Anil Sadgopal[1]

The debate on Right to Education was initiated by Mahatma Jotirao Phule almost 125 years ago when a substantial part of the memorandum presented by him to the Indian Education Commission (i.e. the Hunter Commission) in 1882 dwelt upon how the British government’s funding of education tended to benefit “Brahmins and the higher classes” while leaving “the masses wallowing in ignorance and poverty.” Mahatma Phule drew attention to the irony that this happens when most of the revenue collected by the British government is generated from the output of the labour of the masses themselves. Things have not fundamentally changed since then. In 1911, when Gopal Krishna Gokhale moved his Free and Compulsory Education Bill in the Imperial Legislative Assembly, he faced stiff resistance. Instead of supporting the Bill, the members representing the privileged classes from Mumbai, Maharajas and other rulers from princely states and the big landlords from feudal areas talked of the conditions in the country not being ripe for such a Bill and that haste should be avoided. The Maharaja of Darbhanga from Bihar collected 11,000 signatures on a Memorandum from princes and landlords expressing concern about what would happen to their farm operations if all children were required to attend the school! The Bill obviously could not be approved. At the National Education Conference held at Wardha (Maharashtra) in 1937, Mahatma Gandhi had to use all the moral powers at his command to persuade the Ministers of Education of the newly elected Congress governments of seven provinces to give priority to Basic Education (Nai Talim) of seven years and allocate adequate funds for this purpose. The Ministers kept on pointing out that there was no money.

During the Constituent Assembly debate in 1948-49, a member contended that the commitment made in the draft Article (later to be known as Article 45) to provide “free and compulsory education” to children up to 14 years of age should be limited to only 11 years of age as India would not have the necessary resources. The dilution would have been made but for Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s clarity of mind that it is at this age of 11 years that a substantial proportion of children become child labourers. He forcefully argued that the place for children at this age in independent India should be in schools, rather than in farms or factories. This is how an unambiguous commitment to provide free education through regular full-time schools to all children up to 14 years of age (including children below 6 years) by 1960 became an integral component of India’s Constitution. This implies that the persistence of more than half of our children today in the school going age group of 6-14 years as out-of-school children [2] (at least 5 crores of them being child labourers) constitutes a clear violation of the Constitution. Likewise, the provision of  non-formal education in the National Policy on Education–1986 as well as the parallel streams of facilities of varying qualities in the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s and the ongoing Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (about 35% of its funds are from World Bank, European Union, DFID and other international agencies) violate the basic spirit of the Constitution as all these are designed to co-exist with both the child labour and inequality in society.

The rhetoric of lack of resources for mass education has continued to dominate policy formulation since Independence. In June 2006, the Central Government, claiming lack of resources, decided not to present the Right to Education Bill in the Parliament in spite of it becoming obligatory under Article 21A introduced through 86th Constitutional Amendment in December 2002. Instead, the central government sent a highly diluted and distorted draft Bill to the state/UT governments advising them to get it approved in their respective assemblies. This amounted to blatant abdication by the centre of its Constitutional obligation to give effect to the historic Fundamental Right accorded to elementary education for children in the 6-14 year age group. The Indian State is so scared of giving children Fundamental Right to Education that it has not even notified the 86th Constitutional Amendment to date though it was signed by the President of India more than five years ago.

Right to Education as Envisioned in the Constitution

The majority comprising the upper classes and upper castes in the Constituent Assembly ignored Dr. Ambedkar’s plea to place Article 45 in Part III of the Constitution, thereby denying education the status of a Fundamental Right in modern India. Instead, this Article was placed in Part IV of the Constitution making it a Directive Principle of the State Policy. In spite of this denial, there are five critical dimensions of the vision of education that emerges from the Constitution which must guide social movements in their struggle to gain Right to Education. First, this was the only Article among Directive Principles (Part IV) that had spelt out a time frame for its fulfillment viz. within ten years of the commencement of the Constitution. The political leadership, irrespective of its ideological orientation, has so far failed to meet this obligation. Second, thechildren below six years of age were included in the reference to the children up to 14 years of age in Article 45. This made the provision of Early Childhood Care (including nutrition, health care and balanced development) along with pre-primary education of the children from birth to six years of age a Constitutional obligation of the State[3]. Third, the Constitution placed the agenda of eight years of elementary educationbefore the State, rather than merely five years of primary education. In this light, the attempt by the policy makers since the 1990s, as reflected in World Bank-sponsored DPEP, to reduce this agenda to primary education must be viewed as being violative of the Constitution’s vision[4]. Fourth, elementary education must be provided in such manner as not to violate other provisions of the Constitution, especially Fundamental Rights. For instance, educational planning must be consonant with the principles of equality and social justice enshrined as Fundamental Rights. This has major implications that we will take up when we discuss the agenda of Common School System. It would suffice to state here that any programme that provides education of varying quality to different sections of society and denies education of equitable quality is not allowed by the Constitution. Fifth, the Article 45 should have been invariably read in conjunction with Article 46 which directs the State to give special attention to the education of the SCs and STs.

The discourse on Right to Education got a new turn with Supreme Court’s Unnikrishnan’s Judgement (1993). In this almost revolutionary interpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court stated that Article 45 in Part IV of the Constitution must be read in “harmonious construction” with Article 21 (Right to Life) in Part III since Right to Life is meaningless if it is without access to knowledge. Thus the Supreme Court in 1993accorded the status of Fundamental Right to “free and compulsory education” of all children up to 14 years of age (including children below six years of age).

Right to Education and the Ruling Class

The above historic declaration by the Supreme Court in 1993 made India’s ruling class uncomfortable. The central government undertook a series of exercises in the following years designed to extricate itself of the implication of the judgment. The Saikia Committee Report (1997) and the 83rd Constitutional Amendment Bill (August 1997) along with the report of the HRD Ministry-related Parliamentary Committee (November 1997) provide evidence of the clever ways being conceived in order to dilute and distort the concept of the Fundamental Right to education. However, there was public criticism of these attempts. Intellectuals, activists and people’s organizations presented memoranda of their concerns to the Parliamentary Committee and organized public debates engaging leadership of major political parties (e.g. Delhi University Convention, December, 1997). Sensing this resistance, the entire matter of Right to Education was put in cold storage for the next four years.

In November 2001, the 86th Constitutional Amendment Bill was presented to the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament). This Bill, like its predecessor 83rd Amendment Bill, too, was flawed. It was misconceived insofar it (a) excluded almost 17 crore children up to six years of age from the provision of Fundamental Right to free early childhood care and pre-primary education; (b) restricted the Fundamental Right of even the 6-14 year age group by placing a conditionality in the form of the phrase “as the State may, by law, determine” in Article 21A; this gave the State the instrumentality to restrict, dilute and distort the Fundamental Right given through Article 21A; (c) shifted the Constitutional obligation towards free and compulsory education from the State to the parents/guardians by making it their Fundamental Duty under Article 51A (k) to “provide opportunities for education” to their children in the 6-14 age group; and (d) reduced, as per the Financial Memorandum attached to the amendment Bill, the State’s financial commitment by almost 30% of what was estimated by the Tapas Majumdar Committee in 1999.

There was widespread public criticism of the anti-people character of the above Bill. A rally of 40,000 people, drawn from different parts of the country, at Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds held on the day the Bill was discussed in the Lok Sabha (Nov. 28, 2001) demanded radical amendments in the Bill. Several Lok Sabha MPs, cutting across party lines, also criticized the Bill. In public mind, it was becoming clear that the hidden agenda of the Bill was not to accord the status of Fundamental Right to elementary education but to snatch away the comprehensive right that the children up to 14 years of age had gained through the Unnikrishnan Judgment. Ignoring the public outcry, however, a consensus was arrived at among all the political parties of varying ideological backgrounds and the Bill was passed in both Houses of the Parliament without even a single dissenting vote. The aforesaid four flaws in the Bill, now legitimized through the 86th Amendment in December 2002, have since provided the basis for misconceiving the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and, more recently, the so-called Model Bill viz. Draft Right to Education Bill (2006) sent to the state/UT governments.

It is noteworthy that the new Article 21A introduced through the 86th Amendment is the only Fundamental Right that has been given conditionally. As pointed out above, this Right will be given to the children “as the State may, by law, determine.” None of the other Fundamental Rights is tied to such a pre-condition. It is precisely this legislation that both the NDA and UPA governments failed to finalise and present in the Parliament. The latest move of the centre in June 2006 to shelve the Bill altogether by sending a flawed draft to the states/UTs, amounts to abdication by the Indian State of its Constitutional obligations. Why did it become necessary for the ruling elite to incorporate such a pre-condition in Article 21A in the first place and then not to enact the legislation as per its requirement? In order to answer this question, we must examine the major policy shift that has taken place as a result of the adoption of the so-called economic reforms and the neo-liberal agenda of globalization.

One matter must be settled at this juncture. The ruling elite imagines that, as a result of the 86th Amendment and introduction of Article 21A, it has succeeded in divesting the children below six years of age of their Right to Education, including right to Early Childhood care and pre-primary education. However, the fact is that this amendment does not negate Supreme Court’s Unnikrishnan Judgment (1993) which directed that the original Article 45 of Part IV may be read in harmonious construction with Article 21 (Right to Life) of Part III. This raised the original Article 45 to the status of a Fundamental Right. In view of this, the amended Article 45, providing for early childhood care and education, can still be legitimately read in conjunction with Article 21, thereby giving the children below six years of age a Fundamental Right that was snatched away by the 86th Amendment.

Before probing the impact of the neo-liberal agenda, let us acknowledge a rather discomforting reality. In spite of the significant flaws of the 86th Constitutional Amendment as pointed out above, it has taken the country more than five decades to accord education the status of Fundamental Right. In this sense, the amendment has indeed given the social movements a fairly powerful weapon to continue and broaden their struggle for education with equality, social justice and dignity. From this perception emerges a three-fold agenda viz. (a) struggle for realizing the full entitlement made available from this otherwise limited 86th Amendment; (b) using policy analysis (see the following Section) as a people’s tool of struggle, expose the political economy of the amendment with a view to reveal the class character of the Indian State as well as the neo-liberal agenda before the masses; and (c) extend the struggle to seek pro-people amendment of the 86th Amendment itself.

Neo-Liberal Assault on Education Policy

Although the agenda of globalization started operating in India from the mid-1980s onwards, its formal announcement was made through the New Economic Policy in 1991. The new element was IMF-World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programme imposed on the Indian economy as a pre-condition to receiving fresh international loans/grants. This meant that the Indian government was obliged to steadily reduce its expenditure on the social sector, particularly health and education. This was a rather enigmatic pre-condition in a country where the vast majority of the people did not have access to quality health or education. In education, it made even less sense as it was imposed by those who were advocating ‘Education For All’ programme along with the move towards the so-called “Knowledge Economy”. One can’t, therefore, avoid asking the question: what was the hidden agenda? An analysis of the declaration issued by the World Bank-UN sponsored “World Conference on Education for All” (1990) reveals that the central thesis in the Indian context was three-fold. First, the State must abdicate its Constitutional obligation towards education of the masses in general and school-based elementary education in particular, become dependent on international aid for even primary education and work through NGOs, religious bodies and corporate houses. Second, the people neither have a human right as enshrined in the UN Charter nor a Fundamental Right to receiving freeelementary education of equitable quality as implied by the 86th Amendment. Third, education is a commodity that can be marketed in the global market. It follows, therefore, that the education system – from the pre-school stage to higher education – must be, as rapidly as possible, privatized and commercialised. This central thesis has originated from the highest echelons of the global market economy and the Indian Parliament, along with India Inc., has unfortunately acquiesced without any critical scrutiny whatsoever, purportedly in larger “national interest”. Prof. Noam Chomsky, the redoubtable US scholar-cum-activist, would not have found a more shameful example of his proposition of “manufacturing of consent”!

In smaller countries, particularly in the ones lacking a strong base of government-funded schools, the above neo-liberal agenda would not be hard to implement. However, in a vast country like India, having a rich history of government’s engagement in education, the neo-liberal agenda required a special strategy. The Indian situation was marked by glaring contradictions. On the one hand, a whole generation of academia, writers, scientists, doctors and engineers, civil servants, lawyers and public figures until the 1990s had been, by and large, nurtured in the government-supported education system. In 1991, the massive school network comprised more than 8 lakh (0.8 million) schools (the figure has grown to more than 11 lakhs (1.1 millions) today), 94% of which were either government/local body or private but government-aided schools.Less than 6% were private unaided schools. The higher education system then comprised about 5,000 colleges, 1,000 professional institutions and 200 universities. It is no body’s case, on the other hand, that the system was adequate – either in quantity or in quality. Half of the nation’s children (and two-thirds of the girls) were essentially out of school (see Endnote 5) – unable to complete even eight years of elementary education. The Constitutional goal of achieving universal elementary education by 1960 eluded the policy makers, as it continues to do even today. A conservative estimate showed that the number of primary schools needed to be increased by almost two-fold while the number of upper primary and secondary schools needed to multiply several fold. As a conservative estimate, we needed at least twice as many qualified and well-trained school teachers as we had in 1991 (this number then was about 40 lakhs [4 millions]).

The 1986 education policy had resolved to raise investment in education such that it will reach at least 6% of GDP by the year 2000. This unfulfilled resolve was incorporated in the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme in May 2004. Yet, as percentage of GDP, India spent less on education in 2005-06 (less than 3.5% of GDP) than what it spent in 1985-86 when the policy was passed by the Parliament. This is despite the fact that the Government had levied 2% Education Cess and raised almost 35% of the resources for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan from international funding agencies. Clearly, as a result of the Structural Adjustment Programme, the political will to mobilize public resources for education by reprioritisation of Indian economy was at a lower level in 2005-06 than what it was 20 years earlier!

What the country needed in 1991 – five years after the 1986 policy – was a firm resolve to first rapidly fill up the cumulative gap resulting from continued underinvestment and then maintain the elusive investment level of 6% of GDP in the following decades. Nothing short of a radical departure was long awaited in orderto energise and restructure the entire education system along with its curriculum. Yet, what the global market forces persuaded the Indian State to do in the 1990s was precisely the opposite of what was directed by the Constitution and resolved by the Parliament in the 1986 policy. The undeclared but operative strategy was to “let the vast government education system (from schools to universities) starve of funds and, consequently, deteriorate in quality.” As the quality would decline, resulting in low learning levels, the parents, even the poor among them, would begin to withdraw their children from the system. A sense of desperation and exclusion from the socio-economic and political space in the country would prevail. More importantly, the people’s faith in the Constitution and the capability of the State to fulfill its obligations will be shaken up, thereby leading to a cynical view of the nation-state. This will lay the groundwork for appreciation of market as a means of solving people’s problems. The neo-liberal economist and advocates have long striven for precisely this goal: measured weakening of the State and increasing credibility and power of the market.

When the children “walk-out” of the schools in protest against their poor quality and irrelevance (no child ever drops out, the official claims notwithstanding, as explained in Footnote 3!), two possibilities would emerge. First, low fee-charging unaided private schools (recognized or unrecognized) would mushroom to meet the new demand. Second, the government would have an alibi for closing down its schools as their low enrolment would have made them unviable. The school campuses could then be converted into commercial ventures such as shopping malls in urban areas or police stations in rural areas, as it has been happening all over the country. A well-equipped police force will increasingly become the State’s priority in “Shining India” (or “Incredible India”) with a view to protect the upward mobile middle class and the elite along with their establishments from the unemployed poor youth who were either denied school education or were compelled to quit without completing it. The likelihood of growth of lumpenisation in this category of youth could at least be partly attributed to the denial of the opportunity for socialization in the common public space of the school, necessary for becoming part of even the bourgeois vision of the nation. Yet, closure of schools would be unabashedly termed “rationalization” of the school system in official reports[5]. The 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century increasingly stand witness to this phenomenon. The neo-liberal agenda is operating as per its original design!

The public expectations from the government system posed another challenge to the global market forces. Arguably, a general unrest in the country might be expected if the above neo-liberal strategy of demolishing the government school system became too apparent. The World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), therefore, took a cue from the 1986 policy’s non-formal stream for the poor. It started promoting low quality parallel streams, rather than providing more of regular full-time schools. From 1993-94 onwards, the DPEP pushed and eulogized all kinds of parallel streams such as alternative schools, education guarantee centres, multi-grade teaching and bridge courses – anything but a regular school! The cadre of teachers was rapidly replaced by para-teachers i.e. under-qualified, untrained and under-paid young persons appointed on short-term contract. A new sociological principle emerged: a separate layer of educational ‘facility’ (not a school) as per the social and economic status of the child. A Common School System functioning through Neighbourhood Schools would have instead enabled children of different class, caste, religious and language backgrounds to study and socialise together. This would have helped promote equality and social justice and also an appreciation of India’s rich diversity and composite culture. With their own children studying in the Neighbourhood School, this would have also provided an objective basis for the more powerful and privileged sections of society to have a vested interest in the state-supported school system, thereby maintaining both its quality and political credibility. However, the emerging system in the 1990s, as promoted by the neo-liberal agenda, was designed to isolate and alienate children belonging to different sections of society. The Indian Constitution was in tatters.

The impact of neo-liberal agenda on the Indian education policies must not be underestimated. Education is no more viewed as a tool of social development but as an investment for developing human resource and global market (see Ambani-Birla Report’s Foreword, GoI, 2000). This innocuous looking statement of the purpose of education implies a major paradigm shift. The dominant features of education having serious epistemic (knowledge-related) and associated implications that emerge out of this paradigm shift may be identified as follows:

• trivialisation of the goals of education e.g. confusing education with merely literacy (e.g. National Literacy Mission of 1990s) or skills (the XI Plan attempts to equate education with market skills);
• fragmentation of knowledge into marketable competencies, as was done in Minimum Levels of Learning (MLLs) during early 1990s;
• alienation of knowledge from its social ethos and material base, a phenomenon that has prevailed since independence but has been exacerbated several-fold in recent years by rapidly growing dependence on information technology in schools, particularly expensive private schools;
• increasingly dominant role of the global market forces in determination of the character of knowledge (e.g. computer companies designing syllabi, textbooks and learning softwares);
• institutionalisation of economic, technological and socio-cultural hegemony of the international instruments in the formulation of curriculum, as evident in the space being given to World Bank, UN agencies, corporate houses and their foundations, foreign universities and externally funded researches and projects in decision-making (e.g. Karnataka state government’s move in 2007 to build SIEMAT under the control of Wipro Ltd. which was forestalled due to public outcry);
• introduction of parallel and hierarchical educational streams for different social segments, as discussed above;
• marginalisation of poor children and youth as well as the backward regions through competitive screening and a discriminatory system of institutional assessment and accreditation (e.g. Pratham’s assessment of reading, writing and computing skills of grade V children in ASER Reports of 2006 & 2007 or NAAC’s standard criteria for categorizing colleges/universities); and
• attrition of the State-supported and democratic structures for educational planning, finance allocation and management, as exemplified by the introduction of the idea of School Vouchers in XI Plan, though none of the seven CABE committees had recommended it in 2005.

Admittedly, however, many of the features enumerated above were evident either in rudimentary or relatively more pronounced forms in the ‘pre-globalisation’ phase as well.  This is exactly what one would expect in view of the colonial control before independence and hegemony of the ruling classes on the Indian State, with no significant democratic social intervention, in educational policy formulation since independence. What globalisation has done is the heightening and sharpening of these pre-existing contradictions.

All these dilutions and distortions were institutionalized in India’s education policy during the 1990s through World Bank’s DPEP in more than half of India’s districts spread over 18 states. None of these policy measures were formally approved by the Parliament, though they were violating both the 1986 policy and Constitution’s principles of equality and social justice. The much-hyped Sarva Shisksha Abhiyan packaged all such measures into one ‘mega’ scheme and sought legitimacy first through the Tenth Plan and now the Eleventh Plan. The Parliament was no more the supreme policy-making body. Directions were coming from the World Bank and such other agencies representing the global market.

What is Common School System?

The Education Commission (1964-66) had recommended a Common School System of Public Education (CSS) as the basis of building up the National System of Education with a view to “bring the different social classes and groups together and thus promote the emergence of an egalitarian and integrated society.” The Commission warned that “instead of doing so, education itself is tending to increase social segregation and to perpetuate and widen class distinctions.” It further noted that “this is bad not only for the children of the poor but also for the children of the rich and the privileged groups” since “by segregating their children, such privileged parents prevent them from sharing the life and experiences of the children of the poor and coming into contact with the realities of life. . . . . . also render the education of their own children anaemic and incomplete. (emphasis added)” The Commission contended that “if these evils are to be eliminated and the education system is to become a powerful instrument of national development in general, and social and national integration in particular, we must move towards the goal of a common school system of public education.”

The Commission also pointed out that such a system exists “in different forms and to varying degrees” in other nations like the USA, France and the Scandinavian countries. The British system, however, was based upon privileges and discrimination but, in recent decades, under rising democratic pressure, it has steadily moved towards a comprehensive school system which is akin to the Common School System as recommended by the Commission. There are other developed countries as well like Canada and Japan that practice similar systems. It may not be an exaggeration to assert that none of the wealthy G-8 countries have reached where they are without practicing the essential attributes of a public-funded Common School System functioning through Neighbourhood Schools. Can India hope to be an exception to this historical experience if it wishes to join the comity of developed nations?

The 1986 policy, while advocating a National System of Education, resolved that “effective measures will be taken in the direction of the Common School System recommended in the 1968 policy.” Since then, the concept of Common School System (CSS) has itself been evolving. There are three widespread misconceptions about CSS, often promoted by its detractors, which we must deal with before going ahead.First, CSS is misperceived as a uniform school system. On the contrary, the Education Commission itself advocated that each institution should be “intimately involved with the local community . . . . . . be regarded as an individuality and given academic freedom.” This guiding principle has assumed even greater significance in recent times in view of the expectation from each school or a cluster of schools to be able to respond to the local contexts and reflect the rich multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic diversity across the country. The present rigidity of the present school system, imposed by the Board Examinations (from CBSE/ICSE to State Boards), will be adequately challenged when flexibility, contextuality and plurality are accepted, among others, as the defining principles of CSS. Second, it is wrongly claimed that CSS will not permit a privately managed school to retain its non-government and unaided (or aided) character. Again, on the contrary, CSS implies that all schools – irrespective of the type of their management, sources of income or affiliating Boards of examinations – will participate and fulfill their responsibility as part of the National System of Education. In no case, however, a school will be allowed to use education for profit making, increasing disparity or spreading disharmony. The only expectation from the private schools shall be to function in consonance with the Constitutional, in general, and provide free elementary education of equitable quality to the 6-14 year age group, as required under Article 21A. Third, the private school lobby has worked overtime claiming that CSS would mean complete government control over schools. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that government grants necessarily lead to government control – the two need to be viewed independently of each other. In developed countries like USA and Canada, the school system is entirely funded by the state governments but it is entirely managed locally in a decentralised mode. In light of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, decentralized management of schools with full accountability is now a statutory expectation. This, however, does not absolve the government from fulfilling its obligations towards financing, monitoring and making policies.

