GMA ‘ripe’ for ouster

February 16, 2008

JOSE Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, said President Macapagal-Arroyo is “ripe” for ouster as the mass movement calling for her resignation or removal from power started Friday.

“The sheer growth of the legal and peaceful mass actions in the National Capital Region and on a national scale in the coming days, weeks and months can encourage the military and police to withdraw support from the Arroyo ruling clique and can suffice to cause the resignation, impeachment or outright ouster of the illegitimate and morally bankrupt president,” Sison said in a statement to the Journal Group.

He made the comment after over 10,000 people from various sectors and political leanings gathered on Friday in Makati City. The rally was called following the disclosures of former Phil. Forest Corp. president Rodolfo Noel Lozada that First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo intervened in the scuttled $329 million national broadband network deal.

Sison said the prospect for the continuation of the peace process, in limbo for the last four years, will be brighter once Mrs. Arroyo is removed from power.

“The downfall of the Arroyo regime would mean defeating the brutal but futile scheme of the imperialists, militarists and clerico-fascists to paralyze and put aside the peace negotiations and use all-out military force to seek the outright destruction or capitulation of the revolutionary forces and the people,” he said. “So long as Gloria M. Arroyo is in power, she will continue to engage in state terrorism and inflame the armed conflicts in the Philippines. She will use the military and police forces to further entrench herself in power and attack both the legal democratic mass movement and the armed revolutionary movement of the people under the pretext of fighting terrorism,” he added.

He also downplayed the government’s claim that the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army, has dispatched several teams to assassinate Mrs. Arroyo.

Sison said the CPP-NPA is “sympathizing with, and encouraging” the legal and peaceful mass actions in the urban areas while it focuses its military campaigns in the countryside.

CPP spokesman Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal earlier confirmed that Mrs. Arroyo, several military officials in Panay island, and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales have a standing arrest warrant from the guerillas due to various human rights violations.

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