Marcos JR.’s lies
Malaya Movement USA response to Marcos’ SONA
The picture Marcos Jr. painted in his SONA is a pretty one, if it were accurate. We are not surprised that Marcos Jr. 's proclamations put his regime in a positive light, while largely ignoring the genuine plight of the majority of the Philippines.
Marcos Jr.’s “Bagong Pilipinas” is a myth. While he acknowledges that the people are suffering due to the high prices of goods, particularly rice, he blames everything except his failed policies that place profit over people. He blames hoarders, the environment, supply issues, or the markets outside his control for making the lives of people more difficult. Marcos shirks his responsibility to address the root problems faced by everyday people and instead makes more money for himself, his corrupt family, and his cronies.
Like his father who plundered the Filipino people’s money through bogus infrastructure projects, Marcos Jr. has placed emphasis on the growing number of projects under his care. While modernizing infrastructure for the benefit of the people is not bad, we are critical of Marcos' priorities. From road projects, expressways, and ports of entry, these projects allow for the facilitation of increased corruption and plunder of lands and resources and provide quick pathways out of the country for export. His sell out of the Philippines is apparent in his pursuit of public-private partnerships, deals between the government and private corporations, that ultimately bind the Philippines to the whims of foreign corporations.
This same logic applies to Marcos’ approach to address the health crisis in the Philippines: create things that sound good on paper but don’t solve the most important problem. Instead of prioritizing the government budget for basic health standards before war, counterinsurgency, “confidential” funds, and unessential national debt payments, he sought deals with private corporations, like the Ayalas, to build projects that do not address the average Filipino’s basic access to healthcare. These private corporations stand to benefit from this debt-oriented healthcare model, rather than the government allocating the necessary funding to provide free and necessary public health care.
For the Marcoses, every Filipino is a commodity to be exploited and exported. He commends Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWS) for their sacrifices as his regime is banking on more to leave the country so the supposed economic managers of the GRP can continue to rely on hard earned remittances to hold up the economy they are running to the ground. Overseas Filipinos’ remittances made up nearly 40% of this year’s totality of the National Expenditure Plan. Not quite “bago” from his father’s Labor Export Policy, which codified the mass exodus of Filipinos from the Philippines from the mid-1970s onwards.
One of many lies: calling his War on Drugs “bloodless”. 700-plus people have been killed since he took office in 2022. He claims “high-level” criminals have been apprehended, but we remain critical of this claim given Marcos’ penchant for disinformation. Marcos’ Bagong Pilipinas is a shiny rebranding of his predecessors’ anti-people policies that drive more people into debt, poverty, hunger, and suffering.
The people continue to resist. In the Philippines, thousands took to the streets to protest during the People’s State of the Nation, just as Typhoon Carina was making landfall. In the US, over a thousand people mobilized across the country, united to fight for sovereignty, livelihood, services, and rights!
This week, join Malaya Movement USA, BAYAN USA, ICHRP-US, and Kabataan Alliance for countrywide actions to oppose the “2+2 ministerial meeting” in Manila between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken & Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and their counterparts Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo and Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro. Learn more: linktr.ee/endusaggressionph
