The Filipino people are one with Trillanes and Lim's act of defiance

Communist Party of the Philippines
November 30, 2007

The Filipino people are one with Sen. Antonio Trillanes III, Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and their fellow protestors in defiantly calling for the ouster of the Arroyo regime. Trillanes and Lim yesterday morning jointly walked out of a court hearing at Makati City with scores of fellow detained soldiers of the AFP, together with their armed Marine escorts. They marched to the Manila Peninsula Hotel and, together with former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, Bishop Emeritus Antonio Labayen and other personalities, called on the people to put an end to the Arroyo regime.

This act of defiance by Senator Trillanes, General Lim and their companions demonstrated their all-out determination to voice out the Filipino people's sentiments against the bogus, rotten and ruthless regime. That Trillanes and Lim were not prevented from walking out and in fact were joined by their armed guards underscore the fact that opposition to Arroyo's rule also runs deep within the government armed forces.

Yesterday's protest action dramatizes the festering political crisis besetting the Arroyo regime that is deeply despised and gravely isolated not just from the Filipino people but from the government armed forces' rank and file. The Arroyo regime has clung to power by fraud, illegal maneuvers, deception, coverups and the brutal suppression of everyone who chooses to oppose its rule. Arroyo has employed her armed forces with utmost arrogance and impunity and has carried out an all-out campaign of terrorist and fascist suppression against the protest movement and the people.

The Communist Party of the Philippines strongly condemns the heavy-handed siege carried out by the Arroyo regime to put an end to yesterday's protest at the Manila Peninsula Hotel. We condemn the arbitrary arrest, handcuffing and detention even of bishops and other respectable personalities who joined and supported the legitimate protest action, as well as reporters and broadcasters covering the event, and the subsequent imposition of a midnight-to- dawn curfew.

The obvious aim of the Arroyo regime in undetaking these actions is to exploit this latest challenge to its illegitimate authority in order to put into place measures to instill fear among the people. More such measures by the Arroyo regime are in the offing, consistent with its long-term goal of extending its reign even beyond 2010 and imposing even more draconian policies and actions against all resistance.

Gloria Arroyo, however, cannot keep on quelling protests and preventing the people from rising up against her rule. In the face of the regime's mounting crimes of fraud, corruption and repression, there will be no end to similar, more coordinated, bigger and more decisive protest actions by disgusted officers and soldiers of the AFP and the impoverished masses of the people.
Yesterday's protest can only be seen in the light of continuing efforts to gather strength to oust the regime. As General Lim pointed out, protest actions and other acts of defiance such as theirs will be a "continuing. .. unfinished business" for as long as the bogus, rotten and repressive ruling regime remains in power.
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