The Marcos Puppet Regime, 1966-

What Magsaysay had done in 1953, transfer from the Liberal Party to the Nacionalista Party to become no less than the presidential candidate, Ferdinand Marcos did in 1965 without having to account for any change of political principles, thus exposing once more the absence of any basic difference between the two puppet reactionary parties. Marcos had been no less than the president of the party he had left and the close associate of Macapagal .

Marcos defeated Macapagal in the election of 1965 to become the sixth president of the puppet republic. After one term, he ran for reelection in 1969 and won over Sergio Osmena, Jr. of the Liberal Party. Each time in the two presidential elections, he faced an opponent raucously claiming to be the more efficient running dog of U.S. imperialism. On the other hand, U.S. imperialism wanted a puppet of the Marcos type, one who could most effectively make use of counterrevolutionary dual tactics in a period marked by the rise of the revolutionary mass movement in both city and countryside.

While sounding “nationalist” interested in the economic emancipation of the Filipino nation and pledging to let the Laurel-Langley Agreement, particularly parity rights, lapse in 1974, the Marcos puppet regime enacted as early as 1967 the Investment Incentives Law which declares it the state policy to encourage foreign investments and defines a corporation with a maximum foreign equity of 40 per cent as a “Philippine national.” By this definition, the U.S. imperialists can create a system of interlocking corporations by which a “Philippine national” already bearing and camouflaging 40 per cent equity invests in another corporation and actually increases foreign equity in the latter corporation beyond 40 per cent. The law, however, clearly allows foreign equity to exceed 40 per cent in an old or new corporation registered with the Board of Investments and to remain so indefinitely as long as “Philippine nationals” do not buy the shares of stock offered in the stock exchange on the eleventh year after registration. In guaranteeing the property rights of foreign investors, the Investment Incentives Law goes to the extent of guaranteeing the right of nonexpropriation and exposes the primacy of foreign investments over any pretension of the present puppet state to sovereign rights. The ‘‘incentives” offered by the law are unprecedentedly abusive of the sovereign Filipino people and are geared to aggravating the colonial status of the Philippines.

An insidious propaganda drive supporting the perpetuation of the interests of the U.S. monopolies in the Philippines has been unleashed by the counterrevolutionaries, especially by the C.I.A. and the American Jesuits through the Manglapus-Manahan gang. Brandishing their slogans of “peaceful revolution,” “constitutional reform” and “profit-sharing,” the Christian Social Movement, the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism, the Congressional Economic Planning Office and several other reformist groups spread the mendacious line that the nationalization of the economy could be advanced through legislation and through the stock market. The workers are told that they can become capitalists and can participate in joint ventures with foreign investors by going to the stock market to buy their own shares and putting on mortgage their future wages. This is akin to the old lie repeatedly told to the landless peasants that they can become landowners by buying land from the landlords.

There has been so much ado about another colonial Constitutional Convention. It is publicized as a channel for changing the status quo. The actual purpose of the Constitutional Convention, however, is to adjust the wording of the colonial constitution to such a law as the Investment Incentives Law and the treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation between the U.S. and the Philippines which is now being prepared. The broad masses of the people are reminded at every turn that they have to attract and be hospitable to “dollar-bringing tourists,” meaning to say, the U.S. monopolies. Every town or barrio is made to expect itself as a possible tourist spot in a clever campaign to counteract the growing sentiment of the people against U.S. imperialism.

Rendering completely inutile the reformist view that the economic interests of U.S. imperialism could be taken over by the reactionary government or Filipino businessmen in accordance with “due process’’ and “just compensation,” the Marcos puppet regime has faithfully followed the dictation of U.S. imperialism to exhaust the financial resources of the reactionary government and to overburden the people with inflation and repeated devaluation. Despite the raising of taxes, the internal debt of the reactionary government has risen to the level of at least P6.0 billion because of the profligate spending on projects that merely deepen the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the economy. On top of this internal debt, an external debt of more than \$l.9 billion has been incurred mainly with U.S. imperialism. Thus, the nation is severely afflicted with a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions.4 The broad masses of the people have to suffer steeply rising prices as a result of the rapid erosion of the purchasing value of the peso from within and from without.

