Indict Marcos! Wage revolution against corruption!

Protest to indict Marcos! Wage revolution to end systemic corruption!

Communist Party of the Philippines

September 18, 2025

The upsurge of protests against systemic state corruption continues to mount across the country. It is a manifestation of the seething outrage of the broad masses of the Filipino people against the monstrosity of bureaucrat capitalist plunder that runs to trillions of pesos, which the Marcos regime has engendered.

The anticipated mass protests on September 21 are timed to mark the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law which preceded 14 years of fascist repression and massive corruption under the Marcos Sr regime. It will serve well as an occasion to indict Marcos Jr for having benefited from the wealth amassed during his father’s dictatorship and for perpetuating the same oppressive and exploitative system.

Desperate to shield itself from the people’s anger, Malacañang has mounted a public relations campaign to reverse the Marcoses’ long-time disrepute as icons of corruption. It has drawn the public’s attention to carefully selected anomalous flood-control projects involving hundreds of billions of pesos, but only to pin down rival politicians, their accomplices in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and their dummy contractors. This is by way of punishing those who have pocketed kickbacks without paying their dues to Marcos. To save himself from discredit and placate the people, Marcos has also made sacrificial lambs of some allied politicians.

To exculpate himself, Marcos formed the “independent commission” purportedly to investigate the anomalous flood-control projects. The Filipino people know fully well that nothing will come out of it. This is the same tactic used by his father who formed the “independent” Agrava Commission to investigate the 1983 Aquino assassination, to deny the glaring fact that the dictator himself hatched the murder. This investigation ordered by Marcos is only meant to mislead the people and draw attention away from the mastermind of corruption himself.

Indeed, Marcos is the mastermind of corruption behind the anomalous flood-control projects, for which he allotted more than P1 trillion since assuming power in 2022. Like all politicians, Marcos receives “campaign donations” from big bourgeois compradors, as well as from corruption syndicates involved in government contracts. Like all his predecessors, Marcos rakes in billions of pesos from kickbacks from multibillion government contracts, which also include roads, bridges, railways, and other big-ticket construction projects, as well as from smuggling, defense contracts, land lease contracts, and a myriad other means of pocketing the people’s money.

Marcos lives the good life of the bureaucrat capitalist overlord, indulging in privilege and extravagance. He is notorious for holding exclusive concerts and ostentatious banquets, such as during his recent birthday, even amid the public uproar over corruption. He was roundly condemned for flying to Singapore to watch high-speed car races. He and his wife used public funds to transform the Malacañang grounds into a personalized vacation resort, tailored to their family’s whims.

Marcos is an outright liar when he feigned sympathy with the people who are fed up with corruption, claiming further that if he weren’t president, he too would join protests. He thinks people have forgotten how he stood beside his father as the dictator ordered the military to break up the demonstrations at EDSA in 1986. As president, Marcos Jr secures his privilege and perpetuates the system by firmly wielding the coercive powers of the fascist state to suppress all forms of mass resistance.

The legacy of his father’s 14-year fascist dictatorship lives on under the reign of Marcos Jr. Organizers and members of workers unions, community associations, student organizations, as well as human rights workers, are subjected to state surveillance, harassment, and violent attacks by state forces. Hundreds of political prisoners remain incarcerated. He has also ordered military forces to impose martial law in thousands of rural villages to subdue the people’s defense of their land and livelihood against the entry or expansion of plantations and mining operations. Violations of human rights and international humanitarian law run rampant.

Marcos, as chief of the bureaucrat capitalist state, is the king of corruption who demands obeisance of all his men. He is the chief fascist who rules with an iron fist, wielding state power to crush all dissent and resistance. He is the chief American puppet and factotum serving the strategic economic, financial and military interests of the US imperialists.

The Filipino people are victims of widespread and systemic corruption and fascism. They suffer from deteriorating social services, rising cost of living, low wages, widespread joblessness, economic dispossession, and overall worsening socioeconomic conditions.

As victims seeking justice, the Filipino people are gathering in the streets and rising up in protest, to indict Marcos and demand that all be held accountable for their crimes. The Filipino people must strengthen their unity, build their organizations and expand and heighten their protests in the coming months. To do so, they must also expose and repudiate those political forces that connive with Malacañang in the scheme to draw public anger away from Marcos. Marcos’ attempts to assuage the people with pretentious but hollow displays of addressing massive corruption have only fueled calls for his resignation or ouster and a total shake-up of the corrupt bureaucracy.

