Max Lane
"Most polls are showing at the moment that 80% of Filipinos want President Gloria Arroyo to go", Professor Francisco Nemenzo told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly by phone from Manila. Nemenzo was recently elected as chairperson of a new left-wing coalition Laban ng Masa (Struggle of the Masses). A long-time socialist activist in the Philippines, he also just finished a five-year term as the president of the University of the Philippines, equivalent to vice-chancellor in the Australian system.
Nemenzo said there is now a deep crisis of governmental legitimacy in the Philippines. "Arroyo cannot govern effectively. This is what is driving elements of the bourgeoisie away from her also. There has been a massive desertion by ruling class groups from supporting her government. She is kept in power only through the efforts of ex-president General Ramos and other supporters in the military."
Nemenzo explained that 10 members of Arroyo's cabinet had resigned. The Liberal Party, an important party of the Philippines capitalist class, had withdrawn its support. The Makati Business Club, one of the most influential groupings of Filipino capitalists, has also called for her to resign.
"They tried to get her to go by getting ex-president Cory Aquino to call on Arroyo to resign and for people to support this call. Most of them were prepared to have the vice-president, Noli Castro, to take over", said Nemenzo.
The opposition to Arroyo from the capitalists, Nemenzo argued, is because they see her as being unable to push through the neoliberal "free market" program that they all support. "The emergence of scandals around her inability to control her husband and family, especially the scandals involving gambling, mortally wounded her", he said.
The allegations over electoral fraud, with the leaking of her phone conversation with a figure from the electoral commission, had hit Arroyo's image even more. "She is seen as ineffective, unable to wield the credibility to face down opposition to neoliberal policies the capitalists want.
"The secretary of finance, for example, resigned when Arroyo tried to get an injunction from the Supreme Court to delay the implementation of a new value-added tax — a very unpopular tax which would add further to price increases. Petrol price increases have caused public transport prices to rise steeply.
"Meanwhile, unemployment rises while factories close and shift off to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The peso is weakening and is only being saved from collapse because the central bank is propping it up."
Elite manoeuvres fail
Nemenzo went on to explain that the political and business elite has not had the same success in mobilising mass support behind its manoeuvres as it has in the past. "They hoped Cory Aquino's call against Arroyo would mobilise people, but nothing happened. There is enormous cynicism now about the trapols — the traditional elite politicians. More than once now, the people have mobilised to throw out a president and have been disappointed. At the moment it is still primarily the organised left that is mobilising."
There are two major organised political blocs at the core of most protest mobilisations now. One is Bayan, usually considered to be connected to the Communist Party of the Philippines (which still organises clandestinely). Laban ng Masa, of which Nemenzo is chairperson, is the second bloc.
Laban includes all of the left organisations outside of Bayan, including the large Filipino Workers Solidarity (BMP) trade union grouping, the multi-sectoral Sanlakas coalition, the Akbayan left electoral formation (including its component formations, the socialist groups BISIG and Pandayon), and a range of others. The Mindanao-based Moro National Liberation Front is also a part of Laban. It is the broadest operating left coalition that has existed since the 1980s presidential dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
"Talks about unity had started before the crisis, but they have been spurred along by the crisis", Nemenzo said. "Everyone realised that we would have no impact if we kept on organising separately. And this unity momentum has resulted in Laban being formed in most parts of the country where the different component groups exist."
As an example, Nemenzo cited his recent visit to Bacolod, capital of Negros Occidental province, where Sanlakas, Akbayan and Alab Katipunan set up Laban. The same had happened in the province of Cebu and was happening in the western Vasayas province of Iloilo.
New mobilising bloc
"The media have become very conscious now that there is another serious force operating in the country", Nemenzo said. On July 1, for example, the Laban mobilisations were bigger than those of Bayan, according to mass media reports. On July 30, Bayan mobilised more than Laban, but both protests were very sizable. The Laban mobilisation had about 15,000 people at it, while about 20,000 participated in the Bayan protest.
