Tasks and Prospects of Filipino Migrants in Relation to the 2022 Philippine Elections

Speech to Regional Assembly of BAYAN-Europe
April 10, 2022

Dear compatriots and friends, first of all, I wish to express my warmest greetings of solidarity to the more than 200 Filipino community leaders from more than 50 progressive Filipino organizations and alliances as well as non-Filipino solidarity activists from scores of various formations and networks, who are convened to participate in this video-conference.

I congratulate you for realizing this broad and sizeable gathering of patriotic, freedom-loving and progressive Filipinos and their friends in the region and for adopting the theme, “Sulong BAYAN Europe! Biguin at panagutin ang korap at pasistang tambalang Marcos-Duterte! Makibaka para sa Pambansang Demokrasya! Imperyalismo, ibagsak!” (Advance BAYAN Europe, Defeat and make the corrupt and fascist Marcos-Duterte team answerable! Struggle for national democracy! Down with imperialism!) in order to guide your deliberations and decisions on the applications for membership, review of your constitution and by-laws, election of officers and your general program of action.

I am honored and delighted to be invited to talk on the “Tasks and Prospects of Filipino Migrants in relation to the 2022 Philippine Elections,” inasmuch as your online gathering is also a platform for raising among overseas Filipinos awareness of the current electoral contest for the presidency and vice presidency, the Senate and Lower House and local executive positions. Under the law on Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV), overseas Filipinos are considered an integral part of the Philippine electorate and are expected to be an active and significant voice in upholding, defending and promoting their own rights and welfare.

We are past more than two-thirds of the official campaign period for the 2022 presidential elections in the Philippines. We are less than a month before the May 9 elections. I presume that you are already well informed about the character of the electoral process, the over-all situation, the competing parties, presidential and other candidates, their platforms and their chances of winning or losing in view of the situation and factors that determine said chances. In your current assembly, I can only add my views to those already expressed by many of you.

By yourselves as organizations and individuals you have come to discern and decide what tasks you must carry out during the rest of the campaign period and during election day and you must have also thought about the probable results and prospects after the elections. During the campaign period, you have become better informed about the character of the situation and issues in the Philippines and the political parties and candidates regarding their platforms and qualifications so that you can better inform others as regard to those who deserve the vote.

You belong to the largest federation of patriotic and democratic organizations from all major classes and sectors of Philippine society and you belong to the largest contingent of overseas Filipinos with continental and country chapters. BAYAN is a legal multi-sectoral formation that is constituted to engage in legal struggles for realizing full national independence and genuine democracy. You are therefore expected to participate in the 2022 elections as a matter of civic right and duty.

Despite its legal character, BAYAN has not been spared from red-tagging and other fascist attempts to discredit and disable it from fully participating in the elections. It has been equated with the revolutionary forces waging the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. The intolerant and brutal forces of fascism misrepresent as “communist conspiracy” or even “terrorism” whatever concurrences and resemblances of views among different political forces concerning the crisis-stricken semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.

Even as you are committed to the legal struggle for national independence and democracy, it is your right and duty to understand why large numbers of our compatriots have chosen to take the road of armed revolution in order to fight for national and social liberation and are sharply critical of electoral exercises staged by the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. But insofar as there is still some space for free political activity, you might even desire that the elections would bring about a new government willing to resume the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

All the major presidential candidates other than Bongbong Marcos have expressed willingness to resume these negotiations but most them have not been totally clear about to how to do away with the law of state terrorism and mechanisms like the Anti-Terrorism Council and National Task Force-ELCAC that Duterte has made to prevent peace negotiations. The Marcos-Duterte tandem vows to continue the corrupt and brutal policies of the Duterte regime against the people and their revolutionary movement.

The Duterte regime has committed so many monstrous crimes of treason, tyranny, mass murder and plunder that it has aggravated as never before the chronic crisis of the ruling system. To be able to commit these crimes, Duterte has wasted huge amounts of tax money to pamper the military, police and paramilitary forces, to instigate them to murder tens of thousands of street-level drug peddlers and usurers in a bogus war on illegal drugs (ensuring the supremacy of the Duterte crime family) and then unleash the terrorism of the state in the main against the armed revolutionary movement of the people.

The brutality of the Duterte regime has been carried out not for its own sake but mainly for threatening and intimidating the people and thereby consolidating the armed power of the bureaucrat capitalists headed by Duterte and giving them the utmost freedom to rob the national treasury through pork barrel projects, military overspending and overpricing of all kinds of government acquisitions, including those related to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to draw the biggest comprador profits in the exchange of cheap raw material exports and manufactured imports.

