CAPITALISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE RISE OF TRUMP

Because neo-liberalism failed the people, because the promises of capitalism benefited only the likes of Donald Trump and made the poor even poorer...

The US presidential election was decided less by specific gender, ethnicity, race, and migration issues (or identity politics) than issues that matter to class. The rejection of Hillary Clinton (but not necessarily the victory of Trump) is a strong indictment of corporate capitalism personified by Wall Street. Wall Street is seen to be the Democrats' principal veering away from its historical role as the defender of the oppressed.

Similarly, in the Philippines...

We should be looking at the trigger of mass anger and address it instead of self-righteously shouting from lofty bourgeois windows about how we are now held hostage by the choices the idiots and uneducated made that now affect us. Education may come from books and universities but theirs came from experience. Electoral choices may be dictated by desire for comforts and privileges derived from a system that deprives the masses of the ability to survive decently. Theirs are dictated by the deprivation they suffer from a system that showers comfort on the few while sweeping them aside like dead leaves to the periphery.

(Un)fortunately, "We are the many; (you )are the few," goes a song inspired by the Occupy Movement.

If democracy is the rule of the majority, then we have to respect their choices. We keep saying that democracy is the best form of government. Well, in the US, democracy decided that Trump should be President. Those who insist that democracy is the only form of government acceptable in a civilized world must honor the choice of the majority.

But maybe, we need to give democracy a second look.

It seems when capitalism logically advances to its worst anti-poor shape, it negates democracy. Government ceases to be for the people, of the people, by the people. It is for the few, of the few, by the few. The masses can no longer exercise freedom of choice and do not enjoy freedom from want.

So, auspiciously, a dictator must rise to undo the imbalance but not in the fashion of Marcos who became a tyrant to enrich himself and his cronies. This dictator will reverse the wheel to the end that government must make the greater good for the greater number its goal.

Our own Jose Laurel said that the best form of government is an authoritarian regime with an angel on the throne. That angel is biased for the poor and the weak.

Now I am looking for that angel. S/he might be able to show to us that a dictatorship for the poor and marginalized is the true democracy. Why? Access to goods and services gets opened and sustained for the majority who make up the traditionally ignored or forgotten poor.

WHO MADE MARCOS A HERO?

Now, they blame the 16M who voted for Duterte. They say to us: Putang ina ninyo!

Who made Marcos a hero?

You did, by worshipping at the altar of his anti-poor, pro-oligarch economic policies perpetuated by Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Arroyo, and Noynoy Aquino. You did not protest when Ramos was privatizing public utilities even if you knew this would make life harsher for the poor. You did not protest when Congress authorized foreign plunder of our natural resources. You did not protest when Ramos allowed the oil industry to operate without a leash around its neck controlled by the State.

You did, by keeping quiet when the winter of human rights during Martial Law returned during Arroyo's Reign of Terror. You were apathetic to the thud of falling bodies of more than a thousand activists. You did not even say a word when lawyers and judges were getting killed. You did not say a whimper of protest when people were disappearing just for telling the truth.

You did, by keeping quiet about EJKs during Aquino's time. Indigenous leaders were being killed, disappeared, or tortured for defending their ancestral lands. Environmental defenders were suffering the same fate. Their domains were being militarized and they were being brutalized. You did not mind it when Arroyo and Aquino allowed mining corporations to use the government-paid military to become mining corporations' private security forces to harass indigenous communities. You would not even post a status on Facebook to express solidarity. You posted pictures of your food and travels. You could afford those. Some of you made money to help the corporations abuse indigenous communities and the environment some more. You made money to help companies abuse the rights of workers.

You did, by not speaking out against cronyism after Martial Law. You did not question Kamag-anak, Incorporated, and Kabaralin, Kaklase, at Kaibigan.

You did, by not speaking out against Palparan and his ilk. You did not speak out against the very conditions which made Martial Law a dark period when they resurfaced after the Marcos tyranny.

You did, by condemning the national democratic activists who would take to the streets on a regular basis to expose and reject what is Marcosian in society. You called them public nuisance. You called Renato Jr. Reyes a pest more than once.

You helped make Marcos a hero. Shame on you for doing a Pontius Pilate.

And yes, you made Duterte President. Your endorsement of Marcosian practices made Duterte stand out as the only hope for the poor.

Remove that mote in your eye before you remove the mote in other people's eyes.

This is the time to examine national conscience, not to wash the guilt off your hands.

WHY RODY DUTERTE?

...This man, despite his dirty mouth, draws voters and indigenous activists like me. Along with his new "loveteam partner" Miriam Santiago, he is the first among the presidential candidates to notice and denounce the latest atrocity committed against the Lumad: the burning of their evacuation center. He has always championed the rights of the Lumad and has always matched rhetoric with action.