We must also note that 86th Constitutional Amendment (2002) enjoins upon the State to provide free and compulsory education at the elementary stage (class I-VIII) to all children as a Fundamental Right. This amendment in Part III of the Constitution has major implications for the national system of education which cannot continue to function as it has since independence. All schools in the country, including privately managed unaided (or aided) schools, are required to act as agencies of the State to fulfill the obligation flowing out of Article 21A regarding equality and social justice. We must note that the private unaided or aided schools have come up as a consequence of the failure of the State to provide quality education and, in this sense, they are fulfilling the function of the State. This is precisely why the private schools receive various kinds of support or subsidies (hidden or otherwise). This means that they have to act as genuine neighbourhood schools to provide free elementary education to all children residing in the neighbourhood as may be prescribed by the government from time to time. The central and state governments are hence required to take concrete time-bound measures, including policy modification, in order to meet the new Constitutional obligation.

Based upon the evolving public discourse since the Education Commission’s recommendation in 1966, the following principles have come to define the framework within which CSS is to be conceived:

• The system of school education is to be rooted in the vision of the Constitution. This implies that, while being consonant with the Preamble, it must also ensure that (a) the Fundamental Rights, especially those relating to equality and social justice, as enshrined in Part III are not violated and (b) the Directive Principles as ordained in Part IV are promoted.
• Education of equitable quality is a Constitutional imperative.
• Education is not used for profiteering, spreading disharmony or practicing subjugation.
• Schools that promote inequality, discrimination and injustice in society are not to be allowed to function.

The following may, therefore, be listed as essential features of a CSS that is to be developed as the National System of Education pertaining to school education:

• coverage from pre-elementary to Plus Two stage;
• all schools, including private unaided schools, to provide absolutely free education from pre-primary to  class VIII as per Article 21A and the amended Article 45 (read with Article 21) of the Constitution; for secondary and senior education, a rational fee structure to be ensured by the state/UT governments and/or local bodies in all category of schools;
• all schools, including private unaided schools, to become neighbourhood schools; neighbourhood to be specified for each school with a view to optimize socio-cultural diversity among children in each school; necessary legislation to cover all government, local body and private schools to be enacted;
• screening, interviews or parental interaction not allowed as a valid basis for admissions;
• common minimum norms and standards for infrastructure, equipment and teacher-related aspects for both state-funded and private unaided schools (recognized and unrecognized); these may relate to school land and buildings, number, size and design of classrooms, drinking water and toilets, mid-day meals, safety measures, barrier-free access and other requirements of various categories of disabilities, facilities for girls at the age of puberty, playground and sports, performing and fine arts facilities, teaching aids, library, laboratory, information technology, number of teachers and their qualifications/specializations along with pre-service and in-service training, pupil:teacher ratio and others such requirements;
• common curriculum framework, shared features of curriculum and comparable syllabi with flexibility relating to texts, teaching aids, teaching-learning process, evaluation parameters, assessment procedures and school calendar;
• common language policy that takes into account the multi-lingual context of the majority of Indian children, pedagogic role of the mother tongue and its relationship with the state language, minority languages (Article 350A) and the increasing significance of English in providing equitable access to knowledge, careers and economic opportunities;
• decentralized school-based management that ensures the necessary degree of institutional autonomy while locating it within the broad framework of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments relating to rural and urban areas respectively; this requires the formation of school management committees, with the majority of members being parents of students and appropriate linkages with local bodies; and
• affiliation to a common Board of Examinations for all schools within a state/UT.

We may add that the principles underlying the concept of Inclusive Education are integral to the vision of Common School System. In the Indian context, Inclusive Education has to go beyond the Salamanca Declaration (UNESCO, 1994) and transcend the issue of disability. It must concern itself with all marginalized sections of society viz. dalits, tribals, religious and linguistic minorities, child labour and of course, the physically and mentally disabled and particularly the girls in each of these categories, whom the school system tends to exclude in substantial proportions. Unless this exclusionary character of Indian education is challenged, both theoretically and in practice, by application of the principles of Inclusive Education, neither the Common School System nor Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) can become a reality.

Further, the kind of paradigm shift National Curricular Framework–2005 (NCF–2005) is apparently advocating can become sustainable only when it is implemented in all categories of schools, including the private unaided schools, in the whole of the country within a declared timeframe through a properly phased programme. The essential linkage between curricular reforms and systemic reforms must be appreciated, before it is too late. Few realize that curricular reforms in a school system founded on inequality and discrimination will increase disparity in the quality of education. Such reforms, therefore, would be meaningful as well as feasible only within the framework of a Common School System.

The educational vision reflected in Common School System has become critical for the survival of India as a sovereign State and a civilized society since the global market forces are rapidly encroaching upon government school campuses and also impacting on the nature of knowledge inherent in the curriculum, with little concern for the Constitutional principles or the welfare of the large majority of the people[6]. Transformation of the present multi-layered school system into a Common School System calls for a major dialogue-building nation-wide political exercise, keeping the federal structure of the country and concurrency of education in mind. To be sure, student bodies, teachers’ organizations, trade unions and people’s movements must lead this campaign and engage political parties to build up public pressure on the State.

The role of Common School System in forging a sense of common citizenship and nationhood is yet to be appreciated. This becomes a critical nation-building function in a geo-culturally diverse country like India. How can the present multi-layered school system fulfill this requirement? Today, the school system is like a nation within nations and this is a recipe for fragmentation, rather than solidarity. There is no alternative to the common and democratic space that is offered for socialization by the Common School System based on Neighbourhood Schools. An educational activist from the north-eastern region has argued that the Common School System is the only option that provides the necessary framework for resolving not just the complex multi-ethnic conflicts within and across each state in the north-east but also for reversing the rapidly growing alienation between the north-east and the rest of India. If this framework is adopted throughout the nation, India would be in a unique position to offer a meaningful policy alternative to its neighbours across the border. The common space available for socialization among children from diverse backgrounds within India could also be made available (and should be acceptable) to the children from the neighbouring countries of the sub-continent.

Let us acknowledge that no developed or developing country has ever achieved UEE or, for that matter, Universal Secondary Education, without a powerful state-funded and state-regulated well-functioning Common School System, founded on the principle of Neighbourhood Schools, in one form or another. India is unlikely to be an exception to this historical and global experience, notwithstanding the misconceived ambition of the Indian State to become a ‘superpower’ by 2020!

New Assaults on Right to Education

During the past 2-3 years, the neo-liberal forces have come up with new forms of assaults on the notion of Right to Education and Common School System. It is critical that we learn to identify and deconstruct these assaults. Here are three examples that should enable us to identify all such moves that will emerge in future:

• A new diversionary tactic was conceived and effectively used to create confusion in the debate during and following the drafting of the Right to Education Bill, 2005 by the CABE Committee (Chaired by Kapil Sibal, Minister of State for Science & Technology, Govt. of India). This was about the proposed provision of 25% reservation for weaker sections in private unaided schools drawn from the latter’s neighbourhood. The entire debate was diverted away from the issue of the Common School System to the problems that the private school lobby is likely to face in finding resources for such reservations and the cultural gap between those who pay fees (presumably from upper castes) and those who would get the same education due to their entitlement (presumably from lower castes). Hardly anyone was bothered that the notion of 25% reservation implied that 75% of the children paying fees shall not come from the neighbourhood. Does this amount to a move towards equality or charity? Would the charging of fees from the privileged children in the 6-14 year age group not amount to violation of Article 21A? An issue of even greater significance is about the number of children this provision is likely to ‘benefit’. Let us make an estimate. The enrolment at the elementary stage in the private unaided schools (including the low quality unrecognized ones) in the whole country is hardly 20% of the total enrolment at this stage (Seventh All India School Educational Survey, NCERT, 2003). This means that the total capacity of the private unaided school sector to provide elementary education is limited to a maximum of 4 crore (40 millions) children out of 20 crore (200 millions) children in the 6-14 year age group. If 25% of this capacity of the private school sector is reserved for the weaker sections, the number of the so-called ‘beneficiaries’ can in no case exceed 1 crore children. What about the Right to Education of the remaining 19 crores (190 millions) (including those 3 crores (30 millions) who are required to pay fees in private schools)? Clearly, the proposal of 25% reservation in private schools has nothing to do with either the issue of Right to Education or Common School System. Nor does it lead us to a programme of systemic transformation that is urgently required in order to fulfill the obligations flowing out of 86th Amendment. Yet, the political leadership concerned with policy formulation and the bureaucracy as well as the media, child right organizations and even the judiciary has gone overboard in promoting the idea of ‘25% issue’ as if the Right to Education is realizable only through this mechanism. This apparently myopic perception is a result of the ruling class knowing that (a) the proposal of 25% reservation will not necessitate any changes in the national economy that may go against its vested interests; and (b) this will only help legitimise the ongoing privatization and commodification of education.
• The XI Plan has made a cleverly phrased reference to the Voucher System for government school children without any evidence of prior democratic consultation or academic discourse[7]. What is Voucher System? The idea was first proposed by Milton Friedman, the well-known advocate of neo-liberal economics from USA. As per its promoters in India (the so-called civil society groups propped up by international agencies advocating neo-liberalism), the government will provide the under-privileged children school vouchers that promise to pay their fees in private schools contingent upon the children getting admission. However, the promoters are not telling the public that the system has either already collapsed in several countries or not made much headway. The hidden agenda of course is to provide backdoor funding to private schools by shifting resources from the government schools using the instrumentality of the voucher. The market lobby knows that this will be an effective means of demolishing the vast government school system and thus accelerating the pace of privatization and commercialisation of school education. With the destruction of the system of publicly funded schools, there shall be ‘free for all’ situation wherein, not just the fee structure, but the curriculum and pedagogy too will be guided by the market alone. This is precisely what the voucher system lobby is aiming at – i.e. taking school education out of the Constitutional domain!
• As explained above, the neo-liberal forces have operated a policy design during the past 15 years aimed at demolishing the government school system. After already having achieved considerable success in these objectives, these forces are now organizing so-called researches and studies on the school system in India through partnership with NGOs and individual academics. All these studies are designed to produce data to establish how ineffective is the government school system in terms of poor pupil-teacher ratio, teacher absenteeism, poor quality of teaching and low achievement levels (e.g. World Bank-sponsored studies in Shahadara locality of Delhi or Pratham’s all-India ASER Reports, 2006 and 2007). However, no such report throws any light on how these schools have reached this state of ineffectiveness and what needs to be done in order to reverse the process. Nor do these reports tell us about the role played by the ruling class in collusion with the market forces in destroying a school system that was functioning fairly well only 20-25 years ago. Obviously, the compulsion to destroy the credibility of the government schools is so overpowering for the market forces that it does not have any space for truth whatsoever.

The Epistemic Assault and the Emerging People’s Resistance

The Ambani-Birla Report (2000), submitted to the Prime Minister’s office, was yet another example of how the market forces began to erode India’s sovereignty and the democratic process of the Parliament. It introduced several new formulations in the policy discourse in India to convert education at all levels into a marketable commodity. Once this is accepted in principle, a paradigm shift follows by implication. Although the Ambani-Birla Report was never approved by the Parliament, most of its recommendations are now being implemented in rapid succession under disguise.

It is time that the paradigm shift in the framework that determines the character of knowledge is recognised. The epistemic (i.e. knowledge-related) implications that flow out of this paradigm shift dominate the policy discourse and decision-making at all levels – legislature, executive and the judiciary. The global market forces, supported by the India Inc., have discovered new avenues, spaces and ways and means in this market-oriented anti-people framework to powerfully intervene and to further dilute and distort policies. The Indian academia and activists, by and large, stand essentially co-opted in this process, with honourable exceptions of course.

The goals of the market-oriented education policy are in direct conflict with the social vision of the Constitution. The assault by the market forces on the character of knowledge is rapidly marginalizing the educational goal of preparing citizenry for a democratic, egalitarian, secular and enlightened society. The Eleventh Plan’s Approach Paper on secondary education, in the context of extending it to the under-privileged sections of society, states that the focus of secondary education shall be to prepare skilled workforce for the global market. In contrast, the privileged will be given access to high value-added forms of knowledge on a priority basis through a handful of elite institutions and thus enabled to shift to the advanced countries and serve the global “Knowledge Economy”. The recent announcement by the Prime Minister to set up new high profile central universities, IITs and IIMs, multiply Kendriya Vidyalayas and open 6,000 new high quality schools need to be seen in this framework. Nowhere in these lofty announcements there is even an iota of evidence of political commitment to ensure Fundamental Right to education of equitable quality for all children or to transform the system comprising almost 11 lakh (1.1 million) schools into a Common School System.  Also, the twist given by the government to the reservation debate of 2006-07 resulted in shifting the resources from elementary education to the elite professional institutions in order to increase the total availability of seats in favour of the privileged upper castes. Establishing ‘Knowledge Hubs’ in the style of Special Economic Zones, providing secondary or vocational education in Public-Private Partnership mode and promoting franchise of second or third-rate foreign universities[8] are the latest policy ‘miracles’ being pushed by the government in the XI Plan. Such new moves point towards the growing collusion between the ruling class and the global market forces for establishing the dominance of their joint agenda against both the masses and national interests.

Clearly, the market assault is not merely in terms of denying education of equitable quality to the masses but also in terms of the social and pedagogical character of knowledge itself. This is to be viewed as an epistemological assault on the generation, distribution and transaction of knowledge. The question of political economy of knowledge can’t be ignored much longer. We need to recreate new Takshilas and Nalandas where the vision of 21st century India will have to be debated afresh and reconstructed in the image of our 150-year long freedom struggle against inequality, injustice and imperialism. The challenge is now being increasingly deciphered by the people’s movements. Education is certain to be accepted as the fourth critical resource, apart from jal-jangal-jameen (water-forest-land), for the survival of the struggling masses[9]. Herein lies the emerging agenda for the people’s movements to recover and redefine India’s democracy and sovereignty!

Endnote:

1. Anil Sadgopal was Dean, Faculty of Education, Delhi University, India. He has been Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi (2001-06) and member of many Commissions of Government of India and provincial governments such as National Commission on Teachers (1983-84); National Policy on Education-1986 Review Committee (1990); Central Advisory Board of Education (2004-06); National Steering Committee of National Curriculum Framework-2005 (2004-05); Common School System Commission, Bihar (2006-07). He also chaired National Focus Group on ‘Work and Education’, NCERT (2004-05). This is a revised and updated version of the paper prepared for the conference organised by the People’s Campaign for Common School System in collaboration with the Institute of Human Rights Education, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, at Indian Social Forum, New Delhi, in November 2006 and later at the Independent People’s Tribunal on World Bank Group, New Delhi (September 2007). This text was also presented at the Annual Conference of Andhra Pradesh Teachers’ Federation at Ongole, 6th February 2008.

2. These include two categories of children: (a) those who never enrolled in schools either due to their own/ parents’ decision or due to unavailability of functioning schools; and (b) those who enrolled but were compelled to leave schools for various reasons at different stages of Elementary Education (Class I to VIII). It should be noted that no child in India ever ‘drops out’ despite what the government claims. By and large, the children are either ‘pushed out’ or simply ‘walk out’ in protest against curriculum that amounts to imposition, pedagogy that destroys inquisitiveness, critical thinking and creativity and cultural environment that demeans two-thirds of our children (i.e. dalits, tribals, minorities, most backward classes, disabled and particularly girls in each of these categories). The Hindi film ‘Taren Zameen Par’ (Director: Aamir Khan), released in January 2008, powerfully (though only partially) brings out this anti-child character of our school system. See Footnote 9 for further elaboration of this issue.

3. It is this category of children below six years of age (almost 17 crores) that was excluded from Fundamental Right when Article 21A was introduced in December 2002 through 86th Constitutional Amendment.

4. Eight years of Elementary Education (class I to VIII) may have been an adequate provision in 1950 but today it is far from being adequate. No one can get any job or enter a career with a class VIII certificate. Even with a class X certificate, hardly any career option becomes available, not even the low profile ITI or Para-medical courses. There is a strong case now for extending the concept of Fundamental Right to cover up to 18 years of age so that Plus Two education becomes accessible to all. This will also link Right to Education with the social justice agenda since the benefits of reservation will become available essentially after completing Plus Two.

5. This term (“rationalization”) was first used in 1999 by the District Collector of Indore, M.P., in his report to the then Chief Minister Digvijay Singh to justify closure of 30 govt. schools in one stroke, followed by their conversion into mostly commercial ventures. In some of the schools, police stations were established. The Collector did report data on the declining number of students in these schools but never inquired as to where did they go. They had actually left non-functioning government schools in disgust. Some of them, whose parents could afford, were admitted into low fee-charging schools which mushroomed in the same locality to fill the vacuum created by the closure of the government schools. The Chief Minister, known for conceiving Education Guarantee Centres, too preferred not to ask such uncomfortable questions.

6.There is ample evidence that the capitalist lobby, working through chambers of commerce (e.g. CII, FICCI and ASSOCHAM), is building pressure on MHRD for major changes in the school system so that corporations and other private bodies can turn education into a commodity and use it for profit. Powerful global market forces have either supported or put up their own NGOs to successfully introduce the alarming idea of Voucher System in the Eleventh Plan with the objective of shifting public funds to private schools. At a recent CII meeting, even Prof. Amartya Sen was constrained to advise the corporate CEOs that there is no way of universalizing school education without a public-funded school system.

7. The reference to Voucher System in Planning Commission’s Draft Approach Paper made in May 2006 amounted to essentially a green signal for the idea. However, there was a widespread criticism from various quarters. As a result, the reference in the final paper (December 2006) was carefully made ambiguous but it was there to be pushed at the right moment. The XI Plan (2007) again poses Voucher System as an alternative but due to public resistance does not dare to openly advocate this idea at the moment.

8. The global leaders of knowledge that emerged in the wake of industrial revolution such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton, CalTech or the likes of Cambridge and Oxford Universities are not being franchised. Indeed, the quality, depth and creativity of such knowledge leaders do not lend themselves to this crass commodification!

9. At a meeting of five tribal and peasant organizations held at Harda, M.P. on 5-6 January, 2008, the grassroots tribal activists stated that “we don’t want this kind of education as it teaches our children to become dalals (intermediaries) of contractors and government, thereby alienating them from our struggle for Right to jal-jangal-jameen.” This perception led them to coin a new slogan: “Shikasha Badlo, Skool Bachao!” (Transform education, save schools) which implies that the struggle for transforming the political character of knowledge in school curriculum and pedagogy has to be concomitant with the struggle for improvement of school infrastructure, teacher quality, pupil-teacher ratio, financing, management and other parameters of education of equitable quality.

James Petras

Venezuela’s democratically elected Present Chavez faces the most serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup. Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle class university students have led to major street battles in and around the center of Caracas.  More seriously, the former Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an ‘individual’ dissident.

The entire international and local private mass media has played up Baduel’s speeches, press conferences along with fabricated accounts of the oppositionist student rampages, presenting them as peaceful protests for democratic rights against the government referendum scheduled for December 2, 2007. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC News and the Washington Post have all primed their readers for years with stories of President Chavez’ ‘authoritarianism’. Faced with constitutional reforms which strengthen the prospects for far-reaching political-social democratization, the US, European and Latin American media have cast pro-coup ex-military officials as ‘democratic dissidents’, former Chavez supporters disillusioned with his resort to ‘dictatorial’ powers in the run-up to and beyond the December 2, 2007 vote in the referendum on constitutional reform.  Not a single major newspaper has mentioned the democratic core of the proposed reforms – the devolution of public spending and decision to local neighborhood and community councils.  Once again as in Chile in 1973, the US mass media is complicit in an attempt to destroy a Latin American democracy.

Even sectors of the center-left press and parties in Latin America have reproduced right-wing propaganda.  On November the self-styled ‘leftist’ Mexican daily La Jornada headline read ‘Administrators and Students from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) Accuse Chavez of Promoting Violence’.  The article then proceeded to repeat the rightist fabrications about electoral polls, which supposedly showed the constitutional amendments facing defeat.

The United States Government, both the Republican White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress are once again overtly backing the new attempt to oust the popular-nationalist President Chavez and to defeat the highly progressive constitutional amendments.

The Referendum:  Defining and Deepening the Social Transformation

The point of confrontation is the forthcoming referendum on constitutional reforms initiated by President Chavez, debated, amended and democratically voted on by the Venezuelan Congress over the past 6 months.  There was widespread and open debate and criticism of specific sectors of the Constitution.  The private mass media, overwhelmingly viscerally anti-Chavez and pro-White House, unanimously condemned any and all the constitutional amendments.  A sector of the leadership of one of the components of the pro-Chavez coalition (PODEMOS) joined the Catholic Church hierarchy, the leading business and cattleman’s association, bankers and sectors of the university and student elite to attack the proposed constitutional reforms.  Exploiting to the hilt all of Venezuela’s democratic freedoms (speech, assembly and press) the opposition has denigrated the referendum as ‘authoritarian’ even as most sectors of the opposition coalition attempted to arouse the military to intervene.

The opposition coalition of the rich and privileged fear the constitutional reforms because they will have to grant a greater share of their profits to the working class, lose their monopoly over market transactions to publicly owned firms, and see political power evolve toward local community councils and the executive branch.  While the rightist and liberal media in Venezuela, Europe and the US have fabricated lurid charges about the ‘authoritarian’ reforms, in fact the amendments propose to deepen and extend social democracy.

A brief survey of the key constitutional amendments openly debated and approved by a majority of freely elected Venezuelan Congress members gives the lie to charges of ‘authoritarianism’ by its critics. The amendments can be grouped according to political, economic and social changes.

The most important political change is the creation of new locally based democratic forms of political representation in which elected community and communal institutions will be allocated state revenues rather than the corrupt, patronage-infested municipal and state governments. This change towards decentralization will encourage a greater practice of direct democracy in contrast to the oligarchic tendencies embedded in the current centralized representative system.

Secondly, contrary to the fabrications of ex-General Baduel, the amendments do not ‘destroy the existing constitution’, since the amendments modify in greater or lesser degree only 20% of the articles of the constitution (69 out of 350).

The amendments providing for unlimited term elections are in line with the practices of many parliamentary systems, as witnessed by the five terms in office of Australian Prime Minister Howard, the half century rule of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the four terms of US President Franklin Roosevelt, the multi-term election of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair in the UK among others.  No one ever questions their democratic credentials for multi-term executive office holding, nor should current critics selectively label Chavez as an ‘authoritarian’ for doing the same.

Political change increasing the presidential term of office from 6 to 7 years will neither increase nor decrease presidential powers, as the opposition claims, because the separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers will continue and free elections will subject the President to periodic citizen review.

The key point of indefinite elections is that they are free elections, subject to voter preference, in which, in the case of Venezuela, the vast majority of the mass media, Catholic hierarchy, US-funded NGO’s, big business associations will still wield enormous financial resources to finance opposition activity – it is hardly an ‘authoritarian’ context!

