Comment by Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
September 1, 2018
Duterte may be seriously sick physically and mentally. But he can still walk and give orders to his minions. While still alive, he is capable of doing a lot of malicious mischief and inflicting social disaster on the Filipino people.
For instance, he has created a caretaker committee headed by Inday Sara to rule the country, instead of letting his constitutional successor serve as caretaker, while he is out on one more expensive tour cum medical treatment in Israel.
He and his co-conspirators are still hell-bent on carrying out a discernibly four-stage plot of establishing a fascist dictatorship ala Marcos and imposing it on the people. Duterte himself has on various occasions volubly indicated these four stages:
Stage 1. Proclamation of martial law nationwide as a result of supposed bombing incidents ascribed to the Islamic State and NPA tactical offensives.
Stage 2. Duterte´s “revolutionary government,” which is actually a counter-revolutionary coup against the 1987 Constitution under the pretext of a counter-coup against an imaginary or real US CIA coup in favor of the opposition.
Stage 3. Due to stages 1 and 2 above, effective control of the results of the May 2019 elections to ensure charter change through the needed majority in both houses of Congress.
Stage 4. Charter change to federalism as façade for fascist dictatorship.
Duterte and his co-conspirators are clever and brutal enough to plot and carry out their evil plan. But time and circumstances are against them. Below are some of the major factors against them:
- The rise and spread of the broad united front and mass movement against the Duterte tyranny, especially its practice of mass murder, corruption and rapid deterioration of the economy,
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The growing bankruptcy of the reactionary government, the widening budgetary and trade deficits, the mounting tax burden and the soaring prices of basic goods and services, and
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The effective resistance of the armed revolutionary movement based in the countryside.
