I call it the Aquino II regime not only because of its name and kinship
ties to Aquino I but more so because of the basic continuity in terms of
class, ideology and politics from Aquino I to Aquino II. Of course, there are
differences between the two given the distances of time and context but I
assert that in those three terms there is more of continuity than breaks.
This fundamental similarity is easily established by three indicators : 1) the
dominant forces which brought them to power, 2) the configuration of their
Cabinet which in our presidential system is the alter ego of the leader of
the government and State, and 3) the strategic and policy declarations of
these regimes and their leader.
Aquino I and Aquino II are thrust to State power by an elite alliance that
I prefer to call EDSA elites in combination with popular support. This
elite alliance includes powerful sections of the big bourgeoisie and big
landowning-agribusiness blocs, and leaders or blocs whose influence are
critical in the military and police establishments and key ideo-cultural
and political institutions of the State like the Catholic Church, the media,
the major academes, and the important professions. Popular support is
provided by a broad base among the middle class and a large mass of the
working people, urban and rural.
The key Cabinet positions under Aquino II, like foreign affairs, defense,
finance, trade, economic planning, and interior and local government,
are occupied by persons whose ideological, political and personal ties
date back to Aquino I and who belong to or are closely identified with
big bourgeois circles and the United States. In this sense, the Cabinet of
Aquino II is closest to that of Aquino I in 1988 when liberal democrats,
hardened by the anti-fascist struggles and popular mobilizations, were
removed under pressure of Rightwing coups and the United States.
Aquino I and Aquino II both profess strong commitment to democracy
which in class, ideological and political terms is clearly bourgeois
democracy. Unlike what developed in the West, the Philippine variant
shares power with semifeudal lords and is suffused by rentier and
patronage, and now patrimonial relations with the State. Our version
of bourgeois democracy gives formal constitutional liberal freedoms
to all, including the middle class and the urban and rural proletariat,
but restricts them in practice through a myriad of political, economic,
socio-cultural, ethnic and gender barriers and mechanisms. This reality
and ideological construct, I believe, are both well understood and
accepted, though in varying dimensions, by both Aquino I and Aquino II.
As I said earlier, there are differences, of course, between Aquino I and
Aquino II. Their contexts vary which differentiates their positioning and
roles in relation to strengthening bourgeois State rule and its opposite, the
development of proletarian and popular power.
Aquino I rose to power on the crest of a popular uprising and a military
revolt, an extra-constitutional mode. This explains why most of the
regime’s will and energy was directed towards stabilizing its rule and
the institutions it built. Aquino I had to do it on two fronts. First, by
overcoming the coup threats from Rightist rivals and coopting them
by pushing aside the liberal democrats. The second, by countering the
challenge of the revolutionary Left and containing the potentials for
proletarian and popular power offered by the popular uprising.
In contrast, Aquino II is brought to Malacanang via an election that is
widely accepted as credible and where his major rivals, Estrada and
Villar, conceded to his victory. In addition, he gained the support during
the electoral campaign of a significant ruling class faction, a consistent
opponent of Aquino I, that of Danding Cojuangco. This plus the huge
electoral vote Aquino II garnered should enable him to do much better
than Ramos and Estrada, and much much more than Macapagal-Arroyo
in consolidating bourgeois State rule and even widening the base of
bourgeois democracy.
Let me explain further. It has long been in the agenda for the Philippines
of the United States and its capitalist allies like the European and Japanese
governments as well as global multilateral agencies like the IMF and World
Bank to modernize the Philippine State and make it a stable apparatus for
global capital operations and still a front-line base against the enemies
of the United States and its allies. This agenda has been expressed in
such language as fighting corruption, economic reforms and governance
reforms. To push this agenda, political pressures, loan conditionalities,
development aid and counter-insurgency are used.
