The convenors have given me the privilege to talk for as long as I want. But I will stay within the limits set for everybody else. In 1965, before the military take-over in Indonesia, I attended a scholars’ conference sponsored by the Indonesian Communist Party. The Indonesian party officials loved to deliver very long speeches. But I learned soon enough that it was not considered impolite to sleep while somebody is talking. Even those in the presidential table were not embarrassed to take a nap. I guess the only rule was, don’t snore.
When I was working for the Development Academy of the Philippines in a training program for foreign service officers, DAP hired an American consultant to assess who were the best and worst lecturers. I told the DAP that it can dispense with the consultant. The simplest and cost-effective evaluation method is to count the number of participants who slept during the lectures.
That we are gathered here today is already a great victory. It has awakened my faith in the movement. To tell you the truth, when the Philippine Left started splitting like an amoeba, I thought that the movement was doomed. This meeting today has revived my hope that in my lifetime, I can see all the Left forces marching together and marching forward. This forum is not an attempt to reunite our fractured movement and create a broad organization. Neither will it attempt to come up with a program and policies that will bind everybody. There will be no voting, no division of the house.
Our only purpose is to set up lines of communication. I hope that even after this forum, all the Left blocs will continue to relate to each other. I hope we will continue to study, not only our own interests as separate blocs, but also the interest of the whole revolutionary movement. I know there are many serious barriers to attaining unity, and it is useless to push for unity when there are still significant differences within the Left. But the restoration of the lines of communication, at least among the democratic Left blocs, is already a major step forward.
I was probably among the first to advocate pluralism in the Left. When we were still in the PKP in 1972, I, together with other comrades, vehemently rejected the line of our party with respect to martial law. We were prevented from explaining our position to other comrades. We asked the PKP to allow us to work separately. We said that we were resigning from the party to remain loyal to the revolution. We told the party that only history will be the judge of our actions and hope that we will eventually meet again.
They could not accept this. They believed that there could only be one vanguard organization, and that whoever espouses a different line, and forms an organization outside the party control should be destroyed. It seems this is also the view of the CPP today. They would rather talk to GMA than to KPD, Alab Katipunan, Sanlakas and Padayon. I believe they’re not as mad at Bisig because we came from another organization.
But even when I was advocating pluralism, I always thought of it as an unfortunate necessity, as something to regret and not to celebrate. It is not the ideal situation for it is obvious that the Left would be stronger and would have better chances of success if it were united. However, if unity becomes untenable due to principled differences, we can console ourselves with the words of Hegel who said that a party only becomes real when it is split. By this he meant that party unity is illusory and fragile, if that unity is maintained by shelving rather than debating principled differences. Sooner or later that artificial unity will break, and when it breaks that relationship will be acrimonious.
Hegel said pluralism is not ideal but pluralism is preferable to antagonism. If there are differences that cannot be resolved within our organization, let each group pursue its own course of action, based on its own analysis of the situation. In real politics, praxis is the ultimate test. But for goodness sake, let us not malign and kill each other. Let us respect each other’s position, bearing in mind that underlying these differences is a common commitment to the progress of our nation and the liberation of the working class. For as long as the lines of communication are kept open, we can debate as much as we like, just don’t twist each other’s words, and don’t attack the caricature, rather than the real position of our dissenting comrades.
As I reflect on the state of the Philippine Left this past decade, I gain a renewed respect for the ideas of Lenin. Fragmented, we are helpless before the power of imperialism and the indigenous ruling class. The Left can never be a significant force as long as it is divided to the extent that it is today. If the various Left groups are sincere in their commitment to the revolution they should strive for higher unity, not by one vanquishing the rest, but by instituting mechanisms where principled differences can be threshed out in a civilized manner, without physically and politically harming each other. When our principles coincide, let us have joint actions.
