OPINION | Jose Maria Sison: Duterte is top terrorist, setting up a fascist dictatorship

November 23, 2017 - 9:24 PM
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CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison (image from https://www.ndfp.org)

Duterte is the No. 1 terrorist in the Philippines. He is culpable for the abduction, torture and mass murder of an increasing large number of poor people suspected drug users and pushers, peasants and indigenous people in suspected guerrilla fronts and Moro people suspected of aiding the Dawlah Islamiyah from the time of the indiscriminate bombing of Marawi City to the present in several Bangsamoro areas.

And yet Duterte is utterly malicious and shameless in threatening and scheming to label and outlaw as terrorists the suspected members and entireties of such revolutionary organizations as the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People´s Army and even such legal patriotic and progressive organizations as BAYAN and its affiliates.

Duterte´s bloodlust and mania for mass murder are boundless. He expects to wipe out through arbitrary arrests, torture, indefinite detention and massacre of suspected revolutionaries and legal social activists both the armed revolutionary movement and the legal democratic movement in order to set up a fascist dictatorship in the service of US imperialism and his fellow oligarchs among the big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats.

The US-Duterte regime is hell-bent on frustrating the people´s clamor for peace negotiations to address the roots of the civil war through the adoption and implementation of social, economic, political and constitutional reforms as the basis of a just and lasting peace. The regime is striving to intimidate the people with its own terrorist scheme and crimes in order to seize absolute autocratic power for Duterte and limitless opportunity for the bureaucratic corruption of his family and ruling clique.

Duterte has repeatedly announced his termination or cancellation of his reactionary government’s peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and his decision to proclaim as terrorists the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the legal patriotic and progressive organizations like BAYAN and its affiliates.

As when Marcos imposed fascist dictatorship on the Philippines in 1972, the revolutionary forces, the legal democratic forces and the broad masses of the people now have no choice but to wage all forms of resistance and fight for national sovereignty, democracy, economic development, social and cultural progress and independent foreign policy.

The Filipino people and revolutionary forces waging the people´s democratic revolution have no choice but to intensify the people´s war through an extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare in rural areas and partisan or commando operations in urban areas. The legal democratic forces and broad opposition have no choice but to develop the underground and encourage endangered activists to become fighters in the people´s army.

Duterte is already discredited as a mass murderer, political swindler, a sycophant to foreign powers and a corrupt bureaucrat. These characteristics of his and the ever worsening chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system will surely limit his ability to stay in power and accelerate the growth and rise of a revolutionary united front against his rule of greed and terror.

Even within the reactionary armed forces and police, there are already rumblings against the despotic, criminal and corrupt character of the US-Duterte regime. Duterte is now worried to death by his own fear that anti-Duterte officers within his own army and police are inclined to act in the name of the people and unite with the broad opposition and mass movement in order to end the Duterte regime in the same manner that the Marcos and Estrada regimes were ended.

READ RELATED STORY: Duterte inviting people to rebel with threats vs legal groups — CPP founder Sison