karanasan ng mga palaka sa kasaysayan ng kilusang kaliwa. Sa kaso man ng mga palaka sa balon o ang kaliwa, parehong lumilitaw ang ilang kaisipan: ang ugnayan ng katotohanan sa hermeneutikang sitwasyon at ang konsepto ng partial truth. Ang hermeneutikang sitwasyon ay tumutukoy sa pagkakataon at lokasyon kung saan tinuklas o natuklasan ang katotohanan.

Ipinamalas ng kasaysayan ang partial truth sa kahinaan ng mga engrandeng naratibo ng modernismo bilang salamin ng katotohanan ng mundo tulad ng teorya ng kapitalismo ni Marx, pyschoanalysis ni Freud o teorya ng ebolusyon ni Darwin. Ang konsepto ng partial truth ay nagsasaad ng limitadong kapasidad ng mga panlipunang balangkas/social paradigms sa pagsakop ng buong katotohanan ng mundo at kakayanan lamang ng mga ito na alamin ang ilang bahagi ng katotohanan ng mundo. Maari nating gamitin ang dalawang misteryo ng katotohan sa pag-intindi sa kalagayan ng kilusan.

Sino nga ba ang tama sa nagkahati-hating kaliwa? Maari ba nating sabihing nagkamali ang mga Natdems (National democrats) sa pagtingin sa lipunan gamit ang lente ng komunismong Maoist- Marxist-Leninist? Mali ba ang pagtalon ng mga Socdems (Social democrats) sa lugar na pinagkakitaan nila ng sosyalistang demokrasya? Kaakibat ng tanong na kung sino ang may tamang lente ng lipunan, ang tanong na kung “sino ang may tamang pamamaraan ng pagbabago?”.

Mula sa nagkakaiba-ibang paniniwala, nanganak ng iba't ibang tradisyon at pamamaraan ng mga kaliwa. Nagkamali ba ang mga RAs (Reaffirmists) sa paggamit ng armas o ang mga ilang kaliwa sa paggamit ng parlamento? Hindi maaring sagutin ang mga ganitong katanungan dahil hinati na ang mga kaliwa ng pagkakataon at lokasyon habang tinitingnan ang katotohanan sa kalangitan mula sa balon katulad din ng pangbibiktima kina Nadem, Sodem at Hindididem.

Mas lalo pang naging magulo ang mga kaliwa sa loob ng balon nang ang mga ilang anak ng RJs ay nakakita ng iba pang bagay sa langit tulad ng Padayon na napagmasdan ang ilang bahagi ng pambansang demokrasya, Bisig na nakamasid sa dumadaang Sosyalismo at Marxismo-Leninismo, at Pandayan na nakakita ng demokratikong sosyalismo.

Hindi lumaon, napagsunduan ng tatlo na magrespetuhan na lang sa pagkakaiba ng kanilang paniniwala habang naninirahan sa bahagi ng balon na kung tawagin ay Akbayan. Sa paglipas pa ng panahon, dumami ang mga RJ na natutunan ang salitang pluralismo at kakambal nitong salitang respeto kaya sinimulan ng mga RJs sa kasalukuyan ang pagtayo ng kanilang tirahan sa loob ng balon na kung tawagin ay Laban ng Masa. Maaring maging mas malawak ang tirahan ng mga RJs sa balon kaysa sa mga RAs ngunit hindi tulad ng mga RAs, iba-iba pa rin ang pagtingin ng mga RJs sa langit.

Ngunit hindi sapat ang pluralismo at respeto kung nanaisin ng mga kaliwa na lumaya sa balon at makita ang kabuuan ng langit. Kinakailangan ng kaliwa ng sama-samang paglabas mula sa balon upang masilayan ang katotohanan ng langit at hindi na muling mabiktima ng sitwasyon.

Bagaman ang paglilinaw ng lente sa lipunan, ang pagtatalop ng katotohanan mula sa mundo ay may dalang sakit at hapdi, kinakailangan ng kaliwa hindi lamang ang pag-unawa kundi pagpapatawad at pagmamahal sa dating kasama.

Ngunit, hanggang saan sa labas ng balon ang tatahakin ng kaliwa sa pagtuklas ng katotohanan sa kalangitan? Hanggang saan magiging maunawain ang kaliwa sa pag-intindi ng paniniwala ng ibang kolektibong hindi kaliwa tulad ng mga kanan, ang mga neoliberal, ang mga authoritarian, ang mga business interest group o ang mga Christian evangelical at mga institusyon tulad ng militar, simbahan, media, IMF, World Bank at WTO.

Kapag muling nagkaisa ang kaliwa ng tirahan sa balon at lenteng pantingin sa lipunan, dadating ba ang punto na sasabihin ng kaliwa sa mga grupong wala sa kilusan na “kami ang tama, at kayo ang mali”. Kung ipagyayabang pa rin ng kaliwa na sila ang may hawak ng katotohanan at tamang lente ng lipunan, kahit magsama pang muli ang RA at RJ, Natdems at Socdems, kahit na mapagtagumpayan ng isang nagkakaisang kaliwa ang estado puder, mananatili pa rin nakakulong ang kaliwa sa balon dahil pinalawak lamang nila ang balon na kanilang kinakukulungan. Ang tanong ngayon: gaano ba kalawak ang kulungan ng katotohanan na gugustuhin ng kaliwa?

Kung sama-sama lamang ang mga palaka at ang kaliwa sa pagtuklas ng katotohanan sa labas ng balon at naging mas maunawain pa sa karanasan ng ibang palakang naninirahan sa labas ng balon, marahil ay nasilayan nila, hindi man tuluyan ngunit mas malaking bahagi, ang katiwasayan at kaliwanagan ng katotohanan sa kalangitan.

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Katatapos lang sa kursong BS Economics si Jamir at kasalukuyang kalahok sa Activist School Antipolo batch. Pagkatapos ng Activist School, plano niyang magtrabaho sa Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), isang organisasyong tumutuligsa sa patakarang pang-ekonomya't ng gubyernong Pilipinas at neo-liberalismong kaayusan ng mundo. Kabilang siya sa Action for Alternative Democracy - University of the Philippines.

Sa Likod ng Antok at Usok

Sa Likod ng Antok at Usok....
Cherry-Anne Matriz

Inaantok na ko. Kaso deadline na ng submission ng article ko bukas. At ngayon ko lang uumpisahan to. Hindi sa tinatamad. Ang pagsusulat kasi para sakin ay nangangailangan ng motibasyon, at ang motibong pwersang panulak ay ang nararamdaman.

Times-up na sa yosi. Tama na ang nikotina. Satisfied na ko sa usok. Maraming nagtatanong sakin bakit daw ako nagyoyosi. Simple lang, meron kasi tayong tinatawag na sikolohiya ng hithit-buga. Pero kung maraming nagtatanong sakin tungkol sa bagay na yan, mas maraming nagtatanong sakin kung bakit ako tibak. Badtrip ang tanong sa totoo lang. Para kasi akong tinanong ng “bakit ganyan ang pagkatao mo?” Ewan ko. Ganun kasi ang dating sakin. Pero sa kabila ng pagka-badtrip, seryoso ko pa rin naman siyang sinasagot, “Wala lang, trip ko lang.” Seryoso no?

Inatasan akong gumawa ng article tungkol sa perspective ko bilang activist. Ummm.... Perspective? Mukhang hindi ata ganun kadaling isalin yun sa obra ng dahon. Bahala na. Sa umpisa pa lang naman ng artikulong 'to, nakapaglahad na agad ako ng perspektiba ko. 'Yun nga lang, kwestyun kung may kaugnayan ba 'to sa pagiging tibak. Anywayz, tibak pa rin naman akong nagsasalita. When you're an activist, you are always an activist.