The amendment allowing the executive to declare a state of emergency and intervene in the media in the face of violent activity to overthrow the constitution is essential for safeguarding democratic institutions.  In light of several authoritarian violent attempts to seize power recently by the current opposition, the amendment allows dissent but also allows democracy to defend itself against the enemies of freedom.  In the lead up to the US-backed military coup of April 11, 2002, and the petroleum lockout by its senior executives which devastated the economy (a decline of 30% of GNP in 2002/2003), if the Government had possessed and utilized emergency powers, of Congress and the Judiciary, the electoral process and the living standards of the Venezuelan people would have been better protected.  Most notably, the Government could have intervened against the mass media aiding and abetting the violent overthrow of the democratic process, like any other democratic government.  It should be clear that the amendment allowing for ‘emergency powers’ has a specific context and reflects concrete experiences:  the current opposition parties, business federations and church hierarchies have a violent, anti-democratic history.  The destabilization campaign against the current referendum and the appeals for military intervention most prominently and explicitly stated by retired General Baduel (defended by his notorious adviser-apologist, the academic-adventurer Heinz Dietrich), are a clear indication that emergency powers are absolutely necessary to send a clear message that reactionary violence will be met by the full force of the law.

The reduction of voting age from 18 to 16 will broaden the electorate, increase the number of participants in the electoral process and give young people a greater say in national politics through institutional channels.  Since many workers enter the labor market at a young age and in some cases start families earlier, this amendment allows young workers to press their specific demands on employment and contingent labor contracts.

The amendment reducing the workday to 6 hours is vehemently opposed by the opposition led by the big business federation, FEDECAMARAS, but has the overwhelming support of the trade unions and workers from all sectors.  It will allow for greater family time, sports, education, skill training, political education and social participation, as well as membership in the newly formed community councils.  Related labor legislation and changes in property rights including a greater role for collective ownership will strengthen labor’s bargaining power with capital, extending democracy to the workplace.

Finally the amendment eliminating so-called ‘Central Bank autonomy’ means that elected officials responsive to the voters will replace Central Bankers (frequently responsive to private bankers, overseas investors and international financial officials) in deciding public spending and monetary policy.  One major consequence will be the reduction of excess reserves in devalued dollar denominated funds and an increase in financing for social and productive activity, a diversity of currency holdings and a reduction in irrational foreign borrowing and indebtedness.  The fact of the matter is that the Central Bank was not ‘autonomous’, it was dependent on what the financial markets demanded, independent of the priorities of elected officials responding to popular needs.

As the Chavez Government Turns to Democratic Socialism:  Centrists Defect and Seek Military Solutions

As Venezuela’s moves from political to social transformation, from a capitalist welfare state toward democratic socialism, predictable defections and additions occur.  As in most other historical experiences of social transformation, sectors of the original government coalition committed to formal institutional political changes defect when the political process moves toward greater egalitarianism and property and a power shift to the populace.  Ideologues of the ‘Center’ regret the ‘breaking’ of the status quo ‘consensus’ between oligarchs and people (labeling the new social alignments as ‘authoritarian’) even as the ‘Center’ embraces the profoundly anti-democratic Right and appeals for military intervention.

A similar process of elite defections and increased mass support is occurring in Venezuela as the referendum, with its clear class choices, comes to the fore.  Lacking confidence in their ability to defeat the constitutional amendments through the ballot, fearful of the democratic majority, resentful of the immense popular appeal of the democratically elected President Chavez, the ‘Center’ has joined the Right in a last ditch effort to unify extra-parliamentary forces to defeat the will of the electorate.

Emblematic of the New Right and the ‘Centrist’ defections is the ex-Minister of Defense, Raul Baduel, whose virulent attack on the President, the Congress, the electoral procedures and the referendum mark him as an aspirant to head up a US-backed right-wing seizure of power.

The liberal and right wing mass media and unscrupulous ‘centrist’ propagandists have falsely portrayed Raul Baduel as the ‘savior’ of Chavez following the military coup of April 2002.  The fact of the matter is that Baduel intervened only after hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelans poured down from the ‘ranchos’, surrounded the Presidential Palace, leading to division in the armed forces.  Baduel rejected the minority of rightist military officers favoring a massive bloodbath and aligned with other military officials who opposed extreme measures against the people and the destruction of the established political order.  The latter group included officials who supported Chavez’ nationalist-populist policies and others, like Baduel, who opposed the coup-makers because it radicalized and polarized society – leading to a possible class-based civil war with uncertain outcome.  Baduel was for the restoration of a ‘chastised’ Chavez who would maintain the existing socio-economic status quo.

Within the Chavez government, Baduel represented the anti-communist tendency, which pressed the President to ‘reconcile’ with the ‘moderate democratic’ right and big business.  Domestically, Baduel opposed the extension of public ownership and internationally favored close collaboration with the far-right Colombian Defense Ministry.

Baduel’s term of office as Defense Minister reflected his conservative propensities and his lack of competence in matters of security, especially with regard to internal security. He failed to protect Venezuela’s frontiers from military incursions by Colombia’s armed forces.  Worse he failed to challenge Colombia’s flagrant violation of international norms with regard to political exiles.  While Baduel was Minister of Defense, Venezuelan landlords’ armed paramilitary groups assassinated over 150 peasants active in land reform while the National Guard looked the other way. Under Baduel’s watch over 120 Colombian paramilitary forces infiltrated the country.  The Colombian military frequently crossed the Venezuelan border to attack Colombian refugees.  Under Baduel, Venezuelan military officials collaborated in the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda (a foreign affairs emissary of the FARC) in broad daylight in the center of Caracas.  Baduel made no effort to investigate or protest this gross violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, until President Chavez was informed and intervened.  Throughout Baduel’s term as Minister of Defense he developed strong ties to Colombia’s military intelligence (closely monitored by US Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA) and extradited several guerrillas from both the ELN and the FARC to the hands of Colombian torturers.

At the time of his retirement as Minister of Defense, Baduel made a July 2007 speech in which he clearly targeted the leftist and Marxist currents in the trade union (UNT) and Chavez newly announced PSUV (The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela).  His speech, in the name of ‘Christian socialist’, was in reality a vituperative and ill-tempered anti-communist diatribe, which pleased Pope Benedict (Ratzinger).

Baduel’s November 5 speech however marks his public adherence to the hard-line opposition, its rhetoric, fabrications and visions of an authoritarian reversal of Chavez program of democratic socialism.  First and foremost, Badual, following the lead of the White House and the Venezuelan ‘hard right’, denounced the entire process of Congressional debate on the Constitutional amendments, and open electoral campaigning leading up to the referendum as ‘in effect a coup d’etat’.  Every expert and outside observer disagreed – even those opposed to the referendum.  Baduel’s purpose however was to question the legitimacy of the entire political process in order to justify his call for military intervention.  His rhetoric calling the Congressional debate and vote a ‘fraud’ and ‘fraudulent procedures’ point to Baduel’s effort to denigrate existing representative institutions in order to justify a military coup, which would dismantle them.

Baduel’s denial of political intent is laughable – since he only invited opposition media and politicians to his ‘press conference’ and was accompanied by several military officials.  Baduel resembles the dictator who accuses the victim of the crimes he is about to commit.  In calling the referendum on constitutional reform a ‘coup’, he incites the military to launch a coup.  In an open appeal for military action he directs the military to ‘reflect of the context of constitutional reform.’  He repeatedly calls on military officials to ‘assess carefully’ the changes the elected government has proposed ‘in a hasty manner and through fraudulent procedures’.  While denigrating democratically elected institutions, Baduel resorts to vulgar flattery and false modesty to induce the military to revolt.  While immodestly denying that he could act as spokesperson for the Armed Forces, he advised the rightist reporters and potential military cohort that ‘you cannot underrate the capacity of analysis and reasoning of the military.’

Cant, hypocrisy and disinterested posturing run through Baduel’s pronouncements.  His claim of being an ‘apolitical’ critic is belied by his intention to go on a nationwide speaking tour attacking the constitutional reforms, in meetings organized by the rightwing opposition.  There is absolutely no doubt that he will not only be addressing civilian audiences but will make every effort to meet with active military officers who he might convince to ‘reflect’…and plot the overthrow of the government and reverse the results of the referendum.  President Chavez has every right to condemn Baduel as a traitor, though given his long-term hostility to egalitarian social transformation it may be more to the point to say that Baduel is now revealing his true colors.

The danger to Venezuelan democracy is not in Baduel as an individual – he is out of the government and retired from active military command.  The real danger is his effort to arouse the active military officers with command of troops, to answer his call to action or as he cleverly puts it ‘for the military to reflect on the context of the constitutional reforms.’  Baduel’s analysis and action program places the military as the centerpiece of politics, supreme over the 16 million voters.

His vehement defense of ‘private property’ in line with his call for military action is a clever tactic to unite the Generals, Bankers and the middle class in the infamous footsteps of Augusto Pinochet, the bloody Chilean tyrant.

The class polarization in the run-up to the referendum has reached its most acute expression: the remains of the multi-class coalition embracing a minority of the middle class and the great majority of the working power is disintegrating.  Millions of previously apathetic or apolitical young workers, unemployed poor and low-income women (domestic workers, laundresses, single parents) are joining the huge popular demonstrations overflowing the main avenues and plazas in favor of the constitutional amendments.  At the same time political defections have increased among the centrist-liberal minority in the Chavez coalition.  Fourteen deputies in the National Assembly, less than 10%, mostly from PODEMOS, have joined the opposition.  Reliable sources in Venezuela (Axis of Logic/Les Blough Nov. 11, 2007) report that Attorney General Beneral Isaias Rodriguez, a particularly incompetent crime fighter, and the Comptroller General Cloudosbaldo Russian are purportedly resigning and joining the opposition.  More seriously, these same reports claim that the 4th Armed Division in Marcay is loyal to ‘Golpista’ Raul Baduel.  Some suspect Baduel is using his long-term personal ties with the current Minister of Defense, Gustavo Briceno Rangel to convince him to defect and join in the pre-coup preparations.  Large sums of US funding is flowing in to pay off state and local officials in cash and in promises to share in the oil booty if Chavez is ousted.  The latest US political buy-out includes Governor Luis Felipe Acosta Carliz from the state of Carabobo.  The mass media have repeatedly featured these new defectors to the right in their hourly ‘news reports’ highlighting their break with Chavez ‘coup d’etat’.

The referendum is turning into an unusually virulent case of a ‘class against class’ war, in which the entire future of the Latin American left is at stake as well as Washington’s hold on its biggest oil supplier.

Conclusion

Venezuelan democracy, the Presidency of Hugo Chavez and the great majority of the popular classes face a mortal threat.  The US is facing repeated electoral defeats and is incapable of large-scale external intervention because of over-extension of its military forces in the Middle East; it is committed once more to a violent overthrow of Chavez.  Venezuela, through the constitutional reforms, will broaden and deepen popular democratic control over socio-economic policy.  New economic sectors will be nationalized. Greater public investments and social programs will take off.  Venezuela is moving inexorably toward diversifying its petrol markets, currency reserves and its political alliances.  Time is running out for the White House:  Washington’s political levers of influence are weakening.  Baduel is seen as the one best hope of igniting a military seizure, restoring the oligarchs to power and decimating the mass popular movements.
President Chavez is correctly ‘evaluating the high command’ and states that he ‘has full confidence in the national armed forces and their components.’  Yet the best guarantee is to strike hard and fast, precisely against Baduel’s followers and cohorts.  Rounding up a few dozen or hundred military plotters is a cheap price to pay for saving the lives of thousands of workers and activists who would be massacred in any bloody seizure of power.

History has repeatedly taught that when you put social democracy, egalitarianism and popular power at the top of the political agenda, as Chavez has done, and as the vast majority of the populace enthusiastically responds, the Right, the reactionary military, the ‘Centrist’ political defectors and ideologues, the White House, the hysterical middle classes and the Church cardinals will sacrifice any and all democratic freedoms to defend their property, privileges and power by whatever means and at whatever cost necessary.  In the current all-pervasive confrontation between the popular classes of Venezuela and their oligarchic and military enemies, only by morally, politically and organizationally arming the people can the continuity of the democratic process of social transformation be guaranteed.

Change will come, the question is whether it will be through the ballot or the bullet.

 Washington applauds Repression

E. San Juan, Jr.

With an interview of Dr. Carol P. Araullo, Chairperson of BAYAN, by Dr. Rainer Werning

Except for what may appear to be relatively minor investment of Dutch capital in the Philippines and the presence of 18,456 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in the Netherlands, nothing really connects Filipinos with the land of fabled windmills. But the events of last week may presage a change. The much-touted bonanza of consumerist globalization may have produced its most hackneyed if repulsive scenario yet, this time in the land of state-approved prostitution, where a handful of Filipino political exiles have taken refuge from the brutal regimes back home. The personnel and offices of the National Democratic Front Philippines (NDFP), legally allowed in Utrecht since the late 1970s, were raided on August 27.

The assault evokes memories of the Nazi Gestapos in an early morning raid on the Dutch resistance, except the victims this time are Filipino national democrats and socialist intellectuals.  The NDFP’s chief political consultant, Jose Maria Sison, was arrested by trickery and coercion. Behind the tulips now prowl the undercover sleuths of both the Dutch and Philippine governments who don’t seem to be hobbled by human-rights guarantees sanctified by the Constitution of the Netherlands and the European Convention of Human Rights. Jails and police brutality now await Filipino activists in the land of the atheist Spinoza (at least, of the Spinoza Museum), of free marijuana in Amsterdam and auctioned “sex work.”

Seizing on this sordid event, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney volunteered the full force of the U.S. imperial state apparatus to persecute progressive Filipinos for imputed “terrorism.” Despite its catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington is not too busy to ignore this minor incident. Not everyone knows of the heavy and deep involvement of U.S. troops and clandestine agents in Mindanao and other regions in the Philippines since 2002. The Pentagon’s close supervision of the Philippine military dates back to the days of Col. Edward Lansdale, whose notorious “Phoenix program” of systematic assassination of suspected enemies in Vietnam was first tried in the Philippines against the Huks in the 1950s. So the U.S. may turn out to be the “real handlers” if not the chief accomplice in this August operation.

Ambassador Kenney told reporters that the U.S. is “willing to help” prosecute Sison and anyone supporting the New People’s Army (NPA), the communist-led guerilla force labeled “terrorist’ by the U.S. State Department immediately after Sept. 11, 2001 (Philippine Inquirer, August 31, 2007). The NPA has been a headache to the neocolonial regimes since its founding in 1969. It was proclaimed to have been defeated again and again by successive administrations since the dictatorship (1972-1986) of Ferdinand Marcos, aided by General Fidel Ramos (who allowed the return of U.S. troops after the closure of Clark and Subic bases in 1991) and business tycoon Juan Ponce Enrile, sponsor of the dreaded anti-terror bill (ironically named “Human Security Act, Act 9372).

Refugees, Beware of Dutch Treats

Domiciled in that reputedly “tolerant” country since his release from prison in 1986, Sison has applied for political asylum-only to be put in the European listing of terrorists at the behest of Washington. Sison is the most well-known Filipino “Maoist” refugee in Europe. He helped re-establish the moribund Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968 as a spearhead of the socialist revolution in the Philippines. In the last decade, Sison has been serving as a political adviser to the NDFP in peace talks with the Philippine government.

Despite the patently weak evidence presented to the court at The Hague last August 31, the Dutch judge extended Sison’s detention to 14 more days until a second hearing on Sept. 7. Meanwhile Sison is held incommunicado at the National Penitentiary in Schveningen where the Nazis used to imprison and torture Jews and Dutch resistance fighters during World War II. His wife Julie de Lima-Sison claims that her husband is being kept in solitary confinement and denied medicine, visits from his wife or doctor, and access to newspapers and TV. If true, this speaks volumes about Dutch liberalism and concern for human rights. As a Dutch activist W. Wijk noted after the hearing, “The persecution of Sison through the use of the judicial process exposes the rottenness and corruption of the Dutch justice and political system.”

The “liberal” Dutch treat here so far has offered us the spectacle of warrantless arrest, theft of personal belongings, and racist inferiorization of Filipinos. Not to be outdone by the Nazi Gestapos who terrorized Holland, hundreds of Dutch police and security agents raided the offices and homes of NDFP staff, broke down apartment doors, ransacked and confiscated computers, records, and assorted private property in the hunt for evidence. In this instance, pious bourgeois law quickly translated into arbitrary fascist coercion. The NDFP has been based in Utrecht since the seventies, legally representing the revolutionary forces in peace negotiations with the neocolonial government of the Philippines, talks sponsored by Norway and other states in the European community. Colluding with the corrupt, illegitimate Arroyo regime in the Philippines, Holland’s justice ministry revealed its fascist core by the deceitful method of Sison’s arrest and its violent attack on legal residents.

What is Sison’s crime? He is alleged to be guilty-not presumed innocent, as legal niceties would have it-of ordering from his remote residence in Utrecht the killing of two former associates (Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara) in 2003 and 2004. The leadership of the New People’s Army (NPA) had already publicly admitted that it was responsible for punishing the two for their counter-revolutionary crimes against the people. Whether Sison personally can order the collective leadership of the NPA or not for this specific act is a pseudo-issue for anyone familiar with the praxis of Filipino insurgent solidarity and its durable tradition. Filipino jurists such as Prof. Raul Pangalangan and others have asked whether the Philippine government has given up its sovereignty by allowing Dutch jurisdiction over a case committed on Philippine soil. What Dutch law has Sison violated?

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark commented that “the Dutch can’t determine the facts. They can only rely on what the Arroyo government tells them, and what it wants is persecution for Sison…. The demonization of Sison will destroy us if we permit it to continue” (News Release of the New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, August 31, 2007).

Sinister Conspiracy

It has been public knowledge for some time that those associates had been collaborating with the military in the persecution and murder of many underground activists. Sison has no court case on this matter in the Philippines. A similar concocted accusation against him, six Congresspersons, and other civilians (which includes the killing of the Kintanar and Tabara) have already been dismissed by the Philippine Supreme Court last July 2, 2007, as politically malicious and without merit. Recently, journalist Kenneth Guda (Jailing Joma , 31 August 2007) in reminded us of the confession of police official Col. Reynaldo Berroya that in May 2000 Kintanar and Tabara, already in the employ of the AFP, were commissioned by the government to assassinate Sison in the Netherlands. The project was botched, so the AFP/PNP and security officials had to wait until August 27.

Recently, Arroyo officials in Malacanang as well as AFP and PNP officers have admitted furnishing documents, testimonials, forensic evidence, etc. to the Dutch government, as well as financing the travel and other living expenses of the two widows (Gloria Joy Kintanar and Veronica Tabara) to the Netherlands (Inquirer.net, August 29). Arroyo officials are thus the main sponsors of the two widows who filed an affidavit against Sison with the Philippine Department of Justice. This is the basis of the case that the Dutch are pursuing (Newsbreak, 28 August 2007). Secretary Raul Gonzalez confessed that his office gave all kinds of assistance to the Dutch National Criminal Investigation Department, including names and data of NDFP personnel. In short, trumped-up charges, collusion of Dutch and Filipino officials, skullduggery and bureaucratic abuses all climaxed in the August 27 attack. The editor of the Philippine Tribune (August 30) predicted a shameful embarrassment awaiting the Dutch, “given the history of the Arroyo government’s practice of manufacturing evidence against its political foes.”

One theory why the Dutch and Filipino sleuths decided on this preemptive action is this: Sison won his case in the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg last July 11. This is arguably a landmark decision for all anti-imperialist refugees or exiles suspected of being “terrorists.” The Court annulled the May 29 decision of the Council of the European Union to retain him in its “terrorist” blacklist.  The Court condemned the European Union for violating Sison’s rights of defense and depriving him of judicial protection. This sent shivers to his enemies, exposing more legalistic fraud, thus their strategy of pre-empting any further erosion of their defenses by concocting this new accusation (the Dutch Embassy in Manila fallaciously claimed that the new “terrorist” listing of June 29 which included Sison was exempted from the Court’s decision). As Julie de Lima, Sison’s wife, accurately noted, it’s Arroyo/Bush’s dirty war in the mode of psychological warfare and solitary confinement that Arroyo and her Dutch patrons are engaged in.

Evidently, this exercise in criminalizing the Filipino popular democratic struggle is meant to physically handicap Sison and distract his followers from the more urgent TASK of unseating Arroyo in Metro Manila. It is meant to deflect attention from the extra-judicial carnage, the rising anger at Jonas Burgos’ kidnapping, the “Hello Garci” hearings, deepening economic bankruptcy, and scandals of large-scale corruption involving the higher echelons. The International Committee of DEFEND is on target with its hypothesis that Arroyo, Washington and the Dutch reactionaries “are using judicial proceedings to put political pressure on the NDFP to surrender to the Manila government.”

However, underneath these incidents we suspect a larger narrative or subtext of causality and historical determinations. To understand why this Filipino-Dutch “connection” is occurring at this specific conjuncture, we need to take into account three important developments that seem to triangulate the impending ruin of the Arroyo regime and its replacement by a new set of oligarchs who may have a more “populist” appeal to calm the turbulent masses. As I discussed in an earlier commentary (see “Seven Theses,” Bulatlat Online, April 29-May 5, 2007), the crisis and disintegration of the Arroyo clique cannot be eluded by Arroyo’s meretricious rhetoric of defeating the worker-peasant and Moro insurgencies by the end of her term in 2010. It can at best delay or soften the impact of the crash, but not permanently defer it.

So what are the parameters for understanding the August surprise?

Contradiction No. 1

First, the brutal and corrupt Arroyo regime has been severely criticized by numerous human rights organizations, among them KARAPATAN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Asian Commission on Human Rights, the World Council of Churches, and the United Nations. Arroyo has shrugged off the criticisms lodged by the president of Finland and other international monitors. UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston’s visit last February gave a stamp of authority on the judgment that President Arroyo has command responsibility over the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and its paramilitary death-squads. State terrorism has been responsible for over 900 extrajudicial killings and 200 forced disappearances or abductions of civilians since she assumed office in 2001. Despite claims that she is concerned about these horrendous events, Arroyo glorified one of the “butchers,” General Jovito Palparan, who is now being linked by two peasants with several abductions and murders.  Arroyo, together with her chief patron George W. Bush, was indicted by the Permanent People’s Tribunal last March for “crimes against humanity” committed in the pursuit of the U.S.-led “war on terror” in the interests of global profiteers.

All this is of no consequence to Arroyo were it not for the danger raised in the U.S. Congress of a real halt, if not drastic reduction, of military and economic assistance. Impelled by the crescendo of complaints, Senator Barbara Boxer and Rep. Ellen Tauscher in April and May urged Arroyo to “move quickly” against the murder and abduction of left-wing political activists. Last July, after lobbying by influential church groups, the U.S. Senate appropriations committee instructed the State Department to monitor U.S. military assistance so that it is not “misused by units of the security forces…against civilians…who are members of political opposition parties and human rights groups” (Inquirer.net, July 5, 2007).

