I remember the song
IREMEMBER the song – actually an anthem – as I reflect that two important classes in the country remain largely quiet over the murder of Kian delos Santos and thousands of others under President Duterte’s drug war.
Perhaps in their cold calculation, the mass carnage of the poor like Kian is good for them and for what they do best. I’m referring of course to the oligarchic classes of big landlords and big compradors.
They are quiet because President Duterte has been good for comprador businesses and land reconcentration: No wage hikes, Endo is still allowed, no land reform, and no industrialization. The burden of tax reform would be passed on to the poor, and not to them. And how can the oligarchs not love Duterte when he clings to pro-oligarchy economists Carlos Dominguez III, Benjamin Diokno, and Ernesto Pernia?
In the run-up to the 2016 elections, in straw poll after straw poll, members of the Makati Business Club and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines preferred Duterte as the most pro-business candidate.
They were ready to switch allegiance from the conservative liberals to the fascist conservative Duterte. And switch they did, as we saw in the exit polls: Duterte won the oligarchy and the upper class.
Today, our very brave conservative liberal friends pick on and humiliate Class CDE voters, obliging them to “repent” over their votes for Duterte. But they are cowards to oligarchic Class AB voters who are exempted from their “righteous indignation.”
The thing is, conservative liberals and fascist conservatives belong to the same oligarchy. They differ only in their preferred means and methods. One prefers liberal guile, the other chooses open rule of terror. They are united in perpetuating oligarchy, privilege, and lack of fairness.
This could be seen, for instance, in Duterte’s free college law. The pro-oligarchy economic managers oppose it. The conservative liberals want to gut it through “socialized tuition. Or in their common defense of Endo and low wages. Or in their united disdain for free land distribution.
The conservative liberals appear to be mad not because the poor and kids are being killed en masse. They are mad at Duterte for being needlessly brazen, brutal, and fascistic. Their mouth foams as they think: “Why can’t he just use mass deception, trumped-up charges, and concentrate only on the Bangsamoro and communists – the two long-term threats to the oligarchy? We’ve tried it and it works.”
Have Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III volunteered to repent their use of extrajudicial killings, or have they been asked at all by conservative liberals to even acknowledge those crimes? No. “They did it with class, unlike Duterte.”
The crocodile tears for “poor victims of extrajudicial killings” shed by conservative liberals can’t wash their own bloody record and the real-life disdain for the poor which they share with the fascist conservatives. We may be in the same broad movement right now, but we must do everything in our power to control their hyperpartisanship, selfrighteousness and obfuscations.
The movement against Duterte and death squads should be truly pro-poor. We must save the poor from certain death under Duterte drug war. We must also join them in fighting Duterte’s daily violence of pro-oligarchy economics. One means instant death, the other a slow death.
We must expose the oligarchy’s support for Duterte, his drug war and other tyrannical measures like martial law in Mindanao and the all-out war against the communists. We must also denounce Duterte’s neoliberal economic program that is thoroughly anti-poor and prooligarchy.
Duterte promised to fight for the poor, and against the oligarchy. But he did the opposite and with unconscionable brutality. We must respond to him by standing in solidarity with the poor, and to challenge Duterte and his preference for fascism and oligarchy.
If you think federalism will solve this mess, you must talk with your friends. If income inequality is not addressed and political dynasties not disbanded, guess who would dominate and monopolize this muchtouted federal republic. The same oligarchs, conservative liberals and fascist conservatives don’t feel threatened by federalism; it would belong to them.
Some of our friends feel “privileged” enough to assume they have the duty and right to ask the poor to denounce Duterte. They imply Duterte is a monster summoned by the poor, while others say the poor need to be saved from their ignorance and from Duterte’s death squads.
But the poor have been speaking. They know. They are organized. They fight back. They occupy public housing. They launch protests and strikes. In far-flung places, they are the main force of radical changemaking. History is written with their blood: the revolts, the national revolution, the resistance against America and Japan, the first open defiance against against Martial Law and so on.
For all their past efforts and in this new political task in pinning down Duterte and his death squads, we are called to be their friends and allies. They honestly don’t need saving. They have been eager to lead in changemaking and revolution.
I remember the song, not just the part about telling Totoy to beware of the dark. The anthem Tatsulok gives out the answer artistically as the book Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino does so scientifically: “Hangga’t may tatsulok, at sila ang nasa tuktok, di matatapos ang gulo.”