Joma Sison: Arroyo SONA to repeat 8-year-old lies

MANILA, Philippines - Jose Ma. Sison, chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front (NDF), belittled President Arroyo's State of the Nation Address, saying it would only repeat her annual lies. "Arroyo has such a long record of lying that no one expects her to describe the real state of the nation and indicate the solutions to the problems that have grown terribly worse under her regime," Sison said in a statement from Utrecht, The Netherlands. Sison, who is former head of the Communist Party of the Philippines, said Arroyo is "more determined to lie in a vain attempt to evade responsibility for the extremely aggravated suffering of the Filipino people." The NDF leader said Mrs Arroyo would claim anew that "she has nothing to do with the crisis of the domestic ruling system and that this is simply the result of external factors that would soon blow away." "She is likely to repeat her lie that the economy continues to grow and that she has already laid the basis for the Philippines to become a 'first world country' in the next 20 years, even as she has not undertaken any program of national industrialization and land reform," Sison said. Sison, who was forced into exile when the Philippine government canceled his passport, said Arroyo continued to be enchanted by the vacuity of "US-dictated neoliberal economic policy and driven by the greed of big compradors, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists." She cannot offer any kind of solution or alleviation to the aggravation of poverty and the spread of hunger as the rate of unemployment zooms and real incomes plummet while the prices of fuel, food and other basic commodities are soaring, basic social services are deteriorating and yet the fees charged are ever rising, Sison said. Turning to the armed struggle, Sison said "Arroyo is poised to repeat for the nth time the lie that the reactionary armed forces and police can either destroy the armed revolutionary movement or reduce it to irrelevance by 2010." "She will claim again with the same or some other mocking words that it is 'ideological nonsense' that fuels the armed revolution rather than the ever escalating oppression and exploitation inflicted on the people by her regime and by her imperialist and local reactionary masters," Sison said. "She obscures the fact that it makes excellent political sense for the people and revolutionary forces to wage an armed revolution for national liberation and democracy against the chronically crisis-ridden semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system," he added. On the peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Sison said: "The regime has also exposed its malice and deviousness by engaging in prolonged ceasefire and mere exploratory talks with the MILF and ultimately refusing to formalize the points of agreement already reached." - GMANews.TV