Volume III, Number 18. 30 September 2021.
We join the Filipino people and the rest of the world in commemorating the 49th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law in the Philippines on 21 September 1972. We must never forget this horrific period in Philippine history when Ferdinand Marcos, with the full backing of the US, grabbed absolute power, abolished Congress, banned political parties, shuttered the mass media, prohibited mass activities and suspended civil and political rights.
In the period from 1972 until Marcos’ ouster in 1986, tens of thousands of Filipinos were murdered, tortured, disappeared and illegally detained. Marcos and his cronies bankrupted the government, led the country to unprecedented ruin and buried the people under mountains of debt.
It is extremely important and urgent that we do not forget the horrors of Martial Law as the country is now ruled by the tyrant Rodrigo Duterte, a confessed Marcos lover and poised to impose his dynastic fascist rule.
In a short span of five years, Duterte has already surpassed Marcos in brutality, corruption and treachery. Since 2016, Duterte’s security forces have murdered more than 30,000 Filipinos in his ‘war on drugs’ and ‘anti-communist war’. In collaboration with Chinese monopoly capitalists and criminal gangs, Duterte and his cronies are pocketing fat commissions on anomalous government contracts and cornering illegal drugs and smuggling operations in the country. The diversion of billions of pesos of public funds to favored companies during the pandemic is among his worst and unforgivable acts of plunder. He and his cronies are set to surpass the Marcos family in terms of corruption and plunder.
Duterte has surrendered vast parts of the West Philippine Sea to China in exchange for promises of Chinese kickbacks on government contracts, vaccines and protection. At the same time, he continues to extend extraterritorial rights to the US military through the Visiting Forces Agreement and other unequal agreements, in exchange for new military equipment as well as US-hoarded vaccines.
In the eyes of the Filipino people and the peace-loving peoples of the world, Duterte has become infamous for his fascism, misogyny, aversion against human rights and contempt for the poor. His tyranny has drowned the country in darkness. This has however made the light of the people’s democratic resistance shine more brightly, illuminating the path of revolutionary armed struggle for the national and social liberation of the Filipino people.
Excerpted from ‘Tyrant Duterte has surpassed Marcos in terms of terrorism and plunder’. Communist Party of the Philippines, 21 September 2021.