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================= ================= Has Revolution Now Become Necessary? ================= ================= ================= Filipinismo, the True Filipino Ideology ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= Magna Carta of Social Justice and Economic Freedom ================= |
Has Revolution Now Become Necessary? Alejandro Lichauco, Tribune, Augus 15, 2005
Extract from sequel to the book Hunger, Corruption and Betrayal: A Primer on the Philippine Crisis. The book is available at Popular Book Store) Q. Has revolution now become necessary? A. Yes Q. Why? A. Because only a revolution offers the hope and possibility of rolling back the mass hunger that now engulfs the land. Q. Is there mass hunger? A. Yes. That's the finding of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (FNRI-DoST). In 2003, it released the result of a study which found that eight out of 10 households in the country are hungry. The fact, however, is that this country has been hungry long before the FNRI-DoST finding of 2003. By official finding dating as far back as 1986, at least 40 percent of Filipinos have been proclaimed poor because they subsist on a monthly income of less than P1,300 a month. “Poor” isn't the right word though. Because if you subsist on less than P1,300 a month, you aren't just poor but hungry. There has been hunger as far back as 1986 but the government refuses to use the dirty word. It prefers to use “poor” instead. The term conceals the disaster. Q. How do you explain the hunger? A. The deadly mix of import liberalization (free trade) and devaluation. Beginning in 1986, government went into an orgy of dismantling tariff and import restrictions that were then in force to protect domestic industries from being overwhelmed by import competition. Simultaneously, government went into an orgy of devaluating the peso. From a peso-dollar rate of P19:$1, the rate has now reached P56:$1. Import liberalization devastated local industries while the chain of devaluation increased both the cost of production and consumption. With that deadly mix - repeat, deadly mix - the Filipino and the economy simply stood no chance of surviving. That's why the hunger. Import liberalization drove giant enterprises such as Hacienda Luisita, Caltex Refining, National Steel Corp., the tire, paper and chemical industries to bankruptcy so that by 1999, business tycoon John Gokongwei would predict that there will eventually be no industries left. Import liberalization also killed off the farming sector. Twenty years ago, the agricultural sector constituted 25 percent of the economy. Today, it represents only 15 percent of the economy. Q. How then do you get rid of that deadly mix of import liberalization and devaluation? A. Through revolution and only through revolution. Q. Why only through a revolution? A. Because you can't have it through peaceful reforms or any other way. The people who run the government - the executive, Congress and the technocracy - are all committed to globalization. And globalization means free trade and allowing “market forces” to determine the peso-dollar rate. By international commitment, or treaty, government since 1986 increasingly abdicated the nation's economic sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). By abdicating the nation's economic sovereignty, a chain of treasonous governments since 1986 abdicated the fundamental responsibility of every and any government to protect the nation's sources of livelihood and the stability of the national currency. Hence, no jobs and high prices. Q. When you say revolution, are you then talking of a communist revolution? A. No. I am talking of a people's revolution against globalization - meaning to say, a revolution against the forces in Philippine politics and society who have aligned themselves with the globalists of the world whose institutional representatives are the IMF, the WB and the WTO. That's the new colonialism. Q. Can you name these forces in Philippine politics and society who have aligned themselves with globalization? A. Yes. Chief among them are the technocrats many of them products of the UP School of Economics, the Ateneo, La Salle and other private Catholic schools, ranking elements of the Makati business community, the Opus Dei, the nation's principal politicians led by Fidel Ramos, Joe de Venecia and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the senators who voted for the hasty ratification of GATT and membership in the WTO, publishers and columnists of media who panicked the nation into a hasty acceptance of GATT while the issue was being debated in the Senate. These are the forces and elements who today retain a solid grip on the nation's politics and constitute by and large the nation's political, social and economic establishment. Q. What should the revolution do with them? A. Confiscate all their assets for distribution to the poor, particularly those victimized by globalization. Q. What should we replace globalization with? A. A return to the Declaration of Principles of the current Constitution which decrees that the state shall promote economic nationalism and a self-reliant, independent national economy. (To be continued) Q. Please elaborate on the nature of the revolution which you say has become necessary. You say it isn't a communist revolution. But aren't all revolutions communist in nature? A. Not all revolutions are necessarily communist in nature. The first revolution that took place in the 20th century was the nationalist revolution of Mexico. The Philippine revolution that Bonifacio launched at the end of the 19th century was also a nationalist revolution. Q. So what revolution does the Philippine need? It already had a nationalist revolution which Bonifacio started. A. Ah, but the nationalist revolution which Bonifacio started was never completed. It was interrupted by US imperialism. From a colony of Spain, we eventually became a colony of the US. Q. Yes, But the US eventually granted us our independence in 1946. So why do you say Bonifacio's nationalist revolution was never completed? A. Because the independence that the US was supposed to have returned to us in 1946 wasn't a genuine independence. It was a phony, sham independence. From an outright colony of the US we were empty transformed into what is called a neo-colony. Q. And what do you mean by a neo-colony? A. A neo-colony is a nation which has the international status of a sovereign and independent nation state but which in fact, in truth and in effect, the colony of another. It is a nation governed in brief by a puppet class. Q. And what makes you say the Philippines has been governed by a puppet class? A. The US government made sure it is governed by a puppet class. As far back as 1949, the US State Department drafted a top secret policy plan which called on the US government to make sure that the Philippines remained under the political control and governance of elements which the US can control. That document is known as PPS 23, abbreviation for Policy Planning Staff Memorandum No. 23. As noted columnist Federick Pascual Jr. of the Philippine Star said in his piece of May 19, and I quote, “PPS/23 established an interventionist policy to keep the Philippines in hands which the US 'could control and rely on' even at the expense of human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.” Pascual in turn was commenting on a piece on PPS/23 written by one Jorge Emmanuel. Q. What do you think was the reason for PPS/23? A. The reason has to do with another US top secret document crafted in 1946. That document is known as the Dodds Report. That document established as a policy of the US to preserve the Philippines as a raw material economy in order to ensure Japan with a continuing source of raw materials. The Dodds Report argued that Japan should be developed by the US as the sole industrial power in the Far East. Q. And how did you come to know of the Dodds Report? A. The late Salvador Araneta uncovered the existence of that document while in self-exile in Canada during martial law, and he exposed the document in a book he wrote titled America's Double-Cross of the Philippines. Q. Is that the reason why you say the nationalist revolution started by Bonifacio was never completed? A. Yes, PPA/23, the top secret policy document crafted by the US State Department in 1949, is the reason why the Philippines has remained a virtual colony of the US and why a revolution that would complete the nationalist revolution of Bonifacio is necessary. It is necessary in order to make our independence a true and an authentic one. In turn, it is necessary that our independence be a true and an authentic one because that's the absolute precondition to our being able to formulate an economic program and agenda that would enable us to overcome mass poverty and the growing hungry. Q. And what have the Filipino globalists, who now are in political control of government, got to do with the fact that this nation is poor and hungry? A. The Filipino globalists constitute the political and economic class through which the objectives of the Dodds Report and PPS/23 are achieved and secured. Q. And is that why a nationalist revolution - against the globalist class - is necessary? A. Yes, If we are to get out of the poverty and the hunger, the nation must rise as one to overthrow the regime of the globalists who represent the implementing agents of the Dodds Report and PPS/23. It's really as simple as that. Q. Is that what you mean by a nationalist revolution? A. Yes. Q. Then, when do we begin with the nationalist revolution against the globalist class? A. It has already begun. =====================================
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