Taking advantage of the financial plight of the Philippine puppet government, U.S. imperialism through the International Monetary Fund has dictated the devaluation of the peso at the expense of the broad masses of the people. At the beginning of 1970, the value of the peso sank to the level of more than P6.00 per U.S. dollar from the previous level of P3.90 per U.S. dollar. This is the second time in only eight years that devaluation has been imposed on the people without any corresponding increases in their income. Since 1962, the prices of many basic commodities have gone up by more than 150 per cent. There is not a single commodity in the Philippines that is not affected by the rising costs of imported fuel, equipment, spare parts, raw materials, and the like. The Filipino national bourgeoisie is daily facing bankruptcy because its products are being squeezed out of the local market and it cannot avail itself of adequate credit assistance from a bankrupt puppet government.

As a result of the peso devaluation, the value of U.S. assets in the Philippines and also of Philippine foreign debt has automatically increased. It is idle and downright stupid to expect the reactionary government or private Filipino stockbuyers to be able to buy out the U.S. monopolies. On the other hand, the reactionary government has become worse as a beggar of usurious foreign loans and Filipino-owned enterprises have become more than ever subject to takeover, assimilation or crushing by the U.S. monopolies. Devaluation has only made the Philippines more dependent on the U.S. dollar and has only served to aggravate the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the economy.

Though the Marcos puppet regime has flamboyantly declared so many towns in the country, especially in Central Luzon, as land reform areas, the reactionary government is simply bereft of the financial resources to carry out what it hypocritically labels as a land reform program. In the countryside of the Philippines, it has become too clear that only by waging a people’s war can the peasantry achieve agrarian revolution. In the city, the proletariat is pressed hard by mass layoffs and by the inflation caused by the workings of imperialism within and without the country.

Only the reactionary classes in Philippine society have shared in the exploitative privileges and gains enjoyed by U.S. imperialism. The comprador big bourgeois and the big landlord class have been extremely favored by the automatic increase of the peso equivalent of their dollar earnings on their raw material exports. They are the principal beneficiaries of the various public works projects facilitating the movement of raw material exports and finished manufacture imports. They have received various forms of “export incentives.” They have been extended the biggest loans in constructing and reconstructing milling facilities. Playing up to the trick of U.S. imperialism of using preferential trade for sugar as a lever for increasing its privileges in the Philippines, the Marcos puppet regime has extended the biggest loans for the construction of new sugar mills at so many points in the country. In the disposition of government funds and the granting of government approval for business projects, the bureaucrat capitalists led by Marcos have aggravated the economic crisis by exacting kickbacks on all sorts of government contracts.

As a rabid puppet of U.S. imperialism, Marcos has outdone Macapagal in sending Filipino mercenary troops to participate in the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam and Indochina in general.

Despite the worsening bankruptcy of the reactionary government, he dispatched the Philcag (Philippine Civic Action Group) to South Vietnam. Until now, there are Filipino mercenaries there who merely carry other labels, the Philcon, Operation Brotherhood and engineering firms. U.S. imperialism brazenly uses its military bases and Philippine skies and waters to conduct its wars of aggression in Asia. On U.S. military bases here, U.S. military personnel continue to murder, rape, and commit all kinds of abuses against the Filipino people and yet the Marcos puppet regime, like all previous puppet regimes, has conspired with the U.S. imperialists in holding “negotiations” that end in upholding the latter’s extraterritorial rights. Instead of fighting for the people’s sovereignty, the reactionary government unleashes its police and troops to attack the anti-imperialist protest actions of the people.