Kailangan ko bang i-define kung ano ang aktibismo? E kung sino ang sa tingin kong tunay na aktibista, kailangan ko bang ilagay dito?... Ayoko. Hindi lang dun umiinog ang usapin 'pag sinabihan ka na maglahad ng perspektiba ukol sa aktibismo. Saan pa?... Ayoko ngang sabihin, mamatay ka sa curiosity.... Pero... naisip ko lang bigla, wala akong karapatang magsabi kung sino nga ba ang tunay na tibak.

Kapag sinabi mong tibak ka, lubog ka man sa isang kilusan o hindi, nagrarally ka man o hindi, kilala ka mang tibak o hindi, basta alam mo sa sarili mo at malinaw sa'yong tibak ka, walang pwedeng magsabi sa'yong isa kang mapagpanggap na tibak. Pero may nais akong bigyang-linaw, kung wala kang pinaglalaban (kahit anu pa yung bagay na yun), siguro kailangan nga nating kwestyunin ang sarili kung tibak nga ba talaga tayo.

May kakilala ako, si Thea. Nakilala ko dati nung umattend ako ng seminar ng dati kong org. Pangarap nyang maging journalist. Malamang, gusto nyang mag-college. Nung huling text namin, hindi na raw siya nag-aaral ngayon. Walang pantustos. (With matching sad face pa sa text.) Sabi ko naman, ayos lang, at least may pang-text siya. (With matching smiling face pa sa text.) Kaso.... Kasama ang kaibigan ko sa 14.8 million na mga kabataang hindi nabigyan ng pagkakataong makapag-aral, hindi nabigyan ng pagkakataong landasin ang pangarap.

Yung uncle ko, regular na trabahador sa isang kumpanya ng softdrinks dito sa bansa. Dati yun. Kelan lang, tinanggal siya sa trabaho. Muntik daw siyang naglabas ng dalawang case ng softdrinks nang walang permiso't bayad. In short, attempted theft ang kaso. (Hindi ako sigurado sa ginamit kong term ng kaso, basta yun yung idea. Defensive?) Pero totoo man yun o hindi, dapat nilitis muna siya bago siya tinanggal. Dalawampung taon na siyang nasa serbisyo, tapos ganun-ganun lang siya tatanggalin? Si Gloria andami ng kaso, hanggang ngayon, hindi pa rin siya matanggal-tanggal.

Nakapanood ako ng docu. Nagmobilisa yung mga magsasaka ng Hacienda Luisita. Hindi sila nagmobilisa dahil trip lang nila. May panawagan sila. Karapatan. Makatarungang pasahod, makatarungang pakikitungo, makatarungang buhay. Sa paglamon ng dilim sa buong lugar, nilamon din sila ng mga balang mula sa mga baril ng mga militar habang mayabang na nakasakay sa tila dragong chopper sa taas.

Habang tumatakbo, unti-unting nagbabagsakan ang mga magsasaka kasama ang kanilang anak at asawa. Hindi dito usapin kung may nakaligtas man at kung ilegal man ang ginawa nilang pagmomobilisa. Tao yung mga yun. Anupa man ang sabihin ng mga Cojuanco, malinaw na krimen ang ginawa nila. Hindi na nga nila binigay ang hinihingi ng mga maralitang magsasaka, pinatay pa sila.

Dati, nung hayskul ako at hindi pa ko tibak, ang konsepto ko ng pagiging tibak ay pagrarally at pagiging subersibo. Ngayon, ganun pa rin. (Biro lang..!) ...Aktibista. Mga taong nasa aktibismo. Nag-aaral. Nagsusuri. Nagkikritik. Kumikilos. Nagnanais ng pgbabago. Nakikibaka.

Triangle at struggle. Pag-ibig at pakikibaka. Isa ako sa mga tinaguriang makabagong tibak.Wala akong balak ilagay sa artikulong to kung ano nga ba ang dapat taglayin ng isang makabagong tibak ayon sa sarili kong perspektiba. Pero may isa pa kong nais bigyan ng puwang. Ang tibak ay hindi lang nasa lansangan o kanayunan o sa bayan ang struggle.

Ang bawat tibak, habang patuloy ang pagnanavigate sa landas ng pakikibaka, paulit-ulit rin yang sinusugatan at tinutulak, paulit-ulit rin yang tumatayo at naninindigan. May mga umuurong at bumabalik sa safety zone. Piniling piringan ang sariling mga mata, takpan ang mga tainga at busalan ang sariling bibig. Sa kabila ng mga nagkalat na dugo sa paligid, ng mga iyak, hikbi at sigaw ng mga masang api habang nasa dunong ng pagpapakasasa sa yaman ang iilang mga taong nasa tuktok ng tatsulok, may mga tibak pa ring umuurong at sumusuko sa laban. Ang hinahangad ko lang na maipahiwatig dito, para sa mga bagong tibak, hanggang saan at hanggang kailan natin kayang panindigan ang esensya ng pagiging tibak natin? Hangga't hindi nakakamit ang tunay na kalayaang minimithi, wala sanang lilihis, wala sanang susuko, wala sanang bibitaw....

Wag daw lalagpas sa isa't kalahating pahina ng papel ang artikulo ko sabi ng ed-chip namin. Hindi ko man nasabi ang perspektiba ko ukol sa ano nga ba ang dapat taglayin ng isang makabagong tibak, tama na sakin ang makapaglahad ng damdamin ko bilang isa sa mga makabagong tibak. Naging magulo man o hindi ang ideyang ipinasok ko sa magasing ito, tama na sakin ang mabigyan ng pagkakataong huminga ang isang makabagong tibak na tulad ko sa magasing ito.

Hindi na ko inaantok. Hinhanap ko na rin uli ang nikotina't usok. Paalam na sa magasin. Salamat sa pagbabasa at pag-intindi.


Si Cherry-Anne Matriz ay 18 taung gulang at kasalukuyang nag-aaral sa Philippine Normal College, Manila. Siya ay kasalukuyang kalahok sa Activist School. Kabilang siya sa grupong MASP, isang militanteng organisasyon kabilang sa Bisig-Youth.

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Ang PUNLAYAN ay isang newsletter ng Antipolo Batch - Activist School. May dalawang isyu, ang una: "Huling Pagtuklas at Pagninilay," May 18 '06 at ang pangalawang isyu, May 26, '06 AS batch graduation day.

Aktibismo 101

Aktibismo 101
ni Karel Tabora

Narinig ko ang tungkol sa Activist School (AS) sa aking ama na isang full-fledged activist tulad ng aking ina. Masasabi kong lumaki ako sa isang tahanan na bukas sa prinsipyong ipinaglalaban ng mga T’bak. Madalas pa ngang maging paksa ng mga diskusyon sa aming hapag ang mga bagay-bagay at kaguluhan na may kaugnayan sa politika at iba’t ibang pagkilos.

Ngunit hindi ko masyadong binigyan ng importansya ang kanilang mga argumento dahil wala akong balak maging isang aktibista. Dumating kasi ako sa punto na nais kong bumuo ng sarili kong pagkakakilanlan. Ninais kong lumayo sa linyang kinabibilangan ng aking mga magulang - at sino ba naman ang may gustong mapalo ng batuta at mabomba ng tubig sa isang dispersal.

