The violent dispersal of protesters and the more recent raid of the community kitchen by the police in Sitio San Roque, Quezon City exposes the barbaric character of the US-Duterte regime. Additionally, Duterte blatantly gave a shoot-to-kill order for people complaining of lack of food for their families. No one wants to dies of hunger along with his loved ones. Even at the cost of one’s life, a person will do what it takes to survive.

As of April 6, there are 3,660 cases of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) positive patients with 73 recoveries and 163 deaths in the Philippines, a matter that should be seriously dealt with by the Duterte administration. There should be testing centers in the cities and municipalities and those with symptoms should be immediately tested. Those proven positive should be the only ones subject to quarantine and hospitalization, and all fees should be waived and sponsored by the state until the patient recovers.

There is a P275 billion emergency fund for COVID-19 that should be enough to cover the crisis. There’s no need to mobilize the AFP-PNP to set-up checkpoints and enforce curfews to control the mobility of the population. According to the Department of Health (DOH) and the Philippine National Police (PNP), there are over 19,000 test kits while over 20,000 have been arrested due to violations of lockdown protocol. Various cases have been recorded of civilians being abused and one shot-to-death. This shows a military approach instead of a medical solution of the government in facing the crisis exposing that it is an inutile kind of government because there are more individuals arrested than those being tested.

The Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) and lockdown only results to more suffering of over a 100 million Filipinos because it will only cause socio-economic dislocation to almost all the people especially the farmers, workers, urban poor, and the informal sector, and even the professionals. This decision of the US-Duterte regime exposes its fascist methods to further limit the masses, a rather stupid solution in fighting the pandemic.

The Duterte regime is directly culpable for the spreading of COVID-19 in the Philippines because it downplayed the warning of the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019, on the possible damage the virus will cause. There were no definite steps on how to stop the entry of over half a million Chinese Nationals, with over 14,000 coming from Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China either as tourists or Philippine Online Gaming Operators (POGO) workers. This also resulted to a scandal in the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) due to Chinese Nationals illegally allowed entry through payment even without proper documents.

It is probable that Duterte will declare martial law using the COVID-19 and the resulting uncontrollable social unrest due to daily hunger as pretext. Duterte plans to remain in power until his death because he knows when he is no longer in power, he will have to face cases for his human rights violations and war crimes against the people. The Filipino masses will surely make his regime accountable.

The Filipino people especially the Negrosanon should strengthen their unity. Widen the broad alliance against the US-Duterte regime. Conduct emergency food production such as root crops to address hunger due to the enforced lockdown from the public health crisis. We will not wait for more losses due to inevitable widespread hunger because of the erroneous steps taken by the reactionary government. Launch extensive mass movements to oust the tyrannical and fascist US-Duterte regime!

Long live the toiling masses!

#OustDuterteNow