The decisive tests facing the Aquino government CORAZON AQUINO, the new president of the Philippines, has proclaimed a "revolutionary government," dissolving the institutions inherited from the period of martial law (which was decreed in September 1972 and formally lifted in 1981). The political reforms are speeding up, but the new regime's economic program remains very vague.
However, it is precisely in the economic arena that the future of the new government will in large part be decided. It is there that its capacity will be tested to reunify the Philippine elites and get the country out of the crisis into which President Marcos (and the advice
PHILIPPINES
A tug of war has begun for control of the provinces. The election campaign waged by Cory and "Doy" Laurel mobilized considerable crowds in the provinces, testifying to the national popular support for Marcos' challengers. But the "revolution" that drove out the former dictator on February 26 was a Manila affair.
It was only in the capital area, Manila-Quezon City, that hundreds of thousands of people came onto the streets and experienced "people's power." The events transpired too quickly (four days) for the mobilizations to spread.
Thus, even in the central provinces of the island of Luzon, such as Tarlac, which are quite close to the capital, the power of the armed forces and the local notables has not been directly challenged by the mass mobilization. (2)
The right opposition to the new regime is mustering its forces. From his Hawaiian exile, Marcos is keeping in close touch with his retainers in close touch with his retainers in the capital and in his native province of Ilocos Norte (in Northern Luzon).
The ousted dictator's New Society Movement (KBL) and Blas Ople, Marcos' former minister of labor, who has just formed a new opposition party, the Partido Nacionalista ng Pilipinas (PNP - Nationalist Party of the Philippines) are denouncing the "revolutionary government" in the name of no less than legality and democracy. Mayors resist new government
Blas Ople has not hesitated to say that Cory has "vested herself with the power of a dictator." (3) More than a thousand mayors called on by the president to resign have declared their determination to resist.
However, in those provinces where local strongmen, such as Armando Gustilo, the mayor of Negros del Norte (on Negros, the sugar island) rule thanks to veritable private armies, the confrontation threatens to be the most deep-going. That is also the case in Lanao del Sur (on the island of Mindanao), where Ali Dimaporo controls at least 500 armed men.
The dismantling of the political structures inherited from the Marcos regime has its economic corollary. Under martial law and thanks to
'International Herald Tribune', March 26, 1986.
See, for example, the report of Patrick Sabatier in the Paris daily 'Liberation', March 4, 1986.
International Herald Tribune, March 26, 1986.
3 of the World Bank) had plunged it. PAUL PETITJEAN
In the economic arena, the new government will demonstrate to what extent it can stabilize the country's relations with imperialism, as well as respond to the most urgent needs of working people, whose standard of living has dropped dramatically over the past two decades.
On March 25, Corazon Aquino abolished the old National Assembly (Batasang Pambansa) and the Marcos constitution of 1973. A provisional constitution has been adopted giving the president very wide powers, including that of governing by decree. A committee is going to be set up to draft a new constitution.
Within a year, the constitution drafted will be put to a plebiscite, and a new National Assembly is to be elected. The objective, according to Corazon Aquino, is to "put out the cancer in our political system." (1) This is to be done by acquiring the means to liquidate the political and institutional legacy of the dictatorship.
This radical decision was expected. But it has deeply divided government circles. According to the minister Aquilino Pimentel, himself less than enthusiastic about the president's decision, half of the cabinet members raised objections.
In fact, the provisional constitution gives discretionary powers to Corazon Aquino at a time when competition is raging among the parties and groups that make up the present majority. Once again, the weight of the presidency has been reinforced.
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
The dismantling of the institutions of the former regime is continuing in several areas. Marcos had built up a network of tame mass communications, gagging the free press. The new regime has begun to attack this media empire.
The Times Journal (owned by Benjamin Romualdez, Imelda Marcos' brother) and the Daily Express (owned by the sugar czar Roberto Benedicto have been seized. The government has taken control of three television channels that belonged to Imee Marcos, the former dictator's daughter. Later they are to be sold off.
The premartial-law press is reappearing. The new minister of information, Teodoro Locsin Jr., himself was editor in chief of the Philippine Free Press.