Even as they mount bigger protests against Marcos and massive corruption under his rule, the Filipino people must raise and link their protests to the overall struggle to put an end to the oppressive and exploitative semicolonial and semifeudal system. This system is under the class rule of the big bourgeois compradors, the bureacrat capitalists and big landlords.

These classes in the Philippines were engendered by US imperialism and control the neocolonial state. They are all beholden, subservient to and collude with US imperialism in plundering the country’s resources and in subjecting the broad masses of the people to fascist repression. The bureaucrat capitalists, in particular, use state power to plunder the people’s money and amass wealth for themselves through all forms of corruption.

In the end, the struggle against corruption and all forms of oppression against the Filipino people, goes beyond the removal of Marcos or the ouster of the entire government. Systemic corruption can only be uprooted by waging a national democratic revolution to overthrow the entire class of bureaucrat capitalists, the big bourgeois compradors and big landlords, their US-supported fascist state machinery, and replacing it with a government of genuine people’s democracy.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) urges the Filipino people to further strengthen their revolutionary organizations, expand the broad ranks of the National Democratic Front, and support and join the New People’s Army. The corrupt and repressive system defended by US-supplied weapons and imperialist indoctrinated armed forces, can and will be defeated by the people rising up in arms for national liberation and social justice.

Indict Marcos! Wage revolution against corruption!

CPP-NPA
September 21, 2025

Protests across the country against the state’s corruption system continue to surge. It reflects the seething anger of the broad masses of the Filipino people against the monstrous bureaucrat-capitalist plunder of the Marcos regime.

To shield himself from the people’s anger, Marcos is trying to polish his image to reverse his long-standing reputation as a purveyor of corruption. While aiming at some political rivals and even allies who don’t remit their kickbacks, Marcos is trying to conceal his own role in the widespread corruption.

Marcos established a meaningless “independent commission” that is supposed to investigate the anomalous flood-control projects. This investigation ordered by Marcos Jr is merely a tactic to confuse the public and divert attention from him.

Marcos is truly the mastermind of corruption behind the anomalous flood-control project, into which he poured more than ₱1 trillion since taking power in 2022. As with his predecessors, Marcos has pocketed billions of pesos from kickbacks on multibillion-peso government contracts, including roads, bridges, railways, and other major construction projects, as well as smuggling, defense contracts, land lease contracts, and a myriad forms of pocketing the nation’s funds.

The bureaucrat-capitalist leader Marcos indulges in luxury and extravagance. He is known for his penchant for multimillion-peso exclusive concerts and lavish feasts, like those held for his recent birthday. He was heavily criticized for flying to Singapore just to watch car races. He and his wife used public funds to turn Malacañang into a private vacation house for their family’s whims.

Marcos is a brazen liar when he pretended to stand with the people in condemning corruption and claimed he would join the protests were he not president. The truth is that Marcos holds the repressive power of a fascist state, which he uses to bleed the nation and crush all forms of people’s resistance.

The legacy of the 14-year fascist dictatorship and plunder of the people’s money by his father, Marcos Sr, lives on. Organizers and members of workers’ unions, community associations, student organizations, and human-rights advocates are surveilled, harassed, and targeted for violent attacks by state agents. Hundreds of political prisoners remain jailed. Human-rights and international humanitarian law are rampantly violated as Marcos imposes martial law in thousands of rural barangays to suppress the people’s defense of their land and livelihood against the entry or expansion of plantations and mining operations.

Marcos, head of the bureaucrat-capitalist state, is the king of corruption. He is the chief fascist with an iron fist who crushes all dissent. He is the chief puppet of the Americans and factotum serving the strategic economic, financial, and military interests of US imperialism.

The Filipino people are victims of widespread, systemic corruption and fascism. They suffer from decaying social services, rising cost of living, low wages, widespread unemployment, loss of livelihood, and a general deterioration of socio-economic conditions. They are rising and protesting to hold Marcos and the corrupt to account.

Filipinos must strengthen their unity, build their organizations, and expand and intensify their protests in the coming months. They should expose and reject the forces riding the anti-corruption protests who defend Marcos in exchange for profit and position. These forces serve Marcos’s schemes to calm the protests. Yet they fail, because Marcos’s hollow and meaningless displays only further fuel the protest movement. Calls for Marcos’s resignation or ouster and for the removal of all corrupt officials from the state are mounting.

