In its almost five years in office, the Aquino regime, in connivance with its US imperialist principals, has deliberately and treacherously committed one serious crime after another against the Filipino people. These have been highlighted all the more by developments related to the war in the Gulf.
Among its principal crimes is its total, treasonous puppetry to US imperialism at the expense of national welfare. It has acquiesced to the use of US military bases in the Philippines in imperialism’s war of aggression and genocide in the Gulf. It has agreed to extend the stay of these military bases beyond September 1991 to further enable the US to intervene in the Philippines and other parts of the world. It insists upon paying the foreign debt of almost $30 billion to imperialist institutions even in the face of a grave economic crisis that has reduced 80 percent of the national population—or almost 50,000,000 out of more than 60,000,000 Filipinos—to hunger and starvation. And it now contemplates to dispatch Filipino troops, disguised as an engineering battalion, to this unjust war on the insistence of the US.
It has also demonstrated, for all to see, its criminal disregard for the welfare of hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers in the Middle East whose lives have been placed in extreme jeopardy as a result of the US-led war of aggression against Iraq. At home, has further intensifed the exploitation and oppression of the workers and other people. In early December 1990, the Aquino regime abided by one of the latest dictates of the imperialist institution International Monetary Fund (IMF) by imposing previously unheard of price increases of gasoline and other oil products, sending the prices of all basic commodities and services skyrocketing. These price increases are now spelling further misery for a people who have long been leading a hand-to-mouth existence.
The regime gave further evidence of its subservience to US imperialism by endorsing “without reservation” imperialism’s war of aggression in the Gulf whose ultimate objective, as spelled out by US President Bush, is the establishment of a “new world order.” This means a world under the tighter and unrestrained domination and control of the US and other imperialist countries.
Her puppet regime virtually involved the Philippines in the war by allowing without challenge the use of US military bases in the Philippines in support of that war of aggression. It also sent a so-called medical mission and, on the prodding of its US imperialist principals, was preparing to send a so-called military engineering contingent.
Mrs. Aquino had earlier gone back on her word, given during the Marcos dictatorship, by agreeing to maintain by at least another five years the US military bases on Philippine soil when these bases are supposed to be dismantled by September. This would enable the US to tighten its neocolonial rule on the Philippines and to directly intervene militarily as the Filipino people’s revolutionary struggles to change the semicolonial and semifeudal system advance towards higher levels. This decision by Mrs. Aquino’s to extend the tenure of the US bases is evidently in exchange for continuing US imperialist support for her regime. This includes the direct US military intervention in December 1989 to save her crisis-ridden rule from an attempted coup d’état launched by cliques within her own armed forces.
In addition, the Aquino regime recently agreed to still another set of IMF impositions in exchange for more loans which it hopes will revive the moribund national economy. The socalled Economic Stabilization Plan (ESP), submitted by the regime to the IMF in obedience to the latter’s wishes, was so secret that its text was denied even to the president and members of the Philippine Senate. From experience, however, we know that the usual IMF impositions include the maintenance of the export-oriented economy, the devaluation of the Philippine peso, the freezing of wages, new and higher taxes, higher power and water rates, tax holidays for foreign investors, and the lowering or removal of tariff walls for the easier dumping of US and other capitalist countries’ surplus products on the Philippine market.
In the meantime, even as democratic organizations were demanding the suspension of payments for the foreign debt in the face of the grave socio-economic and political crisis, the Aquino regime said it would continue paying no matter what the consequences since it was an “honorable” debtor. The regime estimated that in the next two years, the country would have to pay more than $7 billion to cover principal and interest payments to foreign creditors, even as 50,000,000 Filipinos were going to sleep hungry night after night. The dispatch of Filipino troops to the war in the Gulf would further strain Philippine finances and unduly involve the country in a war to promote imperialist domination over the world.
Criminal disregard for the people’s welfare
It is general knowledge that Filipino men and women have been forced to seek employment abroad—on Philippine government sponsorship—because of the bankruptcy of the semicolonial and semifeudal system which President Aquino upholds and nurtures.
True, it is not Mrs. Aquino but her immediate predecessor, the fascist puppet dictator Marcos, who had institutionalized the sending of Filipino workers abroad. But she continues the policy and the practice as a means of relieving the increasingly acute problem of domestic unemployment and under-employment, and as a means of bringing in billions in foreign exchange to shore up a system that is on the brink of total bankruptcy and collapse.