Democratic freedoms, including the right of habeas corpus have been reestablished. The Philippine government has ratified the United Nations international accord on civic and political freedoms, a pact signed 20 years ago but which Marcos refused to sign because of his martial law. The enormous repressive powers of the Marcos presidency have been abolished.
In taking the radical step of decreeing a "revolutionary government" unbound by the laws and structures left over from the Marcos regime, Corazon Aquino not only dissolved the National Assembly. She also assumed the power to oust more than 1,500 mayors linked to the old regime.
TEMENDAY
NICARAGUA
TOMORROW
PHiLiPPiNES
Demonstration by supporters of the radical nationalist coalition, Bayan (DR state support, monopolies were constituted in the key sectors, and a parasitic state bourgeoisie was reinforced - a "crony capitalism," or "bureaucratic capitalism.
In its 20 years in power, the Marcos regime formed more than 300 state enterprises, while at the same time opening up the country widely to foreign capital. The main financial and commercial monopolies were in sugar (Roberto Bendicto) and coconuts (Eduardo Cojuangco, a cousin of the new president, who has fled).
The presidential family, the MarcosRomualdez clan, itself offered, to the point of caricature, a picture of a corrupt, nepotistic, and graftridden bourgeoisie.
The new regime has seized or frozen Marcos' holdings in the Philippines and is trying to get such measures applied against the assets that he has stashed away abroad, in particular in the United States and Switzerland. It is liquidating the privileges and protection of the "bureaucratic" bourgeoisie. It is attacking the monopolies in sugar and coconuts.
In the course of this, it is going to run up against sharp resistance and some delicate problems. For example, Juan Ponce Enrile, minister of defence under Marcos and still in that post today, made his fortune under martial law in the coconut business, working hand in glove with Eduardo Cojuangco.
It is, however, in this area that the Aquino government's economic policy is the clearest. In fact, dismantling the parasitic apparatus built up under the dictatorship is in line both with the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the program of the modern big-business bourgeoisie. It also coincides with the interests of the sugar and coconut planters, who have long been under the heel of the financial and commercial monopolies and subjected to the competition of Marcos' cronies. The regime hopes thereby to restore the confidence and initiative of international big-business circles and the Philippine bourgeoisie.
To this end, Corazon Aquino has named professionals to the key economic posts in the government. The minister of finance, Jaime Ongpin, chief of one of the main mining trusts and close to the Church, is quite representative of the Makati Business Club. which under Marcos served as a kind of parliament for the opposition bourgeoisie. The minister of commerce and industry, Jose Concepcion, has a similar background. He is the head of a big-business clan with interests in agriculture, food and light industry. Also, he heads the country's biggest association of Catholic laypeople. The minister of tourism, Jose Antonio Gonzales, controls an industrial and commercial group. The minister of agriculture, Ramon Mitra, a member of the Philippine Democratic Party - Combat (PDP-Laban), is a big stock raiser on the island of Palawan.
Nonetheless, the government's desire to revive and reform the economy is going to run up against fundamental problems in the context of a bad economic situation. The economy is in a bad state because of the disarray left behind by Ferdinand Marcos, who literally looted the public treasury. At the end of his regime, he built up his holdings abroad considerably. And he printed money without any restraint to finance his election campaign. The printing presses churned out around 12.5 thousand million pesos for that purpose.
Since the end of 1983, business closures have multiplied, and unemployment has gone up drastically. Raw materials prices are generally very low on the world market. In two years, 1984-1985, the country's gross national product has declined by 10%. It is probably going to shrink again in 1986. The economic and social crisis in the Philippines has no parallel among its partners in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Dependence on imperialism presents a major problem
The primary underlying problem is a very great dependence on the world market and imperialism. The scale of "crony capitalism" (sometimes protected by tariff barriers that the IMF wants to see dismantled) should not give rise to any illusions. The Marcos regime did not implement a policy for industrializing the country. Its dependence — always great because of its colonial past - has increased over the last two decades.