In the course of time, domestic forces and elements like the Makati
Business Club, technocratic circles associated with the IMF-WB and global
business networks, a number of intellectuals, and social democrats and
social liberals have gravitated towards this agenda. Defensive about
the continuing failure of the neo-liberalism espoused by successive
regimes from Aquino I to Ramos to Estrada to Macapagal-Arroyo to solve
the poverty of the majority, they came up with anti-poverty programs
which put premium on State delivery of social services rather than on
redistribution of sources of wealth and the political empowerment of
the poor majority. Once again, we can expect them to increase the
garguantuan foreign and domestic debt only to finance these programs
and resort to socio-cultural engineering to whip up a mantra of success
with the aid of media moguls.
This alliance of global and domestic forces has started to form under
Ramos, was disrupted by Estrada (not by a sustained populist drive but by
taking in other sections of the elite – the taipans and rent-seeking rivals of
the EDSA elites who are not so welded to this agenda), restored by GMA
but who blew it later when her big-time fraudulence and corruption divided
the ranks of the EDSA elites. Now this alliance has once more jelled under
Aquino II and this time, with Danding Cojuangco.
Aquino II has forces behind him which can effect the modernization of
the Philippine state though within the allowable perimeter of capitalist
globalization and US strategic interests in this part of the world. This
modernization will consist of an efficient state, instituting transparency
and accountability through bureaucratic means, a professional and
constitutionalist AFP and PNP, a decisive shift to agribusiness from
redistributive land reform , and an approach to the Mindanao peace
problem that will reconcile elements of MOA-AD with the claims of big
business and the Filipino majority within the unsullied constitutional
integrity of the Philippine State.
This modernization is stripped of such essentials of classical modernization
like industrialization and a redistributive land reform and agricultural
modernization which the Philippines needs to lift the large majority from
poverty and provide a decisive component for sustained prosperity.
Even by the standards of the refashioned modernization of globalist and
domestic neo-liberals, breaking up political dynasties, semifeudal warlord
enclaves, private armies and rentier practices are imperatives. They will
have to deal with Kamag-anak Inc.and Danding Cojuangco and the political
dynasties, warlords and rent-seekers who joined the Noynoy campaign;
the turncoats from the GMA and Villar and Estrada camps; and those
who will remain oppositionist like what will remain of the GMA bloc and
the Marcoses. Are they serious about this task? And can they hack it?
CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISTS
These are challenging and interesting times for socialists. But the first and
foremost challenge should be addressed to ourselves. And by ourselves, I
mean not only those who stick to or join socialist organizations who openly
espouse socialism. I include those in the social movements and political
blocs and independent advocates who consider themselves part of what is
called the Left community.
I submit that in the face of this challenge, we all have to shape up
or pack up, as a saying goes. And shape up ideologically, politically,
organizationally and may I add, ethically.
I can understand those among us who will point to the economic crisis
and the other internal contradictions of the new regime as an assurance
that the winds of fortune will blow in our direction, possibly sooner than
we expect. Indeed, they are conditions that can ignite a resurgence of the
proletarian movement. But lest we forget, the many severe manifestations
of the economic crisis have been with us for years and years. The previous
regime which lasted for more than nine years had never relished a real
period of relief from political crisis. But has the socialist movement or the
Left grown stronger?
My address this afternoon cannot provide a sufficient answer that can do
justice to this question. I can only present a number of assertions that can
help our Left community in our soul-search and deep study for solutions to
our predicament.
I submit that a mounting influence of pragmatism is eating away our
ideological, political and organizational capacities to challenge the
bourgeois regimes and the State. Our struggle against dogmatism during
the great split of the Left in the early nineties has invited pragmatism to
enter our ranks in droves and infect us seriously.
Through the years, our agitations and propaganda on issues have loosened
up on systems critique of capitalism and bourgeois democracy and their
accommodation of the semifeudal, and imperialism. We can hardly hear
socialism being said and advocated openly. We stop at calls for regime
change and we satisfy ourselves with united front regime alternatives.
Rarely do we openly assert the socialist standpoint of our critique and our
alternatives. A serious lag in the study of philosophy, political economy,
State and revolution and socialism is most evident.