Last month, the pressure climaxed with the highly publicized letter of 48 US lawmakers, initiated by Rep. James Overstar of Minnesota and Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania, that expressed alarm on the atrocious human-rights situation and called on Arroyo “to prosecute the perpetrators” (Tribune Online, August 6, 2007).  At last, the regime seems to be registering pain and anxiety over possible long-term damage. The recommended token cuts of over fifty million dollars in the Foreign Military Financing, the International Military Exchange Training for the AFP and funding for the Philippine National Police (PNP), if implemented, would demoralize Arroyo’s supporters, particularly the generals and hirelings dependent on their share. It would also prove that Arroyo cannot “deliver,” thus lending credibility to her essentially hollow claims of economic progress and stability.

Contradiction No. 2

Second, the defeat of the Arroyo camp in the May elections despite the usual rampant cheating supervised by Arroyo flunkeys in the Commission of Elections (COMELEC) exposed the inherent weakness of the current bloc of the neocolonial elite. It revealed the flaws in the hegemonizing effort to unite the most backward, malefic oligarchs. Fearing that that the detained ex-president Joseph Estrada might rally his followers, many of whom got re-elected, to a repeat of “People Power 2”-the mass demonstrations in 2001 that unseated him and catapulted Arroyo to power-when a verdict of his case is handed down in the near future, Arroyo ordered thousands of troops to saturate Metro Manila and environs in addition to already militarized urban zones. This is an unequivocal symptom of panic and political bankruptcy.

Further, the election of Senator Antonio Trillanes, one of the officers who led the aborted “Oakwood mutiny,” is a clear repudiation of Arroyo’s illegitimate rule.  As former president of the University of the Philippines Francisco Nemenzo observed, the presence of civic-minded nationalist officers inside and outside the Establishment who oppose Arroyo may not support her advisers’ view that the military is always political neutral: “The military is either partisan for the elite or partisan for the people.” While the other maverick officer and elected Senator, former Col. Gregorio Honasan, may have been “pardoned” as a compromise by the Arroyo bloc, Trillanes and other principled officers (beholden to other political factions of the elite, or nationalists in their own right) still pose a serious threat to the prolongation of Arroyo’s tenure. The horrific slaughter of AFP troops in Basilan and scarcely suppressed criticism from the ranks are a forecast of further mutinous upheavals from the ranks (on the Moro crisis, more below). Could bribery, threats, and concessions allow Arroyo to complete her term?

Meanwhile, Arroyo’s favorite bureaucrat, COMELEC chair, Benjamin Abalos, Sr., is now implicated in one of the most outrageous bribery scandals in Philippine history. It involves the Chinese firm China ZTE Corp. which won a government contract for $1.6 billion without any rival bidding. Named accomplices are Arroyo’s appointees, among them Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, Trade Secretary Peter Favila, and the aforementioned Abalos, among others. But this is nothing new to Arroyo; it has been her modus operandi since she entered public service.

At this point, it would not be anticlimactic to mention that before Sison’s arrest, the Netherlands won a valuable multimillion-dollar oil exploration contract from the Arroyo administration. Rep. Crispin Beltran revealed that an oil exploration company with significant Dutch participation, Premier Oil, was granted by the Arroyo regime the right to drill for oil within a million hectares in the Ragay Gulf of the Bicol region. Aside from this, Dutch investments (from oil to banking, insurance, electronics, etc.) are expanding rapidly. It is now the Philippines’ third largest trading partner, and the second largest foreign investor in the country, hence its willingness to support the criminal Arroyo regime for the sake of profit and imperial self-aggrandizement. After all, Arroyo has turned over to the Dutch capitalists the gas reserves of Malampaya and the indigenous people’s ancestral lands, hence the quid pro quo.

The most worrisome is the Supreme Court Justice Reynato Puno’s show of independence from the executive branch. Last July Puno initiated a summit on human rights to which civil-society activists and left-wing groups were invited. Like the Melo Commission and the government’s Human Rights Commission, this exercise in ritualized respect for “the rule of law” would have been just that, an inutile exercise, were it not for Puno’s courage in protecting two escaped peasants, the Manalo brothers, from testifying to their reprehensible imprisonment and torture by the military, and their first-hand witnessing of military complicity in nefarious crimes of kidnapping and extra-judicial murder. Earlier, several top generals expressed willingness to offer substantive evidences of such complicity in the process of Congressional or Supreme Court inquiries.

In addition, perhaps inspired by the global monitoring of the human-rights situation, various groups (aside from BAYAN and KARAPATAN) have finally gathered their forces to petition the Supreme Court to declare the reprehensible Human Security Act RA 9372 as unconstitutional. Aside from religious and church groups, lawyers and lawmakers (among them Senators Jamby Madrigal, Serge Osmena and former senator Bobby Tanada) have argued that the Act would give license for those temporarily in power, or in control of State apparatuses, to label any act as “terrorist” if it expresses “a demand deemed unlawful by the government.” Basically the Act would suppress the constitutional right to freedom of expression and of assembly for the redress of the people’s grievances. Authored by the right-wing Senator Enrile, who was a fanatical persecutor of critics of Marcos authoritarianism, the Act is modeled after the infamous USA Patriot Act and similar measures aimed at warrantless arrests, surveillance, and repression of democratic rights and civil liberties.

Not to be neglected is the recent passage in the Philippine Congress of a bill penalizing State agents for forcible “disappearances” and abductions, putting pressure on the Senate and Arroyo to ratify and sign the United Nations International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances (so far Arroyo has withheld her endorsement). In the light of the revelations over the abduction and torture of Pastor Berlin Guerrero and the military kidnapping of Jonas Burgos, two college students, and other highly esteemed civic leaders, the well-organized campaign against extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations is gearing up with full force, mobilizing millions not only in the Philippines but in the shifting diaspora of about 10 million OFWS around the world. Indeed, given the fact that its annual remittance of $12 to $14 billion to the government treasury is the single reason why Arroyo can meet its huge foreign debt payments, the OFWs can deliver fatal blows on U.S. imperialism and its local subalterns if they can be fully united and mobilized for national-democratic liberation.

The splits within the elite have undermined any claim of Arroyo to moral or ideological leadership of the U.S.-subservient local oligarchy.  The formation of such a broad consensus critical of Arroyo’s attempts to suppress any public protest against her corruption and cheating, threatens Arroyo’s monopoly on State power.  With a possible revival of impeachment moves coinciding with the coming out of military officials involved in the “Hello Garci” spying (the secret taping of Arroyo’s manipulation of votes during the presidential elections of 2004), Arroyo cannot rally the legislative branch to support her failed policies on the economy (the Philippines has regressed to a status well behind Malaysia and Thailand) and the two militarily undefeatable insurgencies. Whether impeachment proceeds or not, the investigation of corruption scandals, the final judgment over the Estrada case, the challenge to the Human Security Act and other schemes, plus the Moro and peasant-worker rebellions exploding everywhere–all these trends, exacerbated by a severely eroded agricultural-industrial base, are bound to converge in the inexorable exhaustion and collapse of the Arroyo presidency.

Contradiction No. 3

Finally, the third fatal blow to Arroyo’s dominance will come not from the New People’s Army, nor from Sison and the NDFP-although one should not underestimate their ideological elan as a catalyzing point of departure-but from the Bangsa Moro nation, arguably the most victimized group in Philippine history. I am referring not to any particular group, whether the Moro National Liberation Front or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, both of which have provided formidable if uneven leadership to the Moro struggle for cultural dignity, political self-determination and communal justice.  I have in mind the quite ethnically diverse communities of more than six to ten million people of Islamic faith who, given their heroic resistance to Spanish, American and chauvinist neocolonial oppression, have collectively embodied the spirit of liberation and justice in our region of the world (see my chapter on the Moro struggle in my recently released book, U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).  All Filipinos (if we might claim to speak editorially here) owe the Moro people tribute for their sacrifices, endurance, and collective solidarity in the fight against imperialism and corporate globalization. This giant is yet to fully flex its muscles; it is capable of overcoming U.S. Special Forces together with its mercenary AFP/PNP helots.

U.S. military intervention heightened after 9/11 when Bush sent thousands of U.S. Special Forces to the Philippines in early 2003 under the pretext of joint war exercises called “Balikatan.” Both Marcos and Estrada vowed to crush the Moro aspiration for self-determination in their “total war” policy, but to no avail. Spellbound by the same imbecilic or addlebrained experts on terrorism from the military and bureaucratic intelligentsia, Arroyo has fallen into the same path of ignominious disaster. In the last four years of Arroyo’s tenure, utter barbarism and havoc–with thousands of innocent civilians driven from their homes and farms, turned into famished refugees or killed outright in the engagements with the Abu Sayyaf (ABS)– have characterized the government’s obscene treatment of the Moro struggle for independence (often deplored as fanatical “separatism”).  The recurrent turmoil in Basilan island, southern Philippines, is a symptom of the larger cynicism and hypocrisy of the elite toward the plight of the Moros (see the insightful article of Carlos Conde, “Abu Sayyaf in Basilan: A Deadly Redux,” in Bulatlat Online, Aug. 26-Sept. 1, 2007).

How do we explain this chaotic confusion?  Arroyo’s militarist-chauvinist method of stopping what she calls “mayhem and bloodsport” cannot be prettified by tawdry humanitarian gestures. Arroyo’s impromptu gifts and gratuitous donations only prove the cynical program for resolving historically profound and complex sociopolitical problems that underlie the deprivation and desperation of the Moro communities, not to speak of the ethnic Lumads and other indigenous peoples in Mindanao and Sulu. While hypocritically claiming to be committed to peaceful negotiations with the MILF, monitored by Malaysia and the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Arroyo regime-to all indications-has no coherent, long-range strategy of solving the social, economic and cultural demands and needs of the Moro nation. Its only approach to this most crucial problem in Philippine society is military-technocratic violence, aided by U.S. Special Forces, the CIA and FBI, and the diplomatic sorcery of US State Department officials such as John Negroponte and Admiral Timothy Keating of the US Pacific Command, both recent visitors praising Arroyo’s savage onslaught on the Moro resistance in Jolo and Basilan.

Invincible Bangsa Moro Nation

Here I can only speculate briefly on two reasons that have bedeviled Arroyo and her advisers on the Moro revolution.  First, Mindanao is not only the last remaining undeveloped economic frontier of the country, incalculably rich with untapped natural resources, minerals, and human labor. It also provides the ideal forward staging ground for U.S. military forces intervening in the “hot spots” of the Middle East and Asia as a whole. Aside from an impending confrontation with Iran or North Korea, U.S. strategic interests (always impelled by profit-driven corporate gangsterism) dictate their scrutiny of what is happening in Indonesia and IndoChina as part of a long-range strategy to circumscribe China’s power, China (allied with a revitalized Russia) being the real contender for U.S. hegemony in this part of the world. Reports of huge U.S. investments in military infrastructure in Mindanao, as well as experiments in unconventional warfare, reinforce the theory of prolonged U.S. intervention in the Philippines.  The second reason is the need to sustain the myth of the Abu Sayyaf (and by extension the Jemiah Islamiyah chiefly based in Indonesia) as the main rationale for continued U.S. military “exercises” and permanent training of Filipino officers and soldiers for atrocious genocide, for unconscionable exploitation of the natural environment and its inhabitants.

In the annals of neocolonial history in the Philippines, and perhaps for third world countries in the region, perhaps the ABS will remain one of the most enigmatic and hilarious hoaxes, if it were not a deadly serious affliction to millions of Moros as well as for Filipinos as a whole. It is public knowledge that this group was formed by a collusion of military officers, public officials, and businessmen to divide the Moro National Liberation Front that was leading the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship from 1972 up to 1996. It was also a lucrative business deal. While some of its members may have been trained in Indonesia or Afghanistan during the Reagan period as potential manpower for the anti-Soviet mujahedin, the majority were and continue to be disaffected, lumpen elements (with a handful of religious teachers or mentors) egged on by local politicians or warlords, and tolerated or encouraged by regional military officials who have benefited from its kidnapping-for-ransom business. In short, the ABS is distinctly a local problem with a historically specific provenance in the Philippine economic, political and cultural terrain.

It is really remarkable how the dead in the southern Philippines can resurrect after periodic intervals. From the administrations of Ramos to Estrada and Arroyo, the government has announced repeatedly that the ABS has been decimated, curtailed, and finally defeated. This ritualized alibi persists ad nauseam. Arroyo and her security council are quick to grab the opportunity to boast of their definitive extirpation of the ABS. But like the mythical hydra-headed monster, the ABS rears its head every time, as it did last July 10 when it killed 14 Marines as a result of a mistake-the soldiers failed to heed the warnings of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) not to venture into their territory in Basilan.  Originally, the troops were supposedly in search for ABS partisans who kidnapped an Italian missionary priest. However, the truth is that Arroyo and her clique may have wanted to instigate heavy fighting with the MILF, labelling its encounters as attempts to suppress “terrorists.” This also applies to the heavy fighting in Jolo and other areas of Sulu islands which has been raging since February 2005 when over 100 soldiers, including two colonels, were killed by fierce MNLF resistance by government attacks in their territory. Arroyo has to shore up her credentials as a bonafide leader of the U.S.-sponsored global war on terror, thus deserving material and political support from Washington/Pentagon.

The AFP in the last two months have suffered the largest number of casualties so far, disturbing the rank and file, as well as the hundreds of widows and orphans of the dead. It is not Basilan that is the target but Jolo and the Sulu island chain where MNLF forces are entrenched and whose reach encompasses the strategic region of Davao and Cotabato.  This is where the issue of autonomy will be decided. While its former leader Nur Musuari earlier compromised with the government in 1996 when he signed the final papers of its agreement to join the government (the negotiation over the treaty began in Tripoli during the Marcos dictatorship, with Libyan strongman Khadaffy’s sponsorship), significant numbers of the MNLF bypassed Misuari in order to continue the Bangsa Moro struggle for independence.

Meanwhile, with the MNLF’s decline, the MILF, with a more openly religious orientation compared to Misuari’s secular program, took up the leadership of the armed struggle against the Manila government.  It is with the leadership of the MILF that Arroyo is now negotiating, even though a dual policy of fighting and talking seems to have been adopted and practiced by both sides. Even if a truce or treaty is signed, this will not solve the enduring problem of exploitation, oppression, and lack of any dignified viable future for millions of Moros and indigenous communities in the southern Philippines, not to speak of thousands of impoverished Christian peasants and workers inhabiting the same region.

The Abu Sayyaf is surely bound to outlast Arroyo and her tutors.  So long as Arroyo and her generals, as well as their Washington advisers, persist in judging the ABS as a military problem, or an isolated case of anomie or loss of identity and cultural status, as some American anthropologists and social scientists believe, the ABS will thrive and attract followers. After all, so many of its handlers are benefiting from the kidnappings and plunder. This is in addition to the U.S. and Arroyo’s need for an enemy as vicious as these “terrorists” who allegedly behead their dead enemies.  The people who live in Basilan, Jolo or any part of Mindanao know why the ABS exists and remains: the misery of everyday life from exploitation of land and other resources by transnational corporations, the immense poverty and desperation of the thousands who feel there is no future. That is why U.S. officials find it necessary for them to say that their heavily armed Special Forces are not just fighting the terrorists, they are also “winning hearts and minds” (the old tired formula from the Vietnam carnage) by digging wells, building bridges, curing the sick, etc.  Stop-gap solutions, charitable work, with no participation on the part of the communities-such is Arroyo’s formula for thwarting “terrorists.”

Self-Determination is the Key

Due to lack of space, I will simply quote the conviction of Abhoud Syed Lingga, the executive director of the Institute for Bangsa Moro Studies, a non-profit research group devoted to Filipino Muslims, concerning the present situation: “The problem in Basilan or Sulu cannot be isolated from the overall problem of the Bangsamoro people…. I have doubt on the effectiveness of the government strategy…because it does not address the grievances and aspirations of the people. The best way to fight terrorism is to address people’s grievances and to open democratic avenues where people can pursue peacefully their political aspirations. Self-determination for Muslims will open the windows of opportunity to resolve the long-drawn conflict peacefully” (quoted by Conde in article cited earlier).

In the context of this wider perspective, Sison’s arrest will not stop the National Democratic Front nor the New People’s Army from the protracted complex struggle for national democracy and genuine sovereignty. Neither a picnic nor a dinner party, as the old adage goes, the progress of the revolution does not depend on individual leaders or heroes, however important their contribution might be. The torture of Sison will not lead to the capitulation of the CPP or NPA, as Arroyo’s advisers expect; nor will it diminish its powerful appeal or influence. It will certainly dampen if not halt the peace negotiations. It surely will not postpone Arroyo’s downfall.  BAYAN chairperson Dr. Carol Araullo summed up the thrust of these events in a news release during a protest in front of the Netherlands Embassy in Metro Manila last August 30: “It is clear that the Arroyo regime really has no intention of talking peace.  It is only interested in waging all-out war.  This is not just about Joma now. This is an attack on the Filipino people and their aspirations for a just and lasting peace.” Given her distinguished leadership of BAYAN, one of the largest coalition of progressive groups in the Philippines today, and her vital role in the united front against the state terrorism of Arroyo, the U.S. and the Dutch reactionaries, Araullo’s commentary in her column “Streetwise” in the Business World magazine (August 31-September 1, 2007) deserves to be quoted at length:

The Arroyo regime is blinded by its denial of that great lesson of history-that revolutions bred by social injustice and oppression cannot be defeated, much less be eradicated by the state’s iron hand and that brutal suppression of revolutionary leaders only constitute temporary setbacks. Many more invariably stand up to take their place in the frontlines of the struggle.   The Netherlands government thinks that by colluding with the Philippine and U.S. governments to politically persecute Mr. Sison and the NDFP and to scuttle the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines)-NDFP peace negotiations, it has done away with a big thorn in its throat, a political embarrassment as well as a pesky obstacle to Dutch multinational corporations’ unbridled profit-making in the country…. The Dutch has clearly interfered in the matter of the sovereign right of the Filipino people, the right to determine its political affairs including the political settlement of internal armed conflicts.  Its shameful role in this outrageous episode shall, in due time, be thoroughly exposed and it shall consequently be held accountable.”

INTERVENTION FROM THE BOOONDOCKS:
An Interview with DR. CAROL P. ARAULLO by Dr. RAINER WERNING

Leading in the defense of Sison and other persecuted Filipino refugees/exiles today is the militant coalition of civic organizations, BAYAN (New Patriotic Alliance) in the Philippines, with affiliates around the world. Its chairperson is Dr. Carol P. Araullo, an exemplary Filipino progressive intellectual and nationalist organizer. She has a long brilliant record of political activism, dating back from her student days at the University of the Philippines and as a doctor engaged in community medicine while opposing the Marcos dictatorship. As former executive director of the Philippines Peace Center, she promoted the peace negotiations between the Manila government and the NDF. She acts as global vice chair for external affairs of the International League of People’s Struggle, co-convenor of the Gloria-Step-Down-Movement, and other broad alliances. Her regular column, “Streetwise” in the Manila journal, Business World, has provided lucid, insightful analysis of current developments (I recommend in particular her two articles in its August issue on the recent fighting in Mindanao-Sulu, “The crux of the Moro problem” and “Tell that to the Marines,” accessible from her Website and from Bulatlat).  Her commentaries may be taken to represent one of the most provocative and sophisticated trends in current progressive circles in the Philippines today.

Dr. Carol P. Araullo, together with Representative Satur Ocampo and other progressive
militants, in a recent rally against the Arroyo regime in Manila, Philippines

The following is a transcript of an interview of Dr. Araullo (CPA) conducted by Dr. Rainer Werning (RW) during her attendance at the Permanent People’s Tribunal Session 2 on the Philippines held at The Hague, the Netherlands, last March 2007. Dr. Werning is a distinguished political scientist and journalist teaching at the Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung of Bad Honnef, Germany. He has lectured in various countries, UK, Japan and recently in the Philippines sponsored by the Goethe Institute and other universities.  He interviewed Jose Maria Sison in a notable book, The Philippine Revolution: The Leader’s View (1989), and co-edited with Nicklas Reese the highly useful Handbuch Philippinen (2006).  This interview (slightly edited here for grammar and coherence) was recently aired over German public radio and published here for the first time.

(For other articles about Dr. Araullo, see Political Affairs , Homefront  and Socialist Viewpoint )
RW: It is now more than 30 years ago since the ouster of the Marcos dictatorship (1972-86). What, in your viewpoint, constitutes the chief differences between Marcos’s rule and the GMA administration?

CPA:  The fall of the Marcos dictatorship was supposed to have restored democratic processes and institutions in my country. We did not expect it to overhaul radically the social stratification, the wide gap between the rich and the poor, the stranglehold of the elite on economic and political power. But at least there were high hopes then that civil political liberties and human rights would be upheld and promoted under a so-called democratic regime.

But under the current government of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, which ironically came to power on the heels of a people’s uprising that toppled a corrupt and oppressive government (that of former President Joseph Estrada), the hope did not materialize. Arroyo’s regime is proving itself to be as brutal, as vicious, as terribly fascist as that of the former dictator. What is exceptional is that it does not have the honesty and decency to call “a spade a spade.”  It engages in oppressive policies in political repression under the guise of democratic processes, under the guise of a rule of law. Mr. Marcos at least declared “martial law” and made clear that he was an authoritarian leader who had control of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and would utilize the AFP to impose his will. Mrs. Arroyo pretends to be a democratic leader.

RW: I understand there were several executive orders and laws passed under the Arroyo administration that turned out to be quite oppressive. Could you name such orders and laws and tell us what the essentials of these laws are?

CPA: There is a law that was carried over by the previous Marcos dictatorship. It is a law that purports to uphold free speech and assembly–it dates back to Marcos’ martial law era-but instead it is used consistently and persistently by the Arroyo administration to curtail freedom of assembly. It is used in a very conscious effort to preempt the massing up of people in protest against her policies and against her government in general. It is deployed to preempt a wave of mass demonstrations and protests that could culminate in an armed uprising in the cities that could topple her government.

As you know, the Arroyo regime is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy. It is under a cloud of having engaged in massive and systematic fraud in the last presidential election. Now this law, while guaranteeing the fundamental right to freedom of assembly and to seek redress from government, has an obnoxious provision: it states that a permit is required to be applied for and gotten from local government officials purportedly to insure that traffic inconvenience and other forms of disorder are avoided. Now this provision has been misinterpreted by all governments after Marcos–much more so by Arroyo’s government–as a no-permit no-rally policy. Consequently, the arbitrary refusal of a mayor to give demonstrators a permit has in actuality curtailed the basic freedom of assembly.

Mrs. Arroyo carried this repressive policy a step further by proclaiming by executive fiat the so-called “calibrated pre-emptive response” decree which she announced on Sept. 21, 2005, the anniversary of the declaration of Marcos’ “Martial Law.” This decree essentially magnified the maximum intolerance policy of government to any forms of street protest, workers’ strikes, or any kind of democratic expression of opposition by citizens to government policies. Essentially, it was a way of cutting short any attempt to mass people up and to stage a mass demonstration.

By Feb. 2006, this reached its height during Arroyo’s proclamation of Emergency Rule, Proclamation 1017, which was bodily lifted from Marcos’ dictatorial Proclamation 1021. Arroyo’s proclamation essentially mimicked the provisions of Marcos’ “Martial Law,” but stopped short of calling itself “Martial Law.” When this was announced by the Arroyo government, a big, big demonstration scheduled on that day was violently dispersed and for one week, no demonstrations were allowed at all.