The Philippine reactionary government and economy are bankrupt, ever sinking in budgetary and trade deficits, under the weight of the mounting local and foreign debts and debt service payments. The rates of unemployment, impoverishment and inflation have soared. Contrary to the claims of Duterte and his military minions that they are doing their best to suppress the armed revolution, they have unwittingly generated with their greed and terrorism the most favorable conditions for the armed revolution.

If the elections of 2022 were to be clean and honest, the Duterte regime and its chosen successors headed by the Bongbong-Sara tandem would be sure losers. Bongbong and Sara represent the most corrupt and brutal political dynasties in the history of Philippine reactionary politics. Their claims to being winners by virtue of paid slanted opinion poll surveys, social media troll armies and use of state and corporate media have been proven to be false by the far larger and more enthusiastic mass rallies being mobilized by the 1Sambayan alliance behind the opposition candidates led by the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem.

Unfortunately, the tyrant Duterte controls the bureaucracy and the military, especially the COMELEC and the electronic vote count. He will do everything in his power in order to rig the 2022 elections and make his successors winners through fraud and terrorism. He is worried to death that if the opposition wins he would be arrested and brought to trial before the International Criminal Court for his crimes against humanity. He is also afraid that a new government will prosecute and try him for plunder. At the same time, the revolutionary movement has promised to the people that they will go after Duterte and his ruling clique for engaging in mass murder and plunder.

Since observing the gigantic mass rallies mobilized by 1Sambayan last month, Duterte has started to red tag the alliance of the Pink Party with the Makabayan Bloc and accused them of plotting a disruption of the elections. Why should they disrupt a process in which they are drawing the largest crowds of voters? Duterte has made a slip in speaking out his criminal mind. He indicates that he can make a false flag operation. He has also announced that he wants a “seamless transfer of power” obviously to his chosen successors. This indicates that anytime he can declare martial law and rig the elections in order to install his chosen successors in power.

There is certainty or at least high probability that Duterte will cheat rig the 2022 elections, unless his US imperialist masters would decide to disbelieve his assurance that his successors would be able to continue the dirty work of finishing off the armed revolution, openly junk him and his crew for having already destabilized the ruling system and allow the opposition to have their electoral victory as in 1986 when Marcos could not take advantage of his electoral cheating.

But why should BAYAN participate in the 2022 elections if Duterte will be able to use his power to rig the elections and there is yet no certainty that he can be thwarted beforehand or after the rigging as in 1986? If you do not participate and others also do not participate in the elections, then how can you arouse, organize and mobilize the millions of people to prove even before election day that the topmost successors of Duterte are already discredited, isolated and sure losers in the elections. If you call for a boycott of the elections, then Duterte and his clique will not even have to cheat and you and the people will not have any reason to be angry about any cheating.

It is not the role and task of BAYAN, Makabayan Bloc, Bayan Muna and other partylist groups to conduct themselves like the revolutionary forces of the people that are banned from participating in the 2022 elections and that are in favor of building the people’s revolutionary government in opposition to the reactionary state. There are times when legal democratic forces can debate whether they ought to participate or boycott the elections staged by the reactionary classes. But so far with regard to the elections of 2022, there is still an opportunity wide enough for them to expose and oppose the electoral fraud and terrorism being prepared by the Duterte regime.

If the Duterte regime succeeds in putting in power his chosen successors headed by Bongbong and Sara, there is the prospect of gigantic mass actions of the people rising up to prevent the usurpation of power as in 1986. But it is also possible these may not arise as quickly as in February 1986 because Duterte has already threatened to make a “seamless transfer of power” by declaring martial law in order to suppress the people and opposition forces through mass arrests, exemplary killings, censorship, confiscations and other foul acts. In that case, the alternative for the people is to resist in ways similar to those of the people who have dedicated themselves to the armed revolution.

And certainly, the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war will become stronger because of the grave political and economic crisis of the ruling system. As the dominant power in the Philippines, US imperialism will have to weigh whether to believe that the Marcos-Duterte tandem will be able to continue successfully the brutal campaign of anti-communist suppression or let the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem take power and try to stabilize the situation as Cory Aquino did in 1986. I presume that the US knows the prospective real winner in the 2022 elections from the usual opinion poll survey that the CIA secretly directs from month to month before election day in the Philippines.

If an Aquino type of regime like that of Robredo-Pangilinan will arise, we can expect the usual first six months to one year of the regime to be a period in which there will be public or third-party clamor for resuming the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and the contending parties will have to make their best possible responses to such clamor. I would expect BAYAN to be among those progressive forces putting forward it own timely people’s agenda to encourage substantive negotiations on social, economic and political reforms until US imperialism, the big compradors and landlords and the reactionary military officers pressure the high bureaucrat capitalists in place to slow down on the peace negotiations and speed up the campaign of military suppression.