"Meanwhile", said Nemenzo, "individual organisations within Laban were also still holding actions in their own name around a range of issues. These mobilisations are different from the past people power mobilisations. They are overwhelmingly from the ranks of the organised workers and urban poor or coming in from some outlying areas. We have not yet been able to mobilise the youth or the middle classes who were so prominent in past mobilisations. There has also been little spontaneous mobilisation of the urban poor."
According to Nemenzo, one factor that could bring into motion more of the unorganised urban poor is if Susan Roces was to play a bigger role. Roces, a former film actor, who is the widow of Fernando Poe junior, who was Arroyo's main rival in the last presidential election, the one she is now accused of rigging.
Roces has become an outspoken critic of Arroyo and was a speaker at the 60,000-strong June 30 anti-Arroyo rally at which Laban, Bayan and the traditional politicians' United Opposition came together.
"She cut her speech short at that rally when the traditional politicians tried to attach themselves to her, one of them grabbing her hand and holding it up", said Nemenzo. "She has a very healthy suspicion of the trapols, but it meant that she wasn't able to say much to the people that time."
Roces' film-star status, and her relation to Poe, himself a popular film actor, and now being an outspoken critic of Arroyo, leads Nemenzo to think she could help mobilise the urban poor.
"We also need to do more work among the youth", he stressed. Being one of the country's most senior academics, Nemenzo, and Professor Randy David, another high profile academic active in the Laban, are being invited regularly now to speak at university campuses.
David worked with Nemenzo and others in the 1980s setting up the socialist group BISIG (Alliance for the Advancement of Socialist Theory and Practice). "We use these visits to look for ways to promote organisation among the students", Nemenzo told GLW. "Student activists from Laban, from Sanlakas for example, travel with me and try to identify students at these meetings who want to get active. This is a crucial task."
Laban is calling for the formation of a "transitional revolutionary government" that would be formed outside of the normal constitutional processes.
"'This is what also happened when Marcos fell [in 1986]", said Nemenzo. "Cory Aquino was installed outside the constitutional processes. But this time we need to make sure that such a process does not just deliver more of the same."
Laban is putting forward a range of reforms that such a transitional revolutionary government should implement before holding new elections. "We want an end to uncontrolled funding of election expenditure with no more secret contributions to parties. Such a government must switch to proportional representation in the election of the Congress.
"There need to be reforms that guarantee all parties equal access to the media. All media must be put under the management of commissions made up of media workers and community representatives."
Nemenzo stressed the need for two other major reforms. "The baranguay [village] level needs to be given its own budget so that village councils have a genuine life of their own. The baranguay councils must have a real role in the debates that would precede the formulation of a new constitution."
There should also be changes to the military. "We are calling for the compulsory retirement of all officers of the rank of colonel and above and their replacement by younger officers committed to reform."
In discussing the power base of such a government, Nemenzo stresses it will need the further growth of the movement. "Such a government would take the form of a revolutionary council oversighting a council of ministers. That is our proposal at the moment. Such a council would have to represent all those forces who had been part of any movement forcing Arroyo to step down and struggling for basic reforms to the system."
At the moment, he sees different possibilities as to who is likely to join such a movement. Concern about the fate of the country is motivating many different groups of people to think about change, he said. This includes middle-class professionals in the public service and 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the armed forces officer corps.
Other political groups may also come on board. There are talks with the son of former president Joseph Estrada, who has a political base among the urban poor, and with the former leader of the revolutionary underground movement against Marcos, Boy Morales, who is now the secretary-general of the main Estrada-oriented party. But, Nemenzo emphasised, the mass movement itself will need to be the major force.
"Cory Aquino was sworn in as president by a maverick Supreme Court judge who had enough authority to swear her in and give her legitimacy. I cannot see any personalities like that today. It will have to be the growth of the mass movement itself that provides the basis of authority of such a government."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 27, 2005.
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