Now, these are, shall we say, bits and pieces of discreet laws that attempt to undercut the fundamental rights of citizens, but now an anti-terrorism bill has just recently been passed by Congress. It is ironically or euphemistically titled “Human Security Act.” It is a compilation of oppressive provisions that is patterned after other anti-terrorist legislations such as the USA Patriot Act. It was lobbied for by the US embassy and the main authors were architects of the Marcos’ martial-law regime. It permits warrantless arrests, it allows being held under police custody and interrogations for three days without any charges being filed. Even if a person has been able to avail of bail, and despite the fact the current law itself says that a person can not be detained if there is no sufficient evidence against him, under this “Human Security Act,” the person accused could be put under house arrest and prevented from using any form of communication, whether internet, telephone or whatsoever.

Worse, it sets up an anti-terrorism council which is essentially composed of the current members of the Cabinet Oversight Committee  On National Security, the heads of the AFP and of the Philippine National Police, the National Security Adviser, the head of the Local Government, Cabinet Secretary–persons who have a military mindset. These people will now compose the anti-terrorism council headed by the president. And they will have the power to apply to any court to call for the illegalization or proscription of any organization on the basis of whatever they say, and so these organizations are deemed “terrorists.”

As you know, there is no anti-subversion law anymore in the Philippines–it was repealed during the presidency of Fidel Ramos. The intent was to allow the Left–Communists if you will–to enter into the legal parliamentary arena, no longer to be illegalized. Of course, armed rebels are still illegal and can be punished as rebels. But with the anti-terrorism bill, we expect that New People’s Army and its leadership, the Communist Party of the Philippines, will be proscribed as terrorist organizations. And legal organizations or progressive organizations that are being smeared, up to this day, as front organizations of the CPP will be in practice treated as guilty by association. Or eventually, under the anti-terrorism bill, they will be proscribed as terrorist organizations.

So we are anticipating a massive crackdown after the election in May when the bill comes into effect. In addition, the president has issued Executive Order 464 which basically requires all government officials to get permission from the office of the president …

RW: (Mic problem) We start again …

CPA: Executive Order 464 was issued by Arroyo in September 2005 about the same time that the policy called “Calibrated Pre-emptive Response” was announced. Basically, Order 464 disallows any official in the executive department at any level to appear before any congressional investigation on any subject matter without getting prior explicit approval from the Office of the President. This includes military officials, police officials, officials of any of the departments under the Executive. What is the rationale for this Executive Order?

We believe– and it has been proven that it was used–it is being used by Mrs. Arroyo to prevent any kind of investigation by Congress of any corruption, scam, any illegal use of government funds, any involvement of high government officials in election fraud, or any entering into any kind of agreement that undermines national sovereignty–like the agreement entered into by the national security adviser with a US private company to lobby Congress in a campaign to change the constitution of the Republic of the Philippines.

In other words, this order is designed not just to stifle but prevent from the outset any kind of relatively independent investigation into the shenanigans of the government. And the idea here is to deprive the opposition and the progressive movement from being able to utilize any issue that can spark public disaffection with government and possibly spark public outrage and massive protests against the government.

RW: Carol, what’s your analysis of the ongoing counter-insurgency plan…Oplan Bantay Laya. I understand there are two phases.

CPA: No…the government recently announced Oplan 2– Operation Plan Bantay Laya 2– which is actually not a phase but a new Oplan along the same lines. Basically, Oplan Bantay Laya 1, which started in 2002 if I am not mistaken, the period for the implementation of Oplan Bantay Laya 1 just ended, and they have not been able to achieve the objectives of that counter-insurgency program…That is why they have re-issued it under Oplan Bantay Laya 2. It is essentially the same, it has the same objectives and features as previous counter-insurgency programs; they are patterned after the counter-insurgency programs of the US military that were tried out in Vietnam, for example. And in Latin American countries, dubbed as the secret “dirty war” in Latin American countries.

These counterinsurgency schemes are simple to understand. They basically utilize military forces to clear an area of guerilla activity and then to hold that area by means of destroying the political infrastructure and support of the guerillas in that area and introducing socio-economic alleviation programs and basically turning the population away from support for the guerillas. But this model of counter-insurgency has failed and it has been proven incapable of achieving its objectives in destroying the armed revolutionary movement and the support of its mass base. However, it is now being re-cycled by the current government with a distinct and very brutal, very vicious component and that is the systematic targeting of progressive groups and activists for the purpose of intelligence gathering, harassment, surveillance and eventual filing of trump-up charges of rebellion and other criminal activities. Or worse, these concerned citizens or groups are set up as targets for death squads that are under the direction and control of the military.

This is the most reprehensible, the most terrible, aspect of this new counter-insurgency program in that it fails to stem the tide of armed guerilla activity. It is being turned against non-combatants, civilian populations and mass organizations of the poor and exploited, who by means of the legal arena, by means of the protest movement and by entering into Congress through the elections, are pushing a progressive agenda. The Arroyo regime’s objective is to annihilate this kind of legal progressive opposition to the government–to incapacitate it by basically killing people or putting them in jail.

RW: From what we gather, the influence of the military is quite pronounced. Would you have any figures how many military people are currently placed in strategically high positions in the government?

CPA: There are figures but, sometimes, we stop counting. The trend is clear. For example, there was supposed to be a clamor to put civilians at the head of the national defense department, but now it is occupied by an ex-general. The telecommunications portfolio is held by an ex-general, also the department of–many generals are now serving as consultants or under secretaries in the Office of the National Security adviser. Many of them are also in the Department of Interior and Local Government, they are spread out. And Mrs. Arroyo clearly is employing retired generals who, after retirement are immediately assigned to civilian positions– either as sinecures or as strategic locations–to put them into strategic control for the administration.

Because it is a beleaguered government, an illegitimate government, the Arroyo regime is reviled by a majority of the people. All the surveys show that people want Arroyo either to resign or be removed from power. We have a government that is more and more relying on the military and police to stay in power as well as the support of the United States, the business community. And as it holds on to power, it becomes more and more tenuous. It will rely more and more on the armed forces, that is why she is giving them all the money all the leeway… Arroyo has clearly made a policy of impunity for any kind of infraction of the generals… not only with respect to violations of human rights but also massive corruption in the military. In other words, Mrs. Arroyo is being propped up by the military that may soon devour her if she does not watch out.

RW: Do you feel harassed in your daily activities?

CPA: Yes, even during the time of Marcos, especially in the later years of the Marcos dictatorship when the mass movement, the guerilla movement and the international public opinion had turned against the Marcos dictatorship, if you have the support of the church, or if you are a professional…let us say you are known in the international human rights community, you have some kind of mantel of protection. But now the government appears to be …very defiant of all of these considerations in making its decisions about implementing a counterinsurgency program that is bound to generate a lot of protests, and a lot of …there would be lot of political fall-out on the basis of this program. So that makes us very, very vulnerable. Either you would be taken out by a death squad, a death squad that is not necessarily politically sensitive or even mindful of political consideration before they pull the trigger. Or else, you are set up for criminal charges, a situation that can keep you in jail until you are old and grey and are hardly a political threat to the government. So we feel insecure, we are threatened and we try to find ways to minimize the risks but, yes, we are very, very vulnerable.

E. SAN JUAN, Jr. works with the Philippine Forum, New York, and the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Connecticut. He was recently a fellow at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, and Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. His recent books are Filipinos Everywhere (IBON), In the Wake of Terror: Class, Race, Nation, Ethnicity in the Postmodern World (Lexington Books), US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan), andBALIKBAYANG SINTA: An E. San Juan Reader (Ateneo de Manila University Press). He is a member of the American PEN Center, National Writers Union, and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Michael A. Lebowitz

‘Save me from these so-called Marxists who think they have the key to history in their back pocket! Save me from disciples like those who followed Hegel and Ricardo!’ Few people understood better than Marx how a theory disintegrates when the point of departure for theoretical work is ‘no longer reality, but the new theoretical form in which the master had sublimated it.’

Happily for him, Marx was spared the spectacle of disciples scandalized by the ‘often paradoxical relationship of this theory to reality’ and accordingly driven to demonstrate that his theory is still correct by ‘crass empiricism’, ‘phrases in a scholastic way’, and ‘cunning argument’. Lucky Marx who (if Engels is to be believed) was before all else a revolutionary whose ‘real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society’ – he missed the affirmation by 20th Century scholastics that what the working class really needs for its emancipation is proof that he was right all along about the transformation of values into prices and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall!

How can we today follow Marx’s mission and contribute to the overthrow of capitalism? How can we help the working class become ‘conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation’?

In a talk several years ago, subsequently published in Monthly Review (June 2004) with the title, ‘What Keeps Capitalism Going?’, I stressed two main points. Firstly, if we understand anything from Capital, it should be that capital tends to produce the working class it needs – workers who look upon its requirements ‘as self-evident natural laws’. Why? The point is really simple: (a) the wage necessarily appears as a payment for a quantity of labour, thereby extinguishing every trace of exploitation; (b) all notions of justice and fairness are based upon this appearance of an exchange of labour for money; (c) capital, the product of workers, necessarily appears as the independent contribution of capitalists and thereby deserving of a separate return; and (d) workers, as individuals within capitalist relations, really are dependent upon capital in order to meet their own needs and, indeed, are dependent upon particular capitals.

Accordingly, in the absence of an understanding of the nature of capital, even when workers struggle, these struggles are for ‘fairness’, for justice within capitalist relations but not justice beyond capitalism – i.e., at best, they reflect a trade-union or social democratic consciousness which does not challenge the logic of capital. Given, then, that the spontaneous response of people in struggle does not (and cannot) go beyond capital, the responsibility of Marxists remains (as always) that of communicating the essence of capital to workers and thus the necessity to go beyond it. But, it’s not enough.

My second point was that ‘For those within the grasp of capital, however, more is necessary than simply to understand the nature of capital and its roots in exploitation. People need to believe that a better world is possible. They need to feel that there is an alternative – one worth struggling for. In this respect, describing the nature of a socialist alternative – and analysing the inadequacies and failures of 20th Century efforts – is an essential part of the process by which people can be moved to put an end to capitalism.’

Can anyone seriously deny this second point? Given the failures of ‘real socialism’ and the success of capital thus far in the battle of ideas – capital’s success in convincing people that ‘there is no alternative’, contributing to the overthrow of capitalism requires us to demonstrate to working people that there is a socialist alternative to the barbarism of capitalism.

Socialism for the 21st Century

There is a spectre haunting capitalism now. It’s not the socialism of the 20th Century – either real or theoretical. Rather, it is a challenge to capital that starts from the needs of human beings. At the core of the concept of socialism for the 21st Century is a focus upon human development. Marxists need to understand this spectre and its centrality to Marx’s thought.

The term, socialism for the 21st Century, entered general currency with Hugo Chavez’s declaration at the 2005 World Social Forum about the need to reinvent socialism: ‘We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.’

As I indicate in Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century (Monthly Review Press, 2006), that vision – although not identified yet with socialism – was already present in the Bolivarian Constitution (1999) which talks about ‘ensuring overall human development’, and about ‘developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society.’ And, it was articulated when Chavez talked in 2003 about the nature of the ‘social economy’ which ‘bases its logic on the human being, on work, that is to say, on the worker and the worker’s family, that is to say, on the human being’ – an economy which ‘generates mainly use-value’ and whose purpose is ‘the construction of the new man, of the new woman, of the new society.’

This is a vision which rejects the perverse logic of capital and the idea that the criterion for what is good is what is profitable. It rejects the linking of people through exchange of commodities, where our criterion for satisfying the needs of others is whether this benefits us as individuals or groups of individuals. Istvan Meszaros expressed all this clearly in his Beyond Capital when he drew upon Marx to talk about a society in which, rather than the exchange of commodities, there is an exchange of activities based upon communal needs and communal purposes. And, Chavez explicitly embraced Meszaros’ perspective in July 2005 when he said ‘we have to create a communal system of production and consumption, a new system.’ We have to build, he insisted, ‘this communal system of production and consumption, to help to create it, from the popular bases, with the participation of the communities, through the community organizations, the cooperatives, self-management and different ways to create this system.’

The concept of socialism for the 21st Century which has been evolving in Venezuela combines three characteristics: (a) social ownership of the means of production which is a basis for (b) social production organised by workers in order to (c) satisfy communal needs and communal purposes. (I develop this point in ‘New Wings for Socialism’ in Monthly Review, April 2007.) At the heart of this concept and permeating all its elements, though, is the essential link between human development and praxis.

That focus on practice was present from the outset in the Bolivarian Constitution, which insists that participation and protagonism by people is ‘the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective.’ and in the identification of democratic planning and participatory budgeting at all levels of society and ‘self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms’ as examples of ‘forms of association guided by the values of mutual cooperation and solidarity.’ With the current development of communal councils (representing 200-400 families in urban areas) as the cell of a new form of state and with proposals for workers councils and worker management, there is definitely a deepening of the commitment being made in Venezuela to what Chavez called ‘a new type of socialism, a humanist one.’

Yet, as I indicated in Build it Now, given the many obstacles (both internal and external) to this process, it is not clear whether Venezuela’s attempt will succeed. Nevertheless, socialism is back on the agenda, a socialism for the 21st Century which has at its core Marx’s concept of ‘revolutionary practice’ – ‘the coincidence of the changing of circumstance and of human activity or self-change.’

All this should be recognized as a break with thinking about socialism in the 20th Century. In that view, socialism was considered to be the first post-capitalist stage – a society with its own specific characteristics and laws, which was distinguished from the higher stage, communism. Having passed beyond the exploitation and irrationality of capitalism, socialism would ensure the rapid development of productive forces and thus would prepare the ground for the communist society of abundance.

While this conception (and the resulting stress upon productive forces) corresponded to the immediate concerns of societies attempting to break with capitalism yet surrounded by more powerful capitalist enemies, the separate stage of socialism was presented as Marx’s view of the necessary step that all people would have to take. Marx’s own comments about the inherent ‘defects’ of the new society, further, were taken as a justification for building upon the basis of self-interest – ‘to each according to his contribution’ would have to be the rule until the development of productive forces had created the society of abundance.

But that wasn’t Marx’s perspective. Rather than two separate stages, Marx understood that the new society necessarily develops through a process – a process in which it transcends the economic, social, and intellectual defects it has inherited from capitalism. And, the specific defect that he identified was not that productive forces were too low but, rather, the nature of the human beings produced in the old society with the old ideas – people who continue to be self-oriented and therefore consider themselves entitled to get back exactly what they contribute to society. Building upon defects – rather than working consciously to eliminate them – is a recipe for restoring capitalism (as experience has demonstrated).

In short, just as capitalism developed through a process of ‘subordinating all elements of society to itself’ and by creating for itself the organs which it lacked, so also must socialism develop. In place of the logic of capital and self-interest, the new socialist society develops by inserting its own logic centred in human beings; rather than taking self-interest as a premise, associated producers work to develop new social norms based upon cooperation and solidarity among members of society.

Thus, building the new society stresses not the growing production of things but, rather, creation of the conditions for development of human forces – i.e., conditions which replace capitalism’s fragmented, crippled human beings with ‘the totally developed individual’ and permit people to develop through their own activity. With the ‘all-round development of the individual,’ all the springs of co-operative wealth would flow more abundantly.

This concept of socialism for the 21st century rescues Marx’s original idea of an ‘association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,’ a society focused upon the ‘development of all human powers as such the end in itself.’  It embraces Che Guevara’s stress in his classic work, ‘Man and Socialism in Cuba’, that in order to build socialism it is essential, along with building new material foundations, to build new human beings. Thus, it rejects the practice of ignoring the transformation of social relations and human beings in order to develop productive forces – an unfortunate characteristic of the top-down efforts at building socialism in the 20th century.

Marxism for the 21st Century

Is there a relationship between the Marxism of the 20th Century and the errors in the attempts to build socialism in the 20th Century? I think there are many. For one, Marxists need to assign the 1859 ‘Preface’ (with its formulaic economic determinism) to a book of proverbs and study instead the Grundrisse‘s insights into the ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ of an organic system, insights that will permit a better understanding of process. Further, grasping Capital‘s focus on how relations of production precede and shape the character of new productive forces would help to reduce the worship of technology and the development of productive forces.

However, I think there is a problem in 20th Century Marxism that flows from Capital itself. Why don’t Marxists automatically begin from the question of human development and the concept of ‘rich human beings’? Why do so many Marxists not grasp that Marx’s premise in writing Capital was his understanding that real wealth is human wealth, ‘the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption ‘and that he wrote from the perspective of a society in which the results of past labour are ‘there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development’? If Marx did not have the socialist alternative clearly in mind, how could he describe the situation where means of production employ workers as ‘this inversion, indeed this distortion, which is peculiar to and characteristic of capitalist production’? An inversion of what?

The problem originates in a misunderstanding of Marx’s Capital – in the view that Capital is Marx’s study of capitalism rather than an exploration of the side of capital, conducted through the beginning of a critique of the political economy of capital. When you fail to understand the limits of Capital (limits that Marx himself pointed out), it is not surprising that economic determinism, the view of the productive forces introduced by capital as neutral, the treatment of the proletariat as abstract, the inability to understand how ‘the contemporary power of capital rests’ upon the creation of new needs for workers, the failure to recognize the ‘general and necessary’ tendency of capital to divide and separate workers and the effective disappearance of class struggle from the side of workers all follow.

In Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (Palgrave, 2003) and in the Deutscher Prize Lecture, ‘The Politics of Assumption, the Assumption of Politics’ (Historical Materialism, 14.2, 2006), I explore the implications of Marx’s failure to complete his epistemological project – in particular, the one-sided Marxism that flows from the failure to recognize implications of the missing book on Wage-Labour. Why didn’t he ever write that book? Marx was less interested, I proposed, in the completion of his epistemological project than in his revolutionary project.

Of course, as followers of Marx, we can do both. However, scholastics and disciples for whom the point of departure is ‘no longer reality, but the new theoretical form in which the master had sublimated it’ can do neither. We need to return to Marx’s premise – the vision of a society of  the ‘rich human being’, one in which there is the ‘absolute working out of his creative potentialities,’ the ‘complete working-out of the human content,’ the ‘development of all human powers as such the end in itself’. In short, we need to embrace the vision of ‘socialism for the 21st Century’.

And, as Marxists who live in this real world, we need to ask how precisely can we help the working class of the 21st Century become ‘conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation’? What are their needs? What are the barriers that 21st Century capitalism has created to the realization of those needs? What, given their actual conditions of life, are the ways for workers to struggle against capital now? What, indeed, is to be done?

We need, in short, to understand the conditions which global capitalism in the 21st Century has created. Obviously, they are not ones which we would have chosen. But, they are the only ones available in which we can make history.

This article was written originally for Junge Welt, a German left daily, in advance of a Berlin conference on Marxism for the 21st Century in April, 2007.

An interview with Senator Jamby Madrigal

E. San Juan, Jr. (with an interview by Dr. Rainer Werning)

“Huwag po nating payagan na bumalik tayo sa kadiliman at takot na dinala ng martial law. Panahon na upang tumindig at lumaban.”  (Let us not allow ourselves to return to the darkness and terror of [President Ferdinand Marcos’] martial law [1972-86].  It is time to stand up and fight.) – Senator Jamby Madrigal, “Martial Law in the Guise of Anti-Terrorism Bill,” Joint Statement with Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Legend Restaurant, Oct 9, 2006

Last June 26, we attended a historic rally-demonstration of over 4,000 people in Washington, DC, called “Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice.” It was the first national mass mobilization of this kind undertaken by the American Civil Liberties Union, a rather staid institution, in cooperation with Amnesty International (USA), Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. It was a coalition representing a fairly broad spectrum of left to right civil-society lobbying groups. A petition bearing tens of thousands of signatures was delivered to Congress expressing five demands on behalf of rights gutted by the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA): the restoration of habeas corpus and due process, ending torture and abuse in secret prisons, stopping extraordinary renditions (secretly kidnapping people and sending them to countries that torture), the closing of Guantanamo Bay prisons and allowing prisoners held there access to justice; and the restoration of the rule of Law. The tide is turning against the rightist, neoimperialist Bush policy of gung-ho war of terror on humanity.

Together with the USA Patriot Act, the MCA is part of the Bush administration’s deceptive schemes to carry out the “global war on terrorism” on behalf of the corporate elite. It operates by casting aside basic democratic freedoms, chief of which is the principle of habeas corpus that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment, a tenet enshrined in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, section 9). By abolishing this doctrine of fundamental due process, the Bush regime can hold hundreds of prisoners-designated “unlawful combatants”-for more than five years without charges.

The USA Patriot Act and the MCA are the two weapons the fascistic Bush administration is using to fight what it designates as “terrorism.”  “Terrorism” for the U.S. ruling class includes the just struggles of peoples for self-determination, a right enshrined in the UN Charter; nonetheless, after 9/11, the U.S. State Department branded the New People’s Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines as “terrorist organizations.” With these legal instruments, Bush has the power to declare who is a terrorist “enemy combatant,” who should be held indefinitely without being charged, define what is torture and abuse, and so on. The MCA permits convictions based on evidence extracted from a witness by torture.  Numerous legislators, among them Senators Leahy, Dodd and others have introduced legislation to nullify MCA and key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, in particular warrantless domestic spying or surveillance through the National Security Letter provision, and other violations of free speech and privacy rights that defy the Constitution and ignore the principle of checks and balances. In short, the war on terror has been used to justify the undermining of the Constitution and the rule of law, the essential civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and basic democratic principles. Polls indicate that the majority of U.S. citizens, especially after the rejection of the war-mongering policies of the Bush leadership in the November 2006 elections, support the scrapping of the MCA and the repeal of the USA Patriot Act. Such laws against terrorism destroy security and civil liberties, engendering a worse kind of terror: inhumane, brutal treatment of civilians by State violence.

Revisiting Benevolent Assimilation

Meanwhile, we read in the Inquirer.net (June 27) an opposite, retrogressive trend in the Philippines: the Arroyo regime is harnessing all means to apply the anti-terror law, officially known as the Human Security Act (Republic Act No. 9372), which is set to take effect on July 15. This Act is patterned after the USA Patriot Act and the MCA, ostensibly designed to be used in the fight against what Arroyo and her US patrons perceive as “terrorism.” It goes beyond the U.S. models by including under the rubric of “terrorism” the political conduct of rebellion or insurrection, which is punishable with 40 years of imprisonment. Suspects can be jailed without charges. Surveillance of terror suspects, including the use of wiretaps and tracking devices, and the freezing of the suspect’s personal assets, are unconscionably permitted by this Act.  The Philippine law tries to out-do Bush’s draconian measures, already condemned by international opinion and rejected by the U.S. public.

Despite the recent claims of Deputy National Security adviser Pedro Cabuay that the Act, considered as “the cornerstone in the Philippines’ fight against global terrorism,” will first be publicized and discussed before its application (Inquirer, 7/04), its eventual implementation seems certain. Arroyo is readying the public for the proscription of groups such as BAYAN, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, and numerous organizations-all considered “communist fronts.” One proof of this is the continuing refusal of the Arroyo regime to take command responsibility for the thousands of victims of extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances.