As the protests against Marcos and widespread corruption broaden, the Filipino people should raise and link them to the broader struggle to end the oppressive, exploitative semicolonial and semifeudal system. This system is dominated by big bourgeois compradors, bureaucrat-capitalists, and big landlords.

These classes in the Philippines were engendered by US imperialism and control the neocolonial state. They all answer to, serve and collude with US imperialism in plundering the nation’s wealth and in the fascist suppression of the broad masses. In particular, the bureaucrat-capitalists use state power to steal public funds and amass riches through every form of corruption.

In the end, the struggle against corruption and all forms of oppression of the Filipino people go beyond removing Marcos, or even ousting the entire government. Systemic corruption can only be uprooted through a people’s democratic revolution to end the three basic problems of bureaucrat-capitalism, imperialism, and feudalism. This is being carried forward by the Communist Party of the Philippines, which wields the New People’s Army as the main weapon to destroy the armed forces of the reactionary and neocolonial state.

The Party urges the Filipino people to further strengthen their revolutionary organizations, broaden the ranks of the National Democratic Front, and support and join the New People’s Army.

The Party calls on youth to go to the vast countryside where the revolutionary movement continues to build organs of political power. These are built on the foundation of revolutionary mass organizations of peasants, youth, women, and other democratic sectors, alongside the people’s army. They serve as seeds of a democratic people’s government that will replace the rotten, puppet regime at the moment of revolutionary victory in the armed struggle for national liberation and social justice.

Historical significance of the September 21 protests and prospects beyond

Marco Valbuena , Chief Information Officer, Communist Party of the Philippines
September 22, 2025

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) congratulates the Filipino people and their mass organizations and alliances, for yesterday’s massive protests against government corruption under the Marcos regime. Reports indicate that at least one hundred thousand people converged at the Luneta Park in Manila, forming the main bulk of protest rallies which include the Church-led EDSA gathering, as well as big and small mass actions in scores of cities and provinces across the country.

The mass demonstrations yesterday and the growing number of protest actions days prior possess profound historical significance:

1. The demonstrators marked the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law. This is a manifestation of how the Filipino people have not forgotten the abuse of power and thievery under the 14-year dictatorship of the Marcoses. The rallies are a reaffirmation of their determination to resist the legacy of corruption and repression that has been passed on to Marcos Jr.

2. The mass actions yesterday and the weeks prior saw the widespread participation of students and youth who were roused from the pandemic and social media disconnection and stupor by the brazen corruption of Marcos and his cohorts. There is now a burgeoning youth rebellion against bureaucrat capitalism and the rotten ruling system. They were joined by religious leaders and groups, urban poor communities, including victims of flooding, as well as small professionals, workers and other sectors fed up with the malignant system.

3. Protesters denounced Marcos as the King of Corruption and Fascism, for having enabled and funded the anomalous flood control and other infrastructure projects, in exchange for political patronage and billions of pesos in kickbacks. This goes to show that all of Marcos’ carefully schemed “anti-corruption” PR campaign to shield himself from the people’s ire has miserably failed—not even with the help of Akbayan and other accommodated politicians who have raised the spectre of Sara Duterte presidency to suppress the people’s clamor to hold Marcos accountable.

4. Marcos’ thievery has started to unravel with reports of him and Sara Duterte receiving millions in “campaign contributions” from contractors, later rewarded with large government contracts. While Marcos tries to expose the Dutertes for having pocketed billions in kickbacks from flood-control projects, he himself is now being exposed as having connived with senators and congressmen in their “pet projects” which saw funds released by Malacañang. With the complete loss of the people’s trust, it is only a matter of time that protests will further groundswell demanding the resignation or ouster of Marcos, Duterte and all their cohorts.

5. Demonstrations and other forms of action were held throughout the country, in the main cities and provincial centers, drawing the spontaneous participation of tens of thousands from all sectors and ages. In the coming months, the mass actions are bound to spread even to the rural areas, especially in areas where massive flooding brought ill-planned infrastructure building for kickbacks. These so-called “development projects” serve the entry and expansion of plantations and mining operations, grab land, plunder the environment and bring about great hardships to millions of people.

