‘Indonesian scenario’ Philippine style

I HOPE and pray I am wrong. But the scenario in the country with so many killings directed against the leftists and critics and no government agency solving a single one since the beginning of the new administration points to some parallelism with what happened in Indonesia during 1965-1966 under Sukarno, and the three decade thereafter of an authoritarian fascist rule of General Suharto.

The years 1965-66 under president Sukarno, known as leftist President and a close ally of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), was a period of massive killings of known communist sympathizers, alleged leftists, progressive religious organizations and ethnic Chinese.

It began with the conception and instigation of state security forces backed by the US-CIA of so-called communist plot to take over the government, with the backing of President Sukarno. Then it was followed by a massive purge of communists and other progressives.

The mass killings started in the capital, Jakarta, spread to Central and East Java, later Bali, northern Sumatra, and to other smaller towns in separated islands. According to a number of reports, 500,000 to one million were killed, with some estimates reaching three million.

President Sukarno tried to play a balancing act of promoting nationalism, religious freedom and communist undertones while playing games with the powerful Us-backed Indonesian army. But without him knowing it, or just played around by his military generals, the mass killings were carried out, blaming it to so-called communist plot to take over, worse to a concocted script of in-fighting in the communist movement resulting to killing each other.

After the military success in dealing death blows to PKI, their mass supporters and the politicized segments of the Islam, Sukarno’s two main pillars of support, in 1967 Sukarno was stripped of his remaining powers by the Indonesian provisional parliament and cabinet largely influenced by the Indonesian military, and paved the way for naming of General Suharto as the acting president.

In March 1968, Suharto was formally elected president. The three decades that followed witnessed the authoritarian fascist rule of Suharto, backed by US-CIA, as revealed in declassified US documents in 2017.

Suharto resigned in 1998. His reign was characterized by military rule; massive communist purge and killings of non-communist progressives and leftists, progressive Islam leaders and churches and ethnic Chinese; rule of terror and silence; a rubber stamp parliament; plunder of Indonesia resources by foreign corporations mostly US and Europeans; indebtedness to World Bank, IMF and other trilateral funding institutions.

See the parallelism. By end of 2016, it was clear that President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) was not serious in his self-proclaimed socialist and leftist standpoint, that he was not interested to mature his “good relationship” with the communist movement into a strategic partnership, and that all his commitments to end corruption, ease poverty thru comprehensive socio-economic and political reforms, participatory governance, and a sovereign nation have been falling apart.

He has been giving more economic and political favors to the military, been relying more on the military to run the government by placing retired military generals in key positions.

With the instigation of the military and militarist legislators, he abandoned peace talks with the communists and declared all-out war against them, and against progressives of all shades, administration critics, critical churches, indigenous peoples, and their sympathizers.

His repeated exhortations for the military and police and even private groups to kill those who opposed his programs especially his war on drugs has inspired killing spree throughout the country and unbridled abuses by men in uniform and those with positions of authority.

Today, death squads abound; some are former rebels tapped by the military and financed by landlords and corporate farm owners; their targets are mostly the communists, progressive labor and community leaders, priests and lawyers.

Worse, with thousands of killings, massacres, salvagings, rural bombings, no government agency has yet solved any of these despite repeated lip service commitment to human rights and justice to the victims by authorities and the President himself.

The only difference perhaps from the Indonesian scenario is that these state-inspired killings are done quietly, spread throughout the archipelago, and with the aid of advanced technologies and organized social media trolls, these are made to appear as isolated and fake, worse, the handiworks of the communists to fan anti-communist hysteria.

But soon, when resistance grows, these killings will likely become more open, unsparing, brutal and high in intensity.

With government key positions now under the control of military generals who are obvious US-CIA favorite boys and effectively turned PRRD more docile to them, and backed by the olds of Martial law years, is it not possible that PRRD will be forced to resign before his term ends, and let one of his generals t ake over the presidency?

Or will he just continue to be a mouth-piece of the military, the big landlords and foreign corporate interests, and carry out more massive killings against communists and those who oppose their so-called “new order?”

Well, parallelisms are clear, still expanding and taking more variations under the increasingly “digital world.”

Meantime, our people are being good time by the government’s war on drugs, overwhelming and sophisticated projection of its build build build and other grandiose infrastructure projects heavily dependent on higher taxes and foreign loans, thus subduing the massive killings into the sideline like a dope injected into our psyche and culture of a terror(rized) people.

Anyone who dares to question and challenge the “new order” will have to pay a dearly high price.

Still, I hope I am wrong.*

(For feedback, email to ombion.ph@outlook.com)