President Noynoy Aquino in his latest appearance to the nation on the occasion of the Edsa revolt commemoration is again showing his reactionary character. As a loyal puppet of the American imperialist government, he tries hard to project himself as a strongman— which he is not. His is a futile attempt to make up for his badly tarnished image as a leader awkwardly feigning a wounded warrior stance to show strength in face of the wrath of the people demanding accountability for all his sins against the nation. But no. He cannot hide his panic nor mask his fears, his legs could be trembling while speaking. He ventures to sport an appearance of confidence while his heart shrinks in fear.
Well, all puppets are like that. They are rightly called reactionary diehards. Their shaky stance and wishful thoughts are anchored on the belief that their lord masters will abide by them to the end. Yes they will, until such time when their fall is imminent. He was speaking in hollow rhetorics that consistently fitted into the template of all his public speeches, claiming credits earned by his parents and family as champions of freedom or as saviors of democracy. And he claims he has the solid support of the considerable forces who will defend his administration until the end of his term of office.
But in an ironic twist, the purported show of overwhelming support from his State security forces in their so-called “Unity Walk” was a ridiculous demonstration of a paper tiger about to crumble in face of the growing demands of the population for him to step down. Sooner than his wishful thought would allow, his rule will flounder in shame quicker than the cogon fire could last. Interestingly, the traffic mess caused by the closure of Edsa’s many routes last February 25 have roused the temper of angered commuters. In its fear of people power, President Noynoy has deployed an “overkill police occupancy” of all conceivable spaces around the Edsa Shrine to thwart any mass protest action. In effect, it only showed Noynoy’s fascist nature, relying solely on the armed might of the State to prop up his rule. And the people would resist fascism as they did three decades ago.
This is the way of all governments, especially puppet regimes, on the verge of collapse. Its failure to rule in the usual way would always lead the ruler to employ fascist force in an effort to give a semblance of normalcy. It would not be surprising if the inability to resolve the incumbent deepening crisis, the allure to declare martial law becomes irresistible. All pretensions of democratic rule will be unmasked and the barrel of the gun will prevail.
This is not to say, however, that virtual martial rule has not been long obtaining in the countryside. As a matter of fact, mass evacuations of Indigenous Peoples in most places in Mindanao rural places are happening all because of massive militarization, The government rationalizes this as a counter-insurgency measure, but actually the military is acting as security force protecting the foreign mining corporations which the IPs have opposed because their ancestral lands are being ravaged. And always concomitant with militarization are rampant violations of their human rights—kidnapping, torture, maiming, and slaying of IPs especially known IP leaders—are happening daily in increasing rapacity.
The puppet government of Noynoy Aquino is now frantically trying to save face after the Mamasapano Incident which has exposed his incompetence and ineptitude as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. He has been given the chance to show his mettle as a leader and to demonstrate genuine statesmanship and he failed. Now, he has been stripped of credibility by the unfolding of his many lies and deceptive doublespeak.
And because more and more testimonies have come up to establish the participation of the US in the Mamasapano tragedy, Noynoy has no other recourse but to harness his resource of deceit and lies to cover up the US role in the disaster. He must prove as splendidly as he can that he can be relied upon as a puppet, otherwise, the US with all its power and cunning can easily dispense with him and junk him to the stench of history’s garbage bin. He has already sacrificed his friendship with Allan Purisima, has dumped all accountability and responsibility on him. And he has categorically blamed Napenas for the failures in the execution of the botched operation.
The next most important thing to be done is to preclude the eventuality of People Power! Here would be the real battle. And here the future of the nation also lies, contingent as it is on the nature of the leadership that will ensue as a result of a people power uprising.
If the impending people power uprising is led and controlled by the same elite forces that installed Cory Aquino to power, or the US, as it always does, will intervene, then the same social order will prevail, the same crisis will come about. It will just be another cycle of corruption and underdevelopment and misery of the masses that will obtain.
It becomes imperative, therefore, that the progressive sectors of the working and peasant classes will assert and take the lead in the transformation council proposed to be created as a transition government once the people power uprising becomes a reality. As we have pointed out here earlier, the supreme interest of the suffering masses should be the primordial consideration of any agenda for social change. Apropos of this, the agenda for the transition-coalition government will tackle must be nothing short of a program for genuine land reform and nationalist industrialization, as engines for progress.
This is the call of the hour. This is the order of the day.
