Philippines Uprising? posted by Richard Seymour

The Philippines has seen repeated uprisings throughout the century: from the Huks rebellion in 1950, ably crushed by the government with the assistance of the US, to the anti-Marcos uprising in 1986 which succeeded. In 2001, President Joseph Estrada was faced with a wave of tumult after accusations of corruption, and now his successor Gloria Arroyo is faced with the same. In fact, Arroyo has been found on wiretapped conversations which she admits are genuine to have ordered others to pad her votes in the 2004 election. A number of witnesses have come out, accusing her of financial corruption and receiving kickbacks in order to fund her election fraud. She also made herself deeply unpopular by allowing the US to station bases in the country.

In part, the crisis of hegemony for Arroyo is such that key business sectors have withdrawn their backing, about a third of her cabinet has resigned and called on her to do likewise, and one political party has left her governing coalition.

Herbert Docena of Focus on the Global South writes:

While the left groups are united in demanding the president’s removal, their tactics diverge. The Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its front organisations have publicly linked arms with the Marcoses, Estradas and other members of the elite opposition — even as they’ve sought to sideline other left groups outside their fold.

The fragmented sections of the non-CPP left, on the other hand, have achieved their highest level of political unity since the many post Marcos splits. They have formed the Laban ng Masa (Fight of the Masses) coalition, which calls for a “transitional revolutionary government” to replace Arroyo and end elite rule.

Though various religious groups have demanded the president’s resignation, the influential Roman Catholic church hierarchy has decided not to play politics this time, effectively strengthening Arroyo’s hand. It appears that the middle class — the decisive factor in previous uprisings — has yet to move decisively.

Meanwhile there is a beeline to the US embassy these days, as various sections of the elite opposition jockey to obtain Washington’s blessings. While the backing of the US may not be decisive, it could prove to be pivotal.

Ever since the US annexed the Philippines in 1899 and subsequently installed a clique of “hacienderos” (big landlords) in the colonial government, it has intervened in Philippine politics every step of the way.

In 1986 the US withdrew its support from Marcos and proceeded instead to ensure that “people power” demonstrations were contained and that moderate pro-US politicians would eventually take the helm.

The US had a major falling out with Arroyo over the latter’s decision to withdraw Philippine troops from Iraq last year. Nevertheless it is not clear that the US has abandoned her.

More than any president since the Philippine senate voted to close down US bases in the country in 1991, Arroyo has been the US’s most pliant ally in the country in recent years. She has consented to US military operations in the country and has been one of the most vocal and loyal supporters of George Bush’s “war on terror”.

US officials have repeatedly warned that they will not tolerate extra-constitutional solutions to the crisis. This means they will move to prevent a “transitional revolutionary government” or anything that cannot guarantee the protection of their interests in the country.

As Chomsky & Herman note, "the Washington Connection" is crucial. Having colonised the country, turned it over to a pliant clique hacienda owners, helped thwart peasant insurgencies and supported Marcos' sub-fascist dictatorship (capital also approved of that dictatorship, loaning the country up to $6bn in the 1970s, even as the regime was imprisoning tens of thousands of dissidents), the US now seeks to contain moves toward genuine democratisation and ensure that conservative elites continue to rule.

Arroyo may well retain the support of international capital. Forbes fairly eulogised her last year, describing her attempts to reduce poverty in the face of a burdensome "Muslim insurgency", the Moro insurgency in the southern Philippines. It is worth noting that this particular movement has had secular-nationalist and Islamist inflections, and of course Arroyo has accused the Islamist wing of being associated with Al Qaeda through Jemaah Islamiya. But this uprising is centred around the same issues that have motivated communist and nationalist insurgency in the Philippines for decades - corruption, the distribution of land and government repression.