May mga bagay talaga na hindi mo kayang takasan o taguan. Dumating ang araw na kinausap ako ng papa ko na sumama sa isang seminar. Ginawa ko ang lahat para hindi ako makasama sa seminar. Sinubukan kong mag trabaho para lang makaalis ng bahay. Ginawa ko ring dahilan ang aming enrolment na tumatagal ng isang linggo para makalusot. Ngunit dumating pa rin ang araw na pinaka-iiwasan ko.

Isang umaga, ginising ako ng aking ama at sinabing simula na ng seminar sa mismong araw na iyon. Natural na hindi ako pumayag kahit pa alam kong para ito sa aking sariling pag-unlad. Doon ko lang siya nakitang ganoon ka seryoso sa isang bagay. Halos palayasin na niya ako. Kaya’t kahit LABAG sa aking kalooban, nag empake pa rin ako ng aking mga damit habang ang aking isipan ay nahahati, kung dadalhin ko ba ang aking mga gamit at magpakalayo-layo o pupunta sa AS na wala man lamang briefing at konsepto ng aktibismo.

Nalutas ang kaguluhan ng aking isipan nang namalayan kong na sa loob na ako ng isang opisina kasama ang mga batang T’bak na handang matuto at ipagpatuloy ang mga nasimulan ng nakaraang henerasyon ng mga T’bak.

Ito ang unang sabak ko sa isang seminar na may konsepto patungkol sa aktibismo at first time ko ding tumira sa isang retreat house na tatagal ng labinlimang araw. Wala ako ni katiting na ideya kung anong mangyayari sa loob ng ganoong kahabang panahon. Ngunit isa lang ang naging tiyak sa aking isipan-KALITUHAN. Nakakalito ang bawat minutong lumipas sa loob ng IPD (Institute for Popular Democracy) office.

Walang nangangahas kumausap kanino man. Pakiramdam ko tuloy ay mali ang pagpunta ko dito. Ngunit hindi nagtagal unti-unting nabasag ang katahimikan. Nagsimulang magdiskusyunan ang mga kabataang kasabayan ko tungkol sa kanilang pinaniniwalaan, palagay at iba pang bagay na may kaugnayan sa aktibismo. Halos dumugo ang ilong ko habang pinakikinggan ang kanilang mga litanya.

Pakiramdam ko ay na-transport ako sa ibang dimensyon, hindi ko lubusang maintindihan ang kanilang pinagsasasabi. Nasanay kasi ako sa usapang tungkol sa mga computer games, subject sa school, babae at kung anu-ano pang kalokohan ng aking mga kaibigan. Kaya’t nahirapan akong sumabay sa agos ng kanilang usapan. Hindi pa nga natatapos ang kanilang mga sinasabi ay para bang gusto nang pumutok ng aking ulo sa dami ng tanong na nais mabigyan ng kasagutan. Mabuti na lang at dumating ang tanghalian. Dahil kailangan ko na talagang kargahan ng panibagong sustansya ang MURA KONG ISIPAN na napakadaling inubos ng kanilang mga argumento.

DING!!! Round 2; Ikalawang round na ng diskusyon, ginanap na ito sa loob ng isang conference room. Nakakakaba ang bawat yugto, ni hindi ko alam kung ano ang isasagot ko sa tanong na kung ano ang aking organisasayon. Doon ko unang naranasan mag flat-line ang aking utak, parang ayaw ng gumana, information overload kung baga. Kaya’t pinagsisisishan ko kung bakit hindi ko pinakinggan ang aking ama noong ipinakikilala niya sa akin si Karl Marx at kung sinu-sino pang pilosopo. Ngunit doon ko rin natutunan kung gaano kasarap ang mag isip ng hindi lang para sa sarili kundi ang mag-isip para sa kapakanan ng LAHAT.

Natapos ang unang araw ng magaan at masarap sa pakiramdam. Totoong napakaraming aspeto at konsepto ang mahirap intindihin para sa MURA KONG ISIPAN (heheh), subalit sa tuwing iisipin kong hindi lang para sa akin ang aking ginagawa, muli akong nabubuhayan.

Ang bagal ng oras sa loob ng bahay ni kuya ( St. Mary’s house of prayer). Ngunit hindi natatapos ang bawat araw ng walang bagong natutunan. Ang bawat minuto ay punong-puno ng sustansya at lutong. Sa kabilang banda, hindi ko maiwasang maguluhan at malito. Salamat na lang sa mga bago kong kasama at kaibigan na handang tumulong at sagutin ang aking mga katanungan.

Habang lumilipas ang araw unti-unti kong nauunawaan ang mga bagay na ipinaglalaban ng mga aktibista. Nais ng mga T’bak ang pagbabagong makakatulong sa lahat. Dati ang T’bak para sa akin ay pampagulo lang ng lipunan at mga taong masyadong ginagawang komplikado ang lahat ng bagay. Ngunit matapos ang ilang araw ng pag-aaral sa tulong ng AS unti-unti akong namulat na ang mga aktibista pala ay yung mga taong bukas ang isipan sa kahit anong pag babago, sila yung mga kumikilos para sa katotohan, at handang mag-sakripisyo para sa LAHAT at sa bayan.

Maliban sa mga bagay na patungkol sa aktibismo, may mga kaugalian din akong natutuhan na maaaring makatulong pa sa aking pag-unlad, tulad ng pagiging independent. Mas nabigyan kasi ako ng pagkakataong umasa sa aking sarili dito sa AS. Wala kasi ang mga taong tumutulong sa akin kapag dumating na ang panahon ng pangangailangan. Tinuro din sa akin ng AS na tumingin sa bagay na hindi lang sa iisang perspektiba kundi subukan itong ipaliwanag sa iba pang punto de bista.

Ang bawat sesyon ay puno ng mga bagong teorya, konsepto at iba pang kaisipan. Dati ang pagtingin ko sa mass media, lalo na sa ating bansa, ay isa sa mga sumisira sa isipan ng kabataang Pilipino. Ngunit ng dahil sa isang sesyon, namulat ako sa tunay na halaga ng mass media. Ito ay ang nagsisilbing daluyan ng impormasyon na makakahubog sa isipan ng mga kabataan. Gayundin, mas nabigyan din ng liwanag ang konsepto ng kaliwa at iba’t iba pang social movements.

Maaring hilaw pa ang aking mga napulot na kaisipan at ideolohiya. Ngunit buo na ang aking loob. Handa na kong magsakripisyo at matuto hindi lang para sa akin kundi para sa mga kabataang tulad ko at sa bansa.

Sa panahon natin ngayon, unti-unting nababawasan ang suportang nanggagaling sa “youth sector” para maisulong ang konsepto ng aktibismo at pagbabago. Sa aking palagay, humantong tayo sa ganito, sa kadahilanang nawawalan na ng kakayahan kaming mga kabataan na makinig at magsuri sa tunay na nangyayari sa aming paligid. Malaki ang maiitulong ng sektor ng kabataan dahil kami ang magpapatuloy sa mga nasimulang pakikibaka.

Lahat ay dumadating sa pagtatapos. Dadating na ang final night sa bahay ni kuya, maghihiwalay na ang mga housemates at magbabalik sa kanilang mga sariling pakikibaka, maghahanap na muli si KUYA ng panibagong housemates na handang tanggapin ang panibagong pagsubok na yayanig sa kanilang prinsipyong ipinaglalaban at kahit walang isang milyong pisong premyo, mayroon namang bagong samahan na nabuo at prinsipyong ipinaglaban ng tapat.

