Foil RevGov scheme
President Rodrigo Duterte’s “revolutionary government” track is in high gear. The Nov. 30 activity was actually preceded by the February 25 pro-government rally. They used every trick to coerce and deceive, especially the 4Ps beneficiaries, to join the pro-Duterte organizations. They failed however to mobilize a million horde.
The road-show has its front-liners. “Organizers” and “key movers” of the so-called “rebolusyong Duterte” – a curious motley of hangers-on: frustrated and failed “rebel” leaders (former military rebels and ex-CPP ‘revolutionaries’), and political aspirants who cannot even articulate what their so-called “revolutionary objectives’’ are.
In reality, Duterte, the star of the show, does not need those front-liners or “extras” for apologists. Even before assuming office and early on his presidency, he has expressed his disdain for any limit to his power. “Do not do any investigation on me” he demanded other co-equal branches of government (Congress, Supreme Court). He is undermining Constitutional bodies (Ombudsman, Commission on Human Rights, Commission on Audit). For Duterte, it’s about unfettered use of power. What does declaration of “revolutionary government,” his most preferred move, mean? It is an extra-constitutional act – an act beyond, and thus, in total defiance of the present Constitution, which was ratified by the people in a plebiscite in 1987.
If he succeeds, his revolutionary government will trash the 1987 Constitution and all the guarantees – economic, political, cultural rights – it provides every Filipino. There will be no constitutional rights and freedoms to talk about and assert.
It means a rule unbounded by fundamental law – an absolute, dictatorial rule unaccountable to anybody except himself. He will be the law-maker and law-enforcer. He will rule by decree. He can declare all positions in government – elective and those protected by civil service laws - vacant, and replace those who displease him with people who please him.
He can have anybody arrested and incarcerated anytime. He can allow full foreign access to our natural resources and suppress communities that assert their own rights to such resources.
He can open all public services (education, health, sports facilities) and utilities (transportation, ports, roads and highways, airports, communication and media) to foreign capitalist control, and subject the country and the Filipino people to unbridled plunder and profit-making by foreign capital.
He can allow foreign military bases into the country, allow their troops to operate here, and drag the nation into big power contention. He can have the country divided into fiefdoms (euphemistically called “local states”), to be ruled by his cohorts that include local political lords.
He claims that he will “declare martial law or a revolutionary government,” only if there is “destabilization.” But for Duterte, any criticism of his rule, any dissenting view to his view, is “destabilizing” and is a “personal insult.” Thus his abhorrence for democracy and democratic processes.
Handing Duterte dictatorial powers will drive us deeper into the darkest depths of our social life. We have to assert our sovereign and democratic rights. We uphold our collective will and employ our collective strength.