On the outcome of the 2013 elections

[marco]

On the outcome of the 2013 elections

Communist Party of the Philippines
May 16, 2013

1. The just concluded 2013 election is clearly no different from
previous elections under more than half a century of neo-colonial
reactionary rule. From the national to the local levels, the elections
were dominated by political parties funded by and representing the
interests of big compradors and landlords and subservient to foreign big
business.

Initial results of the elections show that 75% of the incoming members
of the House of Representatives belong to so-called traditional
political families or dynasties. All the top-running contenders of the
Senate will either extend their own or their parent's or family's
political careers. Not a single one of them come from the ranks of the
toiling masses.

The Filipino people have no fundamental gains from the 2013 elections.
In general, the elections only served to strengthen the control of the
reactionary ruling classes over the government and its bureacracy.
Despite all the hype about "democracy", the 2013 elections have proved
to be a pseudo-democratic exercise where the "power" of the people is
limited to selecting from among the ruling reactionaries and casting
their votes for those who will make or implement the laws that will
oppress and exploit them.

2. The results of the automated elections of 2013 are widely discredited
because of the complete lack of transparency. The automated counting and
canvassing system of the 2013 elections have become ever more
untransparent and undemocratic. The absence of transparency is at all
levels, from the lack of a public review of the source code, to the
built-in secrecy of the counting of votes by the automated counting
machines and the national canvassing of votes.

The automated system is owned, controlled and administered by foreign
companies that are driven by commercial profits not by any patriotic
duty. That there exists no system to check the digital signatures or
integriy of the software that runs from the compact-flash cards means
the machines could be run with malicious software to manipulate the vote
count and carry out wholesale tampering of election results away from
public scrutiny. There is a complete absence of means for the public or
the political parties to independently verify the software and review
the numbers being fed to the central computer servers of the Comelec and
its private company partner Smartmatic Inc.

Advocates of electoral democracy are united in the rejection of the
system of automated elections in the Philippines. These are condemned as
a step away from democracy. The so-called automated counting alienates
the voters from the votes they have cast. They insist that automation
should be done in the transmission of votes after these have been
democratically, openly and manually counted. In the history of
Philippine elections, precint-level counting was never the bottleneck,
rather the canvassing at the municipal, provincial and national levels
where tampering of election returns are at its worse.

The prevalent news about corrupted compact flash cards, failed
electronic transmissions, malfunctioning counting machines and the
delays in the canvassing of votes underscore the widespread doubts
concerning the results of the elections.

3. The Aquino regime will take advantage of the results of the 2013
election to help further consolidate its oppressive and repressive rule.
Majority of the incoming new senators are Aquino allies and are expected
to support the IMF and World Bank programs being implemented by Aquino.

Under the direction of his US advisers and pressure from the American
and European chambers of commerce, the Aquino regime is set on further
liberalizing investment and trade policies in the Philippine. They are
pushing for the removal of constitutional restrictions against 100%
foreign ownership of land and key public services and enterprises
through an amendment of the 1987 constitution either by convening a
chacha (charter change) commission or convention or passing new laws
overriding such provisions.

In accordance with US dictates, there is also an increasing push from
Aquino to ensure the legal justification for the increasing presence and
basing of US military forces in the Philippines to skirt the
prohibitions against foreign military facilities in the 1987
constitution. Foreign big business groups have also been vocal in
pushing for the removal of constitutional restrictions against the
re-election of the president beyond one six-year term.

With a firm hold over the Philippine congress, Aquino seeks to further
liberalize the Mining Act of 1995 in order to attract bigger investments
in the mining sector. He completely disregards the Filipino people's
opposition to foreign plunder of the country's patrimony and
environmental destruction resulting from large-scale commercial mining,
plantation and logging operations.

Having majority control of congress, Aquino hopes to pursue his
budgetary program to carry out austerity measures by further reducing
social spending and carrying out the privatization of public utilities
and services. Anticipate the Aquino regime to go full-throttle with the
privatization of public hospitals and schools over the next few years.
Relatedly, Aquino is set to push for more tax measures to further raise
the government's revenues in the face of the continuing economic crisis.

Without a strong opposition block within congress, the Aquino clique
hopes it can go ahead in signing government contracts with private
contractors without fear of public rebuke and blue-ribbon
investigations. The Aquino regime is slated to carry out the public
bidding of the extension of the LRT project, the fare increase and
privatization of the Metro Rail Transit system and the rebidding of the
Laguna Lake dredging projects. The big bureaucrat capitalists and big
comprador partners of Aquino are likely to bag these contracts in the
same way that the Daang-Hari construction project under the
Public-Private Partnership Program was anomalously granted to Aquino's
cronies despite lower bids by contending parties.

With a firm electoral victory, Aquino is emboldened to further intensify
his regime's all-out war of suppression under Oplan Bayanihan. Aquino
seeks the collaboration of the Philippine congress to increase funding
for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine
National Police (PNP) and put into place the deceptive
counter-insurgency programs as the Pamana and Kalahi projects which have
been used by military commanders and local bureaucrat capitalists to
line up their pockets.

4. The recently concluded elections did not address the most pressing
problems and concerns of the Filipino people. Save for the efforts of
progressive parties which participated in the political campaigns,
election discussions and debates failed to center on the people's most
urgent demands including land reform and national industrialization,
higher wages, lower prices, local employment and affordable housing.

The Filipino people have no other recourse but to heighten their
struggles against the pro-imperialist and anti-people Aquino regime.
They must vigorously advance their demands and mount intense and
widescale mass struggles. The Filipino people and their democratic mass
movement can take advantage of schisms among the reactionaries by
employing united front tactics to forge alliances with the anti-Aquino
sections, especially in light of the political maneuvers related to the
approaching 2016 presidential elections.

In the face of their worsening socio-economic conditions, the Filipino
people are compelled to more resolutely advance their struggle for
national and social liberation through democratic mass struggles and
armed resistance.