P.S. Sana nga lang magkaroon na ng IDIOT’S GUIDE TO ACTIVISM.

Si Karel Tabora, edad 18, ay walang anumang karanasan sa aktibismo bago pumasok sa Activist School. Kilalang aktibista ang kanyang mga magulang na sila Edwin at Leticia Tabora. Mga magulang na iginigiya ang anak sa aktibismo.

Wikang Globalisado o Wikang Busabos?

Ayon sa March 2006 survey ng Social Weather Station (SWS), bumababa na raw ang self-assessed proficiency ng Pinoy sa English. Maaring sabihin nating positibo, maaring trahedya rin sa iba.

Tanggap na natin ang hamon ng rumaragasang globalisasyon, paggamit ng English, ang bersyon ng English kalabaw at Taglish. Patuloy na pinatatag ng Pilipinas ang trono bilang pinakamahusay na OFW-skilled, entertainer, domestic helper, care giver at prostitutes sa buong mundo at "ikatlo sa mundo na nagsasalita ng English."

Sa kasalukuyan, mahigit kumulang na 8 milyon Pilipino ang nasa labas ng bayan; Australia, Canada, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Hongkong, Germany, UK, at iba pa. Sa Amerika na lamang, mayroon nang 1 milyon at dumarami pa. Halos malagpasan na natin ang mga Intsik doon kung bibilangin pati yung mga TNT (tago ng tago). Sa tingin ko, hindi habang panahon ay OFW na lamang tayo!

Apat na siglong nilooban (occupation)tayo ng Amerika, Hapon at Kastila. Noong panahon ng Kastila, ginamit ang wika upang ikintal sa utak natin ang mensahe ng kabanalan at pagiging masunurin. Sa ilalim ng Kano, sa loob lamang ng kalahating siglo at ilang dekada matapos “ibigay ang kasarinlan”, isinubo ang wikang English bilang opisyal na lengguwahe.

Mula sa sistema ng ating edukasyon bilang medium sa pagtuturo, gamit ang English sa gubyerno’t lehislatura at pakikipagtransaksyon sa negosyo. Mula sa aklat at iba pang reference materials, magazines, research manual at script ay pawang nakasulat sa dayong wika.

Sinasabi ng ilang kritiko na tuluyan na tayong nawalan ng tunay pagkakakilala sa sarili. Sa awit ni Heber Bartolome na “tayo’y mga Pinoy”, para tayong asong ngumingiyaw at hindi tumatahol. Sino ang maniniwala na makakagawa tayo ng sariling awtomobil na pinatatakbo ng hydrogen gas-tubig, karaoke, land rover na ginamit sa buwan o maging ang ilaw na fruorescent kung patuloy ang pambubusabos ng ating wika.

Kung gusto mong maging pulitiko kailangang English ang gamit mo, kung gusto mo ng may mataas na pinag-aralan at modernong pamumuhay wikang English ang dapat na gamit mo. Sa simpleng paghahalintulad, ginamit ang English sa pangungulimbat. Yung salitang commission, under the table, standard operational procedure (SOP) at “substantial compliance” ay walang iba kundi suhol, lagay at pangungukurakot.

Ginamit ang English sa pagbibiyahe sa abrod o jungket. Ginamit ang English sa land grabbing at malakihang pagnanakaw. Ginamit ang English upang sang-ayunan ang mga batas at tratadong kontra Pilipino. Ginamit ang English upang supilin ang kilusang makabayan. Ginamit ang English, upang baluktutin ang hustisya’t paburan ang mga malalaki’t mga dambuhala.

Sinasalamin ng ating wika ang ating pagkatao bilang Pinoy. Ipinagpapalagay na hindi raw “pambansa” at hindi “intelektuwalisado” ang wikang Filipino, pero ito’y dahil sa konteksto ng ating bayan. Kailan ma'y hindi na tayo nagkaisa bilang isang bansa.

May sari-sariling pananalig ang ating mga pulo at barangay. Kay dali nating bumigay sa tindig na mapanghati at rehiyonalistang mga pulitiko’t kaaway ng wikang Pilipino. Paanong magiging “pambansa” ang isang wika sa loob ng isang bansang mahina ang damdamin at kamalayang makabansa?

Ang “intelektuwalisasyon” ay isang kasong dapat ibintang sa uri ng ating
edukasyon at kultura. Napakababa ng ating literasi. Napakababaw ng
nilalaman ng pagtuturo at ng mga nababasa’t napapakinggan ng sambayanan.

Paano magiging “intelektuwalisado” ang Filipino kung hindi gagamitin ng mga intelektuwal? Paanong aangat ang karunungan ng taumbayan kung ang mga dapat nilang matutunan ay sinasalita at isinusulat sa wikang hindi nila naintindihan o alam?

Ayon kay Virgilio Almario sa aklat na Tradisyon at Wikang Filipino, “Anupa’t ang problema ng pambansa at “intelektuwalisasyon” ay katulad ng kasabihan tungkol sa iniuuna ang kariton sa kabayo. Ipinahihila sa wika ang mga suliranin nasa unahan. Samantalang ang dapat mangyari ay ilagay ang mga suliraning ito sa likuran ng wika at saka tulong-tulong nating itulak ang kariton tungo sa pagsulong ng Filipino.”

Hindi totoong nakabatay lamang sa Tagalog ang wikang Filipino. Magkakapamilya ang mga katutubong wika sa Filipinas. Nagkataon lamang sa ating kasaysayan na Tagalog ang unang ginamit na batayan sa pinalaganap na wikang pambansa mula pa noong 1935. Tinaguriang Ama ng Wikang Pilipino na isang Tagalog si Pres Manuel Quezon noong Disyembre 31, 1937 ng Commonwealth Act No. 570. Malaki na ang pagbabago ng Tagalog nuon 1935 sa Tagalog ngayong kasalukuyan.

Sa kabila ng pabago-bagong patakaran ng gubyerno sa wikang English, hindi
maitatatwang mayorya ng populasyong ng bansa ang marunong ng Filipino. Sa survey halimbawa ng Surian noong 1982 sa wika ng radio at telebisyon, lumilitaw na ang gumagamit ng wikang pambansa ay may 82.55% Pilipino, 15.43% English, 1.98% Espanyol at 0.02% iba pang wika. Noong 1986, ang uri ng Filipino sa print media ay 79.76% Pilipino, 14.95% English at 5.28% Espanyol.

Noong Pebrero 1989, nagpalabas ng survey ang Ateneo de Manila at lumitaw sa estatistika na 92% ang nakakaintindi ng Pilipino sa buong bansa, 83% ang nakapagsasalita nito, 88% ang nakababasa nito, at 81% ang nakasusulat nito. Sa naturang pambansang saliksik ay lumilitaw ring 51% lamang ang nakaiintindi ng English at 41% ang nakaiintindi ng Cebuano.

Lumalabas na hindi totoong kakaunti ang marunong ng Filipino. Kung matatandaan, kaliwa’t kanang sumigla ang komiks, tabloid, pelikula at awiting Filipino noong dekada ‘70s at ‘90s. Dumami ang nagiging POPULAR ang mga programa sa radio at TV na gumagamit ng Filipino.

Hindi totoong mababa at makitid ang karunungang makukuha sa Filipino. Pakulo lamang ito ng mga maka-English na naniniwalang hindi tayo uunlad kung hindi tayo marunong mag-English. Ang tunay na karunungan ay yaong lumulutas sa pangangailangan ng tao, yaong nagagamit niya para mabuhay.

