It addles our mind how President Noynoy Aquino can ignore the rampant human rights abuses under his administration and point to the martial law regime of the Marcoses as rabid violators of the people’s human rights. How can he reconcile the cavalierly fashion with which he accuses another regime as evil when his very own government is perpetrating the very same evil he hypocritically abhors?
The Aquino government is enmeshed in irreconcilable contradictions. And it is adamant in its vicious policy of perpetuating the inhumanities against its victims in disregard of popular outrage, domestically and internationally. It continues to brandish the old boogey of anti-communist rhetoric to justify its rotten anti-people policies. But it is digging its own grave, in the same manner that the Marcos dictatorship and the other previous regimes dragged themselves to their own doom.
The Aquino government is fond of excavating skeletons of human rights violations by the rapacious military of Marcos, forgetting that this is the same military establishment now terrorizing the Lumads in the countryside. The culture of fascist terror and impunity has not quite dissipated after the Marcos dictatorship. It has always been there in the time of Cory Aquino, in the time of Ramos, Erap, and Arroyo, respectively. It has always lurked dangerously
in the hierarchy of the military apparatus that has consistently adhered to the system imposed by the U.S. Military establishment.
Maybe there is a negligible difference in the degree of bestiality between the Marcaos’ martial law military and his own ‘undeclared martial law’ military. Maybe Mr. Noynoy Aquino relishes with some comfort in the thought that under his watch, no AFP soldier has yet slashed a woman’s breast like what Marcos’ soldiers did in Samar during martial law? But does that render less brutal the slitting of the throat of ALCADEV’s school director Samarca in Liangga, Surigao del Sur? Who knows but that in the next few minutes or hours or days, an even worse savagery will be committed by the AFP and its paramilitary minions in some part of the country? For after all it’s the same ideology of fascist terror directing the conduct of the AFP now as in martial law days.
Can Mr. Noynoy live and breathe comfortably with a military entity that nurtures the same culture of fascist terror and impunity as the military of Marcos? As the military of Arroyo in the latter’s Oplan Bantay Laya? Does he not cringe in the idea that this AFP he has accorded the privilege of impunity through his Oplan Bayanihan could very well be harboring the clones of Palparan the notorious berdugo? Ah, but is not the arrest of this berdugo a mere token act in order to parry the avalanche of criticisms and denunciations and demands by concerned citizens?
Some people wonder if a sense of justice and righteousness still resides in the subjectivity of the chief managers of this Republic since the time of the first puppet Manuel A Roxas. Or if it is a virtue impossible to be wished for and expected of a President who is a stooge of foreign interests that are infinitely favored at the expense of his own native citizenry.
And the willful indifference and neglect the government manifests vis-à-vis the enormous issues faced by the nation seem to give credence to most everyone’s perception that this administration is infinitely insensitive to the plight of its people. It seems its dogged preoccupation is the success of the coming APEC Summit? And what, by the way, is this event so much ballyhooed for? For the glory of trade liberalization! Yeah, for the big strides in advance of imperialist economic interests! And so must all preparations by the host country be single-mindedly directed at its realization.
Never mind that the Lumads at their Manilakbayan protest actions are ignored and denied justice, and their kinsfolk are suffering from all inconveniences and discomforts at the evacuation centers. Never mind that the OFWs and other airplane flight passengers be jailed or unjustly accused because of the irresolvable “tanim bala” at the NAIA airport terminal. Never mind that the victims of Yolanda and other calamities are neglected and their rehabilitation funds are irresponsibly managed or squandered.
Let the trapo politicians go on unhindered in their extravagant campaigns for the coming elections to insure that patronage politics be strengthened for all eternity! Let the Status Quo flourish to satisfy the avarice of the foreign monopoly capitalists and economic elite of the country! Let the patrimony of the nation be laid wide open for their plunder at the expense of the teeming masses! Let the entire Filipino nation be consigned to eternal poverty and misery!
This nation from its very conception has been laid on the cornerstone of puppetry and corruption imposed by US imperialism. The Noynoy is but a link in a chain of virtual slavery to foreign interests. If the system of puppetry and corruption will continue to thrive in another six years of the next elected President, the contradictions between the ruling economic elite and the broad masses of the people will intensify. These contradictions will manifest in acute clashes at certain points as the masses of the people resist the oppressive and violent anti-people policies of the State.
But in the remaining months before President Noynoy steps down after the elections, he will do his utmost to bestow a plethora of benefits for his US imperialist masters. We can expect more repressive acts against the people as a way of tightening the clutches of the economic elite, and strengthening the neoliberal economic system of Philippine society. As far as the Noynoy government is concerned, the road to take is out-and-out puppetry which he calls “matuwid na daan”. It is a road to irreversible disaster, even as it is a widening avenue for people’s resistance, and ultimately, revolution.
