FEATURES

Ithough news from the Philip-

pines is dominated by elections

and constitutional referendums

that suggest a stable democracy,

the reality is very different for Fil-
ipino workers and peasants.

The Aquino government's creation of
an electoral system in which the elites
compete for the nation’s spoils has been
accompanied by a strategy of delibrate
civil war against those seeking fundamen-
tal reforms of the country’s economic and
political system.

The result has been savage conventional
and psychological warfare in the country-
side and a nationally co-ordinated terror
campaign in the villages and cities.

It cannot be coincidental that recent vis-

itors to the Philippines have included such RSE oe , Pere Sag
vicious proponents of U.S. President Rea-- + — on RS Bethe ae tt ix ot 5~ ity
gan’s foreign policy as retired Maj.-Gen. . y ¢ é ? 17 (idk fl =

John Singlaub, a member of the private
right-wing Special Warfare Advisory Group,
which has helped to institute similar “low-
intensity conflict (LIC)” plans in countries
like El Salvador.

The touchstone of LIC theory is the
development of “total war at the grass-
roots” level. In pursuit of such tactics, the
Philippines military has unified, co-ordin-
ated and armed the nation’s ultra-right
fanatic groups to terrorize the progressive
movements.

A recent example was the brutal
murder April 28 of Peter Alderite, a
warehouse clerk with Ladeco, a subsidiary
of Del Monte.

Alderite, a 31-year-old union officer of
the Ladeco Workers Union, was hacked
to death by Tadtad cultists in Davao, a
city on the southern island of Mindanao.
Tadtad means “to chop” and the cultists
are armed with machetes.

Alderite was accosted in the canteen of
his workplace in broad daylight, singled
out by the Tadtad squad and hacked to
death in the street. Ladeco management
declined to intervene on the grounds that
it was “military operation.”

The union, an affiliate of KMU, has
confirmed that Tadtad and military oper-
atives are working on the Ladeco planta-
tion with the connivance of management.
Tadtad is just one arm of the newly-
organized Alsa Masa, a national “anti-
communist uprising” which openly plans
terror against labour and peasant groups
on the pretext of fighting communism.

With the final collapse of ceasefire talks
with the New Peoples Army, the national
guerilla resistance, President Aquino has

Filipino

workers
make no gains
with Aquino rule

STORIES BY GEOFF MEGGS

——

’ their efforts. A sign of the workers’ mil-

endorsed the activities of groups like Alsa

Masa. At the same time, she has approved
of savage conventional warfare operations
against the guerilla movement.

“These things put to question the
sincerity of the Aquino government in
protecting workers,” said a KMU state-
ment. “When Marcos fell the workers
hoped that they would no longer be
gunned down nor imprisoned for asserting
their rights. But the murder of Alderite in
the hands of armed vigilantes proves oth-
erwise.” ;

(Messages of support to the family of
Peter Alderite may be sent to KMU, 3rd
floor, Jopson Building, M. Earnshaw St.,
Sampaloc, Manila, Phils.)

A recent review of the human rights
situation in the Philippines by Currents,
the publication of the Canada Asia Work-
ing Group, bears out KMU’s charges.

CAWG is a research and solidarity pro-
ject of Canada’s churches.

“The use of vigilante groups in the mil-
itary’s anti-insurgency program has.
reached most alarming proportions in the
Davao region,” CAWG reported in April.
“Groups such as the Alsa Masa, armed
and directed by the regional military
command, primarily serve to systemati-
cally intimidate and spread terror through
a virulent anti-communist campaign.

“As a result of their threats, more than
23,000 Davao residents have fled their
homes, according to military figures. Of
particular concern is the fact that Mrs.
Aquino and other members of the cabinet
appear to regard the Davao experience
with vigilante groups as a model to be
encouraged in other parts of the country.”

Despite the repression, peasant and
workers’ organizations are continuing.

/

itancy was the fact that strikes in the
notorious Bataan Export Processing Zone
cost 1.2 million hours of lost time in 1986,
up from 800,000 the year before. Almost ~
25,000 workers took job action in the
zone, up from 3,500 in 1985.

“At the time of the report in January, —
1987, only. three of the 31 firms in the
zone were fully operational,” CAWG
says. “Of the remainder, six were closed
and 22 partially shut down because of
walkouts by workers demanding an
increase in the minimum wage, the repeal
of restrictive labour laws, and improve-
ments of their social conditions.”

Employers reacted brutally Jan. 28.
That day they appealed to Aquino for
government intervention to end the strike.
By afternoon, CAWG says, “combined
military and police forces burned workers
barricades and forcibly dispersed the
pickets. Three picketers were shot to death
and 34 others wounded.”