He is a self-confessed killer of people he self-righteously and arbitrarily judged as rapists, murderers, kidnappers, or drug lords, but he has not killed a single activist in the struggle to dismantle structural/national oppression or a single indigenous person protecting ancestral domains. In fact, he has been providing shelter to internally displaced IPs. The other candidates consider IPs invisible - we haven't heard them say anything about the issue even if it is burning right before their very eyes. Two candidates are said to be using the private planes of people connected to abusive mining in IP territory. Any candidate who supports corporate mining on indigenous land is automatically off my list.

So do not judge me, a human rights lawyer and activist before anything else, for gravitating towards this foul-mouthed, dirty old man named Rody Duterte even if my husband, Leandro B. Yañgot, is committed to campaigning for Mar Roxas. With the exception of Grace Poe and Santiago, your candidates have meaner, harsher, and dirtier human rights records. Human rights violations are not just about killing without due process. They are also about neglecting to do your job well or looking at your job as a way to upgrade your burning presidential ambition, resulting in the death of thousands of people in a storm. They are about keeping quiet as a Cabinet official, even if you could have spoken out while DSWD was hoarding and later burying food worth millions of pesos meant for disaster victims. They are about stealing from government coffers millions or billions of pesos that could have gone to alleviating the economic tribulation of the poor. Poverty, hunger, and lack of security in times of disaster are human rights violations, too, as serious as death. At least, death ends suffering but how about those who remain alive? 

Friends, if your main criterion in choosing a candidate is his/her position on who should or should not get buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, that to me is not enough. Besides, the other candidates may be anti-Marcos and spewing anti-Marcos rhetroic but where were they and their families during the anti-Marcos days? When they got to the helm of power, what did they do to reverse the after-effects of the Marcos presidency? One pandered quite solicitously to foreign interests, and indefatigably worked for the same Marcosian solutions to economic ills - the solutions friendly to hacienderos, abusive domestic and foreign corporations, the elite. One claims to be indigenous but what has he done for indigenous peoples? He ruled a city that benefits immensely from the oppression by corporations of indigenous communities. The big corporations wantonly plunder ancestral domains and pay taxes as residents of his city. His city gets a large share from the Internal Revenue Allotment. His city is rich because of indigenous sacrifices and unabated suffering, among others. The resource-rich LGUs where the IPs are remain to be this country's poorest and they deal with the environmental degradation wrought by corporate pillage. Very Marcosian situation. You are anti-Marcos? How can you support these candidates who continue the same anti-people policies of Marcos?

I am indigenous and I look at the world with indigenous eyes. I am engaged in development work and work with communities. I hold office in my shoes and where they take me, and not in some posh four-cornered room. I look at the world from that vantage. For that matter, I look at the elections with the same eyes. I will vote for a candidate who has been kind to the most oppressed people in this country, who are fighting to protect the country's last living lung (even if he is condescending at times. I have not forgotten that he said, "Let an Ifugao or Badjao run, but please... not an American." I wish I could force him to gargle with the strongest laundry soap.).

And he is not "epal". In fact, he seems to be destroying his own campaign. He exaggerates his flaws and does not talk about the Samaritan acts he did for people in distress. But actions speak louder than words.

So, please stop asking why I, a human rights lawyer, am supporting Duterte who supports a Marcos burial in Libingan  ng mga Bayani and I will stop asking why you are supporting one I perceive to be anti-people. :-) With the exception of Grace Poe and Miriam Santiago, the candidates are all killers, all human rights violators, all evil.

I chose the least evil.

ALMOST HALF A CENTURY SINCE CHE'S MURDER...

Humanity’s Misery for Sale

by: Cheryl L. Daytec

The compradors imprecated your fiery rhetoric

Scorning avarice that empties famine’s belly

Indicting  thirst  that lusts after  plebeian  sweat

Yes, even enslaved blood from  chocked veins

You drew lines of parity - no rich, no poor

Just humanity  eating  from the same plate

To each based on penury; from each, on gift

You preached that one’s  labor must liberate

The precariat  from  helotry to  Wall Street

On that cruel day, one hundred souls vanished

By the ruthless hands of the butler of greed

Korda’s camera arrested your pain and rage

Framed between a silhouette and a palm tree

Now frozen for the world to see… everywhere

To those who heard the clarion call, it is the face

Of  deep love for the masses who are also oneself

The face that speaks indignation  against  injustice

Against oligarchs bestriding  borders as fictions of law  

To reach last frontiers beneath the feet of first peoples

The  gold fever afflicting them does not come down

They eat  what they steal, and get even  hungrier

As their bursting patrician pockets get deeper

To the naïve and nescient, a movie icon’s face

Or, perhaps, a heavy metal band’s sex symbol

In thoughtful contemplation of the next show

To capital, nothing is sacred; even God is cash

Comrade Che, you would not believe me if  I say

Today, I saw your face on T-shirts and bikinis

Offered at  altars of the golden calf on high streets

Of Bangkok, of Manila, of London, of San Salvador

Of New York, of Sidney, of Beijing, of  Pretoria

Your enemy keeps the contours of your face  alive

Flouting the fire and  faith that resided in your soul

A cursed  thief  to sell humanity’s desolate visage