Volume IV, Number 7. 15 April 2022.
Less than a month remains before the 9 May elections. Less than a month remains for the Duterte ruling clique to ensure that the successor regime will not hunt them down for their atrocious crimes against the Filipino people.
President Rodrigo Duterte and his camp followers must be quaking in their boots. Tens of thousands flock to the campaign sorties of chief rival Vice President Leni Robredo and Sen. Francis Pangilinan, while the anointed tandem of Marcos, Jr. and daughter Sara Duterte could gather such crowds only in their press releases. In desperation, Duterte’s propagandists are resorting to red-tagging and muckraking, accusing Robredo of sleeping with communists and her daughter of sleeping around. Simultaneously, propagandists are ramping up the hosannas for the tyrants’ son and daughter and drowning the public with ‘survey results’ favoring Duterte’s anointed.
Meanwhile, human rights activists both in the Philippines and abroad are intensifying efforts to have Duterte and his top officials investigated and prosecuted for their culpability in crimes against humanity, including mass murders, extrajudicial killings, torture and forced disappearances. Duterte’s propagandists routinely retaliate by labeling the activists as communists and terrorists, all the better for Duterte’s armed minions to recognize their next targets.
As election day draws near, it has become clear that Duterte and his security forces will fail in their goal of crushing the armed revolutionary movement. Even so, their attacks against activists, community volunteers and the rural population are intensifying even further. Rural villages and community volunteers suspected of supporting the armed revolution suffer ever more aerial bombings, military encampment, arbitrary detention, forced disappearance, extrajudicial killing and mass murders.
The Duterte ruling clique has lost its haughty sense of invincibility. It is gnashing and thrashing like a cornered beast, becoming even more ferocious and aggressive against real and perceived enemies. The coming weeks will be ever perilous for Filipinos and friends of the Filipino people, as they continue to fight for human rights, democracy, national liberation and peace.
Despite all its ferocity and aggressiveness however, the Duterte regime is but a paper tiger. It will crumble against the Filipino people’s resolute struggle and unity.