RECIEVED VIA MAIL.
Communist Party of the Philippines June 16, 2008
The Filipino people have long been suffering under a regime of intransigent puppetry, deceptions, corruption, anti-people socio-economic policies and repression.
The people's conditions have critically worsened especially in the recent years under the Arroyo regime. Its mendicant neoliberal, deregulatory and other pro-imperialist "globalization" policies and sellout of national and people's interests in collusion with big foreign, comprador and bureaucratic plunderers have resulted in the current series of rapid and sharp increases in the prices of fuel, power, food and other basic commodities and the ensuing increase in government tax collections.
Oil prices in particular have risen more than 250% since the start of the regime in 2001. Since the start of the year, these have risen 15 times, escalating to weekly hikes at record levels the past few weeks. Rice prices have more than doubled in Metro Manila (and more than tripled in other areas like Mindanao) since the start of the regime, with the most rapid and steepest hikes during the past three months. Inflation of basic commodity prices are presently at a record high since 2001.
The ruling regime has done nothing to alleviate the plight of the people amid the upwardly spiralling prices. Worse, it has stubbornly continued to block the demand of workers for a P125 legislated increase in the daily minimum wage. It rejects price controls and obstinately defends the oil price deregulation policy. It refuses to remove the 12% Value Added Tax (VAT), especially on oil and electricity, that imposes a tremendous burden on the people.
The Arroyo regime is even now taking advantage of the people's plight and deceiving them by showcasing "subsidies" for "lifeline" power users, farmers and students as cover for Arroyo and her ilks' self-indulgence with the increased VAT collections. Just as they did with the previous "subsidies" like the Ginintuang Masagang Ani, the bulk of these new and bigger "subsidies" worth tens of billions of pesos will only be used to line the pockets of Gloria Arroyo and her clique and grease their electoral and political malevolence. Malacañang has yet to account for scores of billions of unaccounted juggled public funds.
As head of the reactionary puppet regime, Gloria Arroyo is criminally culpable for collusion with foreign oil monopolies and big bourgeois comprador and bureaucrat capitalists and for the escalation of the prices of fuel, power, food and other basic commodities and services. The US-Arroyo regime is principally responsible for the worsening backwardness and destruction of the country's industry and agriculture, massive unemployment and underemployment and the intensifying and unprecedented poverty and hunger of the mass of the Filipino people.
It is criminally culpable for stealing billions of pesos from public funds. Arroyo and her cohorts have engaged in pocketing and splurging billions even as they deprive the people of much-needed support for education, health, low-cost housing and other urgently needed social services.
The Arroyo regime has wrought even worse cruelty and brutalities upon the people with its relentless "all-out war," extrajudicial killings, abductions, illegal arrests and detention, torture, ruthless bombings, mass destruction and evacuations of communities and widespread repression and terrorism.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) champions the unity and struggle of the Filipino people against the US-Arroyo regime's sellout of national and people's interests and plunderous collusion with big foreign companies, comprador capitalists and bureaucrats. The CPP supports the people's demand for the scrapping of the Oil Industry Deregulation Law and other deregulation laws, for the nationalization of the oil industry and other basic and strategic industries, for the imposition of state control on the prices of fuel and food and other basic commodities and services, and for the guaranteed delivery of much-needed public social services.
Amid the rapidly worsening socio-economic and political crisis of the ruling regime and system, the CPP encourages the people to go to the streets and other public venues to express their outrage and wage their struggles. Rallies, marches, protest concerts, public video showings and other cultural presentations, fora and community meetings, alternative classes, school and office walkouts, factory protests, transport strikes, noise barrages, boycotts and other forms of collective protest action are bound to spiral towards a generalized and nationwide protest movement as the Arroyo regime remains intransigent and continues to ignore the people's legitimate and just demands.
In the face of intensifying fascist repression by the regime and its armed forces, security forces and police, activists have to work hard, exercise creativity and redouble their efforts in agitating, organizing and mobilizing the people in factories, communities, schools and all other places of their work and residence. They must immerse themselves among the people, address their day-to-day problems at the grassroots, link these with the basic problems and key issues facing the whole country, and raise the level of the people's determination and militancy in struggle. With the people's help, they must learn how to deal with enemy spies and efforts of government forces to intimidate, harass and suppress them and the people and to overcome the regime and its armed forces and police's fascist counter-organizing and counter-rally measures.
For its part, the New People's Army (NPA) under the guidance and command of the CPP is accelerating its recruitment and training of new Red fighters and commanders and acquisition of arms in order to carry out more tactical offensives against the armed forces of the puppet reactionary state. The revolutionary masses are expanding the revolutionary mass organizations, building their local organs of political power, stepping up agrarian and other mass struggles in guerrilla bases, fronts and zones and other areas, and participating actively in the armed struggle.
The CPP calls on the Filipino people to rise and intensify the revolutionary struggle and all other forms of struggle to bring down the rotten reactionary puppet ruling regime and the entire underlying semicolonial and semifeudal system. From the rubbles of the rotten system, the people's revolution will build a people's democratic government and a revolutionary system to finally achieve genuine national freedom and democracy and continuing socio-economic progress in the country
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