Against all repression, Spring is coming

IBON Foundation, June 15, 2024

Reflections for “Rising Reprisals, Raising Resistance,” a dialogue on the Philippines with the
United Nations (UN) Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable
international order George Katrougalos organized by the National Union of People’s Lawyers
(NUPL) and Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).

The undemocratic and inequitable world order cannot make the work of the UN independent
expert on international order easy. But then it is immeasurably harder for the billions of people
around the world who are on the receiving end of so much international, national and local
disorder. Fortunately, there are many who do aspire for more – not just for themselves and their
families, but also for their communities, their country and for all the peoples of the world.

The UN expert spoke about fundamental ideas that make the world order – the balance of forces
in society, how systems of power set limits, and what it takes for progressive ideas to become a
material force. The messenger strengthened the message. Mr. Katrougalos is a professor of
public law, widely-published and with extensive practice in international tribunals and advising
governments. He has spent time in hubs of power from serving as a member of the Greek and
European parliaments and as a foreign minister of Greece aside from other ministerial positions.

Philippine power

The world is ordered and shaped according to systems of power, and hence, of control and
domination. The most controlling and dominating thing today is capital and capitalism and their
exploitative impulses.

In the Philippines, as in most of the rest of the world, the very few elites who have a grip on
power invariably do very well for themselves.

The presidency is the property of the country’s most powerful political dynasties. Perhaps 300-
400 political families dominate political life – 90% of our presidents have come from political
clans. Today, 80% of governors, 60% of senators, and over half of representatives (51%) and
mayors (53%) are from political clans. The spectacle of siblings and spouses or of parents and
children simultaneously holding office has become normalized.

The 115-million population can produce better but are stopped from doing so by the strictures
and structures of the prevailing electoral system.

Political elites are inextricable from the country’s oligarchs and billionaire elite. It’s no
coincidence that the three richest Filipinos are behind and bankroll three of the country’s five
biggest political parties. Their three parties control over one-third of the Senate (38% of
members), House of Representatives (34% of members) and provinces (34% of governors).
The richest 2% (some 500,000 families) have accumulated Php25 trillion (US$450 billion) in
wealth which is as much as the poorest 80% have combined (some 22 million families). There is
inequality even among this super-rich – just 3,000 billionaires have Php8.2 trillion (US$147
billion) or one-third of that elite wealth.

These elites in power are particularly backward even by capitalist standards and they are a
relentlessly pre-modern non-industrializing rent-seeking elite.

Which is why the majority are chronically left behind by so-called progress. Anywhere from 70-
80% of Filipino families must be considered poor and vulnerable. Their numbers keep growing,
even as official statistics are kept flawed and incomplete to try and hide this.

This undemocracy and inequality and its attendant oppression and exploitation is of course what
spurs so much resistance.

People power

The people’s movement surged during the worst of times – during the brutal Marcos dictatorship
in the 1970s and early 1980s which it eventually overthrew.

But it was not just anti-dictatorship. It was also pro-democracy, pro-equity and pro-development.
The people’s movement also opposed International Monetary Fund (IMF) stabilization
programs, World Bank structural adjustment, and their crushing debt and destructive
conditionalities. The peasantry waged battles for land, workers for better wages and working
conditions, urban poor for housing and social services, and so much more. The mass movement
was at the forefront of articulating and giving real political expression to demands for agrarian
reform, national industrialization and social services.

These battles continued in the changed conditions of the neoliberal world order, and continue in
the shift from United States (US) imperial hegemony and unipolarity. We all know that it is
movements most of all that resist elite power and domination.

The people’s movement built lasting people’s organizations which to this day are the only ones
really able to extract any sort of grudging concession from the state, landlords and capitalists.

Even upon the return of elite democracy under the first Aquino government, the country’s mass
movements kept growing because things were not getting much better. The battles against
systems and structures continued.

Broader diverse social movements were spawned and took up every imaginable development
issue – the environment being particularly popular as the existential threat of climate extinction
became even more real. Civil society organizations flourished.

But then and now, it’s the radical mass movement which is keenest about the need for
fundamental reforms and which is the most resolute, determined and consistent in advocating for
real social, economic and political policy changes.
And because of this it’s the mass movement that is the most devoted to the painstaking
education, organizing and mobilizing of basic sectors and grassroots communities about the
issues that matter most to them. It not only reaches the most people about the possibility of
alternatives and a better world, it also builds the real tangible political muscle to make these
alternatives real against the resistance of those in power.