The direct influence of foreign capital and the control it has over commercial exports fruit in Mindanao, for instance) have increased. On the insistent "advice" of the World Bank, economic development has been oriented toward exports, thereby perpetuating the coun try's dependence on international markets. This is heightened by the markets. This is heightened by the International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
fact that the export trade is concentrated to a great extent in a few main areas sugar, coconuts, copper, forestry products, tourism (including prostitution), labor power, semi-conductors, and clothing.
Most of these industries today face a severe crisis. This is particularly true for sugar, in which the AquinoCojuangco family has major interests. Sugar-cane growing faces very strong competition from supermechanized plantations in other countries; from the European sugar-beet growers, who enjoy solicitous protection from their governments; and from artificial sweeteners.
At the end of 1985, a pound of sugar was worth 25 US cents on the world market, while the Philippine production cost was 14 cents! As a result, out of the 400,000 hectares that had been under sugar cane in the islands, 170,000 were taken out of production. But hundreds of thousands of workers depend on this industry. Some 250,000 of them are already without work and prey to want. (4)
After a brief upturn in 1983, revenue from exports of coconut products fell again in 1985 to 50 per cent of the level of the previous year, and a third of the islands' population depends on this industry.
Exports of manufactured products are restricted by the policy of quotas imposed by the Western countries, in clothing for example. Competition from other dominated countries and technological advances in the imperialist countries, in particular in the armament industry and microelectronics, further limit exports.
Dismal examples of the dynamic of an "outward-turned" economy, tourism and tourism-prostitution, as well as the export of labor power, have become key sources of foreign currency. But in this area also, the future is somber.
The massive export of labor power promoted by the Marcos government has considerably weakened the coun try's potential. It is often skilled workers who are exported - from doctors and nurses, who are cruelly lacking in the countryside and the poor urban neighborhoods, to elec-.. tricians and telephone workers.
The dictatorship took its pound of flesh from this emigration by trying to control the repatriation of the emigrants' wages and by imposing double taxation. Phony employment offices multiplied, ruthlessly fleecing many of those looking for jobs abroad or promising honest jobs to women who found themselves forced into prostitution when they reached their destinations.
The consequences of this massive exporting of workers on social and family life have sometimes been very
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
The trade unions in the Philippines THE OVERALL structures of the Philippine trade-union movement may change profoundly as a result of the fall of the Marcos regime. The main groupings are the following:
- The May 1 Movement (Kilusang Mayo Uno, KMU). Founded in 1980, it is the main "class struggle" union confederation. It is militant and independent of the regime. At its founding, it had 50,000 members. In 1985, it claimed 500,000. It includes federations, regional unions and independent unions. It does not belong to any world confederation but is recognized by some national confederations (the ICTU in Ireland, the NZFL of New Zealand, ACTU in Australia and the CGIL in Italy). Its general secretary, Rolando Olalia, succeeded his father, Felixberto. The KMU is present in the industrial sector, in mining and in the plantations. (1)
The TUPAS. Founded in 1972 by Bonifacio Tupaz, it claimed 120,000
-members in 1985. It belongs to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), whose headquarters is in Prague and which includes the unions in the Eastern bloc countries, as well as others such as the French CGT.
- The Federation of Free Workers (FFW). It was founded in 1980 by American Jesuits in the context of the Cold War. After supporting the Marcos regime, it took its distance from it in the 1980s. It belongs to the World Confederation of Labor (WL, the Catholic confederation) and is supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in West Germany.
- The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP). It was organized in 1975 by the Marcos regime under martial law. It claimed 1,200,000 members in 1985. It is led by Democrito Mendoza and belongs to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), like FO in France and the AFL-CIO in the United States. It has become quite compromised by its collaboration with the regime over a decade.
"Trade-union" alliances have appeared with the radicalization of the social struggle in the Philippines. One was the MP (Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Philippine Workers Unity) which was formed in 1981 and included the KMU, the TUPAS and independent unions. This alliance was banned by the government in 1982 and its leaders were arrested. In 1984, the PKMP (Pambansang Koalisyon ng mga Manggagawa Laban sa Kahirapan, National Coalition of Workers Against Poverty) appeared. It includes the same organizations as the MP and extended its support to the dissident federations of the FFW and the TUCP.
