Duterte’s use of anti-communism and anti-terrorism for the fascist suppression of the Filipino people
A close reading of Executive Order No. 70, signed by Duterte on December 4, 2018 in order to create the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict, shows that it is a major step of his tyrannical rule to realize the imposition of a full-blown fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people and to reassure the US that he is still its puppet even if he makes a fast buck on the side from shady deals with China and the Chinese criminal triads.
Duterte’s order uses the expression “whole nation” approach. This is but a rehash of the long discredited and failed catchphrases, such as “total war” and “whole government” approach used by previous regimes to mean all-out war against the revolutionary movement of the people. But Duterte and his task force wish to wage psywar and mass murder on an unprecedented scale, even surpassing the standards of repression set by his idol Marcos.
The implementation of the order has proven its repulsive murderous and deceptive character and its antipeople and antidemocratic objectives. In touting what it deceptively calls a “whole nation” approach, the Duterte regime is doggedly trying to militarize the Duterte cabinet and entire reactionary government in order to turn the entire Filipino nation against itself and serve the interests of the imperialists and local exploiting classes under the pretext of anticommunism and anti-terrorism.
The tyrannical and terrorist regime seeks in vain to misrepresent and demonize the forces of the armed revolutionary movement and at the same time to tag and brand the forces and activists of the legal democratic movement of patriotic and progressive forces as “communist” and “terrorist”. Going to the extreme of absurdity, the regime blames both types of forces as the causes of underdevelopment, poverty and armed conflict.
The uppermost counterrevolutionary objective of the regime is to preserve the semicolonal and semifeudal ruling system in which foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism exploit and oppress the people and to discredit, isolate and destroy all the national and democratic forces that fight for the national and social liberation of the Filipino nation and people.
The Duterte regime is using E.O 70 to militarize all branches and agencies of the reactionary government, the state educational and communications system, all nongovernmental institutions and organizations in order to terrorize the people and impose fascist rule on the entire Filipino people under the long-discredited Cold War and McCarthyite shibboleth of anti-communism and the latter-day Bushite pretense of anti-terrorism.
The Duterte regime’s methods for trying to suppress the legal democratic forces and the revolutionary movement of the people are similar to those employed in Oplan Tokhang in the bogus war on drugs. Scare tactics are used to exact mass compliance, compel barangay officials to list up poor people as drug addicts and pushers and subsequently use the list for murdering people by the tens of thousands.
General Año, the notorious butcher head of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), has ordered the local governments to list down rebel suspects, give the list to the death squads for action, hold fake surrender meetings and declare as persona non grata the revolutionary forces as well as the patriotic and progressive organizations. But he has failed miserably to discourage the people from participating and supporting the revolutionary movement despite the fanfare he tries to stir up in the press.
At all levels of the reactionary government, the regime’s political and military agents terrorize communities, organizations or individuals deemed as opposed to or critical of the regime by red-tagging them and branding them as communist, waging psywar campaigns against them and subjecting them to all forms of punitive measures, including harassments, arbitrary arrest on trumped up charges or planted evidence of firearms and explosives, extortion, torture, murder, bombing and arson, forced evacuation and “hamletting”.
Under the so-called Oplan Kapayapaan, now renamed Oplan Katatagan, the reactionary military and police officers are being corrupted by Duterte with discretionary funds for murdering rebel suspects in fake encounters, for staging fake surrenders under the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program and for arranging token projects and dole-outs under the Pamana Program, Peace and Development Program and Community Support Program.
Duterte’s military, police and paramilitary units have extremely limited capacity to deceive the people with token delivery of social services and dole-outs because the programs they operate are encumbered by corruption at various levels. Moreover, the pretenses at civic action or real acts of militarizing civilian functions are discredited by the atrocities being committed by the same or by other military and police units. In the first place, the economic, social and political conditions are rapidly worsening under the crisis-stricken ruling system.
After sabotaging the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and terminating them completely, Duterte and his sidekick General Galvez, his supposed presidential adviser, have utterly failed to realize their scheme of dividing the revolutionary movement through so-called localized peace talks which are preconditioned on surrender and self-humiliation. Since the announcement of the shallow deceptive scheme, all leading organs of the CPP and commands of the NPA at various levels have rebuffed the scheme and vowed to intensify the people’s war.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process has become a worse hotbed of corruption and bureaucratic intrigue than ever before. Its open function now is to prevent peace negotiations within the framework of the The Hague Joint Declaration, avoid addressing the basic roots of the armed conflict and use the false claim of localized peace negotiations to escalate the armed conflict, seek the total destruction of the people’s revolutionary movement by military means and support the imposition of fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people.
The broad masses of the Filipino people are fighting back against the tyrannical, treasonous, terrorist and corrupt Duterte regime. The anti-imperialist and democratic forces and the broad masses of the people in the Philippines are resolutely and vigorously exposing and opposing the regime’s gross and systematic violation of human rights in the civil, political, socioeconomic and cultural fields.
As in the time of the Marcos fascist dictatorship, the tyrannical and terrorist Duterte regime is unwittingly and practically forcing social activists and other people to join the armed revolution by threatening them with abduction and murder and is generating a public clamor for armed partisan and commando operations against the worst human rights violators and plunderers to obtain justice for the aggrieved people.
The tyrant and terrorist Duterte is now being widely ridiculed as having unwittingly become the No. 1 recruiter and No. 1 supply and transport officer of the people’s army by oppressing and exploiting the people and sending his armed minions to the countryside for annihilation in the people’s war.
The revolutionary forces in the countryside and urban underground have been tempered in more than 50 years of revolutionary struggle and have built strength in an extensive and deepgoing way among the people, especially the toiling masses.
According to their publications, the revolutionary forces of the people are intensifying the people’s war, carrying out social programs for the benefit of the people and building a people’s democratic government mainly in the countryside. ###