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In the Philippines, regime change does not translate to real social reforms

This piece by Luis Teodoro, Things Fall Apart, was shared by prominent Leftists Inday Espina Varona and Teddy CasiƱo. One wonders how they can keep on glorifying an insurgency with the avowed aim of toppling the State. This best typifies the dysfunctional relationship between the Yellowtards and the Redtards who are now allied against the Duterte administration.

Teodoro himself cites the inconsistencies of Duterte which he has manifested in all nine months of his first year in office. The more important question is, if ordinary Filipinos can understand Duterte’s strategy, why can’t the more educated civil society do the same?

This is the consequence of a personality rather than an issues based argument over policy differences. The critical and the detractors didn’t want to give Duterte a chance to succeed which is why they were at him since he made the decision to run for the Presidency.

The problem with Filipinos is they want rally behind the winner after an electoral contest. Divisions will be widened and the only time it stops is when the powers with vested interests are able to subjugate the will of the people.

About the only peaceful transition post-Marcos is the one from Cory to Ramos. Ramos won with only 24{4eb372af5551b576c332530d2213f76448bfdb9ba226f83bb200d1761ffb3785} of the vote in a seven way Presidential contest which was also tainted with allegations of fraud. Yet he managed to govern because the Marcos loyalists decided it was time to quiet down and attend to the cases filed against them by the government. Ramos finished his term not beset by coup plots but beset by corruption scandals.

Erap won the Presidency in the next election cycle. He wasn’t the candidate rid choice of the elite minority. We all know by now what transpired during the nine year tenure of GMA and the six year tenure of Boy King Noygoloid I. The question now is, when will we ever learn?

In the last 400 years the Philippines has been mostly under colonial rule by foreigners and Filipinos who have enslaved their countrymen after the colonizers left. If no drastic measures are undertaken in the next six years, the Philippines will be overtaken by Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, in that order.

The EDSA 1986 mutiny did overthrow the Marcos terror regime, but that was just about all it did. What it didn’t do was deliver on its promise of authentic change by democratizing political power so the truly revolutionary tasks of achieving authentic rather than illusory independence as well as social change could be pursued. After EDSA the same landed elite and the remnants of the bureaucrat capitalists from the Marcos regime, with the help of their minions in the police and military, made sure that any attempt at social, economic and political change would fail.

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RG San Luis as posted on Facebook.


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