A Tyrannical Act Of Desperation (Philippines)

[IndianaGreen]

Three days ago, Philippines President and Bush ally Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed an executive order proclaiming a state of emergency claiming that her political opponents and terrorists were plotting a coup against her. Since then, she has arrested opposition leaders, shutdown newspapers critical of her, and has clamped down on demonstrations.

Proclamation 1017 Is A Tyrannical Act Of Desperation, Incites The People To Intensify Oust-Arroyo Movement

Prof. Jose Ma. Sison

National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Chief Political Consultant
February 25, 2006

Gloria M. Arroyo has issued Proclamation 1017 to combine a declaration of a state of emergency and invocation of commander-in-chief authority to call the troops to suppress rebellion. By this proclamation, she claims to have the power to prohibit peaceful assemblies, revoke rally permits issued ministerially by local mayors, order warrantless arrests, suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, take over the mass media and public utilities, superimpose military officers on civilian authorities,and so on.

The real malevolent objective of Arroyo in issuing the proclamation is to suppress the people’s assemblies in the nationwide anniversary celebration of the events of 22-25 February 1986 that resulted in the overthrow of Marcos. She is terribly afraid that the people’s mass actions critical of her rotten and hated regime would encourage her own military and police forces to withdraw support from her.

Indeed, she has undertaken so-called preemptive actions by ordering the arrest of military and police officers suspected of opposing her regime and revoking rally permits nationwide and ordering the violent dispersal of people in peaceful assembly. The proclamation and its immediate consequences demonstrate that Arroyo is tyrannizing the people and even her own military and police officers whom she suspects of siding with the people.

Proclamation 1017 is a tyrannical act of desperation by an utterly isolated usurper of authority and her small coterie. It maliciously misrepresents the movement of the people and the broad united front as a mere conspiracy of the so-called extremes of the Left and the Right. It proves that Arroyo will go to any length, including the bloody suppression of the people and her opponents. It is the prelude to worse tyrannical acts to come if the people and the broad united front of patriotic, progressive and all other anti-Arroyo forces do not act promptly to stop her.

To oust the Arroyo regime, it suffices for the legal patriotic, progressive and other anti-Arroyo forces and their allies among the active and retired military and police forces to do their best in mustering their own respective following and in drawing the broad masses of the people to gigantic mass actions in the vicinity of the presidential palace and key points in the national capital region and in the provinces. The people hate the Arroyo regime for its puppetry to foreign interests, electoral fraud, corruption, brutality and mendacity.

PWRC

[cliss]

1. How many more of these rebellions can the US

tolerate? Before it says, "Sorry, we're preoccupied in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran (emergency propaganda), Hugo Chavez, Saudi Arabia (oil facility bombing), Israel, etc etc etc.

Trust me the way this administration operates, we cannot even function with a SMALL amount of crises. That's obvious.

[Shelor]

2. ugh!

[Paranoid Pessimist]

3. I Wish We Had Philippine-like "People Power" here

Marcos, Estrada and now (possibly) Gloria Arroyo - driven out of office by massive displays of public dissent. Here (remember the worldwide demonstrations at the start of the current war) demonstrations are kind of scoffed off by the powers that be, not much attention is paid.