Since assuming office in February 1986 upon the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship, the Aquino regime has stepped up the dispatch of Filipinos to work overseas while totally denying them the least semblance of official protection and hypocritically calling them the country’s “new economic heroes”. It is now callously exposing them to the perils of the US-led war of aggression and genocide on Iraq which threatens to spread throughout the entire Middle East.
There are an estimated 650,000 Filipino workers in the Middle East, almost 400,000 of them in Saudi Arabia alone, driven to seek livelihood there as a result of a 50-percent unemployment and underemployment rate at home. As early as last December and early January, when US imperialism was already undertaking all-out preparations to launch its war of aggression in the Gulf, concerned citizens were already urgently appealing that the imperilled Filipino workers be repatriated home.
The Aquino regime not only rejected these proposals but continued to send an average of 500 workers every day to the Middle East, even as other countries were already evacuating their citizens from the danger areas. The Aquino regime deliberately tried to minimize the dangers confronting the Filipino workers, mendaciously trying to give the impression that it had drawn up contingency plans to evacuate them should war break out.
At first, the Aquino regime said the US-led bombings on Iraq had crippled that country’s ability to launch counteroffensives. It said the 110,000 workers in Saudi Arabia’s exposed Eastern Province could easily be evacuated to the capital city Riyadh which, it asserted, was safe. When eastern Saudi Arabia came under attack, many of the Filipino workers were forced to evacuate on their own, without any assistance whatsoever from the Aquino regime. But neither was Riyadh safe as it, too, came under attack. Representatives of 10,000 workers in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, who were seeking government help last January 31 were seeking government help in having them repatriated home were shocked by the chilling reply of Consul General Amable Aguiluz who spelled out the government’s callous policy in these words: “As long as there are no wounded or dead Filipinos resulting from the war, there is no need for repatriation.”
To this day, Filipino workers in areas exposed to the war continue to evacuate on their own, condemning the Aquino regime for its criminal neglect. A late report from the war zone indicates that three Filipino workers have already been killed. It is a miracle that not more have perished or been wounded. But as US imperialism continues to escalate the war—ignoring urgent calls for peace from peoples of the world, including the American people—many more of the hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers abandoned by the Aquino regime in the war zone will be facing increasing hazards to life and limb.
In the homefront, meantime, President Aquino and members of her clique have used the war in the Gulf to heighten economic exploitation and political oppression even more, making life for the workers and the rest of the Filipino people more miserable than ever before. She has sought emergency powers, including the power to ban workers’ strikes, and, together with her defense secretary, Fidel Ramos, has revived the plan to institute a nationwide identification system to check on and curtail the movements of citizens. A similar plan had been foisted during the Marcos fascist puppet dictatorship but was scuttled due to popular resistance. Taking a cue from Mrs. Aquino, capitalists have started laying off workers, using the Gulf crisis as a “reason.” Recently, a nationwide curfew has also been proposed ostensibly to save on energy and enhance “discipline.” The regime is virtually trying to impose fascist martial law without the benefit of a formal declaration.
The list of crimes can go on. But in this statement, we will not go into a lengthy discussion into the regime’s refusal to formulate a genuine land reform program, keeping the vast Philippine peasantry in feudal and semifeudal bondage, and its “total war” policy against the people under which it has chalked up a record of human rights violations worse than that of the murderous US-Marcos dictatorship. Neither shall we go here into a serious discussion of Secretary Ramos’ slanderous and ridiculous disinformation that the National Democratic Front (NDF) of the Philippines has offered uniforms to the Iraqi army or has offered the services of the New People’s Army (NPA) for “terrorist” operations. What we have discussed here are just some of the grossest crimes of the US-Aquino fascist dictatorship.
But these crimes of the US-Aquino regime, taken together, certainly justify the Filipino people’s heightened revolutionary struggles to eliminate the existing semicolonial and semifeudal system and set up one that is independent, democratic, peaceful, just and prosperous. These struggles, in the armed and unarmed spheres, in city and countryside, are ever advancing towards higher levels. As the people’s struggles move forward, let the Aquino regime and its US imperialist masters face up to their culpability. Let them answer for their gross crimes against the Filipino people!