The Marcos puppet regime has echoed every “new” policy and followed every “new” step taken by U.S. imperialism. It follows Nixon’s “new Asia policy” of “making Asians fight Asians.” It rabidly supports the U.S.-Japanese partnership in the Pacific and the troublemaking activities of this partnership in Asia. It bows to the U.S. imperialist policy of reviving Japanese militarism and making it play the role of fugleman for U.S. imperialism in Asia. Resurgent Japanese militarism is being promoted as the “regional leader” of Asia through the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Pacific Council (ASPAC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southeast Asian Ministers Economic Council (SEAMEC), the “Asian Forum” and the like.

Even before the ratification of the unequal Japan-R.P. Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation, the Marcos puppet regime has encouraged the Japanese monopolies to invade the Philippines. They now rank as the second biggest foreign investor. Japanese commodities are being dumped into the country and Japanese investments are penetrating every major field of business activity. Japan today is next only to the United States in getting Philippine raw materials and ranks first in getting copper concentrates, logs, molasses and iron ores. Japan’s share of Philippine foreign trade is now more than 30 per cent. Its military vessels and fishing fleets do not respect the territorial waters of the Philippines. In a desperate attempt to hoodwink the Filipino people about Japan, the Marcos puppet regime is bandying about the lie that Japan is a benevolent aid-giver and actually begs for loans from it in exchange for the plunder of Philippine natural resources and exploitation of the people. Its war reparations payments which have been grabbed by the local reactionaries for themselves are even misrepresented as gracious aid to the people. The strategic Pan-Philippine highway is obsequiously called the Japanese Friendship Highway.

The Marcos puppet regime has also steadily opened the way for trade and diplomatic relations with Soviet social-imperialism and other revisionist countries in line with the U.S. imperialist policy of maintaining a global alliance with the Soviet Union in opposing China, the people, revolution, and communism. In a futile attempt to deflect attention from itself, U.S. imperialism is raising the joint oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people by the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union. In this connection, there is an imperialist scheme to whip up the evil wind of modern revisionism inside the country. The local agents of modern revisionism, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas, are being accommodated in the arena of bourgeois parliamentarism in the imperialist scheme to sabotage the revolutionary mass movement.

In carrying out its reactionary policies, the Marcos puppet regime has inevitably laid out its fascist character. Unable to cope with the political and economic crisis into which it has pushed the nation and also unable to deceive the people with such hypocritical slogans as “this nation can be great again” or “new Filipinism,” it has ruthlessly employed the apparatuses of the state to suppress the broad masses of the people through selective and mass terrorism. In conducting its anti-democratic campaign, it cynically waves the banner of “liberal democracy”.

Through the JUSMAG, U.S. imperialism is supplying more military equipment to the reactionary armed forces and is egging them on to launch counterinsurgency campaigns, that is to say, to attack the broad masses of the people. Through A.I.D., U.S. imperialism is also providing communications and anti-riot equipment to attack mass organizations and disperse protest actions. U.S. military personnel have even taken to the field of supervising police and military operations. The buildup of local fascism by U . S . imperialism is clearly intended to quell the growing revolutionary mass movement inflamed by the rapid deterioration of the ruling system.

As fascism is on the rise, private armies and official murder units, such as the “Monkees,” “BSDU,” “Home Defense Forces,” “Special Forces,” “provincial strike forces” and the like brazenly commit atrocities against the people. Even as the tyrannical character of the reactionary government has clearly emerged, the counterrevolutionaries rig up reformist groups to whip up confidence in the reactionary government and slander the revolutionary mass movement.

Massacres, mass arrests, kidnappings, assassinations, rape, arson, extortion and looting of homes have characterized the Marcos puppet regime. The Culatingan massacre, Corregidor massacre, Lapiang Malaya massacre, Capas massacre, the Mendiola massacre and the Tarlac massacre are blatant proofs of its fascist character and they typify the many more atrocities inflicted on the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, and the national minorities.5 In the last presidential elections, it made use of fraud and terrorism on an unprecedented scale to ensure its continuance in power. Government funds and facilities and both the reactionary government armed forces and the warlord gangs were employed on an unprecedented scale to keep the Marcos fascist clique in power.

