STATEMENT | Duterte’s ‘revolutionary government’ is nothing but dictatorship

*Statement by the Movement Against Tyranny on October 15, 2017

Pres. Rodrigo Duterte’s idea of a “revolutionary government” is nothing else but the one-man dictatorship that he has been repeatedly dreaming of since last year.

Duterte merely wants to concentrate all governmental power to himself as president. He wants to further dismantle whatever little is left of the system of checks and balances provided by a rubber stamp Congress, a Supreme Court dominated by his and former Pres. Arroyo’s appointees, and easily intimidated Constitutional bodies like the Office of the Ombudsman and Commission on Human Rights.

He aims to further intimidate the critical press and overwhelm social media with his fake news-churning troll army.

Worse, in order to impose his “revolutionary” regime on the people, he will have to declare martial law nationwide, He will have to ban all forms of public criticism and dissent: protest rallies, strikes, political demonstrations of any kind, not even cultural shows, art works or social media posts. There will be wide-scale and utter disregard for due process, human rights and civil liberties.

Meanwhile, the same old oligarchic interests will remain, with Duterte’s family and friends as the favored cronies. The same old kowtowing to foreign interests. The same old corruption and criminality except cornered by the Duterte clique, the Davao group and even the ascendant mafia in the illegal drugs business.

Marcos tried the same thing before, resulting in 14 years of cronyism, plunder of the national treasury and economy and wholesale human rights violations of the worst kind.

The Movement Against Tyranny denounces Duterte’s so-called “revolutionary government” as nothing less than the usurpation of all powers to impose one-man rule and trample on the people’s democratic rights. We will not be cowed. We will not be silenced.