See the interview with Roland Olalia published in 'International Viewpoint', No. 68, January 28, 1985.
grave. But getting a job overseas has often served as a life preserver for poor families suffering from unemployment and declining living standards. Hundreds of thousands of workers have in fact benefited from much higher wages overseas than they could have hoped to get if they stayed at home.
Today, with the economic crisis and falling oil revenues, the international labor market is contracting. In fact, for a decade most Philippine emigrant workers have gone to the building sites in the Middle East (while doctors, nurses, domestics and prostitutes have found jobs more readily in the West or in Hong Kong).
If the economic crisis continues in the Philippines, the cutbacks in infrastructural developmental projects in the oil-producing countries threaten to have profound social consequences in the islands.
The whole policy of developing the country by means of an export economy is now in question. The new government recognizes that and is talking about building up the domestic market. But the country's dependence also shows up on the politico-financial level. The form of growth that the Marcos government adopted, under the aegis of the World Bank, has led to one of the worse situations of indebtedness in Asia. The external debt is officially estimated at 26,000 million dollars and semiofficially at 30,000 million.
In the negotiations on rescheduling of interest payments on the debt, the IMF imposed drastic conditions giving to itself a veritable right of overseeing government decisions. The journalist Jose Galand wrote: "The IMF has extended a standby credit facility of 615 million special drawing rights (SDR, worth 710.8 million US dollars) under an agreement that gives the fund considerable say over the country's economic policies." (5)
The IMF makes a quarterly report on the implementation of the political directions it has imposed. Its judgements influence the group of 483 foreign banks that hold the Philippine debts. It is possible that
* philippine economic crisis: Waiting Figures cited by Walden Bello in for the receiver," 'Inside Asia, November-December 1985. On the crisis of the sugar industry, see in particular Philippe Pons, "Le sucre amer de Negros, Petitjean, 'Le Monde, March 25, 1986, and Paul "Growing guerrilla movement fuelled by peasant desperation", International Viewpoint, No. 49, March 26, 1984.
5. Jose Galand, 'Far Eastern Economic Review', March 13, 1986.
5
in view of the present situation the IMF will display caution. It wants to avoid having to declare the country bankrupt out of fear of the possible repercussions. But through its control of credit it holds a very powerful means of applying pressure. And the Philippines' margin for maneuver in regard to this powerful imperialist institution was further reduced under the Marcos regime, which thus again sold out the national sovereignty.
In fact, the policy of the IMF is for removing all protection against the competition of imperialist capital, for drastic austerity policies paid for by the poor masses, for a contraction rather than an expansion of the internal market and for weakening rather than strengthening the autonomy of national capital.
The country's dependence has become a formidable obstacle in the way of social and economic reforms. But any policy of radical reform, in particular in agriculture, runs up against two other underlying problems - the weight of the traditionally dominant social strata and the inherent dynamic of the capitalist market.
The new government, like its predecessors, knows that 70 per cent of the population lives from agriculture and that it has to establish its authority in the countryside where the Communist insurrection is most deeply rooted.
Corazon Aquino and her advisers are probably aware of the importance of a policy of agrarian reform and support for the peasantry. But the whole of the contemporary history of the Philippines shows that there is a long way between proclaiming an agrarian reform and really transforming the agrarian structures in the interests of the working people in the rural population.
Already in the 1950s, in response to the Hukbalahap peasant uprising on the island of Luzon, Ramon Magsaysay was elected president on a program calling for agrarian reform. İn December 1952, moreover, an American investigating committee had created a scandal among the Philippine notables. The Harding Report produced by this committee called in fact for nothing less than the elimination of tenant farming and sharecropping by distributing the land.
In 1963, it was the turn of President Diosdado Macapagal to introduce an agrarian reform law. President Marcos himself was the official promoter of "green revolution": the agrarian reform law of 1972, the Masagana 99 program for rural credit of 1973, research on high-yield seeds (the Institute of RiceGrowing Research - IRI - was set up in the Philippines) and later the cooperative movement, Samahang 6
Nayon.
