Press Statement
Patricio Ramirez
Spokesperson
Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino

This is the beginning of the end for the pretender in Malacanang. It may be months instead of weeks before GMA is ousted but she will be sooner than later. All previous destabilization attempts have failed because the people remained indifferent and the administration outmaneuvered the opposition.

But this is a different conjuncture. This destabilization by GMA’s reactionary rivals coincides with radicalization of the masses as the regime’s policies of privatization, deregulation and liberalization ravage their lives.

Yesterday it was Ecuador, today it is Bolivia and tomorrow it will be the Philippines, as the heads of pro-globalization presidents fall like dominoes thru mass uprisings. GMA must be ousted not just because of the recorded conversations with Garcillano but more so because of her record of puppetry to globalization. Even without the recent exposes on the Arroyo’s hand in jueteng payola and GMA’s complicity in election fraud, the regime should be overthrown because of its anti-people and anti-worker character.

We call on the workers and poor to take the lead in the escalating movement to oust the GMA regime and to deepen the struggle to the overthrown of the rotten system. The masses must accelerate the momentum of protests towards a people’s uprising. The strength of the mass struggle will ensure that GMA’s fall does not lead to another reactionary’s rise to power.

If Vice President de Castro is unacceptable even to the ruling party as replacement, then Senate President Drilon is also objectionable to the masses for being no less a reactionary. The workers remember Drilon as the Aquino’s labor secretary after Bobbit Sanchez who reversed the token pro-labor reforms the latter instituted.

With GMA’s legitimacy doubted by a majority of the people and unrest brewing over economic hardships, GMA remains in power only because of support from the armed forces and national police. We call on the soldiers and police to withdraw support from this illegitimate government but not to give allegiance to another reactionary rival. The young officers and rank-and-file of the armed forces must defy the planned coup that is the game of the generals and reactionaries opposed to GMA. We call on them to build links with the mass movement and link arms with the workers and the poor who are in fact their class brothers and sisters. ###