Philippine editorial...

This is from Malaya.(Philippine Newspaper)
The paper is fiercely anti-government but the fear of Arroyo trying to hang on to power by means fair or foul is no doubt widespread among Filipinos. The problem of poverty and rural underdevelopment is also real enough and one reason for the continuing insurgency. Even the cause of Muslim independence is partly economic as the Muslim areas are among the poorest in the Philippines. The Maoist insurgency is strongest in the countryside where they in fact have virtual control of some areas and exert influence (and collect revolutionary taxes) over a much larger area.


Never again?
Editorial
‘The dangers of a self-executed coup d’etat are real enough.’
Never again! As an expression of commitment to fight attempts to impose martial law, the slogan finds deep and wide resonance given the fascist tendencies of Gloria Arroyo. The people should justifiably be on guard against renewed efforts by Gloria to accumulate power in her hands, to the castration of the Legislative and the Judicial branches.
Gloria is obsessed with staying in power beyond 2010. The current track is the shift to a parliamentary system through Charter change. If that fails, she is likely to shift to martial law or some other form of emergency rule, using the communist and secessionist rebellions as a justification.
The dangers of a self-executed coup d’etat are real enough.
Let us distinguish, however, the greed for power of Gloria, which is a personal defect that is for her and her psychiatrist to sort out, from the dysfunctional Philippines social structure that generates the dynamic of dissent/repression/resistance. Gloria no doubt is the incarnation of the authoritarian personality – a bundle of character traits most distinguished by intolerance. But she is only an individual after all. We have to go beyond her and take a look at the social conditions that made a Gloria possible. For if the same conditions continue to define our society, we will see more Glorias and Ferdinand Marcoses in our future.
Before the declaration of martial law in 1972, Philippine society was described as a social volcano on the verge of eruption. There was a small section of the population wallowing in obscene wealth while the vast masses were mired in abject poverty. That same elite controlled the state while the rest were condemned to powerlessness.
Many are puzzled why the communist rebellion, driven by what is seen as a dead and discredited ideology, continues to flourish. They should not be. The conditions that led Crisanto Evangelista to establish the communist party in 1930 persist to this day.
If anything, the passage of years has only strengthened the resolve of the people below to secure what is promised them – economically and politically - by a state that claims to be founded on equal access to economic opportunities, on justice and on democracy. In the South, the same impulse has resulted in the rise of secessionism.
How do we deal with such forces that spring from the very ideals that gave us the Republic? We either reform to accommodate their demands, or wage war against groups that claim to also pursue our deeply held aspiration through violent means.
If we don’t take the first alternative, the threat of martial law – which after all is the state’s emergency weapon against rebellion – will always hang before us.