In the past 30 years, Philippine agriculture has undergone considerable evolution. The Magsaysay plan helped to bring about the success of the American counterinsurgency policy by raising the hopes of the peasants concerned. The market economy has spread widely throughout the country. Agribusiness has spread to new regions and taken on more modern forms. The methods of cultivation have been modified with the introduction of high-yield seeds, mechanization and industrial fertilizers and pesticides.
However, no government reform has put an end to the conditions of exploitation, oppression, poverty and dependence suffered by the working peasants, as well as by the agricultural workers. On the contrary, a dramatic contrast has grown up between the wealth of agricultural produce produced by the country and the growing poverty of those who create this wealth. Small farmers trapped by capitalist market
There are two underlying causes of this. The political and economic power of the traditional possessing classes (the landowners who are also traders and usurers, the big planters) and of the modern possessing classes (the entrepreneurs, agents of multinational companies) over the small peasants, tenants, and agricultural never been broken. Quite often it has been those who had no interest in applying the radical clauses of agrarian reform laws who were officially charged with implementing them (mayors who are also landlords, for example).
Furthermore, the omnipresent capitalist market does not favor the small producers. Modern agriculture involves big investments. The price of fertilizers and pesticides has been increasing faster than profits from the harvest. The peasants have no control over the market. The traditional social structures and the expanding capitalist market have combined to maintain the dependence of the poor strata, in particular through debt.
To break the conservative power of the rural elites and the logic of the capitalist market, laws and programs from above have never been sufficient in the Philippines. There are a lot of people today who know that from experience in the provinces. And so it is understandable that peasants and agricultural workers display skepticism about such things. (6)
A real agrarian reform is not going to be imposed by decree. It will have to be won by mass struggle. In order to keep agrarian reform from getting bogged down in the traditional social structures and from being diverted to the profit of agribusiness, it has to be carried out by revolutionary methods.
It is on this point obviously that the weakness of the "revolution" of February 22-26, 1986, is most glaring. The provinces did not get time to move a muscle. Even in Manila, where the population got a taste of the experience of "people's power" - the might represented by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators - this power was not structured by bodies representative of it, by mass committees.
Moreover, what is true for the countryside also holds for the urban centers, where poverty has reached unbearable levels, as attested by the growth of child prostitution. (7) Without an independent, radical mass struggle, the transformations promised by the new government will never become a reality.
The activity of the revolutionary forces (8) and the organized mass movement will be decisive in determining what benefit the poor strata will derive from the overthrow of Marcos. The role of the neighborhood associations, unions (9) and peasant movements (10) cannot be underestimated.
In a "central statement," the May 1 Movement (Kilusang Mayo Uno - KMU) has said that its components "recognize the Aquino government as the product of the sovereign will of the Filipino people and support the democratic reforms that it has initiated."
But at the same time the KMU is advancing 16 demands that represent the immediate interests of the poor masses themselves, as well as five more general ones, stressing that "the fight to uplift the economic and political rights of the impoverished and repressed Filipino workers continues to be our urgent task." (11) It must be pointed out that on
6. See for example, Daniel SouthAquino," 'International Herald Tribune', erland, "Farmers are Skeptical March 18, 1986.
According to an official report, in 1985 in the city of Manila alone, there were at least 20,000 minors engaged in prostitution. Child prostitution is notable in a dozen regions (including the environs of big US military bases). See Roland-Pierre Paringaux, 'Le Monde, ; May 18, 1985. See also his article in 'le Monde diplomatique, January 1986: "Un autre combat pour la survie aux Philippines. Au coeur de la misere urbaine.
8. In a future article I will come back to the evolution of the Philippine left.
9. On the unions, see the box and •Philippines Information', No. 35, October 1985; No. 36, November 1985; and No. 37, December 1985.
10. On the birth of the peasant move. ment in the Philippines (KMP), see 'Philippines Information', No. 39, February 1986.