It is instructive to recall that on the eve of the October Revolution, Lenin had a terrible quarrel with Kamenev and Zinoviev. It was so bitter that when Lenin won the vote in the Central Committee, Kamenev and Zinoviev resigned. But Lenin did not order the execution of these comrades; he did not condemn them as traitors; in fact a few months later when the Bolsheviks triumphed, Lenin appointed them to sensitive positions in the revolutionary government.
If we are truly fighting for democracy, we should practice democracy in the movement. The advocates of contending lines should be given the right to explain their positions and persuade others. Only when there has been an honest to goodness debate will the majority gain the moral right to bind the minority. That is what I understand by democratic centralism. A unified party need not be monolithic; it does not have to be always of one mind on everything.
It is dangerous to entrust state power to one party led by a few like-minded ideologues where the rest of the members are reduced to unthinking robots. But a party that has been underground for so long tends to be of this mode. What the Russians call konspiratsiya becomes the dominant culture. The higher organ alone makes all the decisions and members of the lower organs are obliged to toe the line. To ask questions is to risk being suspected of being a spy or a deep penetration agent. To question party policy is to risk being called a traitor.
Often we see sectarianism in others but not in ourselves. Fraternal debate is useful in forcing us to look at ourselves and cleanse ourselves of sectarianism and dogmatism. Moral security will hold but only as long as the movement is doing well. But once it encounters a serious setback, there will be those who will challenge the wisdom of the leaders. When both sides suffer from sectarianism, the debate turns ugly and splits follow. Instead of recruiting new militants to the movement, the rival factions raid each other’s ranks and in self-defense, hurl wild accusations at each other.
This unhealthy situation is what prevails in the movement today, even in that section we call the democratic Left. At this historical juncture, it is important that we can act in concert, even if we cannot be organizationally united. A revolutionary situation is emerging in our country. The system of elite rule is indeed in crisis. GMA and the trapo opposition have done a magnificent job of wrecking the system to which they all belong. With the rising clamor for change, the Left has a good opportunity to push for system change. But the outcome of the crisis depends on how wisely the revolutionary forces play their cards.
Let us not forget that a revolutionary situation is also a counterrevolutionary situation. We saw this in Germany in the early 1930s. The crisis of the Weimar republic fueled the contradictions within the Left, so the outcome of the crisis was not the victory of socialism, but the rise of Hitler who proceeded to crush the Left groups, one after the other.
It is time for us in the democratic Left to take a hard look at the way we have pursued our tactics of open, legal struggle and see if indeed, these tactics serve our strategic goal. Many comrades in the democratic Left are involved in NGO work. That is good, for any number of reasons. An NGO is better able to raise funds than a political organization. It enables talented comrades to survive without being totally absorbed in the system. It also helps consolidate the movement’s influence in the communities or sectors that it serves. But most important, as far as I am concerned, is that the experience of organizing and running an NGO nurtures and develops management skills that will be needed in building a new social order.
Marx himself recognized that the bourgeoisie has developed the art and science of management, and that the skills that the proletariat learns from working in the factory prepare them to manage a socialist economy. Because the PKP, in 1950, did not have the people who knew how to run the government, it would have been a monumental tragedy had Jose Lava’s plans for early seizure of power succeeded. They probably wouldn’t have held on to power for long. That was also the dilemma of the Bolsheviks.
After the October Revolution, and after winning the civil war and crushing foreign intervention, they did not know how to revive the industries and administer the government. In the NEP period, Lenin had to appeal to the technicians who had gone into exile to come back and help to rebuild the Russian economy. In Cambodia, however, Pol Pot and his thugs did not have the humility and pragmatism of Lenin. They tried to wipe out all the professionals and intellectuals. Anyone wearing glasses was regarded as a potential traitor. The Khmer Rouge regime was one of the biggest tragedies in human history.
I appreciate the NGOs as schools for training the revolutionary managers of the future, but we should not overlook their negative aspects. Since foreign funds started flowing into local NGOs, comrades have started fighting each other to corner the funding sources. Some NGOs were so beholden to their financiers that they virtually became their servants. Some NGOs designed project proposals, not with the needs of the revolution in mind, but to accommodate the agenda of the funding agencies. The avowed missions of these funding agencies appear noble and philanthropic, but many of them are in fact foreign policy instruments of their governments and corporations. Where else do they get their funds?
