(We yield this space to the statement of the Movement Against Tyranny due to its timeliness. – Ed.)
THE GOVERNMENT has officially laid bare its program for 2019 and whatever days remain for this bunch of doddering fascists. The Philippine National Police admitted launching a major operation against the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the only bargaining union for close to a million teachers in the country. The Armed Forces, meanwhile, stages ludicrous drama to taint the independent National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
These moves follow a rollout of other organizations, including the Movement Against Tyranny, and individuals, including prominent, award-winning journalists, tagged as enemies of the state by the Armed Forces.
The new attacks on organizations fighting for democratic rights enshrined in the Constitution show the regime’s efforts to consolidate power for itself and its foreign masters, the better to pillage natural resources. Despite its claim of popular support, the regime is concerned with the potential repudiation of the many corrupt sycophants in its electoral slate for the 2019 mid-term elections.
The attacks have two goals: to clobber groups whose focus on the government’s many failures and abuses could harden voters against the government’s candidates; and to set up conditions for a total shutdown of democratic space even before scheduled elections.
The regime needs a silent, cowed public to ram through its mad vision of exercising full dominion over the country’s resources — people, land, waters, and industries — as payback to the oligarchs and foreign puppet masters.
The machinations in Congress for a constitutional overhaul, with its flimsy federalist excuse thrown by the wayside, is a clear assault on national sovereignty and basic civil liberties. The so-called drug war has also been unmasked as a farce, an attack on poor victims while protecting lords and enablers of the illegal narcotics trade.
Having perfected the dark art of mass murder via tokhang, the state now seeks to use the same strategy in mass attacks against all democratic forces that stand in the way of his malignant dream.
The Movement Against Tyranny calls on Filipinos to resist tyrants at every turn. Engage in electoral races but never forget that the people’s might is not limited to traditional political exercises that can be manipulated by ruling powers. Let every lover of democracy and freedom be a bright light blazing.
We have overcome before. We will overcome again.