Keeping power

This threatens the undemocratic and inequitable national order. And it’s for this that the mass
movement has most of all come under fire. Elites fear people’s organizations because they are
the seeds and motive force of democratic power and genuinely democratic societies.

The attacks started as early as the restoration of elite democracy under Cory Aquino and has
continued through every political permutation and administration since. New heights of political
repression were reached under the populist demagoguery of the previous Duterte administration.
Repressive laws and legal mechanisms were greatly expanded – such as the draconian Anti-
Terrorism Act and the particularly notorious National Task Force to End Local Communist
Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).

Lawfare expanded many times over astride increased violent attacks on activists and community
organizations, and while artillery, airstrikes and bombings razed the countryside. Financial
repression and regulations on civil society organizations/non-government organizations
(CSOs/NGOs) were a new and tightening noose.

All these continue under the current Marcos Jr administration which has the gall to promote itself
as promoting and upholding human rights.

As in so much of the rest of the world where reaction and the Right are on the rise, the
government arrogates to itself the prerogative to decide what kind of civil society is and is not
acceptable. Those merely providing services quietly to fill up for government neglect, or those
subcontracted by the government as it privatizes welfare and social well-being are okay.

But those who dare to question and act to improve democracy and equality are not acceptable –
and neither are the services they give. This prejudice against development NGOs only leaves the
communities they serve worse off.

There are around 380,000 registered CSOs in the country, of which some 3,000-5,000 are
development-oriented NGOs. These are aside from thousands more people’s organizations.

What’s acceptable to the government? The stakeholder chamber of the government’s Sub-
Committee on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a microcosm of what the
government wants. This chamber has 42 members – 52% are conservative welfare or service-
oriented NGOs , 43% are business-aligned NGOs (including those of oligarch corporations and
foreign chambers of commerce), and just two (less than 5%) have any track record of advocating
for income and asset reforms of any kind.
Because what the government wants is an echo chamber that will just reproduce what already
exists in an infinite echo of itself – an undemocratic and inequitable but also oppressive and
exploitative domestic order.

This includes resorting to violence. In just the first year-and-a-half of the current Marcos Jr
administration, the human rights group Karapatan has already tallied 89 extrajudicial killings, 13
enforced disappearances, and 552 fake or forced surrenders. The number of political prisoners
has risen to almost 800. There have also been 1.6 million victims of threats, harassment and
intimidation. In the countryside, there are tens of thousands of victims of indiscriminate firing,
bombings near communities, and forced evacuation.

The Marcos Jr government is notable for the heightened attention to choking civil society
especially development NGOs daring to do more than provide welfare services to fill in vast
government gaps.

The civil society network Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) reports
that at least 57 development workers and 22 NGOs or networks in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao
are being harassed with spurious charges related to terrorism. Fifty-three (53) individuals from
20 organizations are baselessly accused of financing or otherwise supporting terrorism. Another
four (4) NGO workers were absurdly charged with attempted murder. Most of these bogus
complaints and cases have been during the current administration.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) reports continuing attacks against
media practitioners with 109 documented incidents of attacks and threats against journalists since
the start of the Marcos Jr administration, including four killings. NUJP also reports 36 incidents
of harassment including surveillance, stalking and accosting of journalists.

Taking power

Some issues can be highlighted. Deliberate state or state-sponsored attacks on human rights
defenders are growing with impunity – like recently on NGOs and development workers. With
so much resources, the government is mobilizing higher technology in greatly asymmetric digital
and information warfare.

The human rights abuses of the Marcos Jr administration are vast but covered up by systematic
image-building so that the Philippines can perform its critical geostrategic role for the US in its
superpower confrontation with China. The “international community” – giving the impression of
a global consensus but really just skewed towards the viewpoints and interests of Western liberal
democracies – is embracing the Marcos Jr government.

The Philippines, and the West Philippine Sea in particular, is currently the only part of the world
where the vast overseas bases of the US war machine and the fledgling foreign base expansion of
China intersect. East Asia and the South China Sea are the literal frontlines of inter-imperialist
conflict and the risk of a conflagration at some point in an increasingly volatile future just keeps
growing.
Change isn’t easy – the geography of struggles is always uphill. Those struggling for change for
the better are always attacked by those in power with age-old accusations of being enemies of the
state, being terrorists, and being destabilizers.

The Philippines and Greece share trajectories of revolution, reprisal and resistance, which they
also have in common with Chile, so it is fitting to close with something the leftist Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda wrote: “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

We know this is true because change won’t be stopped, and the world is changing for the better.
###