The Mexico-Philippines nexus

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/16/2006



Read the following quote and you will hear the echo of nations oppressed by a global system of exploitation today and their yearning to be freed by new leadership to replace the existing exploitative regimes. This piece is from a national political leader who has won a nation’s mandate but, like in many Third World countries, the popular is being frustrated by the powers of elites that control the established system supported by the oligarchy of the Western powers:

"1. We will fight poverty and the monstrous inequality which reigns in our country. Without justice, no one will have guaranteed security and tranquility. Nor will there be social peace. Peace is the fruit of justice.

"2. We will defend the Nation's patrimony. We will not permit national assets to be sold off. We will not permit the privatization, under any modality, of the electrical industry, of oil, of public education, of social security, and of natural resources.

"3. We will uphold the public's right to information. This refers to the attempt to ram through a law strengthening the cartelization of Mexico's mass media.

"4. We will confront corruption and impunity. The government cannot continue to be a committee at the service of a minority. Those who have committed abuses when in power and robbed Mexicans of their patrimony must be punished."

5. Civic institutions must be cleaned out, he said, because the institutions that are supposed to protect our Constitutional rights have been "kidnapped by a cabal." We are not willing to let tax and treasury policies be applied "solely for the benefit of bankers and influence traffickers." And we are not willing to allow the Supreme Court "to be at the service of tycoons and to protect white-collar criminals." This quote is from Mexico’s Andred Miguel Lopez Obrador, the true winner in their last presidential election but fighting to claim that rightful mandate.

Some elements young officers asked for advice, I gave them this counsel: Be revolutionary leaders. I write this piece and quote from AMLO beautiful exhortation to his people to struggle, for years if necessary, to force the mandate they have granted to the leadership they have entrusted their hopes. For our young idealist young officers I can imagine how they will fire up the hopes of the nation if they quit the ambiguities and tell it like it is: our the oppression and corruption in our society is dire, we need radical change! Listen to AMLO, be like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

AMLO sums up the vital issues we too face: poverty and monstrous inequality; peace from justice (and not from suppression as Gloria, Jesuit Intengan and Palparan thinks); national and people’s patrimony and its protection against theft (privatization) by the powerful few; media and control of information by oligarchs; government and constitutional bodies (like their IFE or our Comelec, and Supreme Court) its corruption and usurpation by the “minority” or the money power that Abraham Lincoln warned against even in the U.S. over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Alongside corruption AMLO condemns “impunity” of the criminals who plunder government and the national patrimony, globalizers (like Makati Business Club people) as well as the corrupt permanent government “bulok-crats”; and finally, the most important assault on the root of the problem: the bankers and “influence traffickers” and how they’ve sucked the nation dry from the debt and taxes for the debts local and foreign. Why look to Mexico and AMLO? - To draw inspiration from it to add to the drive of our Philippine struggle.

AMLO’s distant echoing of what we are fighting for here helps us re-echo it to ourselves and overcome the noise and fury of our daily brawls here. At some point, as I have been stressing to a number of deaf ears, our struggle must link up with the international struggle against the global oligarchy which also supports Gloria and the Establishment here. This echoing will help the consolidation of our genuine popular leadership - consolidating around the definition of the people’s problems, establish solidarity and boost leadership symbols that nation and the masses can rally to.

If no single, individual leader can generate the critical mass then a council can be established. The progressive bishops can provide intermediation. With the combined power of the people and the reformists let us seize the levers of national governance to restore this country to the people once more. We are pressed for time for, as the article in the reformist soldiers’ website “The Last Revolution” states, we are a: dying society. Let’s resuscitate it before it’s too late. Even as we write and discuss this the global and local oligarchy continues to suck our blood
dry:

The country’s largest IPP Mirant is “borrowing” $735-M from local banks (our OFW’s hard earned $) winding up after gaining $ 3-B in assets in just five years from being bankrupt in the U.S.! The Lopez’s First Philippine Hodling profit soars 76% mainly from power sales and NLEX fees. P 350-B of our tax payments will go to interest payments, another P 380-B to roll over princip, and the local banks gets over half that. Let’s take the country back from these leeches! Let us break free! Solidarity of Mexicans and Filipino masa now!

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