The choice between Marcos and Duterte is one we do not need to make

As the political unrest in the country intensifies, we at Partido Sosyalista face criticism for calling for Marcos’ and Duterte’s resignation and for supporting the establishment of a democratic transition government with broad popular support.

They say that “to support calls for Marcos’ removal is to enable the Dutertes to win.”

They argue that “to side with Marcos is a strategy to prevent the ‘bigger enemy’ from rising.”

They tell us that we have no choice but to ally with the “lesser evil” yet again.

Partido Sosyalista remains unpersuaded by these arguments for choosing between evils because these lines of reasoning are self-defeating: They are exactly what stop us from realizing that we have the power not just to choose from existing choices but to choose to expand the range of choices we face.

We stand firm in our view that there are legitimate grounds for calling for Marcos’ resignation—just as there are legitimate grounds for calling for Duterte’s resignation.

First, Marcos was the sitting President when tens of billions of pesos of public funds were stolen—wealth we produced through our labor. There may be no “smoking gun” yet showing that he himself was directly involved in this criminal operation but the fact that it happened at all and took place under his watch is more than sufficient reason for us to demand his removal.

To insist that we can only call for a President’s resignation if there is damning proof that they themselves took a cut in the spoils of the crime is to lower the standards by which we can hold elected officials accountable and to further erode ordinary people’s ability to keep the powerful in check within our already hollowed-out “democracy.”

Second, Marcos himself has long been a beneficiary of massive corruption. The large-scale plunder his family engaged in during his father’s dictatorship deprives him of the moral ascendancy needed to carry out a successful anti-corruption campaign.

Refusing to call for Marcos’ resignation even when there are valid grounds for doing so sends the wrong message: that we ordinary people have no choice but to tolerate wrongdoing just to keep people with detestable political projects out of power. 

We do have a choice: We can choose to hold both the Marcoses and the Dutertes accountable. 

Such a choice is far from foolhardy. Just because the Dutertes happen to be the strongest political force in the arena today and they consequently stand to benefit most from Marcos’ removal does not mean that this always has to be the case. The balance of forces is not fixed and the future is not foreordained; they depend at all times on the exercise of our collective agency today.

If we in the anti-Duterte opposition continue failing to capture the imagination of the working majority, including Duterte supporters, then yes, the Dutertes are bound to win. 

If we continue to resign ourselves to choosing between the different sides in the perpetual conflicts among discredited oligarchs and their imperialist backers, then yes, the balance of forces will remain lopsided in favor of the Dutertes. 

But what if we reject the flawed assumption that there cannot be—and that there will not be—any other alternative social force capable of countering the  Dutertes?

What if we persevered in gathering behind and building up this alternative social force by championing causes that seek to ease the suffering so many Filipinos experience—such as by requiring all employers to pay their workers’ a living wage, implementing a more ambitious land reform program, imposing a wealth tax on billionaires to expand social services, and many other measures that the Marcoses, the Dutertes, and the Aquinos refused to champion?

Our critics accuse us of being “purists,” or of being more interested in keeping our hands clean than in winning. This could not be further from the truth. We refuse to enter into even just a tacit alliance with Marcos now–just as we have long refused to be in league with the Dutertes and the Dilawan–not just because we find it morally repulsive but because we see it as a road to certain defeat: It will undermine our credibility. It will hinder our efforts to raise the consciousness of the oppressed. And it will prevent us from building a broad popular front from below capable of taking on and prevailing over our country’s parasitic oligarchs and dynasties.

There is another way: that of asserting our full autonomy from the different sections and representatives of the ruling class. We join all those who wish to pursue this road and struggle towards victory.