years after the "February Revolution' Hoping for democracy: Aquino supporters rally in January 1986.
"salvaging" (murder by death squads) or during military operations or visory Consultative Committee (LACC), which is a council of four of the national Labour Organisation (ILO) conference in Geneva she brought Armed Force Geographical Unit or GAPGU). They are armed civilians co-operating with the army to fight communism, and specifically the squads, linked to the any and the police, suppress any popular opposi- tion to the govemment. Even human rights activists and lawyers are mur- dered by the vigilantes and the death President Aquino initially gave the government's full support to the Though official sanction has been withdrawn, and the military ordered to disband such groups, they continuc According to human rights or- ganisations in 1987 alone there were 29 massacres, in which 149 people were killed; 158 cases of forced evacuation, affecting nearly 14,000 families: and 54 cases of destruction of property, including the buring of There were 602 cases of torture and 263 persons killed either by Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May Ist Movement) is now the leading trade union federation in the Philippines with some 700,000 members. In Angust and October 1987, the KMU was the driving force behind two strikesol unprecedented size over gasoline price rises and wage increases. Crispin Beltran or "Ka Bel' became chairman of the KMU in December lion people went to Rolando's funcral. As with many other murders of leaders of trade unions and mass movements Rolando's murderers were Crispin Beltran is also the chairperson of the Philippine Labour Ad Five main groupings of Philippine unions representing 80 percent of or- ganised workers. But when President Aquino last year spoke at the Inter- with her the representatives of the pines (TUCP), which was set up by Most of the killings in the Philip- pines are done by the "vigilantes and the "citizens' army" (formerly the ICHDF and currently the Citizens" New People's Army. The death vigilantes, calling them "concrete 514 houses. 7,444 people were detained, most of them later released. 1986 after the murder of his predecessor Rolando Olalia. Almost a mil- Trade Union Congress of the Philip- manifestations of People's Power" to operate throughout the country. Low Intensity Conflict and the US bases the Marcos dictatorship. squaris. while in detention. (Kasama no 29). I never prosecuted. Whatever next? Aquino after the election m With a foreign deht of S30 billion and with gross domestic product and exports both declining 0.5% annually and investments declining 13,5% annually between 1980-87 the Aquino goverment opposed the workers' campaign to raise the minimum wage from 70 pesos (E2) per more unpopular among the millions of worker, peasants and students The Philipino economy is in a big crisis, 'From 1987 to 1992, the government expects new loans amounting to S11.5 billion to be able to attain in 1992 the GNP level in 1982. This, on top of the $28 billion foreign debt, on which the goverment paid $2.9 billion in 1987. Debt Bank rocommends the doubling of social services spending. (Ibid., p 6). day to 80 pesos (£2.30). Thousands of children die from lack of nutnibion. concessions to the army chiefs. In doing so she has become more and who brought her to power. The military is essentially unchanged since the Marcos era. The AFP is still divided by factionalism, but *a military takeover by any one of the military-civilian factions is a distinct payments were equivalent to 8.7 percent of the GNP and half of export contemplates her options. possibility, according to Ang Bayan (CPP paper, April 1988). Economic crisis and poverty country's s56 million population live in people in the Philippines today that at 5 any time in recent history. In both a 5 tion has worsened during the past three * decades. According tothe World Bank "ahout 30 million Filipinos out of the o relative and absolute sense, the situa- an income that does not enable them to serve basic needs." The Philippines has lowest calorie consumption per capita of all the ASEAN countrics. The World carings in 1987. In 1988 debt service payments were estimated to hit $3.03 billion, including S2.1 billion in inter- est payments - over three times the. projected budget deficit. (Ang Bayan President Aquino presented her govemment's hudget for 1989 to Con- gress on July 25, 1988. Out of the 228.9 billion pesos ($11 billion) budget 42.2% was allocated to pay of the country sextemal and internal debt (up from 30% of the 1988 hudget). The 1989 budget has a 22.9 billion pesos deficit of which 40% will have to come from further foreign borrowing. Expen- diture on defence is to rise from 9,7 bil-. lion pesos in 1988 to 21.2 billion in A confidential World Bank report has admitted: "There are more poor absolute poverty, in the sense of having the highest level of poverty and the 1989. (Kasama, no 31. p 4). Vol XX. no. 2).
*Today, Washington is secking to increase the fighting capability of insurrectionary policies presently being implemented in the archipelago." A lot is at stake for the US in the Philippines. With a population about American multinationals. The country's strategic position became more important for American imperialism after its defeat in Vietnam. The two Naval Base, are the largest American military installations outside the mainland USA. All this is threatened should a government unsympathetic the army by greally increasing the number of American advisors and agents in the country, by improving the training of officers and soldiers, by atrengthening heavy arms in particular (helicopters, tanks, artillery...) and by injecting new money into the counter-insurrectionary effort... ('The Philippines: First lessons of the revolution" International Marxist the same size as Britain, the Philippines is a resource for exploitation by main American bases in the Philippines, Clarke Air Base and Subic Bay Today the Philippines are a living example of the theory of "Low Inten- sity Conflict'. We must not underestimate the seriousness of the counter- Page 23 to the US come to power in the Philippines, Review, Vol. 2, No 4). With only a very limited land reform being discussed in Congress, mass *Even whica Mrs. Aquino dismantled the Constitution of Marcos, she These are Marcos laws, still with us now. And she has gone on to issue her own new pronouncements which amount to a virtual declaration of *Take, for example, her speech to businessmen on October 20, 1987 when she ordered the military outright to dismantle all existing pickets Beltran, chairman of the KMU union federation, in International Labour and barricades on company premises. No less than 30 strikes were dis- mantled within a few days... We say this is an undeclared state of martial of flow intensity conflict' the workers are in the first line of fire.: (Crispin did not repeal many of the repressive laws, including the Labour Code. Taw with a liberal facade. In this US-backed counter-insurgency strategy unemployment and starvation are to continue for millions of people. Human rights violations SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 12 February 1989 Report, Summer 1988). war against labour.