11. Kilusang Mayo Uno Central Statement, three typed pages, March 1986.
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
The legal political parties
BEFORE THE imposition of martial law, two big bourgeois parties alternated in power - the
Liberal Party and the Nationalist
Party. Marcos belonged to the former and then shifted to the latter in 1965 in order to assure his election to the presidency. Then he destroyed the two-party system.
Under martial law, he imposed his own official party, the New
Society Movement (KBL).
Today the major legal parties, not including the extra-parliamentary organizations, are the following:
- The United Nationalist and
Democratic Organization (UNIDO).
Formed in August 1980, UNIDO is a grouping of about a dozen political groups, generally conservative, including the leftovers from the Nationalist Party and the
Liberal Party. Among its more prominent members are Salvador
Laurel (vice president, prime minister, minister of foreign affairs),
Rogaciano Mercado (minister of public works), Alberto Romulo
(minister of the budget) Ernesto
Maceda (minister of natural resources). It remains to be seen if
UNIDO, which is a coalition, will become a real party.
- The Nationalist Party. It was on its ticket that Marcos was elected president in 1965. It was led by the brothers Jose and
Salvador Laurel, and the latter broke in 1979 become, a year later, the principal representative of UNIDO.
The Liberal Party. Benigno
Aquino was its secretary general and Gerardo Roxas, its chairperson.
Under martial law, this party split in two, with a progressive wing represented by the former president Diosdado Macapagal and
Jovito Salonga (who today is at the head of a presidential committee for clean government). The right wing is identified with Eva March 21 there were 38 strikes recorded in the country, actions essentially over salary demands or calling for the departure of the Marcos partisans still remaining. Between March 21 and April 1 the 22,000 Philippine employees at the American bases also struck.
The people's revolutionary fight, the struggle to transform the society, is also an anti-imperialist fight to break out of the dependence in which the country has been kept. Moreover, there is no doubt about Washington's readiness to intervene. The most recent events have been the occasion for a full-fledged press campaign in the United States aimed at rehabilitating the principle of active intervention by US imperialism - in the name of democracy, of course - in
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
Estrada Kalaw, a former senator who ran on the UNIDO ticket in 1984, despite the call for boycotting the elections from the party chairperson, Salonga, who was then in exile in the United States.
- The Philippine Democratic Party - Combat (PDP-Laban). This party came out of the fusion of two organizations opposing Marcos. The Laban was formed in 1978 by Benigno Aquino, husband of the present president of the Philippines, who was arrested by Marcos in 1972. In 1978, he was still in prison. He was finally released in 1980, and then assassinated in 1983. The other component, the Philippine Democratic Party, founded in February 1982, was strongly influenced by the so-called social democratic current, of Catholic origin.
Among the more prominent members of the PDP-Laban are Aquilino Pimentel from the province of Cagayan de Oro (present minister of local administration), Ramon Mitra, a Palawan rancher (minister of agriculture and food).
- Regional movements: The Mindanao Alliance, led by Homobono Adaza in the province of West Misamis; the Concerned Citizens Party (CCP) of Cesar Climaco, mayor of Zamboanga (Mindanao), who was assassinated in November 1984; and Panaghiusa (Unity) in Cebu.
The KBL, formed by Marcos, is today in the midst of crisis. Juan Ponce Enrile (minister of defence) was a member of this party. Now it is led by Jose Rono and Cesar Cirata (former prime minister under the Marcos regime).
The Philippines Nationalist Party (PNDP). Formed on March 15, 1986, by Blas Ople (former minister of labor under Marcos and a leader of the KBL). It has revived the name of the old Nationalist Party of the Laurel brothers. the countries of the Third World.
This campaign to shape public opinion has at times taken on extraordinarily nostalgic and mystical notes, as in the statement of David J. Steinberg, president of Long Island University: "American objectives in the Philippines have not changed since the turn of the century, when the United States took possession (sic) of the Islands: America wanted to establish and preserve a stable, pro-US society. It also sought to enhance its geopolitical position and military power ... while encouraging Filipinos to develop and preserve their democracy. ... Condescending as it may appear today, William Howard Taft's phrase little brown brothers' has been internalized by many Filipinos, who feel a kind of fictive kinship ... Rudyard Kipling implored Americans to take up the white man's burden' in the Philippines... Whether it was what the historian Richard Hofstadter called 'the voice of God' intoning Manifest Destiny that urged us on, or only 'the carnal larynx of Theodore Roosevelt,' America imperially imposed its might on a devoutly Roman Catholic society ...
