Volume IV, Number 19. 15 October 2022.
The first 100 days of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. was marked with greater economic hardships and repression suffered by the Filipino people. It was marked by skyrocketing prices, increasing unemployment and poverty incidence, decreasing purchasing power, plummeting value of the peso and galloping national debt, not to mention natural disasters. Having already ascended the throne, however, Marcos, Jr. would not be bothered by these trifles.
Marcos, Jr. is not interested about the sufferings of the Filipino people. He declared, “Inflation is not that high,” despite inflation pegged at 6.9% and rising. Prices of fuel, food, medicine, health care and other basic goods and services continue to rise. To make matters worse, the Marcos II regime mandated budget cuts for social spending, and instead prioritized foreign debt servicing, sneaky intelligence funds and grandiose foreign-funded infrastructure projects benefiting foreign capitalists, the Marcos family’s comprador partners and loyal corrupt bureaucrats.
Marcos, Jr. is not interested in developing the national economy for the Filipino people. He recently closed deals with his US imperialist masters in opening the Philippine economy wider to foreign trade and investments. Marcos, Jr. plans to reward multinational corporations with tariffs and tax breaks, greater freedom in exploiting the country’s natural resources and cheap labor. In the meantime, Filipino taxpayers are fleeced with burdensome income and regressive taxes.
Marcos, Jr. is not at all interested in the Filipino people’s basic rights and freedoms. In just 100 days, 16 people, including three minors, have fallen victim to extrajudicial killings by security agents of the Marcos II regime. Rural communities suffer from aerial bombings, artillery shelling, economic blockades, forced evacuations, unlawful arrests and detentions, and massacres. Despite official pronouncements, journalists continue to suffer harassment, persecution and assassinations.
Marcos, Jr. doesn’t intend to prosecute former president Rodrigo Duterte and former top security officials for the murderous ‘war on drugs’. Likewise, Marcos, Jr. does not intend to stop state terrorism under the auspices of the anti-communist NTF-ELCAC.
Marcos, Jr. did show a lot of interest for foreign travel during his first 100 days. Especially as they involve shopping sprees, Formula 1 racing and other profligate events for himself, his family and his closest minions. Marcos, Jr. after all, has a fascist dictator for a father and an Imelda as a mother.
The Filipino people have no other choice but to resolutely assert and defend their rights and welfare against the rising economic hardships and ever-worsening repression. The worsening economic and political crisis under the Marcos II regime emphasizes all the more the urgency and justness of the Filipino people’s revolutionary struggle for national liberation, democracy and just peace.