Bush meddling in Philippines government?

http://www.atimes.com
SPEAKING FREELY
US designs on the Philippines
By E San Juan

Dr E San Juan Jr was recently Fulbright professor of American Studies at Leuven University, Belgium, and fellow of the Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University. He also works with Philippine Forum in New York City.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
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Incontrovertible signs from Washington and elsewhere indicate that the Bush administration and its reactionary cabal have already instructed their local agents in Manila to replace President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with one of the elite factions, together with a bloc of traditional military-business groups.

This is a routine maneuver for the US State Department and Pentagon. As in the February 1986 overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos, their agents will use both normal and violent means to maintain US hegemony in its neo-colony, particularly when its Mindanao military/political base is at stake.

The Philippines has historically been pivotal to the US projection of its military power in Asia and the Middle East. Besides, Filipinos are famous worldwide for being 200% Americanized and martyrs for "Americanism" everywhere.

Washington is now plagued with the mounting disasters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Public resistance to the wars is increasing, especially among military families and business sectors. Meanwhile, the challenges of Iran, North Korea and of course China, not to mention Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and insurgents in Colombia, Nepal and elsewhere, are extremely worrisome to the corporate power elite.

The Philippines is not comparable to oil-rich Indonesia or even touristy Thailand. Nonetheless, the US hegemonic bloc is extremely fearful that a nationalist, nay a left-wing, alternative may take advantage of the chronic weakness of the Filipino oligarchy ridden with corruption, internal antagonisms and sycophancy to corporate US and foreign interests. Preparations to transfer the Okinawa military operations to the Philippines are being expedited, even as the militarization of Japan proceeds without let-up. The Philippines also provides about 10 million migrant contract workers to service corporate globalization around the planet (for example, building Guantanamo prison cells and cleaning the barracks of troops in Iraq).

After September 11, the New People's Army (NPA)and the Communist Party of the Philippines were promptly declared "terrorist organizations" by the US State Department. This was meant to paralyze any international support for the nationalist insurgency. The millions of Filipinos abroad might be a support base for the NPA and the National Democratic Front - just as Islamic nations supported the Moro National Liberation Front during the Marcos dictatorship.

The systematic media exploitation of the Abu Sayaff as somehow comparable in scale to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, together with its linking of the Abu Sayaff with left-wing and nationalist dissent, has conditioned the US public to recent military incursions ("exercises") in the Philippines. It has allowed Bush and his generals to refurbish the politically bankrupt Arroyo and the armed forces of the Philippines as part of their united front against opponents of US neo-colonial encroachment wherever profits can be made.

Ever since the local economic think-tank, Ibon Foundation, and pollsters began documenting the decline of public support for Arroyo amid illegal gambling (jueteng) scandals involving her family, the US has begun to follow their tested modus operandi on "regime change". They have consulted with opposition politicians, the Catholic Church, the judiciary and of course their military operatives.

Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo recently solicited the backing of key US lawmakers for Arroyo, such as Republican Senator Thad Cochran, chair of the US Senate Appropriations Committee; Republican senators Robert Bennett of Utah and Jim Kolbe of Arizona, as well as Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California (where the majority of Filipino Americans reside). Romulo also got the support of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy defense secretary and adviser to Bush, and one of the shrewd authors of the project to resuscitate the obsolescent American empire in the post-Cold War epoch.

A revealing interview with US diplomat Karen Kelley, which appeared in the online Inquirer (reported by Agence France Press, June 29), suggests the duplicitous mode of preparing for "regime change" as seen from the US Embassy in Manila. While former lackeys of Arroyo are abandoning ship and jumping into the Susan Roces bandwagon, the US poses to defend orderly transition, which means appearing to endorse transparency and accountability while engaged in cloak-and-dagger shenanigans to preserve business and military interests in their former "showcase of democracy" in Asia. The cases of "Cold Warriors" Ramon Magsaysay, Benigno Aquino and Colonel Edward Lansdale of the notorious Phoenix program in Vietnam easily come to mind.