May sarili na tayong teknolohiya para mabuhay at magsarili. May nalinang na tayong paraan ng agrikultura at mga industriya para masagot ang ating pangangailangang pangkabuhayan.

Intelektuwalisado na ang ating wika noon pa man. May mga salita ito na naglalaman ng mga katutubong kaalaman sa pilosopiya, politika at teknolohiya.

Sa isinagawang pag-aaral sa Third International Maths and Science (TIMSS) noong dekada 90s sa mahigit kalahating milyong kabataan ng mundo, pang-labingpito (17th) at pangdalawangput walo (28th) lamang ang USA sa agham at matematika. Nangunguna ang bansang Singapore, S. Korea, Czech Republic, Japan, Bulgaria, Netherland, Hungary, Austria at Belgium.

Kalahok dito ang Pinoy kaya lang hindi ito naisama sa opisyal na talaan sa
kadahilanang nasa kulelat ang ating mag-aaral. May sinirang mga “alamat” ang TIMMS. Una, wala sa laki ng badyet ang kahusayan sa pagtuturo sa agham at matematika. Hamak na ang liit na ginagastos ng Czech Republic at South Korea sa edukasyon ngunit ungos na ungos ang mga ito sa malalakas gumastos na bansang gaya ng Germany at Great Britain. Hindi rin nakukuha sa liit ng klase at haba ng oras sa pag-aaral.

Maliliit lamang lagi ang bilang ng mag-aaral sa klase sa France, United State at Great Britain. Samantala’y laging doble ang laki ng mga klase sa mga bansa sa Asia, kahit sa Singapore at Hongkong, ngunit matataas ang marka kaysa sa nabanggit na mayayamang bansang Europeo.

Sa huling listahang inilabas ng Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds (THE-QS) World University Ranking itong 2006, nasa top 50 ang mga mauunlad na bansa sa US at Europa. Sa Asia, nangunguna ang China, pang 14th ang Peking University at 28th ang Tsing Hua University of China, 19th ang Univ. of Tokyo at National University of Singapore, 29th ang Kyoto University (Japan) at 33rd ang University of Hongkong. Nasa malayo ang Engliserang bansa natin, 299th ang University of the Philippines, 392nd ang De La Salle, 484th ang Ateneo de Manila, 500th ang UST.

Kung sa Asia ang pagbabatayan, dinaig tayo sa ranking ng mga unibersidad na matatagpuan sa Taiwan, India, S. Korea, Thailand, Malaysia at Indonesia.

Kung ang wikang English ang mag-aahon sa karalitaan at mataas na antas ng ating pamumuhay, kung ang English ang magpapawi ng karalitaan, kung ang English ang magpapalago ng industriya’t teknolohiya at empleyo, kung ang English ang papawi sa pagiging busabos ng Pinoy sa mata ng mundo, kung ang English ang magdadala ng maraming gintong medalya sa tuwing may palaro sa Olympic at kung ang English ang siyang daan sa pagkakaisa, baka siguro numero uno na tayo sa Asya!

Nasa yugto na tayo ng tinatawag na Panahon ng Kaalaman. Sa ganitong kalagayan, napakahalaga ngayon ang pagpapaabot, pagpapalitan at pagpapaunawa ng kaalaman o mga kaisipan upang makamit ang mithiing kaunlaran.

Totoong may sapat na kakayahan ang mga Pilipino na makipag-ugnayan sa mga dayo ngunit maliwanag pa sa sikat ng araw na hindi natin makakamit ang tunay na sariling kamalayan kung patuloy tayong walang kakayahang makipag-ugnayan sa sarili nating mga kababayan, ang ugnayan sa mamamayang nananawagan ng pagababago.

Sabi nga ni Randy David, “walang wikang umuunlad kung hindi ito naisusulat at binabasa. Walang wikang umuunlad kung ito’y hindi sinasanay na maglulan ng mga produkto ng kamalayan at iba’t-ibang kaisipang hango sa maraming kultura. Kailangang makipag-usap ang ating sarili’t-katutubong wika sa mga wika ng ibang bansa, sa halip na isangtabi ito, sa maling pag-aakalang hindi na ito angkop sa bagong panahon. “


Francisco Cinco
April 22, 2006

Dahil sa whitewash ng “Mayuga Report”, may namimintong panibagong pag-aaklas ?

Tulad ng inaasahan, maa-abswelto ang apat na heneral at isang colonel na diumano'y sangkot sa pandayarang dagdag-bawas sa halalan noong 2004 Presidential Election. Sa ordinaryong Pinoy, hindi na ito balita, ang balita ay kung napatunayang guilty at na-court martial ang apat na Heneral. Mgatataka tayo kung may delicadesa't nagsipag-resign ang buong komisyon-ner ng COMELEC at nag-ala Thaksin si Ate Glo! Yan ang balita, yan ang healine!

Ang problema ngayon, sinong engot ang maniniwala kay Mike Defensor at kay Ate Glo? Negative-zero ang kredibilidad ng Malakanyang. Ayon sa mga Senador, upang hindi mabulabog ang AFP at Malakyang, sina-nitized nila ang resulta ng Report. Kaduda-duda ang laman at resulta ng fact-finding report ni Mayuga;

Una; ayon kay Rep Roilo Golez, "dinuktor o nagkaroon ng switching" sa orihinal na MayugReport.
Pangalawa; para walang kilos protesta sa lansangan, itinaon sa bakasyon (Semana Santa) ang labas ng Report.
Pangatlo; dahil bakasyon, umiiwas at sinekreto ang lugar ng announcement-interview kay Mayuga at sa government owned television lamang ito ipinalabas. Walng media pipol ang nakasubybay sa nasabing anunsyo.
Pang-apat; simula't simula pa lamang, hindi naging transparency at over delayed ang pagkakalabas nito. Wala ninumg media, senador ang naka-access sa dokumento at winidhold ito ng mahigit dalawang buwan (2 months) sa Malakanyang bago inilbas.
Panghuli; kung totoo ngang walang "partisan politics" at hindi nakialam ang apat na Heneral sa dayaan noong 2004 election, bakit bigla-biglang ipagbabawal na mula ngayon ang pakikialam ng AFP sa mga darating na halalan (2007), ayon sa isang rekomendasyon ng AFP?

Negative-zero ang kredibilidad ng Malakanyang. Sariwa't hindi malilimutan ng country ang makailang beses na linlangan, manipulahan, goyoan, katiwalian at kasinungalingan ni Ate Glo; Ang Rizal Day Statement na “hindi na ako tatakbo sa 2004 Presidential election"; Ang 464; CPR; ang 1017 at defacto Martial Law; “ang Piso at gumagandang ekonomiya”; na intak, buong-buo at solid ang AFP; na may sabwatan raw ang junior officers at CPP-NPA; na may Kudeta raw sa Pebrero’06 at itatayo ang Military Junta”; na wala raw alternative sa kanya, na siya raw ang "best president" at inilukluk ng Diyos, na wala raw unemployment sa bansa, mismatch at mapili lang daw ang Pinoy at higit sa lahat, yung response sa editorial ng New York Times na "may demokrasya raw sa Pilipinas?"

Sa isinagawang whitewash sa Mayuga Report ng Malakanyang, hinding-hindi mapapatahimik ang mga patriotiko-idealistang mga junior officers. Alam ng buong mundo na inis-SPECIAL OPS nina Maj.Gen Hermiogenes Esperon, Maj Gen Gabriel Habacon, Rear Adm Tirso Danga, retired Maj Gen Roy Kyamko at isa pang Koronel ang halalan (dagdag-bawas) sa Mindanao at ito ang mga narinig sa commando type operation ni Ate Glo sa “hello garci” tapes para sa hiling na karagdaggang isang milyong boto noong 2004 election.

