Left on a leash, drunken missteps

WITH the noisiest political movement in tow and the Liberal Party reduced to full-packed Volkswagen, the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte is indeed lucky.

The national democratic movement may have been what it disdainfully labeled leftists groups like Akbayan during the Aquino administration.

It was slow in condemning extra judicial killings in the guise of this administration’s relentless drive against drugs.

Now it is happily cheering the anti-US pronouncements of the president. The president by far is now the loudest agit-prop barker shouting “Imperialismo Ibagsak!” Surely, you will not hear them shout “Ibagsak ang Rehimeng Estados Unidos-Duterte!” But will we hear them shout “Ibagsak ang Rehimeng Tsina-Duterte?” It is doubtful.

While every peace advocate is happy with the progress made in the peace process between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front – representing the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing the New Peoples’ Army, any substantive peace agreement should be based on actual reforms happening on the ground.

While Duterte rhetorically shouts anti-US slogan – specifically against outgoing US President Barack Obama, would his economic policy changed from its neo-liberal capitalist framework? There are no signs it would. He would most likely just replace it with China and Russia.

Chinese investments are already here. It would be interesting if he could strike a deal with Russia to import cheap natural gas, it being the largest producer in the world. It would also be interesting if this government can strike a deal for cheaper petroleum from Venezuela, a non-US aligned original member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec)? Would we finally be seeing Citgo gas stations mushrooming alongside Chevron Caltex and Shell? There are no telltale signs we are going in that direction.

It would be interesting if along with the President’s mouth, his economic team start a non-neo liberal economic framework and set-up safety nets to protect Filipinos from the ongoing capital flight and the continued devaluation of the dollar-pegged Philippine peso.

With The Mouth saying things not expressed in actual policy, it is hard to determine who is running the country, especially our economy.

Maybe we will just wake up one day with the Russian mafia running alongside the Binondo stock market.

Recent world history is replete with social experiments that have gone awry. Burma, now Myanmar had opened up after almost 50 years of catastrophic socialist experiment started by Ne Win, and around 20 years of brutal military dictatorship of Than Shwe. Of course, there was the genocidal regime of Cambodia’s Pol Pot.

Duterte’s political outlook, starting from his father’s relationship with the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and his cavorting with the dictator’s decendants does make him a rightest. Even his short association with Jose Maria Sison as a student does not make him a leftist ideologue. If there is anything common with him and the failed socialists is his murderousness. Perhaps too, his murderousness can be shared by the Philippine left whose history is plagued by its bloody witchhunt in the late 1980s to the early 1990s that claimed over a thousand lives of their fellow comrades. Of course, the left has made a so-called rectification of that bloody campaign, but that experience leaves an indelible black eye on the movement.

Now we are happy with the resumption of peace talks with the communists. Aside from rhetorics, what reforms that would serve the bottomline of rescuing majority of Filipinos from poverty is being offered on the table of the Filipino masses. It remains unclear.

Now aside from demanding release of their jailed comrades – the so called peace consultants – what is the tangible effect of this peace process with a movement whose armed combatants has dwindled and reduced to pockets of territories of indigenous people? Whose open political movement is becoming stale, with cadre’s either poor ideologues, actually demagogues and a few progressive politicians. But still, since it joined the party list system, it’s political mass base has been stuck at around four million votes. This open political movement has allied with various elite political parties to field senatorial candidates, but has miserably failed up to the last election. What can be expected of a revolutionary movement lead by ageing warriors, many homesick from their exile in Dutchland?

With no political movement to rely on, the Filipino masses need a voice at this time when the noisiest have been put on a leash through political accommodation.

The process of regaining this political space would be slow. But with the present administration committing missteps as it becomes more drunk with power, regaining the political space for better change may be faster than we thought. –Robby Guanzon, robby.guanzon@gmail.com