On September 21, we shall remember the declaration of Martial Law 54 years ago and mark the first anniversary of last year’s massive anti-corruption protests sparked by the flood control scam.
These two events, separated by more than half a century, are bound by our continuing struggle against entrenched poverty, corruption, repression, and foreign domination.
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) will join the KBKK rally at Liwasang Bonifacio in the afternoon and lead a march to Mendiola afterwards. We will march to commemorate the Filipino people’s historic resistance to the fascist US-backed Marcos dictatorship and to continue the demand for accountability over the flood control scam and the systemic corruption it represents.
The massive flood control scandal under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. continues the legacy of his father, the dictator Ferdinand Sr., whose imposition of Martial Law in 1972 ushered in an unprecedented era of state terrorism, puppetry to US imperialism, bureaucrat capitalist plunder, and cronyism. The US-backed Marcos dictatorship is reputed to have stolen tens of billions of US dollars’ worth of public funds through onerous foreign debt, monopolies of export products, and overpriced big-ticket foreign-funded government projects, and plain graft and corruption through public infrastructure projects. Political opponents, journalists, student activists, trade unionists, peasant organizers, and critics were jailed, tortured, killed, or disappeared. Urban and rural poor communities were terrorized into submission. Today, as our people suffer from perennial flooding despite billions supposedly spent on flood control, we are once more witnesses to wholesale graft and corruption at the highest levels of government.
Marcos Jr. is literally following in his father’s footsteps. Beyond corruption, his government continues to employ red/terror tagging, harassment, and other fascist measures against social activists and political dissenters. Like his father, he is subservient to the United States and its military and geopolitical agenda.
The Marcos Jr. government is blatantly turning the Philippines into both a forward military base and a critical link in the AI supply chain for the United States. Expanded US military access to Philippine territory, constant military exercises, and the production and storage of arms and other materiel are now being complemented by initiatives such as Pax Silica. The latter seeks to integrate critical-mineral extraction, a low-end semiconductor industry, upgraded energy infrastructure, and AI facilities into a US-controlled strategic supply chain. Philippine territory, resources, and economic development are being further harnessed to the US military-industrial complex and its intensifying rivalry with China.
This September 21, remembering Martial Law means more than looking back. It means confronting the neoliberal economic maldevelopment resulting in the further immiseration of our people, institutionalized graft and corruption, pervasive political repression and state terror, and abject subservience to US imperialism that persist today. It means holding the new generation of corrupt bureaucrats and their business cronies accountable, upholding and defending democratic rights, and fighting against all attempts to sacrifice our sovereignty and patrimony for the interests of foreign imperialist powers and big business interests.
We shall never forget the fascist dictatorship. We shall never forget the plunder of the economy. We shall never forget the subservience to foreign dictates.
We shall continue the legacy of our people’s valiant national and democratic struggles!