Lalo lamang binuhusan ng gasolina ang nagbabagang silakbo’t damdamin ng mga junior officers. May inhustiya na nga sa buong bansa’t sa AFP, katiwalian at kabulukan sa loob ng AFP, nakakulong at naka court martial pa ang ilan sa kanila dahil sa “pagtataksil” daw sa republika, wala pa ngang close door sa “hello garci”, dinagdagan pa ng PAG-AABSWELTO’T switching ng “Mayuga Report”!

Walang dudang pati mga kasama ni Col Querubin na YOUng sa Mindanao, Gen Lim at Gen Gudani (nadistino sa Mindanao) sampu ng mga bata-batalyong yunit na nakasaksi sa maniubrahan, gapangan, bayaran at madgikan ay talagang magwawala’t mag-aalburuto.

Ano ang aral nito, ano ang ibubunga nito, ano ang epekto nito? Tipping point? Ano pa nga ba, eh di isang “big push” muli, panibagong pag-aaklas ng junior officers – Magdalo-YOUng at baka dito’y tuluyan ng mapatumba ang gubyernong iligal ni Ate Glo.

Paano na ang kampanyang pipol inisyatib, cha cha-parliamentary shift ni Ate Glo, ang snap election at panibagong impeachment complaint ng oposisyon sa Kongreso at welgang bayan sa Mayo Uno ng mga militante? Koordinado ba'yan, sabay-sabay ba'yan o unahan na lang?


-Doy Cinco / IPD staff
April 12, '06

Yet Another Palace Initiative (PI)

Yet Another Palace Initiative (PI)
By: Gladstone A. Cuarteros


First they denied involvement but soon enough the tenants of Malacanang bared their
true colors. Slowly as the issues surrounding the so-called Peoples Initiative
unfold the smoke screen of Malacanang is quickly fading. It is crystal clear now
that the GMA administration is orchestrating this most recent maneuver to amend the
1987 Constitution. In fact without the formal petition yet with the Commission on
Elections (Comelec) GMA has already endorsed the peoples initiative. She declared
that the Cha Cha train have left the station and that ' it is time for old-time
politicians to step back or get run over' by the speeding Cha Cha Express.


Is GMA's declaration a plain expression of support on the peoples initiative? Well
that is what her allies want us to believe. That the initiative is genuine clamor
coming from people. But as we can later conclude her strong declaration reflects
that indeed she knows what is happening and is going to happen on the
DILG-ULAP-Sigaw ng Bayan-led peoples initiative. She could not claim innocence
because if she is, she should have waited at least for the Comelec to take
cognizance a formal petition to be filed. At maximum she should have deferred on
whatever ruling the Supreme Court makes once the peoples initiative is questioned
in court.

But that is least of her concerns. What is important to GMA and her allies is to
undertake charter change now and avoid being subjected to another impeachment
compliant in July this year. Another impeachment proceeding could be more
difficult to ward-off this time. And in so doing the charter amendments she hits
two birds with one stone. Forever she will no longer need to answer questions on
her legitimacy but will continue ruling until 2010 at least (God forbid) and
secondly she will deliver on her promise to Speaker Jose de Venecia for the shift
to a parliamentary system.


With the way the current peoples initiative is carried out by the administration
we can say there is a DILG-ULAP- Sigaw ng Bayan conspiracy, if not Malacanang plot
itself. Well that is using only this administration's language - one that is fond
of accusing other groups of conspiracy, plots, destabilization, etc.


When Rep. Ronaldo Puno was appointed to head the Department of Interior and Local
Government (DILG) it was suspected that the real intention is for him to set into
motion GMA's version of charter change. Especially now that the ConAss proposal of
the House of Representatives is stalled in the Senate. Using his acumen as an
expereinced political operator Puno will again make use of his network at the DILG
to realize GMA's Cha Cha. For the uninitiated, Puno maintained his network within
and outside the DILG – network which he developed during his time with the
Department in the Marcos years. DILG used to be Ministry of Community Development
and Local Government. Some of his colleagues then are by now in the upper echelons
of DILG bureaucracy, serving as assistant secretary or regional directors. While
some others has since retired and are officers of the retirees association.
Remember also that Puno served as DILG Secretary during Estrada's short-live
presidency.


It goes without saying this made him in close contact with his DILG network again and
perhaps enabled him to expand it further. It is said that this same DILG network
was the backbone of the political machinery which helped Puno in the presidential
campaigns of Ramos, Estrada and in 2004 GMA herself.


The suspicion that Puno will work to expedite GMA's Chacha prove right. The haste
we are seeing now in the signature campaign is not at all accidental. Nor is it
because the people are so 'hot' about GMA's chacha. A key factor is Puno at the
DILG. Before literally warming his seat in the Department, DILG issued Memorandum
Circular 2006-25 directing all local officials to hold barangay assemblies
nationwide. In these assemblies the people are supposed to discuss issues
affecting them, one of which is the proposal to amend the 1987 Constitution. The
holding of barangay of assemblies is required under the Local Government Code of
1991, and so taking the DILG memorandum at face value there is nothing sinister
about it. But considering the context and the intense involvement of the
Department in the holding barangay assemblies which was absent in previous years
then one smells something fishy in all this.


Take for example the allegation that it is DILG personnel who distributed the
forms being used in gathering the signature. With it are copies of voters list per
precint and a matrix on the advantages of the parliamentary system. The DILG
Regional Offices furthermore formed special project team to work in gathering the
targetted 5.6 million signatures (5.2 million is the minimum requirement). All
these are supported with adequate funds. Sources from the DILG reveal a
surprising increase for the budget on monitoring barangay assemblies. It can be
recalled that in early February this year even before Puno took his oath as DILG
Secretary he is said to have convened a two-day conference of DILG field officials
in preparation for their role in the peoples initiative to amend the 1987 Charter.


Strategy-wise inserting the signature campaign in the barangay assembly is a smart
move by Puno. A skilled operator as he is, the requirement under the LGC in the
holding the barangay assemblies is a perfect cover against allegations that the
Palace has a hand on this. It conveniently camouflages the hidden intentions DILG
has by reminding the barangays to hold regular assemblies. Because supposedly
barangay residents are going to discuss issues affecting their community anyway.


The peoples initiative is led by Sigaw ng Bayan, a multi-sectoral grouping of
purportedly civil society organizations. Closer scrutiny however shows that these
are same organizations that which were involved in the GMA presidential campaign
in 2004 and those who issued paid advertisements in support of GMA at the height
of impeachment against the President. They were part of the political machinery
then. Thus they are all supporters of GMA so nothing new. Only recycled
organizations taking issues for the President at different times. After the
election campaign, these groups were mobilized again last year to defend GMA
against the impeachment enjoining us 'to stop all the destabilization/trouble '
(Tama na ang Gulo, Tama na ang Pulitika) campaign line, now they want to impress
on us sort of ' people power' by gathering millions of signature supporting the
peoples initiative.


One can only wonder how these organizations seems to be overflowing with money that they can easily fund the pro-GMA campaigns they had launched and that they also can so often afford whole-page paid advertisements in major newspapers. This is not to
mention flooding of Metro Manila with pro-GMA streamers and tarpaulins during the
impeachment. Of course they also commemorated EDSA I last February but were spared
of the truncheons and violent dispersal the more progressives have to endure in
their rallies.


