The article below is by Peter Boyle, the national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, which is a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance. Boyle attended the founding congress of the new mass-based left-wing Power of the Masses Party (PLM) in Manila in February. He also met with military rebels, some supportive of the PLM, currently in prison for trying to overthrow the corrupt, neoliberal government of President Gloria Arroyo. A longer version of this article can be found at the socialist e-journal Links, http://www.links.org.au.
An activist from the PLM, Reihana Mohideen, will be an international guest at the World at a Crossroads conference in Sydney, April 10-12. For more information, or to register, visit ;http://www.worldatacrossroads.org.
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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 and held incommunicado in a windowless cell for five months.
I met Aquino and several other detained rebel officers in Camp Aguinaldo in early February this year. They were all outspoken against the grossly corrupt Arroyo government. Their years of incarceration (as yet without being convicted of a single crime) have only deepened their politicisation.
Aquino — who has studied the speeches and writings of Fidel Castro and read everything he can get his hands on about the Venezuelan revolution led by Hugo Chavez — wanted to make it clear 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 a systemic change.
"The primary role of the military is to protect the people. When the people become oppressed, abused and disenfranchised by a regime they elected and entrusted, it is not just a role but a moral obligation of the military to intervene together with or on behalf of the people in overthrowing a tyrannical and oppressive government and replace it with a pro-people government."
Conversion in the field
Aquino is an army special operations specialist and his last post was with the Scout Rangers.
"I was trained to hunt down guerrillas. I was assigned to most hotspots and remote areas in the country.
"While in the combat areas, most of my time was spent mediating land dispute problems, anti-illegal logging operations, dealing with petty crimes, which local officials could not or would not handle.
"I became a teacher, a doctor, a judge, a counsellor, an event organiser and even acted as a police enforcer.
"I had spent my time attending to concerns which were outside my sphere of expertise — but had to do it for the people.
"Even the most basic services have failed to reach the ordinary citizen … I did my best but I just couldn't do much.
"It was very frustrating to see the reality on the ground and the sorry state of the people because of governmental neglect of its responsibilities."
Aquino and other rebel officers had been thrown into the frontline of the unending wars against leftist guerrillas, other left and civil society organisations and the Moro people's national liberation movements.
His view of these "enemies" changed radically with experience.
"I learned about the enemy (real and perceived) in the classrooms. While in the field, I continued to study the history, psyche, motivation, organisation and operations of the so-called enemies of the state vis a vis my actual experience with them. My exposure in the field changed my views.
"The New People's Army, for example, was tagged as 'communist terrorists' by the government. As a ground operator in the field, I have had actual close encounters with this group and have captured some of its members.
"I had talked to them and found out that most of them were victims of social injustice and economic deprivation. Generally, their issues were the same as the rest of the society.
"I view the left and civil society organisations as legitimate cause-oriented groups. I respect the individual person's ideological, political and religious preferences.
"I believe in responsible democracy. Airing freely one's opinion, grievances and even dissension is politically and socially healthy. The issues being raised by these cause-oriented groups are the same issues we have in the military, but we just cannot openly articulate it.
Aquino said he had been to Mindanao in the south, which is the site of the Moro independence struggle. He said, "the grievances there are the same as the rest of the country. Moro secessionist movements thrived because of loss of faith and confidence in the government for its inability and failure to address the basic communal problems.
"Hence, military action on the Mindanao problem is not the solution.
"At the outset, the evolution of different armed groups was a consequence of the overall misgovernance of past and present regimes."
'For the country'
It is easy to see why Aquino's ideas strike a chord with many soldiers.
While successive generations of traditional politicians (trapos, as they are popularly derided) were setting world records in shameless corruption and venality, the working poor, ordinary soldiers and even some junior officers struggled to get their children through school.
When he was a lieutenant in 2004, Aquino began to popularise the slogan Para sa bayan ("For the country") among the troops. He circulated a paper on the role and responsibility of the military towards the people. Other young officers began wearing T-shirts with the slogan.
Not surprisingly, in July 2005, Aquino was temporarily relieved of his post for "entertaining political thoughts".
Years of detention have only firmed Aquino's radical views and he is encouraged by the strong support he and other rebel soldiers receive from other soldiers — sometimes even from prison guards.
"For the first five months of detention, I was placed inside a seven-foot by 12-foot concrete room with a steel door.
"I had no sunning privilege. The guards were prohibited to converse with me. They gave my meals through a small opening in the steel door.
"Reading materials, glasses, personal paraphernalia for hygiene were all banned inside the cell. I had no medicines and no lawyers were allowed to see me for the five months.
"But my life inside was uplifted by the guards themselves. Some broke the rules. They talked to me. They shared with me their sentiments and what they read and heard of my advocacy defending the wellbeing of the ordinary soldiers.
"They knew how I fought the generals for their welfare in the army.
"After a month, they smuggled newspapers, books, soft drink, cigarettes, cold mineral water and they even made my meals palatable. Every morning, they would prepare a cup of coffee, cigarettes and a newspaper.
"In order to get away with inspections, they would meet my wife and friends outside the camp and brought in everything they sent.
"At first, I thought it was a scheme, but two incidents proved to me that these soldiers were sincere: first, one of them was jailed for a month for talking to me.
"Second, they brought my pistol into the jail for personal defence if ever something bad was to happen.
"I was also eventually able to send and receive untampered letters through the guards."
Aquino said: "The senior military officers wanted to mistreat me but the juniors and the ordinary soldiers did not follow their orders."
Formation of PLM
Like another celebrated and incarcerated rebel military officer, Brigadier-General Danilo Lim, Aquino has welcomed the formation of the socialist PLM on January 30.
"I believe that the political, social and economic direction of any democratic state towards the realisation of its people's common aspirations can only be attained by a strong people's political party with a viable pro-people platform.
"I think the PLM has correctly recognised, addressed and responded to the enduring deficiency in Philippines politics for decades: the absence of a genuine revolutionary party capable of uniting the common aspirations of the masses, committed to the overthrow of elite rule and establishing an egalitarian and humane society."
The rebel movement within the Philippine armed forces is deep going and has now a long history.
PLM chairperson Sonny Melencio told Green Left Weekly that, while some rebel officers have moved to the right, others have moved to the left,.
Leading military rebels are the most popular symbols of resistance to the corrupt and increasingly repressive Arroyo regime.