Historically, repression of Muslims in the south has been a hallmark of politics in the Philippines since the Spanish took the island in 1521: the 'Malays' were divided into 'pagans' and Muslim 'Moros' (moors) - perhaps it isn't too hard to see, then, how a religious distinction can be racialised. The former were to be converted, and the latter simply killed - but Muslim military resistance lasted right until the Americans took the island from the Spanish in 1898 in a colonial enterprise that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The US's attempt to take the country involved defeating a patriotic resistance - because, having initiated a movement to oust the Spanish, the Philippines had the audacity to announce its national independence shortly before the Spanish ceded the islands to the US in the Treaty of Paris. It took until 1902 to pacify most of the island, but the Moro insurgency did not abate until 1913. In defeating the rebellion, the US resorted to torture and a scorched earth policy in which entire villages were simply wiped out. Troops were known to describe the war as a "n*****r killing business". General Jacob H Smith, in an infamous order memorialised below, told his men to "Kill everyone over ten". As to the enormous number of Filipino dead and injured, General McArthur quipped that Anglo-Saxons did not wound so easily as those from "inferior races".

While much of the island was subect to concentration camps and military repression, part of occupiers' divide and rule strategy was to impose sectarian laws allowing Christians to own more land than Muslims. And so, quite predictably when the Philippines was made formally independent in 1946, the Moros pleaded not to be included in the new independent republic fearing continued repression and discrimination at the hands of the US-backed elite. They were right to be worried. The nationalist resistance movement that preceded the Islamist one began in 1968, after the Jabidah massacre in which dozens of Moro soldiers were murdered by the government. The Manila government's response was to engage in artillery bombardment, mass summary executions and the use of Christian paramilitaries to terrorise the population. Martial law was declared in 1972, and over the course of twenty-five years the Manila-Washington axis waged a vicious war that killed 100,000 Moros, and left 250,000 homeless. A peace deal was reached with the nationalist wing of the insurgency in return for 'partial autonomy' in 1996, one that was shortly thereafter expanded to include the more separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front. It was broken by Estrada in 2000, who launched a series of military attacks on the region. Gloria Arroyo, in 2001, dubbed her opponents in Moro 'terrorists' and linked them to bin Laden: in early 2002, the US dispatched 1,000 troops to help the government crack down on 'terrorism'. Another 300 were sent later in 2002. The constitution of the Philippines does not allow foreign troops to take part in actual fighting, so the troops are supposedly there as military advisers and nothing more than that. The US designates both the MILF and the Communist Party of the Philippines terrorist organisations, although the latter is not classified as terrorist even by the Philippine government.

On the 20th anniversary of the anti-Marcos uprising last week, state of emergency was introduced after army leaders declared that a coup plot had been thwarted. Opposition newspapers and dissidents have faced a severe crackdown, which has been compared to the harshest days of martial law under Marcos. This has produced quite a strong rebellion, and today it emerged that sections of the armed forces have threatened to withdraw from the chain of command, supporting student demonstrators. In many ways, what is emerging in the Philippines is a new left generated from the anticapitalist and antiwar movements. While the Maoist left strives to accomodate itself to sections of the elite, and the Moro rebellion forces are casually being butchered even as they have a peace deal with the government, the arrival of the Laban ng Masa coalition is a serious threat to the brutal Philippines ruling class and its US sponsors. Arroyo will probably not survive, and in the short run one assumes that she will be replaced by an elite figurehead. But this is not a movement delimited by national boundaries - in South Korea, a new and very militant left is expanding; in Nepal, the monarchy would have been overthrown by Maoist guerillas some time ago were it not for the fear that the US would intervene. The demonstrations in Hong Kong outside the WTO summit illustrated the arrival of this new movement across South East Asia, a movement which is tied to other forces of the Global South, in the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Latin America. These movements have supplied much of the militancy and political urgency of anticapitalist movements in the North. And of course it hardly needs stipulating that the demonstrators in the Philippines are our brothers and sisters, as are the Moro resistance fighters being wiped out by US-Manila forces. Were it not for the reach and might of imperialist governments, many of these people would already be free. They would, in fact, be showing us what democracy and freedom look like. Which is why it is incumbent on us to support them and oppose our own governments', whether the latter are trying to impose exploitative trade relations, patent drugs and crops, invade here, station troops there, send arms to help wipe out the Acehnese and West Papuans, subvert democracy in Haiti and so on. It should be painfully apparent, but perhaps sometimes it needs to be forcefully restated.