With the assistance of local officials through the Union of Local Authorities
(ULAP) which vowed to strongly support GMA and her Chacha through peoples
initiative, Sigaw ng Bayan can solicit the 5.2 million signatures. In fact with
the combined resources and machinery of the DILG and ULAP, as of today, Sigaw ng
Bayan claims to have gathered 7 million signatures already.


Yet there are significant opposition against the people's initiative. Surprisingly
local officials of Cebu province which has overwhelmingly voted for GMA in the
past election rejected the peoples initiative and GMA's version of charter change.
The Cebu Municipal Mayors League believes the signature campaign is illegal and
unconstitutional. There are also the other local executives who are members of the
opposition parties and party-list like Akbayan have not joined gathering
signature. Hopefully this minority of local officials can still prevent Sigaw ng
Bayan from satisfying the minimum requirement of three percent signatures for each
legislative district.


Aside from Puno another revealing link of Malacanang in this peoples initiative is
the designation of Atty. Raul Lambino as spokesman of Sigaw ng Bayan. Who is Atty.
Lambino? He is said to be coming from the infamous 'The Firm' Villaraza Law Office
and is among the members of the Consultative Commission (ConCom), a body formed by
GMA to study and recommend amendments to the Constitution. The most notorious
their recommendations is the cancellation of the 2007 elections. After the ConCom
which was given only three-months mandate, Mr. Lambino was again made part of the
Charter Change Advocacy Group that Malacanang formed. While serving in the said
Advocacy Group he is at the same time Sigaw ng Bayan spokesperson. What a
coincidence!


Clearly what these linkages indicate that members of Concom and the Advocacy Group and those working for peoples initiative – the supposed civil society component (Sigaw ng Bayan) are more or less in the same loop. They are not different and
exclusive groupings as what the Palace wants to project to the public. After all
they were part of GMA's political machinery.


And why is Mr. Lambino made their spokesperson? That is the problem when a
political machinery is abruptly transformed into a supposed civil society
organization or movements. It is not as fast to train a PO leader that can be as
erudite and articulate as a lawyer. Especially with the intricate issues that
needed in explaining, much more linkages to the 'powers that be' that should
remain hidden from the public. And so they have to depend on their seasoned
operators – the like of Lambino as their mouth piece.


Gleaning from all these brouhaha is an elaborate and concerted effort of GMA and
her lieutenants in leading the peoples initiative. Obviously we see the hand of
Malacanang. And this made through the DILG, ULAP and Sigaw ng Bayan- the civilian
component, to use their language. For sure the Palace will distance itself from
this peoples initiative but is futile already. The links are there for all to see
and thus the GMA camp can no longer erase the fact that such peoples initiative
is in fact a Palace Initiative.


####
05 April 2006

Sino ang SumiSIGAW ng BAYAN?

Mahusay sa kalokohan itong Sigaw ng Bayan Movement. Parang kidlat na tinapos ang mahigit sampung milyong (10.0 milyon) “pirma” para sa Pipol Inisyatib (PI). Kaya lang mukhang mauuwi ito sa kangkungang, ultimo si Atty Macalintal na abogado na ng Palasyo ang nagsasabi ngayong isang "iligal ang PI" at "maliwanag na nilabag nito ang Referendum Act ng RA 6735.

Mula sa pinuno ng Liga ng Barangay hanggang sa mga “legal expert” ng bansa ang nagsasabing walang batas (no enabling law) na sumasakop sa initiative ni Gloria (PIG). Ayon sa kanila, isa itong void, invalid at palsipikado. Nakabitin sa SC (proper forum?) ang kahihinatnan ng Pipol Inisyatib ni Gloria (PIG). Tulad din sa maraming pagco-contest ng batas, ang burden ng proof kung unconstitutional o constitutitional ang PIG ay wala sa nagsusulong nito't wala sa Malakanyang.

Hindi na tayo magpapaliguy-lighoy pa! Ang sama-samang pagkilos ng PIPOL ang siyang tunay na maghuhusga nito. Pinatunayan ng ating kasaysayan na ang kalsasda't pipol power at "direktang demokrasya" sa baba, hindi ang Korte Suprema (SC) ang siyang magpapasya kung iligal o ligal ang PIG.


Sino ang sumiSigaw ng Bayan? Una, sa pangalan palang maiintriga kana. Ang unang kikintal sa utak mo'y parang Kaliwa ang balagbag, parang Kilusang mapagpalaya ang dating, makabayan, maka-masa at patriotiko. Isang COALITION na binubuo daw ng mahigit isang daan (100) non-government organization (NGO) ang “Sigaw ng Bayan Movement”.

Ang husay mangopya, parang NGO-civil society ang packaging at imahe. Sounds familiar, kung si Marcos ay may Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) na tumugis sa mga kalaban niya sa pulitika noong 1970s, Sigaw ng Bayan Movement naman ang bersyon at pakulo ni Ate Glo, Atty Lambino, Kalihim Puno at ULAP.

Kung tunay na “adbokasiya” ng Sigaw ng Bayan Movement ang people empowerment, ipakita nila ng pruweba na hindi sila impostor. Sino ang mastermind ng grupong ito? Mga operador ni Ate Glo noong 2004 election ang bumubuo nito. Mga corporate elite na gaya ni Donald Dee, Ortiz Ruiz , Francis Chua at Valera ng Phil Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), Philippine-Chinese Chamber of Commerse at Employer's Confederation of the Phil (ECOP), mga dating cadre, mersenaryo't panggitnang pwersa ng National Democratic movement.

Marami sa kanila ay mga dating kasamahan at recycled communist na nagsasabing “hanap buhay lang ito” at babalik rin sa democratic movement kung makakatiempo. Ang ilan sa kanila mga dating nagpapatakbo ng makinarya ni FPJ for President, Sen . Loren Legarda at Ping Lacson, Pres Erap Estrada, mga kasalukuyang Gobernador-Mayor, Ed Pamintuan at mga alyado' patron ni Kalihim Puno ng DILG.

Pangalawa; Ang kengkoy rito ay parang social movement ang isinisigaw na islogan. Parang alternative ang inilalako sa PIPOL. Out of the blue, sila pa ngayon ang nagsusulong ng demokratikong adhikain ng masang Pinoy at ang lahat ng babangga rito ay lalabas na anti-demokratiko! Ang nakakabahala dito, binibigyan daw nito ng pagkakataong makilahok at magka-boses ang mamamayan! “WOW MALI, bode-bodegang kasinungalingan!

Pangatlo; Sila pa ngayon ang nagmamagaling na may hawak ng pormula't solusyon sa krisis pampulitika ng bansa. Sila pa ngayon ang may karapatang manawagan ng “constitutional reform at magbandila ng demokrasya”. Nagawa pang magpasaring,“na kaya raw napag-iwanan in terms of economy sa Asia ang Pilipinas ay may executive at legislative gridlock da sa politika,” na dapat buwagin ang Senado, magkaroon na ng Unicameral tungo sa sistemang Parliamentaryo . Lalabas na bayani, tagapagligtas ng sansinukob at tgapagpagmalasakit ang Sigaw ng Bayan Movement.

Pang-apat; Mas may kredibilidad daw sila kung ikukumpara sa mga destabilizer at pulitiko. “Malinis daw ang kanilang konsyensya, let's move on na”, wala raw halong pamumulitika, hindi raw sila binayaran at wala raw silang kinalaman sa mersenaryo't operdor na Kalihim Puno ng DILG. Nagpa-awa effect pa't gusto pang palabasing sila ang kinakawawa, sila ang dinidihado, sila ang inaapi, sinasaktan at “hina-harrash" ng mga organisadong mamamayang ayaw ng pagbabago.

