Solution to Crisis Rests on the Filipino People – Sison

Prof. Jose Maria Sison argues in an Oct. 2 paper that the solution to the country’s economic and financial crisis rests on the Filipino people. He mentions four ideas on how to carry out the solution.

BY BULATLAT

The  “comprehensive solution” to the Philippines’ “chronic economic and financial crisis” rests in the hands of the Filipino people themselves.

In a paper read at the forum on fiscal crisis organized by the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance)-National Capital Region, Prof. Jose Maria Sison, who is the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), also said that the Macapagal-Arroyo regime can be removed through a “people’s uprising” similar to the Edsa revolts in 1986 and 2001.

Removal of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, Sison said in his 9-page paper, “Chronic Financial Crisis and the Way Out,” through a people’s uprising similar to what happened in 1986 and 2001, and its replacement by “a new government that is patriotic and progressive, enjoying the support of the broad masses of the people and a broad range of forces bound by a program of reforms similar to those envisioned by the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism in 1966,” is possible.

“If such a government can arise,” he said, “the question of economic and financial policy can be resolved along the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal line. It is possible for the working people and the middle social strata, represented in such a government, to agree on a firm policy of canceling all fraudulent and odious foreign debts, undertaking genuine land reform and national industrialization and strengthening diplomatic and economic relations with the ASEAN, China and Japan as well as Russia, France and Germany against the hegemony of the U.S.”

Concealing

Sison, chairman of the International Network for Philippine Studies traced the roots of the financial crisis to “foreign domination of the economy, feudal backwardness, and bureaucrat-capitalism.” He hit the Macapagal-Arroyo regime for concealing “the culpability of U.S. and other foreign monopoly capitalists in keeping the Philippine economy agrarian and pre-industrial, with the collaboration of bureaucrat capitalists who are themselves big compradors and landlords.”

“Foreign monopoly and feudal exploitation of the people over the past century has resulted in economic stagnation, chronic crisis, the absence of basic industries, chronic trade and current accounts deficits, deepening indebtedness, and a quagmire of poverty and misery into which more and more of the toiling masses are forced to flounder,” Sison said. “Even the doctored and manipulated government statistics would reveal that the percentages of employment in the industrial and manufacturing sectors have not increased over the past four decades but have in fact steadily decreased from 16.5 percent (industrial) and 12 percent (manufacturing) in 1970 to 15.1 percent and 9.2 percent respectively in 2003.  Further underdevelopment and worsening crisis have pushed more than 80% of the population below the poverty line.”

“The Arroyo regime refuses to admit that the Philippine economy has further deteriorated and has been stricken with an unprecedented crisis after being brought into the WTO under the neoliberal policy of ‘free market’ globalization,” he added. “It must be recalled that it was through a legislation sponsored by then Senator Macapagal Arroyo that Philippine entry into the WTO was effected.’

Sison said that in order to comprehensively solve the crisis, the Filipino people must gain power by fighting for national and social liberation, undo the dominance of US imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, uphold national sovereignty and independence, defend economic sovereignty and national patrimony and undertake economic and social development through genuine land reform and national industrialization.

Four ideas

He mentioned four ideas on carrying out the solution: electoral struggle to put into office good men and women who will push the necessary reforms, using the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations to forge agreements on reforms and arrive at truce and alliance against common problems, changing the present regime through a peaceful mass uprising in order to put up a new government that would undertake reforms, and overthrowing the ruling system through armed revolution in order to make a social revolution. 

“It is possible to put into executive and legislative offices some good men and women,” Sison said of electoral struggle. “They can advocate economic, financial and other reforms and in the process expose the rottenness and puppetry of those who oppose these as well as the entire ruling system.”

“However,” he warned, “they need to be aware that the US and the local exploiting classes will always seek to ensure the overwhelming dominance of the rabid reactionaries and buy off or discredit those who seek to change or challenge the fundamentals of the system.”

As regards the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, he said that these are vulnerable to sabotage by the “rabid puppets of the US imperialists in the Arroyo cabinet and in the military as well as agents of clerico-fascism” who, he said, dominate the GRP side of the talks.

He pointed out that the people “have chosen” the path of revolutionary armed struggle for national democracy, with a “socialist perspective,” since it “is extremely difficult or impossible to achieve basic reforms (like the end of foreign monopoly domination, land reform and national industrialization) within the ruling system because the US and the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords wield powerful instruments of violence against the people.” Bulatlat

Chronic Financial Crisis and the Way Out  By Prof. Jose Maria Sison

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