I am not suggesting that we reject foreign funding. I am just urging the NGOs of the democratic Left to be careful and critical so that we will not become unwitting tools of imperialism. The Left in general, including the reaffirmists, recognizes the futility of boycotting the elections. Instead of simply supporting friendly candidates of major parties, most Left groups put up their own party-list candidates and candidates for local governments where they have an even change of winning. The basic assumption of these parties is that people have faith in the electoral process and participating in elections would enable us to reach the broader masses. I am happy to observe that in their desire to win, some of us seem to have caught the trapo disease. To get our party list in their sample ballots some of us have aligned with trapo candidates and indulged in such despicable practices as vote buying. Yet we know that if elected these scalawags will try to recover their expenses through graft and corruption.
These tactics may be effective in winning votes but in the long run they undermine our credibility as a genuine alternative. It does not contribute to raising political consciousness; in fact it contributes to the spread of cynicism. In resorting to these tactics, we are not opening an example of new politics. To be an alternative is to be different and better. But if the masses identify us with the trapos, we cannot expect them to turn to us when they get fed up with traditional politics.
The trapos themselves have discredited the political process. It has become so expensive that even candidates for barangay captain must spend hundreds of thousands. Those who do not have the money or are unwilling to spend are considered nuisance candidates, no matter how competent and virtuous they may be. Lately vote buying has been going out of fashion; what is in fashion is the buying of certificates of canvas. In view of all these, I now doubt our initial assumption that people still believe in elections as a means to improve their lives. I think people regard elections more as free entertainment and an opportunity to earn a few pesos. That is why they sell their votes to the most generous scoundrels.
I am not calling for a return to the boycott line. I am merely appealing that all democratic Left groups, especially party-list representatives in Congress, be more aggressive in attacking the electoral process as it has evolved. When the system is in great trouble, it is important for the Left to be taken seriously as contender for power. I think more people are now looking for a genuine alternative. It is important for the Left to come out with a fundamental critique of the system, and to put forward truly innovative policy options. We have to explore other forms of political actions, as life gets harder for the masses and even for the middle class.
A political upheaval is in the offing. People are no longer in the mood to wait for the next election to get rid of a corrupt and incompetent president with doubtful legitimacy. If the constitutional process is followed, however, the next president will be the buffoon Noli de Castro. That is why I am almost certain that the forthcoming regime change will take an extra-constitutional form, as in 1986 and 2001. The only thing missing is the spark that will trigger the conflagration.
At the rate GMA is fumbling, there is no shortage of issues with the potential of triggering political upheaval. Jueteng is only one issue. Soon the opposition will release the taped conversations of GMA, Big Mike, Garcillano and Barbers gloating over their success in manipulating the last elections. The disgruntled intelligence officer of the Presidential security group secretly recorded this conversation and turned over the tapes to the Catholic bishops. Another potentially explosive issue is the Sandiganbayan verdict on Estrada. The trial seems to be moving in his favor.
The conviction of Estrada, which carries a penalty of death, may have the same impact as the Aquino assassination. GMA’s hopes of survival now lie in Angelo Reyes, and in the chain of command. But if the generals realize that her situation is untenable, they might plot to seize power themselves. The problem is that the junior officers in command of the effective combat units have mutinous tendencies.
I do not expect an Estrada restoration, but more frightening is the prospect that the GMA regime self-destructs before an alternative leadership can be ready to fill in the vacuum. The democratic Left should be prepared for this eventuality. Let us not delude ourselves that we are capable of seizing power this time. But we can maneuver so that, in the event of an extra-constitutional regime change, we should be in a position to push for a system change. That is why it is urgent and imperative that we keep our lines of communication open. We have to act in concert to survive the crisis and turn to advantage the impending political upheaval.