I am quite sure that among our ranks the two-stage theory of the past
is no longer the culprit; this applies only to CPP-led forces. Rather,
defensiveness about the collapse of the socialist camp and the weakening
of the revolutionary Left has led many of us to exaggerate the need to
be more acceptable to the thinking in vogue, to be more “concrete” in its
empiricist meaning, or to be more doable and palpable in NGO language.
Before we become fully aware of it, our reform struggles have lost their
strategic moorings.
Many have become so obsessed with tactics, even tactics to serve tactics
(“tactics as process”) without seriously cultivating a strategic perspective.
Obviously, this has led to political opportunism of various stripes, shameful
even.
Of course, we must have tactics. We must make good in our struggle
for reforms. But we must go beyond the “engagements” of the NGO
movement. Our NGOs have been of much help in research work and going
into the knitty gritty of issues and concrete alternatives. Our duty is to
incorporate these into a larger frame which will show how proletarian
or popular power is built step by step to make sure the desired changes
are sustained and develop in the direction of radical alternatives. For
example, our fight to make public utilities like power and water accessible
and affordable to all must clearly take the stand for nationalization or
community ownership at the local levels but with mechanisms that will
build accountability to the public instead of State or any other form of
bureaucratization.
Most if not all socialists have taken up the electoral struggle as a
significant arena for the socialist struggles. Here, the sway of pragmatism
is most visible. Probably because of the long string of electoral defeats
of the Left, many tend to substitute the principled socialist position of
education, mobilization and organization of the working people and
other popular sectors with strong notions of “there is no substitute to
victory” and “winnability.” There is no debate about the objective of
winning but not to the point of unprincipled and indiscriminate forging
of alliances, “nuancing” and massaging of messages to cater to trapo
(traditional politicians) and bourgeois media-fed crap, and worse, tactics or
what is called dual, or triple or hydra-headed tactics which only accentuate
before the public eye a craving for power and money. Winning only
makes sense if the votes are clearly an endorsement of our positions
and confidence in our parties and leaders. Votes other than this are just
bubbles.
To a regime whose key Cabinet portfolios are entrusted to those loyal
to global capitalist institutions like the IMF-WB and to US strategic
interests, socialists must unmistakably take a position of strategic and
basic opposition. We must always take to heart our insurrectional direction.
Socialists must carry the fight to all arenas, from the streets, communities
and workplaces to parliament, media, and academic and public intellectual
debates. The struggle for reforms must be guided by the orientation of
people before profits and the step by step establishment of public power.
Socialists must challenge the regime’s anti-corruption drive to go beyond
weeding out the notoriously corrupt to that of establishing rules and
mechanisms where popular power gets to be more and more expressed
and sustained.
In times like this where bourgeois power heads towards consolidation and
manages to get popular consent, the aforementioned tasks are not going
to be easy. The election of 2010 has saved the legitimacy of the EDSA
regime from the abyss to which Macapagal-Arroyo has brought it. We can
expect the ideo-cultural, political and military institutions of bourgeois
power – domestic and its global patrons, to roll into action and further
consolidate itself.
We are not lacking in sources of strength to face this challenge. The
organized forces of socialism, of the Left, may be small at the moment
but the Left has deep roots in our popular culture and our historical
imagination as a people. We are to be found in many day to day and major
battles to defend and promote the rights of the working people. Just open
up a conversation in many umpukan (gathering) and tambayan (watering
hole) in our working class and middle class areas and they will tell you
of the proud images of activists they have known before and until now –
principled, men and women of sacrifice, intelligent and studious, always of
help to their problems and plaints, and brave, always for the oppressed,
the masses, the country.
After the great splits and the crisis of socialism worldwide, we went
through a very trying period of survival. I believe this period is over. We
have the lessons of the past and new learnings, new organizations and
a new generation of leaders combined with experienced and steadfast
seniors. And we have Latin America and the global justice movement
as inspiring beacons and powerful support. Let us keep the faith.
Ric Reyes