Philippines

[Senator Benigno Aquino III ("Noynoy" Aquino) campaigns in Manila.]
By Reihana Mohideen
(Based on interviews with leaders of the Philippines left, Frank Pascual, Sonny Melencio and Ric Reyes.)
June 13, 2010 -- On June 9 Senator Benigno Aquino III ("Noynoy" Aquino) of the Liberal Party, the son of former President Cory Aqunio, was proclaimed president by the Philippines Congress. Noynoy was a former senator “with little legislative record to speak of”, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper, which nevertheless campaigned hard for Noynoy Aquino’s presidency, soon after Cory Aquino’s death in August 2009.

By Sonny Melencio, Manila
May 17, 2010 -– The May 10, 2010, election has been bandied about as the cleanest and the most peaceful since the restoration of this exercise after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. This is attributed to the computerised election which ensured the quick counting of votes so that there would not be sufficient time for any of the trapo (traditional politician) to cheat.

By Reihana Mohideen
May 9, 2010 -- The country faces a possible failure of elections on May 10 due to the inability of the Philippines' elite to ensure a resolution to the political crisis through elections, and the general incompetence of a corruption ridden, elite-controlled, weak state to conduct credible elections, above all one based on a fully automated voting system.

Pictured: Supporters of Ric Reyes.
By Reihana Mohideen
April 7, 2010 -- Socialist Feminist -- Ric Reyes' campaign for mayor of the city Pasig was formally launched at a 5000-strong local rally on March 26. The march, the biggest to be held in that city for many years, snaked its way on a "long march" through the working-class sections of Pasig. Ric Reyes' campaign is a model campaign for the left – an example of how to conduct a united, principled and effective electoral intervention.

Medical workers cover the bodies of massacre victims, November 25, 2009.

By Sonny Melencio, Partido Lakas ng Masa

November 25, 2009 -- The Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) condemns in the strongest possible terms the massacre in Maguindanao. We assert that this is not only a problem confined to Mindanao, but that it’s a symptom of a festering and rotten political system. We predict that this violence will be the feature of the coming elections, as the political elite struggle with increasing desperation and ferocity for a share of the ever-dwindling national wealth and power.

By Reihana Mohideen
Recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports on global and regional employment trends paint a stark picture of rapidly increasing unemployment in 2008; the situation is expected to worsen in 2009 with the prediction of massive job losses. The message is clear: workers and the poor are already paying heavily for the capitalist economic crisis. Especially hard hit are working-class and poor women and young people.

By Peter Boyle
Major Jason Aquino is one of the 28 officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines charged with allegedly attempting a mutiny in February 2006. Aquino was detained on February 22 that year and held incommunicado in a windowless cell for five months.
I met Major Aquino and several other detained rebel officers in Camp Aguinaldo in early February 2009. They were all outspoken against the grossly corrupt government of Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, and their years of incarceration (as yet without being convicted of a single crime) have only deepened their politicisation. But Major Aquino -- who has studied the speeches and writings of Fidel Castro and read everything he can get his hands on about the revolution in Venezuela led by Hugo Chavez -- wanted to make it clear a that he was “not a reformist”.
“In the present Philippine political context, the solution to our overall problem is not merely a regime change -- be it through a democratic process or not -- but most importantly, a systemic change.

By Peter Boyle
Manila: “We are the bat people, the people who lived under bridges in Manila”, explained urban poor organiser Ka Lisa as she took a small group of international observers around a section of an urban poor relocation settlement in Bulacan, about 60 kilometres north of Manila.
Since 2002, entire communities of urban poor have been forcibly relocated to Bulacan from their “squatter” shanty homes in Manila to make way for never-to-be-completed rail and road developments ordered by the corrupt government of President Gloria Arroyo.

By Peter Boyle
Manila: More than 1000 people, including 920 elected delegates, attended the inaugural congress of Power of the Masses Party (PLM) on January 30. The delegates represented mass organisations of workers, urban poor, peasants, students, street vendors, jeepney and tricycle drivers, women and senior citizens — a mass base estimated at 300,000 by PLM leaders.
The congress adopted a recruitment target of one million members in Manila and two million in the country as a whole by 2010, when presidential elections are due.

By Reihana Mohideen
The Wall Street crisis seems light years away from the side streets of Manila’s urban poor slums. For the labouring masses in the Philippines the capitalist system has been in crisis for some time now, unable to deliver life’s basic necessities: jobs and a living wage; affordable quality healthcare and education; and food security.
According to official National Statistics Office data poverty levels have increased between 2003 and 2006, and 2008 is expected to be the worst year since the 1998 Asian economic crisis. Between April 2007 and April 2008 the labour force grew by only 81,000, while the number of unemployed rose by 249,000, i.e. triple the increase in the labour force. In 2008 the number of employed persons fell by 168,000 and there was no employment generation in April of this year. Jobs were being lost at a time when prices and inflation were skyrocketing.

• See also The US Meltdown & the Indian Economy
• See also China & the Global Capitalist Economic Meltdown