“Why the Left remains politically insignificant”

William Esposo of Philippine Star reproaches the Philippine Left for being ineffective in selling their ideology to the Filipino people. In his attempt to explain why Filipino communists remain politically insignificant, aside from the influence of the Catholic faith in Filipino thinking, he also argues that Filipino communists have not really succeeded in branding and selling their product effectively:

With their decision to participate in the electoral process, we had hoped that the Extreme Left will finally evolve to something more palatable to Filipino political sensibilities. Alas, they still behave like the proverbial old dog that is already incapable of learning new tricks. They’ve not changed their rhetoric. They’ve not changed their venue, the streets. They’ve simply refused to change and try to be acceptable.

. . . What makes our Leftists most pathetic is that they’ve become anachronistic and they do not even know it. If they had an iota of marketing sense, a grasp of strategy, they should have evolved already into a new and acceptable political brand and product.

. . . The best marketing organizations will not even attempt to repackage what is already perceived as a bad product. That would be wasting good money in trying to salvage something bad. They would rather create a new brand and get a fresh start that will be unencumbered by a negative association.

But it’s not the branding that is marginalizing the Left. It’s much, much more than that! It’s the nonsensical worldview of the communists and the futility in their argument that simply cannot pass the scrutiny of reason. For any commonsensical, hard-working Filipino, these communists are the ones causing enormous sufferings to the Filipino people.

Their typical argument revolves around their messianic mission of liberating the Filipino people from “the shackles of U.S. imperialism,” regardless of the means to achieve it. Indeed, its leadership, Jose Ma. Sison, has repeatedly argued that the root cause of all the problems in the Philippines could be traced to its long history of foreign dependence on America’s imperial domination, and, as a consequence, to the plunder of the country’s resources and the exploitation of its cheap labor by greedy American multinational companies.

But where is the evidence for this? In fact, study after study indicates that global trade (yes, via those greedy MNCs) contributes to Asia’s economic growth. While multinationals reap profits in the Philippines, as any corporation should, they provide jobs and technical assistance to hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers, thereby contributing to the country’s economic growth.

Rather, as Third World scholars would agree, the factors that cause Third World underdevelopment are the following: endemic graft and corruption among local politicians, ethnic wars, lack of capacities, skills, and attitudes that encourage individual responsibility, lack of strong institutions and the rule of law, and the pervasive influence of certain cultural values and religious beliefs that are anathema to progress and prosperity.

Filipino communists have nothing to offer but their long record of crimes committed against the Philippine government, the Filipino people, and foreign nationals caught in their ideological war. At least during the three decades of war that they have waged against the country, they are responsible for, among others : a) the loss of thousands of civilian and military lives killed in one way or another during this insurgency; b) the political instability that has disrupted the country’s economy through loss of investor confidence (Philippine economic growth has been one of the slowest among Southeast Asian countries), and, consequently, to loss of jobs and government revenues; c) the diversion of tremendous amounts of government resources designated for social services (such as education) towards supporting anti-insurgency military operations.

Instead of asking why the Philippine Left has remained politically insignificant, I think the proper question to ask is why the Philippine Left continues to exist. It should have been banished from the intellectual, moral, political, and economic landscapes of the country a long time ago.