Bulatlat

With most of the votes now counted the Arroyo administration has suffered a humiliating defeat in the May mid-term elections despite widespread military intimidation, abductions and killings.

BY GILL H BOEHRINGER
Published in The Socialist Worker – Australia June 15
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 20, June 24-30, 2007

With most of the votes now counted the Arroyo administration has suffered a humiliating defeat in the May mid-term elections despite widespread military intimidation, abductions and killings. Unfortunately, for the many millions who rejected her candidates for the Upper House, the administration has retained sufficient strength in the House of Representatives to make a further impeachment attempt-there were two in 2005 and 2006-out of the question in the near future.

The explanation for the overwhelming defeat in the Senate race is simple. The Filipino people are fed-up with the corruption of the elite, which Arroyo represents.

Further, they overwhelmingly reject ruinous policies favouring multinational capital as well as the slavish acceptance of neo-liberalism and "structural readjustment" foisted on the country by the World Bank and a succession of US administrations.

Local races for House seats were dominated by conservative parties led by the landlords and infamous "dynasties", which still have a stranglehold, particularly in poverty-stricken rural areas where votes are often bought.

The pervasive presence of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is intended to create an atmosphere of fear.

Carnage with impunity

To understand the context in which Filipinos continued to defy the terror of the Filipino state with their votes, we need to remember the Arroyo regime's repression of progressive groups and individual activists over the past five years.

More than 1100 human rights activists, leaders of peasant and worker organisations, journalists, lawyers and pastors have been killed or abducted, usually to be tortured or "disappeared".

Numerous national and international reports have established that most of the carnage is the responsibility of state forces or "private armed groups" acting, as they say in the Philippines, "with impunity".

In the face of the pervasive terror imposed across the country, the courage of the people is inspiring.

They are highly organised, widely networked across all sectors, and skillful in their use of technology and the media.

They continue to defy the armed forces arrayed against them, using a variety of tactics from the mass actions on the streets for which they are famous to careful documentation of police and military harassment and brutality.

Progressive journalists have bravely publicised the terror tactics employed against the people. This has resulted in several dozen deaths making the country the second most dangerous for journalists after only Iraq.

Human rights lawyers, who also have been killed and disappeared at a significant rate, have constantly challenged the actions of the state, not least the corrupt and ineffectual Commission on Elections, which assisted Arroyo to steal her Presidency in 2004.

Even the Churches, especially the Protestant and Independent Filipino Church, have not been spared the terror. As a result of their solidarity with the people, 25 pastors have been killed in the past five years.

Australian weapons

In the face of all of this, Arroyo and the business press have tried to claim that the elections were "relatively peaceful and orderly" and that Filipinos cast their vote "freely and without coercion".

The U.S. embassy spokespersons echoed these outrageous claims. According to one, "This is a vibrant democracy and we are helping them to improve their human rights record. But you have to remember, the Philippines are on the right path. This is not a dictatorship as in Thailand or the communist states.

"What you don't know is that things are moving in the right direction. We have funded new programs for improving the human rights capacities of the AFP.

"The problem really is that the Filipinos are not good at public relations so the good things they are doing are not being publicised".

That will be a comfort to those being deprived every day of their human rights by a military which now is not only receiving weapons and training from the US but also from the Howard government as a result of the military pact signed with Arroyo during her recent visit to Australia. Posted by Bulatlat

*Gill H. Boeringer is senior lecturer in law at Macquarie University and was a member of the People's International Observers Misson that recently visited the Philippines.