Aside from the previous demonstrations of government military-police complicity with these heinous acts (Amnesty International, United Nations Rapporteurs, even by Arroyo’s Melo Commission), the recent Human Rights Watch report (28 June) reaffirmed the international principle of command responsibility-the top officials of the State, the President, the Armed Forces of the Philippines high command, and other security officials (particular Norberto Gonzales and Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez), are all accountable for the forced “disappearances,” torture, and murders of activists and other innocent civilians. Three generals have come out in support of Senator-elect Antonio Trillanes IV’s plan to investigate the involvement of military officials and other State agents in the continuing atrocities. Finding itself on the defensive, the Arroyo clique retools via mock-repentant compromises, cajoling, hypocritical apologies, and-by the end of the day-convenient scapegoats, and desperate appeals for more U.S./IMF/World Bank sympathy.

One example of the Arroyo regime’s hard-headed refusal to acknowledge responsibility is the revelation that three kidnapped victims-Sherlyn Cadapan, Karen Empeno, and Manuel Merino-have been witnessed by many to be in military custody. A petition for habeas corpus filed last July 17, 2006, was already served to Generals Romeo Tolentino and Jovito Palparan; but the military chiefs deny any wrongdoing. General Esperon and Secretary Ermita can repeat to kingdom-come their tiresome refrain that the government has no stated policy of killing political enemies or critics who are publicly stigmatized as “communist fronts” by government propaganda and media flunkeys, by OPLAN Bantay Laya 1 and 2, and countless covert schemes. Whom are they trying to fool?

It might be instructive to recall how UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Philip Alston’s comment last February that the government’s “passivity bordering on an abdication of responsibility” fell on deaf ears. Secretary Gonzalez, however, perked up and berated Alston for being “blind, mute and deaf.” In his report to the UN Human Rights Council last March 27, Alston reiterated that “based on my fact-finding, there is no reasonable doubt that the military is responsible for a significant number of the killings.” So, whatever protestations of Arroyo, Esperon and Ermita to the contrary, Alston’s earlier criticism that the military “remains in a state of almost total denial” cannot be met with more asinine denials.  Indeed, no one so far has been prosecuted; no military or police personnel has been investigated, or brought to trial.

We all know that denials are cheap and easy for tricksters in public relations. This is the confidence game Norberto Gonzales is playing when he recently quipped that “leftist propaganda is successful” (Inquirer, July 3). The same goes for hundreds of abducted victims, the most recent being the esteemed Jonas Burgos in Manila, Nilo Arado and Luisa Posa Dominado in Iloilo, and more starkly, the torture of Pastor Berlin Guerrero by the Naval Intelligence Security Forces and elements of the Cavite Provincial police last May (see Carol Pagaduan-Araullo’s “Smoking Gun,” Bulatlat June 10-16).
Unravelling the Web of Lies

Despite hedged admissions that the counterinsurgency program may not be sensitive to human rights-Secretary Ermita’s coy response to the European Union’s mission that categorized the political killings as a serious liability that may interrupt European aid and investments-Arroyo persists in spinning her “web of lies,” to quote Dr. Carol P. Araullo’s phrase. Dr. Araullo, chairperson of BAYAN, captured the prevailing climate of opinion in her recent column “streetwise” (Business World June 28): “Outrage, long pent-up and mounting, is bound to explode over the killings, unabated by universal condemnation and earnest appeals. In the short term, it can find expression in public support for the trailblazing efforts of the Puno Supreme Court to use the judiciary’s ‘expanded powers’ under the 1987 Constitution as a guardian of civil liberties and human rights….That outrage may also bring about the popular will and force that could oust the fascist criminals from power and put a stop to the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.” Prophetic words for the powerful who no longer have a future.

One of the most militant and formidable opponents of the State terrorism practised by the Arroyo regime, aided with U.S. Special Forces courtesy of Washington/the Pentagon, is Senator Ana Maria Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal. Senator Madrigal has already earned a well-deserved reputation as a leader in the crusade against government corruption and for social reform. She is sustained by a legacy of nationalist activism in her family: she is the granddaughter of the national martyr, Supreme Court chief justice Jose Abad Santos; and her grand-uncle is the well known revolutionary Pedro Abad Santos, the founder of the Socialist Party of the Philippines (which later joined forces with advanced sections of the working class to form the Communist Party of the Philippines in the thirties). Before becoming a Senator, she was active in managing several charitable foundations such as Books-for-the-Barangay Foundation, the Abad Santos Madrigal Foundation, and ABLE Foundatiion, to help the poor, especially women and children. In the Senate, Jamby Madrigal chairs two senate committees: one on Youth, Women and Family Relations, and another on Cultural Communities.

Three of Senator Madrigal’s recent nationalist bills are strikingly progressive and deserve national-democratic support: first, the repeal of the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act of 1998, the bill to protect the national patrimony by repealing the Mining Act of 1995 (RA 7942), and another to impose a total log ban. While attending a religious procession on October 4, 2005, with other activists, Jamby was hit by Manila Police water cannons-a kind of baptism of fire for her.

While attending the Permanent People’s Tribunal Session 2 on the Philippines last March at The Hague, Netherlands, I had the privilege of meeting Senator Madrigal. She was one of the witnesses in the trial against the anti-people crimes of Arroyo and Bush. Her testimony cantered on the continuing displacement of indigenous communities and the plunder of the environment. Senator Madrigal criticized Executive Order No. 364 which subordinated the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples to the Department of Land Reform, thus rendering it inutile in its task of protecting and promoting the rights of indigenous peoples. She also condemned various multinational corporations for the devastation of our natural resources (for example, mining company Toronto Ventures, Inc. in Zamboanga del Norte; Lafayette Mining Corporation in Rapu-Rapu Island, Sorsogon, Marcopper Mining Company). She concluded her speech before the Tribunal with these words: “As a Filipino, I accuse and seek a guilty verdict for the regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for the violations of the economic, social and cultural rights of the people, including the violation of economic sovereignty and the national patrimony through iniquitous agreements and economic plunder by foreign and local exploiters.”
Devil’s Wager: Exchanging Security for State Terror

Concerning the Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB), Senator Madrigal called my attention to her joint statement with Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. at the Legend Restaurant, October 9, 2006. In that statement, she charged that the Bill (Senate Bill No. 2137, sponsored by Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile) “legislates martial law.” She asserted that the bill “will create a shadow criminal justice system that in turn will be used as an instrument of a greater terror perpetrated by people in power against their critics and political opponents.” Sacrificing human rights for an alleged guarantee of security, ATB contains vague and sweeping provisions that practically abolish “the rights to freedom of expression and association, the liberty of movement, the prohibition against arbitrary detention, and the rights to the presumption of innocence and fair trial.”  Exactly what thousands of demonstrators in Washington DC last June 26 were saying about the MCA and the USA Patriot Act.

Senator Madrigal also recounted to me her trip to Europe in October 2006, specifically to the World Council of Churches in Geneva, and the International Parliamentary Union, the International Federation of Journalists, the Belgian and Flemish parliaments, the House of Lords in UK, and Amnesty International. She focused on the “repressive provisions of the proposed ATB,” intent on broadcasting to the international community that “Mrs Arroyo is bent on adopting policies and measures that will only further strengthen her control over Filipinos and encourage widespread human rights abuses” (Press Statement, 17 October; from Senator Madrigal’s Official Website).

Senator Madrigal finally referred me to her presentation entitled “Legislating Insecurity through State Terrorism” to the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights at the conference of the International Commission of Jurists in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 5 December 2006. In this extremely valuable speech, Senator Madrigal reiterated her principled stand against the ATB, an “oppressive” law that would legitimize Arroyo’s “State terrorism” because of its “terrifying provisions.”  I have already cited some: the likelihood that persons may be labelled terrorist “by reason solely of his religious or political beliefs,” which is already the practice of the AFP, their para-military death squads, and Arroyo’s security council. As illustration, Senator Madrigal cited the case of six progressive parliamentarians [Satur Ocampo, Crispin Beltran and colleagues]…who were accused of participating in a rebellion against the current regime,” as well as the case of the Tagaytay 2 who were arrested and tortured without any warrant.   One of the provisions of the ATB (on detention of suspects for 5 days or more) has already been judged by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) as violating Article 9, paragraph 3, of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires that a person arrested be brought “promptly [not exceeding 48 hours] before a judicial authority.”

Last March 12, the UN Special Rapporteur for promotion and protection of human rights, Martin Scheinin, issued a statement that the overly broad definition of terrorist acts contradicts “the principle of legality and [is] thus incompatible with Article 15 of the ICCPR.” Moreover, Scheinin noted other defective features, such as the 40 years imprisonment for suspects which “undermines judicial discretion in individual cases” and results into disproportionate punishment, and the questionable competence of various bodies authorized to review detention, as well as the restrictions on movement, including the imposition of house arrest-all amount to the conclusion that many provisions of the ATB “are not in accordance with international human rights standards” (see his website).

Senator Madrigal also warns of other extreme provisions of the ATB which are tantamount to disregarding “with impunity constitutional guarantees” and therefore sanctioning State terrorism. In her press statement of March 11, 2007, supporting Rep. Satur Ocampo’s defense, Senator Madrigal described the current dispensation as “martial law with a de facto civilian and military junta in control.”

What Is To Be Done?

At this juncture, I call the readers to the substantial and thorough critique of the ATB by the militant organization BAYAN, entitled “The Anti-Terrorism Act: Recipe for Undeclared Martial Law (June 13, 2007), accessible in BAYAN Website; and also to a recent letter of Amie Dural, secretary general of the Promotion of Church People’s Response, posted in Inquirer‘s Opinion Section (June 27).  Dural stressed the points raised by Senator Madrigal, BAYAN, and others: the ATB will embolden the abductors and torturers of activists like Pastor Berlin Guerrero and “multiply the number of unjustified arrests, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the name of the Arroyo administration’s ‘war on terror…. The full implementation of the anti-terror law threatens to arrest progressive parliamentarians and anyone who will participate in protest actions, such as nationally coordinated rallies, during the State of the Nation Address (SONA),” as well as legalize “the unconstitutional deployment of military troops in urban communities,” a step which proved useful for the regime in terrorizing citizen-voters during the May electoral campaigns and depriving citizens of their democratic rights.

Senator Madrigal articulates with great eloquence her nationalist and libertarian convictions in the following exchange with my colleague Dr. Rainer Werning (RW), lecturer at the Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung of Bad Honef, Germany.  He has asked me to edit (for style and readability) the transcript of this taped interview of Senator Madrigal (AMM) during the session of the Permanent People’s Tribunal [words in brackets are the editor’s].

DR. RAINER WERNING INTERVIEWS  SENATOR MADRIGAL

RW:  Madam Senator, you listened to the presentation of Prof. Roland Simbulan on U.S.-Philippines relations. What is your response to that?

AMM: Well, he gave a very interesting and detailed historical perspective on the continued control of the USA over the Philippines with regard to sovereignty and the country on national defence. I listened very intently and he explained the situation in a very, I would say, factual manner and it is very worrisome when you see that we are – as he said – the last country in Asia to have an army capable of defending ourselves from external threats…merely having an army under the beck and call of the government of the USA to be used as a pawn in its so- called war on insurgency and terrorism.

So yes, I believe very strongly in what the Professor says, because the Philippines continues to be a country with not much pride in our own sovereignty because we continue to exist as a neo-colonial state, as a de facto American colony with regard to economic and national defence issues.

RW: It’s now almost 61 years after independence. You must get the impression that the Philippine isn’t a sovereign country at all with the AFP acting as a mere appendage of the U.S. military. Isn’t it?

AMM: Yes, it is merely an appendage of the US Army because we are bound by the treaties to be trained by the US Army and to buy all arms from the US. This would be tantamount in economic terms to a U.S. monopoly. Instead of being able to choose the best armaments, the best arms with the best prices in the free market, we are bound to the US without the right nor the power to choose and buy [what we need at a] price more suitable to us. So this is very inefficient. [We are caught in] a controlled economy where there is only one supplier; and monopolies, as you know, are never really very efficient.

And this has led to a steady decline of the capability of our armed forces when it comes to national sovereignty but they are continuously aided by the US Army to kill the perceived terrorists and insurgents who are not really terrorists and insurgents but opponents of American imperialism and the present regime albeit illegal (because Mrs. Arroyo cheated her way to election of 2004). Many people do not think she is the legitimate president.

So the goals and aims of the American government is to preserve their monopoly of power in the Philippines, both  economic and military. It is exactly the same as Mrs. Arroyo’s desire to preserve herself in power, so they are mutually beneficial for each other but not for the country as a whole.

RW: Irony of history … there’s so much talk about free economy but when it comes to military equipment, obviously it’s exactly the opposite.

AMM: I just want to say, it is very ironic because when they say, oh  we should be grateful to America, they are giving us so much military aid, only to pay themselves back …so there is really not much given because the money given to us is used to buy armaments back to pay the Americans. So net-net, there is really nothing much that the Philippines gets but America has all the gain.

RW: Who is mainly responsible for this kind of ongoing counter-insurgency – the U.S. or the GMA administration?

AMM: Well, as I said, I believe that the GMA administration is being used as a pawn to keep the US influence on the Philippines intact both militarily (in matters of defence) and politically. So that they can continue also to keep their multinationals in the Philippines with all the privileges that a multinational has. But in terms of killing the insurgents, I believe that the Macapagal Arroyo government [with its security advisers, AFP and PNP] are the ones who pinpoint who to kill because they are their political opposition, legitimate political opposition.

And I don’t think that the US really is concerned as to who is killed as long as it helps prop up the government and as long as their interests are not compromised. As the Professor said, he believes that the US knows about these extra-judicial killings; however, they do not condemn them. But as to who to kill – I think this is really more the job of the Macapagal Arroyo government because she is killing her political opponents. She wants the Americans to turn a blind eye to the killing, as long as they can keep military and economic hold over the Philippines.

RW: Would you agree that there is sort of dirty “division of labor” going on?

AMM: Shall we call it an immoral division of labor to keep both of them in power – the illegitimate Macapagal-Arroyo government – and to keep American interests forever in power in the Philippines, militarily, economically and politically?

RW: Quite amazing, you hardly come across a politician, in this case  even a senator, who so openly speaks about US-imperialism…

AMM: Well, I think during the Cory Aquino time there were few of the patriotic senators who had spoken about it. I have a few of my colleagues who continue to speak about it, but I think the litmus test was when these colleagues voted for the Anti-Terror Bill, which I did not vote for. At the end, there were only about two of us who voted no to this bill which will be used as an instrument for further oppression of our people and further weaken the national sovereignty of the Filipino people.

RW: You mean to say, out of 24 Senators, only two voted against it?

AMM: Two voted against it, one was in his office when the vote was called but he is a good colleague of mine and I believe he is one of the best senators we’ve  ever had, …Senator Osmena II would have voted against it. But aside from that, of the 23, only three perhaps in conscience would have voted against it.

RW: What do you think has been the reason for this? These people aren’t stupid, rather well-versed in political issues …

AMM: Well, “political compromise,” I think would be the best way to put it. Some point to other [reasons], they were just justifying their “yes” votes because their amendments were accepted. Yes, the amendments which changed only the grammar [or wording] of the bill. But the amendments which would have changed the spirit of the bill were not accepted and the amendments to safeguard human rights were not really there.

They say, oh the bill is safe now because we’ve put enough safeguards. To me…and I would not say it…it is a four-lettered word but that is all foolishness. There are no safeguards in the bill. You do not have to be a lawyer to see it, I’ve discussed it with the International Court of Justice. I ‘ve recently discussed it with United Nations Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights who issued a press statement asking the Philippines to repeal or amend the bill because it is not in harmony with the Covenant of Human Rights that the Philippines has signed.  So it really makes a mockery of democracy, this is a licence to kill and legitimize state terror against its people.

RW: Could you sum up your main arguments that made you vote against it? What are the most perfidious elements?

AMM: First of all, you can be arrested without any warrant on mere suspicion so it is back to the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.

If they don’t like your face, they can say I suspect you to be a terrorist and you can be arrested without warrant, your assets frozen, and you are put under surveillance and those of your family and friends who come in contact with you can be put under surveillance.

And what is worse is not only that there is a very vague provision in the law which the United Nations Rapporteur pointed out: [namely,] that aside from a judge, any member of the Philippine Commission of Human Rights who is not even a judge can issue a warrant. So…they are making a mockery of our Commission of Human Rights by making them now an instrument to make possible state terrorism against the people.

RW: I thought the Commission just investigates cases?

AMM: Yes, but it says, upon mere suspicion of someone being a terrorist, you can apply for a warrant from your [local] judge or you can go to the representative of the Commission of Human Rights in the area and get a warrant to arrest and bring that person into jail but you can just…on mere suspicion though. You can arrest someone and detain him for three days without warrant.  So there are really no safeguards.

If you look at it, the main sponsor was Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, who in 1972 was the architect of Martial Law and he was the Minister of Defence under which Mr. Marcos committed human rights violations. The [first] Permanent People’s Tribunal, when it indicted President Marcos, also indicted Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, then Defence Minister. And Mrs. Arroyo has used this same man to be again her architect of martial law… they say, first time martial law was imposed, it was a tragedy. The second time with the Anti-Terror bill, it is a comedy of errors

RW: What in your view marks the difference between the Marcos era and the GMA administration?

AMM: Very easy. Marcos was a lawyer and he was very conscious of his place in history. When he wanted to extend his power way beyond his term, he was not a hypocrite and used all the excuses to declare Martial Law. At least the people then knew, that we were under dictatorship and that we had limited freedom.

With Mrs. Arroyo, it is worse because she is the best hypocrite that ever lived. The Filipinos are living today under a dictatorship masquerading as democracy. It is even harder when Mrs. Arroyo tries tell the international community that the Philippines is a democracy when she has killed more – if you look at the number of years – more people than Marcos  killed in his 20 years in power. Marcos killed three thousand or more people under that regime. There were about three thousand people killed. In the Macapagal Arroyo government we have almost 800 people in less than five years.

Pound for pound, although she is a little, a very small woman, I think she packs more repression, more hypocrisy, more killings, more violations of human rights, more violations of the constitution than Mr. Marcos ever did.

Do not forget, Mr. Marcos had a vision for the Philippines. Mrs. Arroyo has the myopic vision only of furthering herself in power way beyond 2010. And that is why should she get the majority in the lower and upper house this election – she would try to change the constitution into a parliamentary form and reign as Prime Minister for an indefinite number of years. Don’t forget we have no monarchy, our constitutional…institutions are very weak, and so to be a prime minister would again  be tantamount to an indefinite period of having a dictator in the Philippines.

RW: It must be awkward to travel around the globe and project such an image of the Philippines. How do your colleagues perceive the Permanent People’s Tribunal Session 2?

AMM: Well, my colleagues who are very much against Mrs. Arroyo are very happy that I am here. And we’ll use this indictment of Mrs. Arroyo to open the eyes of the Filipino people with regards to their gradual loss of freedom.

I feel as if we are living in a military junta with a puppet president willing to do what the military wants just to stay in power. And legislators like me have very limited power. All we can do is talk – if we are not killed.

I was water-cannoned last October for participating in a procession. And the last time I came here to [to Europe] and tried to negotiate peace talks with the NDF, I was under threat of being arrested when I arrived [home] for doing nothing.

Sen. Jamby Madrigal (center) NDFP Negotiating Panel Luis Jalandoni (left)
and NDFP Chief Political Consultant Jose Ma. Sison

In the Philippines, the modus operandi is that you are presumed the guilty unless otherwise proven innocent, whereas the presumption of innocence is what should be held especially under a constitution.

Mr. Satur Ocampo, a congressman, was not presumed innocent. [The government] got a warrant of arrest under trumped-up charges, he was arrested – I was with him in jail, I saw it. And then at the break of dawn [after his arrest], the police tried to kidnap him to bring him to a small town where his life could have been lost.

This is not a democracy. We are living under the worst form of dictatorship because it is masquerading as a democracy. To live in the Philippines is very frustrating at the moment. Whereas they tell you, you have your own freedoms, what they tell you…what is in the law is not what is happening.

E. San Juan, Jr. was recently a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Center, Bellagio, Italy; visiting professor of literature at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan; and Fulbright professor of American Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He works with the Philippine Forum, New York, and the Philippines Cultural Studies Center, Connecticut. He authored a collection of poems in English entitled The Ashes of Pedro Abad Santos and Other Poems (1986).  His recent books are Filipinos Everywhere (IBON),  In the Wake of Terror (Lexington Books), US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan) and Balikbayang Sinta: An E. San Juan, Jr. Reader (Ateneo University Press).

Dr. Rainer Werning is a German political scientist who has lectured and researched in various institutions in the Philippines, UK and Japan. He interviewed Jose Maria Sison in The Philippine Revolution: The Leader’s View(1989), and co-edited Handbuch Philippinen (2006). He writes for various publications in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Luxemburg.

S Sivasegaram

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5. The Scene, the Players, Ideology and Approach

The Present Situation. The conflict escalated rapidly under President Rajapaksha and, between April 2006 and April 2007, over 4000 have been killed, mostly civilians. Although aerial bombing gave the government the edge over the LTTE, the latter seems to have retreated from bases in the East with minimal losses, while civilians suffered heavily. The LTTE has since switched to guerrilla attacks in the East. While the almost daily air attacks by the SLAF cause suffering to the people, skirmishes between the army and the LTTE have caused loss of life on both sides.

The surprise land, sea and air attacks by the LTTE have emboldened the main opposition party, weakened by its defeat at the presidential polls, to challenge the government’s ability to defend the country against the LTTE. The government, which is far from accomplishing essential tsunami relief work, is now saddled with a burgeoning refugee problem, to which its attitude fringes on calculated indifference towards Tamil refugees while appearing to address the needs of the smaller number of Sinhalese victims. Muslim victims are neglected too, despite pledges by Muslim politicians.

The Tamils in the North have since last August faced shortages of essential goods and high prices owing to the closure of the A-9 highway (the main supply route which was opened in 2002 following the CFA) amid difficult living conditions caused by war-imposed restrictions on cultivation and fishing. Those in the army-controlled areas also face unlawful killings, kidnapping, disappearing, threats and a general rise in crime.

In the East, what was a fairly successful agricultural economy of the Tamils even under conditions of war and a reduction in the area under cultivation is now in total disarray. The loss of livelihood for the hundreds of thousand internally displaced persons and the disruption of normal life has grave short- and long-term implications for the solution to the national question and, given the dominance of narrow nationalism and opportunist politics, could aggravate tensions between local communities. The Muslims in the East who earlier protested about harassment by the LTTE now, especially since the tsunami, face increased harassment from Sinhala chauvinists, sections of the armed forces, the Special Task Force (STF), and pro-government Tamil paramilitaries.

