September Newsletter
ON WEAKENING FACTIONS AND WIDENING MASS BASE
NEWS SUMMARY:
1. COMELEC extends voter registration, open from October 11 to 30
2. Sandiganbayan ordered Traders Royal Bank (a Marcos-owned bank) to pay PH Gov’t around PHP 96M and $5.4M in ill-gotten wealth
3. PH Army behind cyberattacks on Bulatlat and Altermidya
To date, the economic crisis of the Duterte Legacy worsened the unemployment to 3.88M and the outstanding debt to PHP 11.64T.
The criminal negligence of the Duterte administration in the time of increasing COVID-19-related deaths and state-sponsored killings are reasons to justify the correctness of online and on-ground protests. At the height of the pandemic, these protests are translated as the mass campaigns and struggles throughout history.
One way to measure the democratic maturity of the state is if either they allow or prevent protests. In particular, the masses experience firsthand the state’s disinformation and terror to suppress their dissent, yet facts will always outweigh deception.
The tactic of arousing, organizing, and mobilizing is the optimal strategy possible against state repression. While it is our necessity to bring the people’s struggles to the broadest masses, we must both have the broad political conception and will to strategically direct them towards agitation.
As politicians now recognize their allies and rivalries, the upcoming 2022 elections become sharper than ever, where the ruling elite is forming factions — either strengthens or shatters existing alliances — that inevitably narrows the Duterte-Marcos faction.
Along with the collective struggle of extensive ideological preparation comes the effort to continuously raise the masses’ consciousness of their right to involve themselves in the country’s affairs. Despite the elections known to be instituted with the preservation of imperialism, still, the organizing efforts must recognize legal processes that would allow tactical reforms benefitting the broadest masses.
The political circumstances and its peculiarities allow us to see the efficiency of protests and elections. But the defining feature is numbers, which appeals to the aspirations of political change. In essence, while factional tensions arise, their dynamics is of fundamental political importance. We must use these resources to the greatest political advantage.