6. As organized rallyists in Mendiola were about to end their speeches, a group of several hundred youths, mostly unemployed people, from working class communities, broke from the ranks and started throwing rocks at police, smashing billboards and lighting fires along Recto Avenue. This is by way of expressing their anger and fighting back against the fascist police who protect Marcos and his band of government thieves. These are the same police notorious for locking down communities and abuses against the downtrodden youth. On Marcos orders to punish the protests, the fascist police responded with brutal force and repression, arbitrarily arresting around two hundred protesters, with scores suffering injuries from police manhandling. These acts of suppression succeeds only in adding fuel to the youth’s fire of justified rebellion. Their acts of defiance yesterday at Mendiola were a desperate, but brave display of resistance to the death, despair and violence inflicted by the corrupt and fascist state on them and their families. Through political education, they can easily realize the need for militant organized resistance, and revolutionary violence as a means of fighting fascist state violence.

7. Yesterday’s massive demonstrations mark a strong resurgence of the mass protest movement with the national democratic forces at the core. These are the biggest demonstrations since the 2013 protests against the Aquino 2 government over the issue of pork barrel and the Marcos No Hero protests of 2016. This resurgence is profoundly significant because it comes after relentless efforts by state security forces to suppress, harass, Red-tag and violently attack mass leaders and activists over the past several years. The massive demonstrations are a product of both the objective conditions of economic and political crisis, and the painstaking work of patriotic and democratic organized forces. Even in the face of violent state repression, they have persevered in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the people and building broad alliances and networks, in order to advance the people’s aspirations for social justice and genuine democracy.

8. Marcos’ pseudo-investigation aims to cover-up the real extent of corruption and his direct involvement in the nefarious activities of bureaucrat capitalist and syndicates. The more that Marcos tries to avoid being exposed, the more that he pushes the people to go to the streets. The upsurge in the anti-corruption movement of the people is bound to gain even greater ground in the coming weeks and months. And Marcos himself will be at the cross-hairs of the people’s protests.

9. The widespread protests can accumulate so much strength that it can turn into a massive people’s upheaval and topple the Marcoses and Dutertes and all their accomplices in corruption from power. The Filipino people have twice exercised such power, in the EDSA uprisings of 1986 and 2001. The Filipino people must prepare for such prospects. They must also learn from past experiences and be ready to fight for genuine justice and greater democracy to allow them to exercise their power to fight corruption and abuse, until they have accumulated enough revolutionary strength to topple the entire system.

10. The rising protests reflect the deep-going discontent of the Filipino people in the face of economic and political crisis that beset the ruling system. It is a manifestation of the widespread sentiment of the broad masses of the people who suffer from corruption and worsening maladies of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. Amid the worsening social crisis, the oppressed sectors of Philippine society are actively responding to calls to end imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and struggle for national democracy.

11. The September 21 mass demonstrations form part of the growing rebellion of youth and peoples across the world. The Filipino youth drew inspiration from the recent demonstrations of young people across Indonesia and Nepal, and earlier, in Kenya and several countries in Africa, over the same issues of government corruption of high bureaucrats, gross social inequity, grave injustices and political repression. In turn, the September 21 demonstrations and growing movement against bureaucrat capitalism will also inspire and impel the youth and people across the world to rise up against their power abusers, oppressors and exploiters.

12. The protests against corruption will gain even greater strength as more sectors join in, especially the workers, the semi proletarian masses of unemployed in the communities and peasants masses in the countryside. They are the ones who make up the majority of the people. It is a certainty that they will rise up in numbers as they become more and more exposed to cultural and education activities that link the outstanding issues of bureaucrat capitalism and corruption to their concrete problems of low wages, unemployment, land grabbing, and economic dispossession.

13. The students and youth will continue to play a crucial role in the current upsurge of protests. To gain strength, they must go beyond their classrooms, learn from the masses, and unite with the people in the urban poor communities and factories. They must also go to the rural areas where they can have an ever broader perspective of the state of Philippine society. They must investigate and see for themselves, in the concrete, the ills caused by the rotten bureaucratic capitalist, imperialist dominated and backward semifeudal system. By doing so, they can transform their intellectual outrage against corruption into a fuller and long-term commitment to serve the people and fight for the aspirations for genuine freedom and democracy.

14. Beyond indicting the Marcoses, the Dutertes and all the corrupt state criminals, the protest demonstrators yesterday and in the past weeks are clearly seeking a change in the ruling bureaucrat capitalist and neocolonial regime. Their demand to change the system is indubitable proof of the favorable conditions for waging a national democratic struggle in the Philippines. The widespread protests have further strengthened the resolve of revolutionaries. They must work vigorously to conduct political education and expand the different underground revolutionary organizations of the National Democratic Front. Red fighters of the New People’s Army (NPA) are also inspired by the mass demonstrations and are even more determined to wage people’s war in order to realize the people’s aspiration for revolutionary change.