The CPP's links with tbe Chinese Communist Party were further weakened when the Beijing and Manila govemments normalised their relations in 1975. Chinese aid to the CPP/NPA ceased, although the CPP was a Maoist party. (The CPP still today claims adherence to Marxism- tion of fighting from small-scale guerrilla strongholds (almost a "foco" Leninism-MaoZedong Thought), In 1975-76 the CPP ahandoned the no- conception) in favour of policy of mobilising the peasants in arms. TH both legal and illegal. The two main American bases in the Philippines employ some 68,000 baseworkers. The Anti-Bases Coalition, campaigning to get rid of both bases, has growing support among the population. One of the Coalition's demands is that no nuclear weapons should he allowed in the country. In authorised the deployment of 467 nuclear weapons in eight countrics February a leaked document revealed that President Reagan had without informing the countries concerned. Of these, 227 are to be Z deployed in the Philippines. (Kasama no 28). governments and the Aquino government bases from $180 million per annum to The Philippine Senate introduced a bill on April 25, 1988 to ban nuclear-car- rying warships and aircraft entering Philippines territory. For months the US negotiated on a new base agreement. The second five-yearly review of the Military Hases Agreement (MBA) was completed on October 17, 1988, increasing the com- ponent of US compensation paid for the 5962 million to cover the final two years of the MBA. But nuclear-armed vessels are still allowed to visit the Philippines. The Communist Party of
are living. According to documents seized = The leading force in the National Democratic Front (NDF) is the Com- munist Party (CPP). The CPP have around 35,000 memhers and 20-25.000 soldiers in the New People's Army (NPA). It is leading mass organisations with around 2 million people and the NDF has set up Tocal and regional alterative govemment. bodies in areas where 11 million people the Philippines
However in 1978 the regional leadership of the CPP in Manila broke ship was in favour of a boycott. The election in Manila was a failure for It had never seen such a mass mobilisation. The CPP (especially in Manila) was running behind the mass mobilisation all the time, not least. The CPP called for a boycott of the clections between Marcon and Aquino, but this left them partly isolated from the mass movement that developed around Aquine's clection campaign. In May 1986 the CPP made a self criticism of the boycott line. Whether the boycolt line was wrong and what revolutionaries should have done in such a stuntion have If scems that the CPP has docided that it has to fight in all arenas, in- cluding the electoral arena. Ax a leading force in the NDF and leading the NPA it is not possible for the CPP to be a legal party taking part in clections. A legal left progressive party does exist. This is the People's Party (PhB) which was officially founded in August 1986 by, amang others, Jose Maria "Joma" Sison, who some claim is the former leader of the CPP. Joma" describes (in International Viewpoint, Dec. 1986) the with its own political and organisational integrity. (Rolando Ololla-the sination, also the chair of the People's Party. The present chair of the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 12 February 1989 been widely debated inside the CPP (and the Fouth Intemational; scc In- People's Party asneither a rival nor a replacement of the CPP. but a party former chair of the KMU trade union federation - was, until his assas- the party's discipline and participated in clections. The national leader The 1986 February Revolution came as a total surprise for the CPP the CPP. and the regional leadership was replaced femational Marxist Review Winter 1987). Battling on regardless: guerillas of the New People's Army. in the call for a general strike. radical youth from 1968-72, particularly the student mobilisations. The Cultural Revolution in China and helped provide political guidelines for In a way it was Marcos" martial law that unified the country and the ment to modemise the country: to build a nation state founded on modern: from the old Philippines Communist Party PKP. I based itself on the new the new CPP. In 1972 President Marcos enforced martial law and the CPP launched the anned struggle. The martial law nearly destroyed the party in 1975-77. But the CPP recovered in 1977-80 as the leading opposition opposition. The Philippines, a country of over 7,100 islands, has strug- gled for a national identity during its nearly 400 years as a colony, first of Spain, then of the US. Under Spain it became a predominantly Catholic country (though the muslim Bangsa Moro people form a large minority In 1889 the Philippines was the first Asian country to liberate itself from colonialism. Though the Philippino elite capitulated to the US in- But it also began to break its political links to China, when Beijing came out in support of US Marcos claimed that martial law wax to suppress the growing nationalist movement calling for constitutional reform and as an instru- capitalism. In reality it led to concentration of political and economic power in the hands of Marcos and his cronies. The worsening economic