The country’s economy is in deepening crisis, and corruption is rampant. The false sense of well being created by the liberalised trade and indiscriminate borrowing from international funding agencies, supplemented by remittances by migrant worker population (standing at well over a million adults from a country of eighteen million) is now gone. The rising crime rate, child labour and child abuse, drug addiction, prostitution, rising unemployment amid migration of skilled labour for overseas employment, decline in social values, wrecking of family life owing to one or both parents seeking jobs abroad are among the many social ills that are directly related to the open economic policy adopted in 1978. The war has added to the economic and social ills and has been the pretext to sell many successful state ventures to local and foreign ‘investors’, to be asset-stripped and abandoned, or for plunder by businesses aiming at short term profit. Covert undermining of the role of the state in the public sector and social services, under pressure from the IMF has further burdened the people, and the climate of instability has affected foreign investment as well as tourism-related income and employment.

A breed of new rich with wealth of dubious origins has emerged, as has an underworld on which the rich and the leading political parties rely for their safety and survival, while subjecting the society at large to unwanted risks.

It is long since the mechanisms for the enforcement of law and delivery of justice became politicised. Today, the country is fast drifting towards state-engineered chaos with routine unlawful killings, kidnapping and disappearing. The law and order arm of the state is indifferent if not involved. Harassment of Sinhalese journalists and politicians directly and indirectly by the state was on the decline since around 1992 but has increased steeply in recent years and particularly the past several months. There is fear that the country is heading towards an authoritarian state with the armed forces and the underworld working together to keep all political opposition in check. The recent Presidential ruling (23.4.2007) authorising the armed forces to carry out the duties of the police, yet to be implemented, is not a good sign.

Thus it is becoming increasingly difficult to isolate the solution of the national question from the issues of democratic and human rights and struggles against imperialist globalisation and foreign domination. Thus the positions of the various players towards the national question have to be seen in the context of their class loyalties as well as their attitude to imperialism.

Sinhala Nationalism: the Shades of Chauvinism. At the core of Sinhala nationalist ideology is the notion that the Sinhalese (or Sinhala Buddhists to some) are the true sons of the soil. This assumption was readily extended to deny other ethnic groups equality with the Sinhalese. The UNP has been the main Sinhala bourgeois political party, with pro-imperialist trappings, followed by the SLFP, which for over a quarter century, identified itself with the national bourgeois interests and adopted, within limits, a social reformist and anti-imperialist programme. However, since the weakening of the SLFP by its electoral defeat in 1977 and the adoption of the liberal economic policy in 1978 the difference in substance between the two parties on matters such as globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation, has in a little over a decade faded into insignificance, except for the occasional ritual denunciation of foreign domination by the odd SLFP politician.

Neither party recognised the Tamils, let alone the other ethnic groups, as a nationality but were compelled by force of circumstances to recognise the existence of traditional Tamil homelands and the right of the Tamils to some form of autonomy. The position on the degree of autonomy was not always consistent and both parties have, under pressure from extreme chauvinists and often without resistance, abandoned their own proposals for regional self-government for the Tamils. Also, the two parties have used issues concerning the Tamils for political gain, promoted chauvinist politics for electoral advantage, and obstructed moves to solve the national question by the rival party in power. This attitude still persists.

Neither the UNP nor the SLFP has willingly sought a solution to the national question, and it is unlikely that, as long as the bourgeois parliamentary political system is in place, they will, in the absence of mass political pressure or, as in the case of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, pressure from a dominant foreign power, consent to a solution to the national question based on the recognition of the rights of the nationalities and ethnic groups. Even when agreement has been reached, the temptation has been strong to cheat or to go back on what was agreed, as seen in the recent de-merging of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

It is important to note that, since the start of the war, neither party sincerely sought a negotiated solution or criticised the excesses of the armed forces. Nor has either denounced chauvinism or campaigned among the Sinhalese for autonomy for the Tamils, let alone other ethnic groups, as a right rather than a price to pay for peace. Successive governments have been party to institutionalised falsification of history and promotion of chauvinism at every level ranging from education to tourism. No step has been taken to end discrimination against minorities, to rectify injustices in the fields of education and employment, or restore language and legal rights of the minority nationalities, which are matters that need not wait for a negotiated settlement of the national question.

The Sinhala Buddhist fanatical fringe existed alongside Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and has contributed to the development of chauvinist ideology and the whipping up of communal tension. It has not been a major political force although it has had capable spokespersons, some of whom Bandaranaike accommodated in his grand alliance (the pancha maha balavegaya, the front of five forces) in 1956. Successive governments acted to placate Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism in various ways in their bid to keep the Sinhala Buddhist electorate with them. The extreme Sinhala Buddhist groups have effectively lobbied at various levels to canvass opinion against what were seen as concessions to the minorities. A section, with a strong base among the educated urban upper middle classes, entered electoral politics for the first time as Sihala Urumaya in the year 2001 to secure just one seat on the basis of the total national vote. In the Elections of 2004, it fielded members of the Buddhist clergy as candidates, and the gimmick paid dividends with voters who were disgusted with corrupt politicians. Despite public disillusion with the conduct of the JHU MPs in parliament, the JHU remains an influential opponent of negotiations with the LTTE and solutions based on autonomy of any kind for the Tamils. Its anti-Tamil and occasional anti-Muslim outbursts are backed by various front organisations and individuals with influence in the media. Although sharing the same class support base as the UNP, the saffron-clad JHU MPs were easily tempted by the perks of office so much so that the JHU came to a deal with Mahinda Rajapaksha to support him in his bid for presidency in December 2005. The JHU and the JVP encouraged Rajapaksha to take a hard line against the LTTE, and following the recent wave of cross-over by UNP MPs from the UNP to the PA, the JHU enabled the fanatically Sinhala Buddhist Champika Ranawaka to become MP and join the Cabinet.

Although the roots of the early leaders of the JVP were in the two factions of the Communist Party, the JVP always had a weakness for chauvinism. Until after its failed insurrection of April 1971 it was hostile to the organised working class and had as part of its programme the expulsion of the Hill Country Tamils from Sri Lanka. It used Marxist Leninist and Che Guevaraist labels up to 1971 and on re-emergence in 1978 acquired a ‘legitimate’ Trotskyist label from one of the Fourth Internationals which withdrew its recognition a few years ago in view of the openly chauvinist line of the JVP.

The JVP’s interest in the minority nationalities does not go beyond tokenism of the kind practiced by the BJP in India and the right wing parties in the US and the UK. From 1982, the JVP position on the national question has been explicitly chauvinistic and it opposed any form of devolution or recognition of traditional Tamil homelands, something that even the UNP and the SLFP have conceded out of political necessity at various times, while in practice acting to deny the Tamils a contiguous territory through colonisation and military occupation. The JVP’s compromise with Sinhala Buddhism was consummated by its leaders falling at the feet of the Buddhist mahanayaka priests and submitting the JVP manifesto to them for approval on the eve of the parliamentary elections in 2000.

The groups that splintered from the JVP before the 1971 insurrection, for ideological or other reasons, became ineffective but remained Sinhala chauvinist. Splits after the insurrection led, however, to groups that have been free of chauvinist ideology, but unable to organise as political parties.

Another overtly chauvinistic group with a ‘left’ label is the MEP, with origins in the LSSP and a chequered political past. It lost all credibility as a left party when it joined the UNP-led government in 1965. It now relies on an alliance with the SLFP to secure parliamentary seats, and is hostile to peace negotiations with the LTTE and opposes autonomy for the Tamils.

The Buddhist Clergy. The Buddhist clergy, now almost exclusively identified with Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism, still has progressive clergymen in its midst. It may surprise many that there were several monks who were activists and leading members of the left movement and that the Communist Party had among its founders the learned Sri Sumamgala Thera. With the upward mobility of the Buddhist clergy owing to support by the state, and wealthy individuals and Buddhist organisations, the clergy, although divided along political, caste and regional lines, act as a privileged social group, and play an important role in carrying forward the cause of Sinhala Buddhism in all major Sinhala nationalist parties. The four mahasanghas have been given increased prominence by successive governments and have generally served to obstruct solutions to the national question based on devolution of power.

Tamil Nationalism: Moderates and Militants. The 1980s saw the emergence of young Tamil militants as a political force. But rather than develop into mass political organisations they became armed groups claiming to fight the Tamil national cause with the support but not participation of the Tamil community. Without exception, the main Tamil militant organisations have been petit bourgeois in outlook and, irrespective of claims to be leftist or radical, they were driven by Tamil nationalism so that the prospects for a mass struggle led by a united front of Tamil militant movements were bleak despite occasional co-operation among cadres of different organisations. Competition for dominance intensified with rising hopes of early success leading to a separate state, a dream encouraged by their Indian patrons, while desire for personal power led to splits and brutal elimination of rivals and, when India imposed its solution on them in 1987, the divisions were too deep to be plastered over.

Although several militant organisations liked to be identified as leftist or even Marxist, in practice their nationalism got the better of their left inclination if any. The desire to acquire a left label was to a considerable extent due to the impact of the success of the mass campaign against caste oppression and untouchability between 1966 and 1971, led by the Marxist Leninists. Although the militants were inspired by the armed resistance of the oppressed castes, they failed to learn the need for democracy, mass participation, mass struggle and above all guidance by sound theoretical principles based on social practice.

The shallowness of the commitment of the Tamil militant organisations and their various factions to the cause of Tamil Eelam became clear when, in the face of impending LTTE domination, they jettisoned their struggle. Some organisations like the PLOTE and the EPDP, besides siding with the government let their members fight alongside the armed forces of the government in attacks against the LTTE as well as the Tamil people. While this is seen as treachery by many, the reality is that the leading militant groups were saddled with a large membership, acquired when things went well for them; with a sudden change in fortunes and the LTTE monopolising Tamil political affairs in the North East, survival meant either assimilation to the LTTE or seeking the patronage of the Sri Lankan government or their erstwhile handlers in India. The Tamil People’s Liberation Tigers (TMVP, also known as the Karuna group) the splinter from the LTTE in early 2004, however, became a close collaborator with the Army for different reasons.

EROS (Balakumar faction) was absorbed into the LTTE while the rival faction that supported the government is virtually defunct. The EPRLF (Pathmanabha faction) is an openly pro-Indian group and a weaker faction loyal to Varatharajapperumal, the former Chief Minister of the North East Province is fully under Indian control. The TULF, ACTC and the former militant groups TELO and EPRLF (Suresh faction) patched up with the LTTE to form a united front, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to contest parliamentary and other elections to curtail the parliamentary strength of the pro-government EPDP. Splits occurred in this alliance owing to personality clashes as well as issues arising from divided loyalty between the LTTE and the Indian establishment.

The LTTE remains the only Tamil nationalist organisation waging armed struggle against the state and, with the Tamil masses being the target of state oppression and war, it is seen by many Tamils as their sole protector. While the LTTE has demonstrated great discipline and capability on the military side and a strong sense of commitment to Tamil liberation, it is lacking in ideology. It should, however, be noted that, it showed remarkable maturity during the peace negotiations to indicate willingness to consider a federal solution based on ‘internal’ self-determination.

The LTTE is not a leftist organisation, although its cadre and support base comprises the most oppressed sections of the Tamils in the North East, especially since the middle classes fled the following the intensification of the war. On the political front, excessive emphasis on Tamil national unity resulted in scant attention being paid to internal contradictions concerning class, caste, region and gender. The LTTE also lacks a clear vision about globalisation and liberalisation and has avoided confrontation with the US in these matters. The failure of the LTTE in this respect could be traced back to the tendency of Tamil nationalism to distance itself from struggles for social justice in the South as well from anti-imperialist campaigns, and is indicative of the considerable influence that the Tamil elite classes continue to exert on the LTTE. In recent years, the LTTE has, perhaps for tactical reasons, also refrained from criticising the Indian establishment, despite the latter’s hegemonic ambitions harming the struggle for Tamil liberation.

There has for long been resentment about taxation by the LTTE, especially among Muslim traders and cultivators in the East, and that has contributed to ethnic tension. The LTTE has been most severely, and deservingly, criticised for its intolerance to political dissent. Many of the faults of the LTTE in issues of human and democratic rights, restriction of freedom of expression and movement, and on political activity arise from the reliance of the LTTE mainly on armed struggle rather than broad-based mass struggle with armed struggle as an essential component. The lack of discussion and debate among the masses and the LTTE’s claim to be the sole representative of the Tamils have obstructed the democratisation of the struggle, the formation of a broad united front to confront the oppressive state, and uniting with other victims of state and imperialist oppression.

The LTTE, like other militant organisations, had seen splits but none more damaging than the one led by Karuna in 2004. Karuna and his TMVP have the benefit of regional sentiments in the East, especially among a section of the Tamil middle class; but the credibility of the TMVP is poor as a liberation movement. It is backed by the government and the armed forces and, following the LTTE ceding formal control of territory in two districts to the Army, it seeks to be the dominant force there. Prevailing conditions will probably restrict its role to something like that of the EPDP, but with the added complexity of conflicts between the Muslims and the TMVP.

Muslims: New Awareness and Old Tactics. The Muslims, while sharing a common language with the Tamils, maintained a separate identity and began to assert it early in the 20th century. The demography of the Muslims determined, however, that Muslim nationalism could not express itself in ways similar to Tamil nationalism. Survival demanded a stable relationship with the communities among whom they live. Given the difference in nature of the problems faced by the Muslims in different parts of the country no Muslim leadership emerged that could claim to represent the interests of Muslims across the country.

Election to parliament (since 1978) according to the proportion of the votes secured by a party on a district basis, relieved the Muslim leaders in the North East of their earlier dependence on the support of a Tamil nationalist party to be elected. This enabled the Muslims to have their own parliamentary political party in the North East as well as demand better representation from the main parties with whom they aligned in the South. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), founded in the 1980s in response to Tamil domination in the East, became a significant political force that performed well in the 1989 general election and won an overwhelming mandate from the Muslims in 1994, to which it held on until the party was ripped apart in late 2000 by dissent based on personal rivalries following the death of its founder leader AHM Ashraff. The SLMC leadership used its parliamentary strength to bargain for cabinet posts and other favours, and compromised its position as a fighter for the rights of the Muslims in the North East. Ashraff set up the SLMC-dominated National Unity Alliance (NUA) in early 2000 in a bid to increase the say of the SLMC in national politics; but the NUA failed to achieve the purpose while the SLMC earned the wrath of the Muslim leaders in the South.

The Muslims in the North East have good reason for concern about Tamil domination. Insensitivity on the part of Tamil militants and their use of violence against non-cooperative Muslims led to the loss of the significant degree of support and general sympathy that the militants enjoyed among the Muslims up to the mid-1980s. The expulsion of the Muslims from the North by the LTTE in 1990 was a cruel act that did irreparable damage to Tamil-Muslim relationship. Since the mid-1980s, successive governments have systematically manipulated the Tamil-Muslim contradiction to their advantage and mischievous elements among the Muslims including Home Guards, recruited and armed by the government and backed by the armed forces, indulged in acts of violence against Tamils.

The Muslim leaders in the North-East are nevertheless aware that in the medium and long term the main threat to the Muslims is Sinhala chauvinism, but their opportunism makes them emphasise the contradiction with the Tamils. Thus, when the demand for a Muslim autonomous region in the East is raised by them, it is invariably linked with Tamil autonomy in the North East and the North-East merger, and not based on the right of Muslims to autonomy. Thus a just demand for autonomy, rather unfairly, acquires an anti-Tamil colour.

The demography of the Muslims in the South does not permit a Muslim parliamentary political party to represent them and for opportunistic reasons the Muslim leaders are allied to one or another chauvinist party. Abuse of privilege by Muslim parliamentary politicians has often been at the expense of Tamils and Sinhalese and has contributed to the worsening of a delicate relationship between the Muslims and other nationalities.

The failure of the Muslim Congress, and its warring factions and rivals in the North East, as well as that of the Muslim leaders of the South to address seriously the concerns of the Muslims, the impact of international events comprising the imperialist persecution of the Muslims, and the upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism and militancy have together contributed to the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Sri Lanka. While the fundamentalists are divided and politically weak, they have strengthened the place of Islam in the identity of the community and in cultural matters, including the demand on Muslim women to follow the ‘Islamic’ dress code.

What is sad is the lack of vision on the part of the Muslim leadership and its inability to put forward programmes for the autonomy of the Muslims as a nationality, taking into account the problems faced by the Muslim nationality in different parts of the island. This lack of vision is highlighted by the fact that a comprehensive proposal for self-determination for the Muslims came from the Marxist Leninist NDP, and not from any Muslim political organisation.

Some newly emerged Muslim nationalist groups talk of an Islamic nation in the North East for which they demand self-determination. Their approach places at risk the unity and the identity of the Muslims as one nationality. And the risk is compounded by the possible emergence of a sizeable Sinhala speaking Muslim community in the decades to come, with an increasing number of Muslims in the South for various reasons opting for Sinhala rather than Tamil as their medium of instruction in school.

While the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists perceive the national question at best as a conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils and more commonly as a terrorist problem, the Muslims do not fare as a part of the national question. They are, however, useful to the extent that they weaken Tamil claims to a merged North East as a basis for solving the national question. Thus the Muslim bid for an autonomous region in the East is considered favourably by the UNP and the SLFP while the JVP and the JHU are opposed to any form of devolution on an ethnic basis.

The Tamil nationalists, on the other hand, have found it hard to digest the fact that the Muslims are a distinct ethnic group. It is only recently that some of the Tamil nationalist parties, for pragmatic reasons, conceded that the Muslims have a distinct identity and a right to autonomy. However, the Tamil nationalist leadership, both moderate and militant, has to this day failed to find common cause with other oppressed nationalities or to put forward proposals that address the national question as a whole.

The Hill Country Tamils. The Hill Country Tamils were alienated from the mainstream of Sri Lankan politics following their disenfranchisement in 1948. This made it possible for the CWC to take advantage of the backwardness of the community and exercise virtual monopoly over the trade unions in the tea plantations. Although the left, especially the Marxist Leninists, made considerable headway in building a politicised trade union movement, that trend met with setbacks in the 1970s.

Corruption and opportunism in the CWC led to dissent and desertions but not to a serious challenge until the Hill Country People’s Front (Malaiyaka Makkal Munnani or the MMM) was formed in the early 1990s. With the restoration of the citizenship to the Hill Country Tamils resident in the country, electoral politics and political bargaining for posts and portfolios and various privileges rendered the CWC and the MMM incapable of fighting the cause of the Hill Country Tamils, whether it be a demand for a fair minimum wage or struggles against chauvinistic aggression.

The CWC and the MMM once successfully used ethnic identity as a political issue to shunt out political rivals who accommodate other nationalities, while avoiding struggles to defend the interests of the Hill Country Tamils. Frustration with the leadership of the CWC and the MMM caused splits and factions in both parties, but for opportunistic reasons. Frustration with the CWC has for some time been a cause for attraction of a section of the youth towards the LTTE, and the MMM sought to use it to its advantage by appearing to be a close ally of the LTTE; but the show was given away when MMM, like the CWC, became a partner in a government that is waging an undeclared war against the LTTE. Elections to the local authorities in 2006 showed that the electoral bases of the CWC and the MMM had eroded considerably, but without an effective alternative. The newly emergent educated youth from the community, guided by the NDP and other left and progressive forces, have taken the initiative to launch struggles for the educational, land and other rights of the Hill Country Tamils, and thereby exposing the betrayal by the CWC and the MMM to protect their cabinet posts and business interests. Although the Hill Country Tamils are conscious of the exploitation, discrimination and denial of fundamental rights that they suffer, they have some way to go before they are mobilised to struggle for their rights as a nationality.

The Left: the Old and the New. The parliamentary left paid the price for its opportunism sooner than expected. The commitment of the LSSP and CP to the parliamentary path meant that their humiliation in their election of 1977 destroyed their credibility as a political force, and their alliance with the SLFP denied them an independent political existence as well as eroded their left credentials. The LSSP and the CP have at times distanced themselves from the chauvinistic line of the SLFP, as for example on the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, but as partners in government they could not dissociate themselves from government policy and its pursuit of war.

The split in the LSSP following its decision to enter into an alliance with the SLFP in 1964 led to the emergence of several Trotskyist groups, but none with a mass political base. The NSSP which originated as a faction in the LSSP in the early 1970s established itself as a political party of considerable strength in the late 1970s. But splits, rather of a personal nature weakened the NSSP: the NSSP (now renamed the Left Front, LF), the United Socialist Party (USP) and the Democratic Left Front (DLF) are surviving factions which are not internationally recognised Trotskyist parties.

The Marxist Leninists, who parted company with the pro-Soviet CP following a debate between the parliamentary pacifist and the revolutionary lines, underwent splits which did not hurt the Revolutionary Communist Party until 1972, when a split was forced by a group of pro-SLFP elements in the wake of the JVP insurrection. That split hurt the Party and its working class base, but the splitters soon disintegrated and lost their political identity. A debate on the stand of the party leadership on the on the Tamil national question led in 1978 to the formation of the Sri Lanka Communist Party (Left), renamed the NDP in 1991, which, although active mainly among the Tamils and the Hill Country Tamils is the strongest Marxist Leninist organisation in the country. There are also the rump of the Revolutionary Communist Party, renamed the Maoist Communist Party of Sri Lanka (MCP), and other Marxist Leninist groups and factions in the South, some with roots in the JVP of the 1970s.

A positive development in the left movement since its downfall since the 1970s was the founding of the New Left Front comprising the NSSP, NDP, USP and three other left groups. It made an impact in the Provincial Council elections of 1999, but the opportunism of the leadership of the NSSP in making a deal with the JVP without consulting other members of the NLF led to the break-up of the NLF in 2001. The NSSP adopted the name NLF (now LF). Subsequent attempts to build a united front have been unsuccessful, but for electoral alliances and joint campaigns with specific goals. It appears that the left, especially in the South, has much to learn about broad-based united fronts, common programmes, and unity and struggle within a united front. A section of it seems to harbour illusions about parliamentary political power, so that electoral alliances take precedence over alliances for mass struggle.

On the national question, however, the position of the left ranges from formal rejection of chauvinism by the parliamentary left to demanding autonomy for the Tamils by for example the DLF, and the recognition of the right of the Tamils to self-determination by the NDP, NSSP, USP, RSP and MCP among others. The attitude towards the LTTE varies from rejection as terrorists by the two parliamentary left parties to almost uncritical endorsement by the NSSP, the MCP and a few others. The NDP takes a guarded approach which recognises the LTTE as the effective fighting force of the Tamil nationality while being unreservedly critical of its failings including a lack of democracy, absence of an anti-imperialist stand, and over-emphasis of military aspects over mass participation and mass struggle.

The left has traditionally seen the national question as one concerning the Sinhala and Tamil nationalities, in response to the way in which the national question emerged since the 1930s and therefore failed to recognise its other less visible but important dimensions. This approach still prevails even among left parties that accept the right of nationalities to self determination. As a result the stand taken by most of the left parties on issues that arise in the course of development of the national crisis has tended to be pragmatic or empirical.

The NDP has, in this respect, made pioneering contributions to the understanding of the national question by examining the national question historically and dialectically and drawing on international experience. It has thus been able to advance the concept of the right to self-determination in a way that it could be extended to nationalities without a contiguous territory as well as to ethnic groups with no clearly defined territories to call their own.

