Campaign Contributions, Pre-programming Key to Aquino Victory – Sison

The NP was publicly known as the only major party willing to have an alliance and share campaign resources. But its leadership obviously monopolized decisions over the downplaying of the program, the strategy of the campaign, the deployment of resources and other important matters. If it had a strong organization of its own, Makabayan could have been more assertive and could have fared better in an alliance with the NP.

While Makabayan had difficulties in ensuring the election of its two senatorial candidates, the progressive party list groups had far better chances in having more than ten of its nominees elected as members of Congress than Makabayan. But it is highly probable that the pre-programmers of the results of the elections were determined to cut down the number of winners among the nominees of the progressive party list groups.

During the electoral campaign, barefaced anti-communists and the pseudo-progressives tried to Red bait and equate Makabayan and the progressive party list groups with the CPP. And after the elections, they would mock the CPP as having failed to make any big electoral advance. The public knows that revolutionary forces are not equivalent to any electoral party. They measure their success in terms of increasing the revolutionary mass base and armed strength in the people’s war and not in terms of taking seats within the reactionary government.

4. What do you expect of the presidency of Benigno Aquino Jr.?

JMS: The Aquino regime will pursue basically the same exploitative and oppressive policies dictated to the Arroyo regime by US imperialism. It will not solve but will aggravate the problems of the Filipino people, such as foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

The Aquino regime will continue to carry out liberalization, privatization, deregulation, curtailment of social rights, reduction of social services and increased taxation at the expense of the people under the US-dictated policy of free market globalization. US troops will continue to maintain forward stations and engage in military intervention under the pretext of combating terrorism. The Aquino regime will continue the US-dictated Oplan Bantay Laya under a new name and will generate a new wave of human rights violations

US and foreign banks and corporations will continue to extract superprofits and plunder the country. The Aquino regime will be grossly incapable of stopping the widening trade and budgetary deficits and the mounting debt burden. The fiscal and sovereign debt crisis will shake the Philippine economy from the base to the rafter and will be used by the foreign banks and corporations to further bend the Philippines.

As during the Cory Aquino administration, the Kamag-Anak Inc. will be at the head of big landlord and big comprador operations. While the regime might still tout a bogus land reform program, the Cojuangco-Aquinos intend to use layers of corporations to frustrate land reform in Hacienda Luisita and other landed estates. They are poised to benefit greatly from the corrupt practices of the high bureaucrat and big comprador.

The Aquino regime will try to broaden its support from various reactionary parties in Congress, including the Lakas-Kampi party of Arroyo. But the worsening socio-economic crisis of the ruling system will tend to intensify the political contradictions among the reactionaries. There will be rising waves of legal mass protests and revolutionary resistance by the broad masses of the people. Ever aggravating the basic problems of the Filipino people, the Aquino regime will use brute force in a futile attempt to suppress the resistance of the people

5. Would the Aquino regime pursue peace negotiations with the revolutionary forces represented by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines?

JMS: It may or may not. It remains to be seen whether it is seriously interested in peace negotiations. It can easily pretend to be for peace negotiations like the Arroyo regime did. But it can set preconditions and use various tactics in order to avoid complying with The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 and the subsequent agreements and thereby prevent the peace negotiations from addressing the roots of armed conflict through, social, economic and political reforms.

The same military hawks and clerico-fascists who undermined and hampered peace negotiations with the NDFP during the time of Arroyo are now with the Aquino regime. The puppet president and his security advisers get guidance from the US security policy of counterinsurgency and anti-terrorism so-called and take detailed instructions from various US agencies represented in the US country team.

I will not be surprised if instead of agreeing to resume the peace negotiations, comply with the existing agreements and begin concentrated negotiations on social and economic reforms the Aquino regime would set preconditions like indefinite ceasefire and front-loading the end of hostilities in vainly seeking the self-disintegration and pacification of the revolutionary movement.

According to the US Counterinsurgency Guide, the policy dictate of the US is for the puppet government to disarm, dismantle and reintegrate the revolutionary forces or in other words to destroy, coopt or reduce them to irrelevance or inconsequentiality. The US imperialists and their puppets conjure the illusion of peace negotiations at the national level if only to push further sham localized peace talks with their own agents and undertake palliative or band-aid measures in localities in order to deceive the people and to escalate military campaigns of suppression.

The imperialists and their puppets are also trying a new tack like pacifying or appeasing the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and other Moro revolutionary groups with foreign funds in order to unleash more military forces against the revolutionary forces of the NDFP. But the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army have already issued comprehensive statements for advancing the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate in the people’s war within the next five years. (Bulatlat.com)