Volume IV, Number 10. 31 May 2022.
With the stamp of approval of the Commission on Elections and Philippine Congress, Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. will be the next President of the Republic of the Philippines, succeeding Rodrigo R. Duterte on 30 June 2022. Joining the son of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos is Vice President-elect Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio, daughter of the tyrant Duterte. The tandem’s so-called landslide electoral victory is nothing but a blatant confirmation that the country’s ruling classes condone – nay, handsomely reward – plunder, torture, murder and treason against the Filipino people.
The Marcos II regime is set to be a continuation of Duterte’s tyranny and a return to the Marcos dictatorship. This clique represents the most brutal and insatiable among the country’s ruling classes of moribund landlords and comprador bourgeoisie. It will appeal for ‘unity’ among the warring factions of the ruling classes, all the better to wield absolute control and to eliminate all forms of resistance.
You can forget about returning to the Filipino people the estimated US$10 billion plundered under the Marcos dictatorship! Now back in power, the Marcos II regime will bring bureaucrat capitalist corruption to new heights, trumping even the bribe-taking, the pocketed government commissions and drug smuggling horde of Duterte. It will heighten the campaign of disinformation and the distortion of contemporary history, and will wipe away the people’s memory of the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The legislature and judiciary will be steamrolled and will rubberstamp the dictates of the Marcos II regime.
But they will take power over a ruling system that is rotten to the core, a government mired in grave crises. Duterte senior is leaving behind a mountain of foreign and domestic debt, a government bankrupted by corruption, defense overspending and budget deficits.
The Marcos-Duterte clique is grossly isolated due to the Filipino people’s extreme hatred of tyranny, corruption and oppression under their dynasties. It is set to be weak and unstable amid the people’s heightening grievances, factional infighting among the ruling classes and the worsening economic crisis. It will resort to ever-greater and evermore violent repression of political dissent.
The Filipino people will not simply relax, lie down and revel in the face of all these abuse! They are now even more determined to defend their democratic rights and freedoms. Indeed, the installation of the Marcos II regime creates ever-favorable conditions for advancing the revolutionary armed struggle.
In the coming years, the revolutionary movement will serve as the strongest core and principal weapons of the Filipino people in fighting against plunder and dictatorship, and in further advancing the people’s democratic revolution for national and social liberation.