The Media. The overall contribution of the mainstream media in the national question has been negative. The Tamil and Sinhala press have in general catered to the interests of the linguistic groups and, except for left and progressive liberal intervention, the contribution of the press to the betterment of ethnic understanding has at best been muted. With the aggravation of the national problem, rival newspapers have competed to capture readers among the increasingly nationalistic middle classes.

The radio has been a state monopoly until the 1990s; television entered the scene around 1980 as a state monopoly with the private sector entering the scene in the early 90s. The private sector has tended to be pro-UNP in the past, but amenable to state pressure since the escalation of the national conflict. The state controlled media has lost credibility over the past few years, thanks to politically appointed administrators and meddling by ruling party politicians.

The Sinhala and English media increasingly cater to Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, at times serving up vicious chauvinism and wilful distortion of facts, the most notorious being the Island and its sister papers. The Daily Mirror, reputed to be a little fairer in its reporting on the national question, recently came under threat from those in power for reporting the serious acts of injustice to the Tamils, and seems to be yielding. Its sister papers compete for the Sinhala Buddhist market. The Tamil newspapers, except for the state-controlled Thinakaran with a poor circulation, give the news a pro-LTTE slant within the permissible limits of pressure from the state and paramilitary forces loyal to it. Although the Thinakaran caters to some extent to the Muslim reader, Muslim opinion is poorly represented in the mainstream media.

The Sinhala newspapers are selective in reporting stories from the Tamil media in ways that are hostile to the Tamil national struggle and, Tamil newspapers tend to publicise stories in Sinhala with chauvinistic overtones. There are, however, a few Sinhala and English newspapers that tend to be critical of the way the government handles the national question, but cautious not to appear to be overly sympathetic to the Tamil cause. Their circulation is low and inadequate to counter the impact of the mainstream media

The media, the Tamil newspapers in particular, were a target of state-sponsored terror in the 1980s, and have continued to be under pressure. In the past few years and especially in recent months attacks on journalists have been on the rise; and now Sinhala publishers and journalists who reject chauvinism are openly threatened by chauvinists and harassed by the state.

The Tamil and Sinhala Émigré Communities. Since an overwhelming number of the Sri Lankan Tamils who emigrated fled the country as refugees, many having witnessed the holocaust of 1983, the Tamil nationalist cause finds strong support among them. However, competition for loyalty and demand for financial support for liberation movements followed the Tamils wherever they went. Although a good many Tamils would willingly support the armed struggle of the LTTE, there have been a many instances of systematic coercion. That, together with intimidation of rival political groups and attempts to suppress critical opinion which was there even before the LTTE became the dominant player, now haunts the Tamil community as well as the support for the struggle.

The Tamil Diaspora, despite its strong feelings about the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the need for struggle, remains politically backward so that not only the supporters of the LTTE but also its opponents are narrow in their outlook. This narrow outlook also reflects in the failure of the Tamil community to identify itself with other refugee communities facing oppression in their countries of refuge.

The Sinhala émigré community like its Tamil counterpart was initially based mainly in the UK. The emigration of professionals and skilled personnel that started in the 1970s extended it to the US, Canada and Australia. The opening up of the economy and the tourism industry in Sri Lanka led to migration to other parts of Europe and the Far East, but in smaller numbers. The violence of 1987-89 led to a large number of Sinhalese leaving to various destinations in Europe. The émigré Sinhala community has become increasingly chauvinistic in a way matching the developments in the country. Today the bulk of the community acts as an active Sinhala nationalist lobby against ‘Tamil terror’.

The healthy interaction that existed even into the 1970s between the two émigré communities comprising mainly an English-educated middle class has almost ceased to be. That advantage has been lost following the transformation of the national contradiction into war, and even the social occasions that brought the two groups together are now almost segregated.

The ‘International Community’. It is often forgotten that imperialism encourages conflict between communities and has been the agent of war in many Third World countries. The role of imperialism in national conflicts depends on the political orientation of the government. The national question has been used to destabilise countries whose rulers act counter to imperialist interests; and oppression of minorities has been condoned where it involves a government that is warm towards imperialism.

The ‘moderate’ Tamil leaders have been well received by US and British imperialists when the country had an SLFP government whose policies were not in the economic or geopolitical interests of imperialism. The relationship was as good when the Tamil leaders were partners in power with the UNP. Thus the Tamil leaders deluded themselves that the great American democracy will find common cause with them in their struggle against Sinhala chauvinist oppression. This, besides their class loyalties, partly explains why the Tamil leaders went out of their way to be hostile towards ‘communist’ countries in general and China in particular.

Things were destined to change when the UNP came to power in 1977 with an unassailable parliamentary majority. Imperialism found in the UNP regime, which lasted until 1994, a strong partner to deliver its plans for Sri Lanka in carrying forward imperialist globalisation. The aggravation of the national question helped to distract public attention from serious economic problems, and once the embarrassment caused by the pogrom of 1983 faded from international memory, imperialism openly backed the war efforts of the UNP government. This support has continued to this day, although by the late 1990s peace and stability became desirable for carrying the imperialist agenda further forward.

The US along with Israel has been the biggest supporter of the Sri Lankan military effort by providing military training, arms, information and logistic support. The US banned the LTTE in 1996 and followed it up with pressure on both the government and the LTTE to pursue peace. The 9/11 attack provided the pretext for the US ‘War on Terrorism’ and for the exertion of further pressure on both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to negotiate. Norway, which delivered the goods for the US sponsored talks between Israel and the PLO, was again the agent. Moves initiated under the PA government bore fruit as soon as the UNP, which was more amenable to the US establishment, formed the government in 2002.

Several US government spokespersons have refused to recognise traditional Tamil homelands and the US has given greater priority to disarming the LTTE than to solving the national question on an equitable basis. The role of the US in causing a split in the LTTE in 2004 was part of a plan to weaken the LTTE militarily. Of late, the US has been more assertive about its interests in Sri Lanka, and an Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (first negotiated by the UNP Premier Ranil Wickramasinghe in 2002 but dropped in view of Indian concerns) has been signed between the US and Sri Lanka early in 2007.

Although the European community and Japan are not as outwardly hostile to the LTTE as the US, their position on the national question is dubious. The LTTE and Tamil nationalists who pinned their hopes on Europe to defend the Tamils against state oppression were in for a rude shock when the EU banned the LTTE in 2006 amid a marked rise in attacks on Tamil civilians by the armed forces of the GOSL. Notably, the ‘international community’, whose response to a whole year of bombing and shelling of the Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan armed forces starting in April 2006 was at most an expression of concern, has been more forthcoming with its criticism of the LTTE for its acts of terror. The attitude of the ‘international community’ has therefore to be understood in the context of its imperialist agenda and the place for Sri Lanka in that agenda.

Direct US interest in Sri Lanka has been more strategic than economic. The US has eyed Sri Lanka since the British naval and air bases were closed down in 1957. However, attempts to gain a foothold in the country intensified after the landslide victory of the UNP in 1977. Sri Lanka is important to the US for two purposes: US domination over South Asia; and plans to encircle China. US efforts to gain control over the Trincomalee Harbour around 1980 were thwarted by India. US interest in Sri Lanka has, however, been revived since around the turn of the century and several military agreements have been signed  between the US and Sri Lanka, the most recent being the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement signed in March 2007, without protest from India. Today the US has increased its naval presence around Sri Lanka, and has a relay station in Sri Lanka for the Voice of America and other US political broadcasts for South Asia.

Sri Lanka also constitutes an important part of the US plans to implement imperialist globalisation in South Asia, and successive Sri Lankan governments since 1977 have been submissive to the US in this respect. A Free Trade Zone (FTZ) was set up in 1978 close to the international airport as part of the open economic policy, and investors from the Far East moved in fast to take advantage of various subsidies including tax holidays and concessions, and a labour force deprived of trade union rights by special legislation. Another important attraction besides cheap skilled and semi-skilled labour and tax concessions has been the unused quota for the export of garments from Sri Lanka to the US and Europe. Meantime the World Bank, the IMF and the ADB continue with pressure on the government to implement ‘structural reforms’ to downgrade the role of the state in providing social services and social security; and the cost of the war has served as an excuse for selling all or part of several state owned enterprises, including the highly profitable national airlines, petroleum and telecommunication companies.

Indian Concerns: Gods with Many Faces. India’s South Asian policy has been driven by hegemonic ambitions of the ruling classes dating back to the last days of the British Raj. India’s direct involvement in the Sri Lankan conflict was prompted by the shift in Sri Lankan foreign policy from strict non-alignment to a pro-US line under JR Jayawardane from 1977.

India provided military training to Tamil militants since the late 1970s on a modest scale and on a much bigger scale since 1983. Most Tamil nationalists misread Indian intentions and believed that India would help them to liberate Tamil Eelam like it helped to liberate Bangladesh from Pakistan over a decade earlier. Although the Indo-Sri Lanka accord of 1987 laid bare Indian intentions, there are many who like to believe that Indira Gandhi was genuinely for a separate Tamil Eelam while her immature son was easily taken for a ride by JR Jayawardane. Illusions about the Indian ruling establishment continue to be propagated by many Tamil leaders, more out of self-interest than ignorance.

One constraint on India has been the strong sentiments in Tamilnadu about the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils. The assassination of Rajeev Gandhi, the motivation for which is still very cloudy, as well as the misconduct of renegades from various liberation movements and some negative aspects of the Sri Lankan refugee problem drained the sympathy for the Tamils, with, of course, help from the elitist media, especially the Hindu and Indian Express groups of newspapers. Recent events in Sri Lanka have, however, reversed the trend in Tamilnadu, but only to the extent of ensuring that the Indian and Tamilnadu state governments do not appear to back the Sinhala chauvinist war against Tamils.

The DMK and its leader have been as elusive as ever while the ADMK leader and the Congress have been uncompromising in their hostility towards the LTTE. It should also be noted that the few friends that the LTTE has like the MDMK and the PMK in Tamilnadu, George Fernandes and, interestingly, Bal Thakeray were, however, of no avail in lifting the ban on the LTTE even when they were partners in the BJP-led government.

The Indian establishment cynically interfered in the peace process in ways that hindered progress, while claiming to keep out of it. It is well known that the Sri Lankan Prime Minister and the Norwegian mediator had debriefing sessions in New Delhi after every round of talks with the LTTE on various issues. The Indian establishment has made it clear that it does not want anyone other than a pliable client in control of affairs in any part of Sri Lanka where India has commercial or strategic interests. There is a slight shift in this attitude with recent developments in Indo-US collaboration and collusion, and Indian ambitions for regional hegemony and that of the US for global domination are now mutually accommodative.

India has several client political organisations in Sri Lanka, including the JVP, besides influence over important personalities in nearly every political party; and the conduct of the two previous Indian High Commissioners had been compared with that of a Viceroy in the colonial era. Thus, Indian interests will in one way or another continue to play a major role in the resolution or otherwise of the national crisis, based on the interests of Indian capitalism and Indian hegemonic interests.

Indian capital began to penetrate Sri Lanka following the open economic policy; it benefited from the deterioration of the national economy of Sri Lanka and controls a sizeable section of the foreign trade. Although Indian capital suffered a brief setback in 1988-89 during the JVP insurrection, it recovered fast to expand into the privatised plantation sector and other major ventures, most significantly the petroleum sector which it has come to dominate since privatisation. India sees in Sri Lanka a good market for its products, especially with the growth in consumerism and the decline in local production. Collaboration between Sri Lankan and Indian companies in the finance and service sectors also has seen rapid growth in the past decade.

India clearly asserted its hegemonic stand in the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, and in 1998 imposed on Sri Lanka an unequal trade agreement whose terms were revised in 2002 to the detriment of Sri Lanka. While India is not in a position to control Sri Lanka militarily, it has been able to restrain Sri Lanka from concluding military agreements with other countries that could challenge Indian hegemony. The Sethusamudram project on which work commenced in 2006 is one more instance where the Indian state has arrogantly ignored Sri Lankan concerns while the Sri Lankan state has abjectly failed to stand up for its people.

Other Factors. There are vested interests working against an end to the armed conflict and others using the conflict to advance their self-interest. Arms dealers need the continuation of armed conflicts in various parts of the world. Profiteering in the arms trade is not possible without the help of people in influential positions on various sides of the conflict. Serious charges of corruption have been made against politicians and leading figures in the Sri Lankan defence establishment. Equally there are vested interests on the side of the Tamil nationalism who do not want peace. Keenness on the part of certain sections of the media to pursue the war makes one wonder if the arms industry has cast its net far and wide.

Another group of cynical operators comprises the NGOs. While they appear to play the role of providers of relief to affected masses and campaigners for peace, the local NGOs mainly comprise careerists delivering the agenda of INGOs, most of which are extensions to the arms of imperialist governments. Recent escalation of the conflict has led to the suspension of relief work by NGOs in the war affected areas, and the people, already denied and deprived by the government, have been reduced to a state of helplessness. Thus the NGOs have positioned themselves as a necessary evil in a situation where the government purposely fails its people.

The worst harm done by the NGOs is through handouts, and ‘self-help’ and ‘leadership development’ projects, which really make the people less and less self reliant; while the NGO campaign against political work undermines mass mobilisation with clear political objectives.

The national problem of Sri Lanka is in many ways less complex than that of many third world countries but has been aggravated by the repeated failure of successive governments to arrest the escalation of the contradictions. The transformation of the national question into a national crisis and war was by design and driven by class interests. Thus its resolution will not be possible without identifying and isolating the forces that are act against the interests of the country, its nationalities and ethnic groups, and the toiling masses. In the final analysis the resolution of the national question is interwoven with the struggle for social justice; thus, while endorsing the need for struggle including armed struggle where necessary to overcome chauvinist oppression and war, one should not lose sight of the fact that the national contradiction is not a hostile contradiction and needs to be resolved peacefully while persisting in struggle against the oppressors.

The people of Sri Lanka want peace. Although peace efforts of the past failed to address the national question in its totality and addressed only certain manifestations of the problem, there are lessons to learn from the positive and negative aspects of past efforts. The next and concluding section briefly outlines a principled approach for the resolution of the national problem and the short- and long-term strategies for its resolution.

6. The Search for a Solution

Over a hundred thousand lives probably have been lost as a result of the war; and the GOSL and the LTTE seem to be underestimating the figures. The number of internally displaced is well over 500 000, comprising mostly Tamils, and includes Muslims driven out of the north and Sinhalese affected by war. The Tamil refugee population in Europe, Canada and Australia adds to around 800 000; the number in India fluctuates with the changing situation in Sri Lanka and probably hovers around 150 000. What is important to note is that, of the number killed, a vast majority belong to the impoverished classes of toiling masses such as peasants, fisher-folk and agricultural labourers, and that those languishing in refugee camps in India and Sri Lanka are also from that class background.

All efforts to deal with the national question since the Banda-Chelva Pact of 1958 to the failed peace talks of 2002-2003 have tended to be matters of expediency rather than attempts to deal with the sources of the problem. As a result, any agreement reached is readily scrapped under pressure from interest groups or simply does not lead to further action. The latter is best illustrated by the plight of the CFA of 2002: the cessation of hostilities led to complaisance on the part of the UNP government so that the urgency of solving the national question lost priority.

What brought the UNP government and the LTTE to the negotiating table was not an abstract love for peace or the realisation that the nation question cannot be resolved by war. It was the strain on the economy, the unpopularity of a war that failed to deliver, and pressure from the US that motivated the UNP government. On the other hand, it was the depletion of human and material resources, pressure from a war weary population, and pressure from the US and EU that persuaded the LTTE to negotiate.

The concern of the ‘international community’ is more about ensuring a climate of peace in which imperialism could take full control of the human and material resources and strategic locations of the country. Thus, going by recent international experience, it is futile to hope that any form of foreign intervention including that of the UN will lead to lasting peace or a fair solution to the national question.

All-party conferences and other such forums have proven to be no more than delaying tactics by successive governments which have been unwilling to solve the problem. All government proposals have fallen well short of the aspirations of the Tamil people, and even the report by the Panel of Experts appointed by the President in 2006, whose recommendations were still inadequate but went some way towards addressing some of the major grievances, has been discarded by the President in favour of a proposal by his party, the SLFP, which is totally inadequate. Thus it seems that the government is only playing for time in the hope that it will soon be able to weaken the LTTE sufficiently so that a solution which is palatable to the chauvinists could be imposed on the LTTE and the Tamil people. But this approach will only prolong the war, ruin the already tottering economy, and cause more misery to the people.

The war has proved un-winnable by either side after twenty-four years and needs to be brought to an end. But the government is able to pursue the war because the apparent success of the armed forces in taking control of LTTE controlled areas in the East has mass appeal among the Sinhalese who have been conditioned to think that the war is against terrorism and that the armed forces are winning. That will only lead to further escalation of the war and greater tragedy for the whole country.

The Short Term. Thus the immediate priority is to bring an end to the conflict and take steps that will help the people in the war affected areas to return to ‘normal living conditions’. External pressure alone is inadequate for this and could be counterproductive. The immediate need is for a campaign for peace and the restoration of ‘normal living conditions’. The solution to the national question would be a continuous project that would initially require the establishment and acceptance of basic principles. Implementation cannot be on a rigid basis but evolved in a flexible way on the basis of experience without compromising on basic principles.

Pressure should be brought upon the government and the LTTE through mass campaigns for peace and a political solution that urge cessation of hostilities forthwith to initiate negotiations. Peace talks alone will serve little purpose if urgent steps are not taken to restore ‘normal life’ in the war affected areas. Mechanisms need to be set up to provide essential services and need to be implemented in the spirit of co-operation. While peace negotiations and matters relating to abiding by the CFA would necessarily concern the GOSL and the LTTE, work relating to the restoration of normal life need to be carried out with a leading role for the local communities.

Among immediate priorities are:
1. Cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of all armed personnel from areas with large civilian concentration
2. Reduction in the territory allocated to military camps
3. Resettlement of all internally displaced people in areas of their choice
4. Restoration of the livelihood of the people
5. Rehabilitation of war affected families and individuals and compensation for loss of life and property
6. Restoration of social amenities and services
7. Restoration of freedom of movement for the people and opening of all highways affected by war

It is important that realistic time frames are set for the various phases of the negotiations and the strict implementation of decisions. Two proposals exist that could serve as starting points for determining an interim arrangement for the period of transition to the long term solution. One is the ISGA proposal put forward by the LTTE in 2003 and the other the proposal submitted in 2006 by the Panel of Experts nominated by President Rajapaksha. There is some common ground between the two proposals so that with both parties taking a flexible and conciliatory attitude on matters affecting the well being of the victims of war, it should be possible to arrive at a sensible working arrangement. Popular support and encouragement for the negotiations is essential and the campaign for peace and political solution should be actively pursued even while the negotiations are in progress to counteract mischief by vested interests and forces of chauvinism and extremism.

It is, however, essential that the campaign for the restoration of peace and an interim solution to the national question does not lose sight of the role of imperialism and the need to resist imperialism and its attempts to manipulate the national problem to serve its agenda of imperialist globalisation.

Recent events have shown that the bourgeois chauvinist state has begun to train its guns against left and progressive forces among the Sinhalese who are opposed to the war, and in the process initiated an onslaught against democratic and human rights. Thus the liberation struggle of the oppressed nationalities should prepare itself for the prospect of new alliances in the struggle against the chauvinist state, even in the short term.

Long term. A just and resilient long term solution to the national question needs to be based on the principle of the right to self-determination. That right cannot be reduced or restricted to be the right to secession but instead be seen as the right of each nationality and ethnic group to determine freely its mode of coexistence with other communities. While the right to self-determination for nationalities with a contiguous territory would readily include the right to secession along with the freedom to determine the form and degree of autonomy that the nationality would have within the union, nationalities and ethnic groups who cannot define a contiguous territory for themselves should enjoy the right to determine the form of autonomy that is appropriate to them.

Autonomous regions and administrative units should be set up as necessary to protect and develop the socio-cultural identity of an ethnic group and facilitate its educational and economic development. An ethnic group could exercise its choice to decide whether it wants a separate autonomous region or unit for itself or share it with one or several other ethnic groups. This will be of particular advantage to the Muslims and Hill Country Tamils. The Muslims could have autonomous regions which are predominantly Muslim in the East and autonomous units elsewhere which may be exclusively Muslim or shared with another ethic group. The situation for the Hill Country Tamils will vary with region according to the variation in their population concentration. The approach suggested here will be of particular benefit to national minorities like the Attho whose territory is under constant threat from chauvinism, and give them the opportunity to adapt to the changing environment at their own pace without fear of losing their cultural identity.

The kind of right to self-determination discussed above is the opposite of ‘the right to internal self-determination’ adopted by the United Nations some years ago, where the right to self-determination is curtailed to deny the right to secession. Marxist Leninists cannot make the principle of self-determination restrictive and thereby a licence for communities that could be defined as nations or nationalities with a contiguous territory to dominate national minorities.

It is premature to propose any particular model for devolution of power and for the setting up of autonomous regions and units. However, the Soviet Union, China, and Nicaragua under the Sandinistas in the 1980s offer a variety of options; and China and Nicaragua have shown that it is feasible to recognise ethnic groups with population as small as several hundred as national minorities and set up autonomous units to defend and develop their ethnic identity. Lenin and Mao Zedong had warned communists about Great Russian chauvinism and Han chauvinism, respectively, and urged communists to be on the guard against such thinking. Nationalism thrives because of oppressive social conditions and will survive as long as those conditions prevail. The challenge before us is to eliminate the conditions that transform what are essentially friendly contradictions among nationalities into hostile contradictions.

To demand that the LTTE should disarm before peace talks or negotiations to resolve the national question is unfair. An oppressed people have the right to defend themselves and armed oppression cannot be met with bare hands. However, there are questions of democratic rights, political freedom and struggles against social injustice within the Tamil community that cannot be lightly brushed aside in the name of unity or as matters that could wait until liberation. On the contrary, democratisation of the struggle and encouragement of political freedom strengthen liberation struggles.

The struggle against chauvinist state oppression will persist until and even after a negotiated settlement, but not necessarily as armed struggle. Armed struggle is an option that a liberation movement does not readily discard. But what is important is to develop other forms of struggle and expand the scope of the struggle by broadening the base of the struggle.

The militarization of the Sri Lankan state entered a new phase since 1983 and several hard won rights and freedoms have been taken away in the name of fighting terrorism. National security should not be allowed to be the pretext for denying democratic and fundamental rights; and if the current trend is not challenged, arrested and reversed, the country will sooner than later come under the jackboots of anti-democratic chauvinists like the JHU and the JVP.

One should seriously consider the prospect of the struggle for democratic, human and fundamental rights soon becoming a common cause that will be as important as the struggle against national oppression or even superseding the latter as a struggle against imperialism and local reaction. The task of the left, progressive and democratic forces will then be to bring together the struggles against all forms of oppression and direct them against the local oppressors and their imperialist masters.

S Sivasegaram is a prominent Tamil poet, activist and scientist from Sri Lanka.