Under the Marcos puppet regime, the revolutionary mass movement has risen to new heights. In 1966 repeated mass protests against Philippine involvement in the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam culminated on October 23 and 24 when the Manila summit attended by the U.S. imperialist chieftain Johnson and the Asian puppet chieftains were dealt powerful blows by a multitude of workers, peasants and students. In 1967 powerful demonstrations condemned the economic enslavement of the people by the U.S. monopolies; the U.S. military bases and the atrocities being committed therein; and the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. In 1968 militant demonstrations broke out all over the country against the U.S.-RP negotiations preparing the extension of “national treatment” to U.S. monopolies beyond 1974, against U.S. military bases, against the further Americanization of the University of the Philippines and the entire educational system and against Anglo-American support for “Malaysia.”

The whole year of 1969 was spanned by student and teacher rebellions against the reactionary educational system, by peasant demonstrations in Manila against the landlords and the fascist rule in the countryside and by workers’ strikes supported by student activists. The coming of the U.S. imperialist chieftains Nixon and Agnew on two separate occasions was met by fiercely militant demonstrations. While militant mass actions raged in Manila and other urban centers, revolutionary workers, students and intellectuals went in larger numbers than before to the countryside to conduct rural surveys and mass work among the peasants. The cultural revolution of a new-democratic type advanced rapidly under the leadership of the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines.

From year to year, despite fascist brutality, the revolutionary mass movement has intensified, increasing in frequency, becoming larger, spreading throughout the province and delivering a clearer revolutionary message among the people. In 1970, unprecedented mass actions involving 50,000 to 100,000 direct participants on each occasion unfolded as a great summation of revolutionary efforts in the past decade and as a striking storm signal for the entire current decade. These started with the January 26 and 30-31 demonstrations of workers, peasants, students and intellectuals. Efforts of the reactionaries to raise the counterrevolutionary slogan of “peaceful revolution” were drowned out by the revolutionary slogan of the masses of “protracted people’s war” in answer to the fascist brutality unleashed against them and also in answer to the repeated threats of the Marcos puppet regime to make a formal declaration of martial law. The First Quarter Storm of 1970 marked the maturation of the cultural revolution spearheaded by the revolutionary youth oriented to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and conscious of the people’s democratic revolution. The essence of the cultural revolution clearly emerged as being the propaganda movement for the national-democratic struggle against U.S. imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism.

Confronted with the increasingly fierce opposition of the revolutionary masses, the Marcos puppet regime has harped on formally declaring martial law notwithstanding the fact that it has wantonly practiced fascist terror in both city and countryside, especially so in the latter where uniformed troops and their goon assistants vent their ire on the peasant masses. By resorting to more counterrevolutionary violence, the Marcos puppet regime is enraging the people and is hastening the collapse of the semicolonial and semifeudal system.

The Marcos puppet regime can no longer attack the revolutionary masses without being counterattacked. The Communist Party of the Philippines has been reestablished under the powerful inspiration of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and has taken the road of armed revolution in order to fight for national liberation and people’s democracy. The New People’s Army under the leadership of the Party is vigorously establishing revolutionary bases in the countryside and is advancing from victory to victory in a protracted people’s war. The Communist Party of the Philippines is today applying Chairman Mao’s strategic principle of encircling the cities from the countryside.

At the end of 1969, which marked only less than a year of its existence, the New People’s Army inflicted on the enemy a death casualty which was well more than 150 per cent higher than the average annual death casualty of the enemy during the period of 1966-68 when the peasant guerrillas significantly raised the level of armed resistance from the level of immediately preceding years. From March 29, 1969 to March 29, 1970, the New People’s Army wiped out at least 200 enemy troops, spies, local tyrants, and bad elements.

Despite the fact that they have been singled out for attack by the enemy, the Party and the New People’s Army have successfully withstood enemy-assaults and have gained greater strength. That is because they are waging a revolutionary armed struggle in defense of the broad masses of the people.