Given the pre-emptive and unconscionable means used by globalizing capital to prevent any real substantive change in the local power hierarchy, we shouldn't be deceived by all this legalese rhetoric about democracy and freedom. It is necessary for all progressive forces not to rely solely on bureaucratic or parliamentary means to get rid of Arroyo and her business network. The few wealthy families have never relied only on peaceful means to seize power and maintain supremacy. Nor have the bourgeoisie anywhere in the world. "Civil society" and state as presently constituted only serve to maintain the seemingly "normal" unequal division of power and wealth. We need to be critical of current institutions and practices, and also guard against sectarian dogmatism and opportunist vanguardism. Let the dead bury the dead.

As events in our history have proved, representatives of the ruling class can never represent the genuine long-term interests of the people. Neither ex-president Cory Aquino nor Arroyo (who represent sections of the privileged minority) can solve the systemic evils of rampant poverty and unnecessary deaths caused by the unequal division of wealth (in particular, land and other means of production) and the chronic backwardness of the economy due to subservience to US dictates (via World Bank - WB - and International Monetary Fund - IMF - conditionalities).

Nor can populist gimmicks tied to ousted president Joseph Estrada and assorted "social democrats" obsessed with capitalist globalization elsewhere except in the Philippines, mobilize informed grass-roots support for a thoroughgoing land-reform program, industrialization, a halt to the overseas workers warm-body export policy, and the genocidal war against Moro and indigenous communities.

How can the owners of Hacienda Luisita and the plantations in Negros, Davao, and elsewhere support the loss of their property and class privileges? How can the classes represented by Aquino, former president Fidel Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo really allow the break-up of feudal privileges and their monopoly of political power in their territories? Behind them stand the corrupt mendacious officers of the armed forces and the police (notwithstanding the presence of some nationalist middle-level personnel in the ranks), as well as warlords and gangster-vigilante formations sponsored by the CIA.

This is not to exclude individual members of these conservative and reactionary groups from joining the anti-imperialist united front. What we need is adherence to and step-by-step implementation of a tactical and strategic program of nationalist development that will mobilize the masses of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals and indigenous communities. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of the past. What is needed? Not a mountain stronghold policy of imposing a party line in a sectarian manner, but a way of unleashing the energies, wit, cunning and intelligence of the masses to destroy the old structures of oppression and exploitation that have victimized us since the days of Spanish colonialism, and particularly since the missionary agents of the US. "Benevolent assimilation" landed on our shores and civilized 1.4 million dead Filipinos.

We need to initiate and explore new radical means of emancipatory transformation. A transitional nationalist and popular-democratic government is needed to prevent the usual trick of using so-called legal procedures that have always reproduced the status quo to restore peace and "business as usual". If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the "People Power I" revolution and the delusions of "People Power II" , we need to rely on a united alliance of armed workers' and peasants' councils, community organizations, existing guerilla forces, and other grass-roots agencies to destroy the mechanisms of imperial domination through the institutions used by the landlords, compradors, bureaucrats and traditional politicians. Otherwise, we will prolong the injustice of the present set-up and the suffering of millions of Filipinos now and in the future.

Only a massive mobilization of the majority of citizens, of all oppressed and exploited sectors, in particular the Moro people and the tribal communities, can rid us of the evils of the exploitation of labor, political tyranny of the US, the WB/IMF, and World Trade Organization, foreign control of the economy, and the racialized inferiorization of our cultural heritage. We need to arm the masses to defend themselves against the counter-revolutionary violence of the US and its local followers.

A thousand defeats and sacrifices litter the past; is history repeating itself? But our countrymen who gave their lives fighting against Spanish, US and Japanese colonialisms speak to us from the future, saying: "A new world is possible. It is there for us to win." Let us seize this crisis of the enemy - the oligarchic elite and US imperialism - as an opportunity to advance the national democratic revolution of the Filipino masses and liberate ourselves from the evils of neo-colonialism, racial and gender oppression, commercialization and globalized misery.