Perverted populism

THE VETO on the Security of Tenure Bill – a direct, not to say dialectical, contradiction to his thundering “stop contractualization or I will kill you” threat to capitalists at the onset of his presidency – gives the brazen lie to Duterte’s professions of being for, from, and of the masses.

Duterte’s arbitrary order to suspend all gaming schemes authorized by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office – complete with a show of force in true stormtrooper style by the police – is an absolute negation of whatever pro-poor molecule still extant in this organism.

The evil of Endo on one hand, the deprivation of the social benefits the poor get from the PCSO on the other. A double whammy in a matter of days inflicted upon the toiling, suffering masses by the very champion they voted into office. Na-Duterte, the bitterest irony of it all.   

“Mahirap kayo? Putang ina, umalis kayo. Magtiis kayo sa hirap at gutom, wala akong pakialam.”

Comes to the fore anew the scorn Duterte heaped upon the drivers and operators of jeepneys protesting the government’s transport modernization program, not so much for the convenience it will bring to the public as to the cost it would entail, way, way over and above their quotidian means.

Self-contradiction is a Duterte affliction: The self-avowed socialist at the time of the election campaign, the tyrant of a president.

His disdain, if not utter abomination, of the masa – the very core of his political base – most manifest in his fulminations against those jeepney drivers, in putting the Chinese worker over and above the Filipino laborer, in opening the nation’s seas to the Chinese and shutting down the same to the Filipino fishermen, in consigning the farmers to a life of deprivation, indeed starvation, if not extinction, with absolute neglect made more resolute with the rice tariffication law. Above all, in the fulsome slaughter of the poor, be they drug addicts or pushers, or innocent collaterals to his war on drugs, as well as in his military aggressions in the countrysides targeting NGOs, journalists, lawyers, IPs – with the utmost intensity on the Lumad.

There is not an iota of the socialist in Duterte. There is in him everything of the elitist, at the least, of the peti-burgis.

Still, he gets high rust ratings, ostensibly from the very victims of his anti-poor whimsy – policy, is too high-brow a word for it. Readily dismissed as some case of mass retardation, damned as “Dutertardism” by the same class as Duterte’s but who happened to be on the other side of the elitist divide.   

Time to raise the class card anew with this unrepentant socialist’s musings in the long defunct Pampanga News issue of March 23-29, 2006 under the heading The masa antithesis. 
HINDI MANGMANG ang masa. Sila’y pinagkaitan lamang ng tamang pagkakataon upang ganap na umusbong ang kanilang katalinuhan, ng akmang kaganapan upang malinang ang kanilang karunungan – pagkakataong pinigil ng hagkis ng kahirapan; kaganapang sinupil ng hataw ng pang-aapi’t pagsasamantala ng mga naghahari-hariang uri.

That “the incompetence of the masses is almost universal throughout the domains of political life…” is a fundamental fallacy in the bourgeois postulates on the people.

The masa response: There is no inherent mass incompetence among the people: there is mass oppression, exploitation, and deprivation that caused – and still causes – incompetence.

Premium to the existence of class exploitative societies is the oppression of the people. Of the highest priority is the reduction of the people to their basic animal instincts, the deprivation of their natural rights as human beings, in order to best serve – in the bourgeois interest – their principal purpose as nothing more than tools of production.

Sa kaisipang elitista, ang masa ay kawan ng baka’t kalabaw na isinisingkaw sa mga bukirin, sa mga planta’t pabrika upang mabigyan tugon ang lahat ng mga pangangailangan, upang masustentuhan ang lahat ng luho at kapritso ng uring peti-burgis.
Tunay ka, kasama: Tamad na burgis na ayaw gumawa, sa pawis ng masa ay nagpapasasa.
Deprivation damns the people to incompetence, dispossessing them of the necessary knowledge and skills to rise above the lot pre-ordained for them by the ruling class.

Born poor. Live poor. Die poor.

Paldac-sicaran ning cacaluluan ibat qng quebaitan angga na qng camatayan, as we Capampangans put it. An animal existence. To the elite, that is the masa destiny. A vicious cycle with neither definitive end nor fixed beginning.

Of that, it certainly is not.

Incompetence is reared upon deprivation which in turn is rooted in exploitation which spawns from oppression. To make possible the elimination of incompetence among the people then, exploitation need to be uprooted.

Ang pagkapantay-pantay ng mga mamamayan ang sandigan ng isang demokratikong estado. Ang mga kalakarang piyudal, pagbubusabos sa mga anak-pawis, paniniil sa mga anak-dalita ay walang puwang dito. 

So, government exists for the purpose of preserving the status quo. This does not cover though the preservation of the system of class exploitation. 

Ang pagtaas sa antas ng pamumuhay ng mga mamamayan ay hindi lamang pangunahin kundi sagradong gampanin ng pamahalaan. Lakip nito ang pagbibigay puwang sa pinakamaliit at pinaka-aba mang mamamayan ng bahagi sa mga gawain at pagkilos na tuwirang tumitimo sa kanilang buhay. Anumang kaganapang taliwas dito ay isang kabalintunaan sa demokratikong estado.

The bourgeois thesis of governance as a monopoly of the propertied class has been – rightfully – long consigned to the dustbin of history.

There is, though, an emerging new elitism. This, the masa should fight with a determined populism.

NO, NOT that kind of populism arrogated unto Duterte. Who, in fact, is an elitist to his rotten core.

Bangon sa pagkakagupiling, bangon kauring alipin…