To reassure the multinationals, the
government has announced new guide-_
lines to encourage foreign business, includ-
ing a two-year strike moratorium in new —
enterprises. Nonetheless, the strike wave
was continuing early in 1987, with 55 new
disputes in January alone. )

What Aquino cannot accomplish with
terror may be won by economic policy.
Incredibly, the real per capita income of
most Filipinos decreased by 2.23 per cent
in 1986, CAWG reports. To put that in
perspective, consider that almost no on¢
receives even the minimum wage, which
would generate less than $4 a day.

Given the constitutional requirement tO
repay the national debt, which was
incurred by Marcos, Aquino will be
forced to spend more than 44 per cent of
the GNP on debt servicing this year rathet
than increasing national production.
Clearly, the World Bank and the Interna
tional Monetary Fund figure higher in the
government’s economic priorities than the
income of workers. Z

The elimination of Marcos and the
imposition of a new government carrying
out the same economic and political poli-
cies must be counted as one of the great _
foreign policy triumphs of the Reagan ef:
A variation on the same theme now is
being played out in South Korea.

The death of Peter Alderite is a
reminder that after such coups the ae
workers of those countries need our solid- :
arity and support even more than they di "
before. =

t is more dangerous today to bea

trade union organizer in the Phil-

lipines than it was in the darkest

days of the Ferdinand Marcos

dictatorship, says Stan Shewaga,
president of the Pulp and Paperworkers of
Canada.

Shewaga recently returned from his
second visit to that country, a trip that
took him to a national congress of pro-
gressive trade unions and onto many
picket lines.

“The situation hasn’t improved at all
since I was there in 1985,” he says. “In
certain situations it is worse and the eco-
nomic situation has deteriorated even
further.”

Shewaga, a member of the B.C. Com-
mittee for Human Rights in the Philli-
pines, was a guest of Kilusang Mayo Uno,
the national federation militant trade
unions created under the Marcos dictator-
ship.

He found a country in which labour
organizers increasingly face assasination
and workers on the picket lines are sub-
jected to military attack.

It was KMU which spearheaded labour
opposition to Marcos and KMU, like
other federations in the country, wel-
comed the pledge of President Corazon
Aquino on May 1, 1986, to repeal the
Marcos labour laws and end the all-out
war on labour.

Militant labour central
~KMU growing rapidly

But one year after that pledge, Shewaga
was walking with KMU members in a
more solenm May Day march that com-
memorated, among others, former KMU
chairman Rolando Olalia, gunned down
by assasins in November, 1986. Olalia is
the most prominent of a score of labour
organizers killed by a growing reign of
terror organized from the highest levels of
the Aquino government.

A helicopter gunship circled over the
May Day marchers — a far different
atmosphere from a year before when
Aquino made a keynote address to half a
million workers. This year she did not
speak at any labour gathering.

“The minimum wage is still not lived up
to at all,” Shewaga said. “At every strike
the military camps 50 metres away and
they still enforce the employers’ wishes by
breaking picket line barriers down. The

KMU and any progressive element in the
country has given up on Aquino.”

Shewaga says the idea that Aquino “has
to contend with a right-wing element ‘is
just nonsense. The only progressive
member of her ministry was the labour
minister and she fired him; = :

The constant military manoeuvers that
seem to threaten a coup are staged, Shew-
aga believes, to create an atmosphere of
tension that justifies continued repression.
“When these coups are exposed Aquino
does not strike back. The military is simply
confined to barracks for a few days. It
keeps everybody on edge, but in fact it’s all
stage play.”

At the behest of the World Bank and
multinational corporations investing in
the Philippines, Aquino has maintained

tough economic policies. The result iseven

greater poverty among workers and pea-
sants.

“The main struggle is to get wages up to
the minimum wage,” Shewaga said.
“Because the KMU is leading this fight, _

more and more workers are moving under
its banner.”

were only about 50 per cent of the workers —
in KMU two years ago. Now that number ~
is about 70 per cent, with 800,000 in KMU
affiliates.

KMU is seeking to step up its international |
solidarity efforts, particularly in support —
of workers in specific struggles around the
Philippines. KMU also has issued a call for
Canadian unions to adopt a Phillipine
organizer. ;

lippines costs only $100 a month. Through
the KMU, Canadian unions can assist a0
organizer in their sector in the Philippines |
and receive regular reports on how theif
organizer is doing.

demanding that Aquino implement het
labour reforms and end the terror cam —

writing to the committee, care of Suite 200, |

In Cebu, a major industrial city, there —

What can Canadian unionists do? The

To field a full-time organizer in the Phi-

“Inside the country the unions are —

paign,” Shewaga says. “It’s a measure 0
how far things have gone that when pea
sants demanded land reform outside the
presidential palace, 19 of them were
gunned down.”

The BCCHRP can be contacted by

1955 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver.

8 @ PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 22, 1 987

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