On the occasion of the 37th year since the EDSA people power revolt, mass organizations of workers, peasants and the broadest sections of Philippine society in their thousands relive the spirit of a mass uprising that toppled a dictatorship. At the same time, the Filipino people remembers the horrors of martial law: a stark reminder of the current situation under the late dictator’s son and sitting President Marcos Jr.
Indeed, the legacy of the EDSA people’s uprising is an important occasion to remember not only in the context of rampant militarization and human rights abuses currently happening in the countryside, but also amid Marcos Jr.’s attempts to revise his father’s sordid history.
Move on, forgive, and forget – the Marcoses and their ilk would often tell the Filipino people.
But move on to where? When the same dire economic conditions exist, and no genuine agricultural and industrial development is in sight; when inflation is at its highest and the toiling masses bear the brunt of rising prices of basic goods and services; when contractualization is rampant and wages severely depressed.
How can martial law victims forgive? When for more than five decades, no justice is served; when the same tactics of torture, enforced disappearances, and extra-judicial killings are employed by state forces; when the law is weaponized, and when repression and state terror is widespread.
How can the Filipino people forget? When blatant corruption pervades, and the Maharlika Investment Fund siphons the people’s money to the pockets of corrupt politicians; When the threat of “cha-cha” (charter change) is alive, and political dynasties and Marcos cronies desperately cling to power; When Marcos Jr., same as his father, demonstrates once again their craven subservience to the interests of US imperialism.
Reliving the spirit of the EDSA people’s uprising means building the broadest united front against the US-Marcos regime’s state terrorism and bureaucrat capitalism. We enjoin all Filipinos at home and abroad, and our allies in the national democratic struggle to unite against the martial-law type of repression and oppression disguised as counterinsurgency and meant only to suppress the democratic struggles waged by the Filipino masses.