"People have long been debating the perplexing questions about when, if ever, it is appropriate to intervene in the affairs of others. Events in the Philippines raise this question anew ... Whatever actions the United States does or does not take now, it cannot help but influence events in the Philippines ... America should accept these facts and not be embarrassed to use its economic muscle, political influence and moral authority America is still a proselytizing democracy. It still believes that it is a city on a hill, a new Jerusalem, the last best hope of mankind.' Even more significant, many Filipinos also believe this ... Surely America still has an obligation to loan its kin a ladder." (12)
This almost unbelievable rhetoric says a lot about the ideological climate that the interventionists are trying to create - in the name of democracy obviously. The international scope of this offensive aimed at legitimizing US intervention appears clearly in an article written by Charles Krauthammer for the Washington Post Writers Group:
"Notice how few people, American or Filipino, seem bothered by all this 'interference in the internal affairs of other countries.' And rightly so. In friendly countries ruled by dictators, it should be the policy of the United States to meddle on behalf of a 'third force,' a democratic alternative to a pro-American despot on the one hand and to Communist insur gents on the other."
What is true for the Philippines should be true for Chile also - and Nicaragua. The "semi-interventionists," those who support American action in the Philippines but denounce it in Nicaragua (and vice versa) are told:
"Why not come clean and admit this principle: that out of strategic and moral necessity the United States should and will intervene in the world to promote democracy wherever it can and when it can do so without unbearable cost or risk. It has started to face its responsibilities in the Philippines. Other democrats around the world have the right to ask: Why not here, too?" (13)
Every point is false in this "common sense" argument. It is not
2. International Herald Tribune ebruary 4. 1981
13. 'International Herald Tribune', February 7, 1986.
7
BRITAIN Washington that freed the islands from Marcos but the Philippine people. By their mass mobilizations, they upset the American plans for "reform with continuity." (14)
The problem does not lie in having the United States - an imperialist great power - intervene in the name of democracy. It lies simply in stopping its intervention. If Washington had not intervened in the country, the Marcos dictatorship would have been overthrown long ago!
There is nothing in common between the Chile of Pinochet and the Nicaragua of the Sandinista revolution! In Nicaragua, Which has a people's government, the mechanisms of dependency were broken with the overthrow of Somoza.
The problem is the policy of strangling the revolution (and thereby the democratic freedoms won by the people in the course of the revolution) that Washington has been pursuing by escalating intervention.
History tends to repeat itself. Already at the end of the last century, the Philippine people liberated themselves from the three-centuries-long yoke of Spanish domination. They were in fact the first people in the region to overthrow a colonial government through insurrection.
After buying from the Spanish what they did not own, the United States imposed its own domination on the islands at the cost of a bloody war and thanks to the capitulation of a large part of the elites. This did of a large part of the elites. This did not keep the United States from portraying itself subsequently as a force for democracy come to liberate their "little brown brothers"
The democratic verbiage of the United States under Reagan should not create any illusions. The American policy is a strong-arm policy. In the name of the "Reagan Doctrine" of fighting Communism, "The administration has turned to a Central Intelligence Agency reinvigorated and greatly expanded under the activist leadership of William J. Casey." (15)
"Moderate" elements of the CIA, such as deputy director John N. MacMahon, were pushed aside. The annual budget of the agency "far exceeds 500 million dollars, which is much more funding than at any time since the Vietnam war." (16) In the Philippines as elsewhere, American imperialism will defend its own interests - never those of the Filipino people.
14. See Paul Petitjean, "After the fall of Marcos," 'IV" No. 95, March 24, 1986.
15. Patrick E. Tyler and David B. Ottaway, "CIA Covert Role Flourishes Under 'Reagan Doctrine,' " International Herald Tribune', March 10, 1986.
16. Ibid. 8