Thirty years after the people’s victory to overthrow the Marcos fascist, corrupt, and puppet regime looms the threat of the return of the Marcos’ son, confidently inching his way to the realm of power with his well of resources from the loot of the past. The past that Marcos Jr arrogantly refers to as the country’s glorious days.
Thirty years after the people’s victory to overthrow the Marcos fascist, corrupt, and puppet regime looms the threat of the return of the Marcos’ son, confidently inching his way to the realm of power with his well of resources from the loot of the past. The past that Marcos Jr arrogantly refers to as the country’s glorious days.
Marie Hilao-Enriquez, Karapatan chairperson said the threat of the return of the Marcoses “Clearly, shows that after 30 years of EDSA and five succeeding regimes later, the same unjust social structures that necessitate a revolution persist,” adding that, “only a determined people and their decisive action can bring about a genuine change—freedom and prosperity, a humane society and just and lasting peace.
The five regimes who held the reins of power, she said, “not only failed to uplift the nation, but also to truly serve the majority of the poor Filipinos. They harped on the wrongs of the preceding regimes to cover up the essentially the same oppressive and exploitative system they perpetuate. The masses have been anesthetized for a second after EDSA have awakened to the same harsh realities, unchanged by the promises and hopes of EDSA.”
Hilao-Enriquez added that the BS Aquino regime, the latest of the regimes that followed the dictatorship “desperately failed to sustain the people’s victory and fulfil their hopes. Instead, like his predecessors, he continued to deceive the people with statistics of a farce development, albeit the statistics of the increasing number of poor and hungry,” which is ironic, she said, because B. S. Aquino III is a son of a Martial Law martyr, Ninoy, and the so-called icon of democracy, Cory.
BS Aquino, like his predecessors, catered to his clique and foreign master’s interest to the detriment of the greater majority. He compromised sovereignty with his signing of the controversial Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). He gave up patrimony by allowing foreign corporations to engage in unbridled exploration and extraction of the country’s mineral resources.
“Unemployment, landlessness, corruption, dwindling social services, low wages and pensions that could not cope with continued spiralling of prices of basic commodities, criminal negligence of victims of disasters, high cost of education worsened by new policies, such as the K-12, and a lot more debacles characterized the B. S. Aquino regime.”
Worse, Hilao-Enriquez said, “he adopted past administrations’ solution to quell the people’s unrest. He activated his killing machine with a rehashed counterinsurgency operational plan, Oplan Bayanihan, courtesy of Pentagon.”
As Aquino steps down, he leaves behind a grim statistics of 306 extra judicial killings, 27 enforced disappearances, 15 massacres, 108,938 evacuees mostly from militarized areas, 557 political prisoners, including 19 National Democratic Front peace consultants.
Realization from experience is a catalyst. No substantive change will occur for as long as the interest of the ruling elite and its US imperialist master is top of the agenda. No substantive change will occur for as long as the great majority remains in its dire plight. “Only the people’s collective and decisive action can reverse the oppressive and exploitative system we are all in,” ended Hilao-Enriquez. ###