Panghuli; ”Totoong ngang mahuhusay” ang mga taong nasa likod nito. Isipin mong mapabilib mo, makumbinsi mo, mapasang-ayon mo ang isang Ale sa bahay palasyo at bahay Tongreso. Ang resulta tuloy, mukhang plotfooted at maa-outsmart na naman ang mga Oposisyon at mga kalaban nito sa pulitika. Ilang araw matapos makuha ng Sigaw ng Bayan ang mahigit walong milyong pirma (8.0 milyon) ay diniklara agad ni Ate Glo na “tuloy-tuloy na ang larga ng cha cha, larga na ang Train at ang humarang dito ay masasagasaan."

Pagwawaldas ng kaban yaman ang PIG. Mangangailang ito ng mahigit isang bilyon (P1.0 bilyon) piso para sa pagbeberipika ng mga pirma ng Comelec (assuming alive and kicking ang buwitre't buwaya), may karagdagang P2.6 bilyon pa ang kakailanganin sa plebisito. Hindi pa kasali dito ang mahigit dalawang bilyong piso (P2.0 bilyon) nawaldas ng palasyo sa prosesong pinagdaanan ng “signature campaign”.

Masasayang lamang ang kaban ng yaman kung titigukin at kung kakatayin ng Supreme Court ang PIG. Ang anim na bilyon pisong (P6.0 bilyon) mawawaldas ay katumbas sana ng tatlong malalaking Hospital at daan-daang duktor, 10 BLISS condo, isang Mass Railway Transit (MRT), libong magbubukid at mangingisda sa buong kapuluan ang maayudahan.

Tumama rin sa wakas ang professor ng constitutional law ng University of the East (UE) na si Lambino ng sabihin nitong, “Section 397 ng Local Government Code of 1991 na binibigyang mandato ang lahat ng local government units na magsagawa ng kani-kanilang barangay assemblies at least twice a year.” Exactly! Kaya lang, bokyang-bokya ito ng sabihin nitong “"pare-pareho tayong mga pipol".

Langit at lupa ang interest ng PIPOL at interest ng Malakanyang . Survival mode ni Ate Glo ang pakay ng People's Initiative, samantalang trabaho, kaginhawaan, pagkain, serbisyo, respeto't dangal ang interest ng Pipol. Diyos ang boses ng Pipol habang Halimaw naman ang boses ng pulitiko.

Sa totoo lang, ang mahalaga sa Pipol ay kung paano mag-survive sa pang-araw-araw na takbo ng buhay. Wala silang paki-alam kung mauwi sa parliamentaryo o sa kalakarang presidential ang sistema. Kung sa usapin ng pulitika, ang concerns lang nila ay kung paano makakaganti sa mga pulitiko sa paraang vote buying-pambubulsa, panggogoyo at kung paano kenkoyin ang mga kandidato sa tuwing may halalan.

Isang panlilinlang ang sabihing ito'y “inisyatiba ng PIPOL.” Isang libong beses na mas paniniwalaang INIS na ang PIPOL, INIS na iNIS na sa theivES (magnanakaw) ang Pipol. Huwag niyong pagkaperahan, gamitin at gaguhin ang PIPOL. Magkaiba ang Pipol sa pulitiko. Langit at impyerno ang diperensya ng representanteng pulitiko sa PIPOL.

Sabihin man nila na tunay na Pipol Initiatve, may suporta't agapay (bagamat isang iligal) ng Corporate super-Elite, Tongresman, Gobernador at Mayor, “so what – walang masama” sila naman daw ay PIPOL din at “representante-kinatawan” ng PIPOL! Maghunus dili kayo! Masyado kayong BRUTAL at garapal! Ang TOTOO, Binababoy n'yo ang PIPOL.

Sapagkat deka-dekadang buluk at mahina ang sistemang elektoral sa bansa, nakalikha ito ng sangkaterbang iligal na kinatawan at representante sa hanay ng mga PIPOL. Sa maraming taong pamamalagi ng COMELEC, libong “Garci-mafia” ang naitanim at naibaon sa Intramuros, probinsya't hanggang sa munisipyo. Ito ang pangunahing dahilan kung bakit TRAPO-pamimili ng boto, MAKINARYA at hindi plataporma't track record ang siyang mapagpasya sa halalan.

Maniniwala lamang kami na hindi kayo alipores ni Ate Glo kung bababad kayo sa PIPOL at magsagawa ng grasis root organizing (GRO)! Subukan n'yong tumira't lumubug sa mga liblib na lugar ng kanayunan (katutubo, pesante't magbubukid) , kumunidad, urban poor -PAYATAS at sa mga pabrika. I-organisa't i-eduka n'yo ang PIPOL hanggang sa libu-libo niyong mapakilos ang PIPOL patungo sa ninanais n'yong pipol initiative at pipol power .

Una, hindi kayo pipol isang demonyo at anti-pipol ang pulitiko't corporate elite. Kayo ang nangggahasa sa pipol, kayo ang humuhuthut at nanghoholdap sa pipol dahil pinagkaitan n'yo ng gatas ang iyak ng iyak na mga sanggol . Dahil sa walang mapasukang trabaho, itinulak niyong mag-japayuki, magprosti-GRO at mag-adik ang PIPOL.

Kayo ang nagtulak sa pipol upang gumawa ng krimen (kawalan ng trabaho). Kayo ang pumatay sa libu-libong PIPOL na itinulak n'yong manirahan sa vulnerableng lokasyon; sa tabing estero, ilalim ng tulay, tabing bundok -ilog, gilid ng bulkan at barong-barong na kalagayan. Kayo ang pumatay ng libu-libung pipol dahil sa malnutrisyon at karalitaan. Dahil sa patuluy na patakarang OFW, kayo ang dahilan kung bakit nagkawatak-watak ang isang pamilya ng pipol.

Pangalawa; Kinumando't inisyatiba ni Ate Glo sampu ng kanyang mga galamay sa bahay palasyo at corporate elite ang PIG. Sapagkat ito'y iwas pusoy sa selda't bilangguang maghihintay sa kanya, “reresolbahin nito ang isyu ng linlangan, ang isyu ng katiwalian, ang isyu ng uncertainty at ang isyu ng legitimacy. Kung kaya't ang pangunahing makikinabang sa PIG, cha cha ay ang ilegal na nag-ookupa sa Malakanyang.

Pangatlo; Mga botong galing sa KBL (Kasal Binyag at Libing) lamang kayo. Hinostage n'yo ang Pipol at Comelec. Tuwing may halalan, ginagamit at sinupalpalan n'yo ng bigas-sardinas-noodles ang pipol. Sino ngayon ang maniniwala sa pinangangalandakan n'yong representative democracy? Mga predator, pekeng kinatawan-representante kayo ng PIPOL. Pinagmalupitan at binusalan n'yo ang PIPOL. Kailanma'y hindi nakalasap ng tunay na tunay na demokrasya ang PIPOL.

Sino ang sumiSigaw ng Bayan Movement? May naniniwala pa ba sa elitist at representative democracy? Hindi marandaman ng country ang gubyerno at kailanma'y hindi nakalasap ng tunay na SIGAW at demokrsya ang PIPOL!!!



-Doy Cinco / IPD staff
April 6, 2006