Bayan coalition, was a blow against the people's movement in the Philippines (see article on back page).
Here we publish Bayan's response and messages of carried out his activities, after the assassination in November 1986 of Rolando Olalia, chair of the KMU and Partido ng Bayan (PnB), and then in June of this year the ambush against Bernabe Buscayno, also a PnB cadre — solidarity.
Bayan declaration: In the wake of Lean Alejandro's assassination, let us unite against fascism, militarism and US intervention. EAN'S assassination is a heinous crime against the people, his death
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being a grave loss to the Filipino people whom he even at a young age had ably and valiantly served and led in their fight against poverty, oppression and exploitation.
Lean's killers have not been identified but we are certain that his death is the handiwork of...those who seek to silence the militant organizations, create an atmosphere to justify the restoration of an open fascist rule and shock our people into abandoning the nationalist and democratic struggle.
This latest political killing comes in the wake of the government's worst political crisis heightened by the groundswell of mass protest since February 1986....Apparently cringing from the [August 28] coup attempt, the Aquino government has been acceding to the militarist demands of the plotters even as it accelerates the implementation of its own fascist agenda.
The Aquino government has conceded to increasing the budget and extending the powers of the military in counter-insurgency, removing cabinet officials tagged by the military to be leftist and establishing a council of state which includes military men. All this, after all, is quite consistent to the Aquino regime's "total war" that is cutting a wide swathe of fascist repression and human rights violations across the archipelago.
Lean's assassination joins the growing list of bloody anti-people crimes for which the Aquino regime must be held responsible. Malacañang [the presidential palace] described the killing as a "serious travesty of law and order" in the same lame way that it has noted gross human rights violations under its administration. The government unabashedly absolved itself even as its US-designed "total war" policy has further emboldened military groups of various loyalties to perpetrate more anti-people crimes.
The fascists and other oppressors in this country would wish to believe that eliminating leaders like Lean Alejandro and Lando Olalia [chair of the union KMU - May 1 Movement - killed on November 13, 1986] would permanently strike fear in the hearts of the people and push them to inaction and submission. But history has shown that the torches carried by the peoples' martyrs before they fall are carried on by the inspired and enlightened multitudes...
This is no time to falter and temporize. The signs are rather ominous. We can project the direction these events are leading to: the transformation of the pseudo-liberal reac tionary Aquino administration into an instrument of outright fascist rule or its being replaced by an all-out military regime still dominated by US imperialism....
We call on our people to expose the steps being taken by the militarists to restore open fascist rule in our country. Neither a military junta established by likes of General Honasan under US tutelage, nor a US-backed Aquino regime increasingly implementing Honasan's demands can be expected to uphold the people's basic interests or to respect their democratic and basic human rights.
We call on our people to close ranks, abandon narrow group interests and earlier illusions and converge in a mammoth mass movement to assert and defend the people's democratic rights and our national interest. The country is in grave crisis and we can illafford to let imperialist and military vultures within and outside the Aquino regime devour our political rights, our economic survival, our patrimony, our very life.
Justice for Lean and the other victims of political repression! Carry on the fight from further depredation and ruin. * an ambush in which two of his companions lost their lives.
The militarist extreme right is trying to terrorize the popular movement in the Philippines into limiting its activity. It is profiting from a broad complicity and the process of remilitarization which is occurring in your country. It is today again attacking your organization, already hit several times by governmental and paramilitary repression.
In this sad hour, we want to assure you of our complete internationalist solidarity.
We hope with all our hearts that the comrade of Lean wounded in the attack will recover from his injuries. We ask you to please express our deep sympathy to the companion of Lean, Liddy, who, like him, is engaged in the battle for the freedom of the oppressed and exploited. * "Our friend and comrade" LEAN, Leandro Alejandro, was our friend and comrade, like his companion, Liddy Nacpil. We met them for the first time several years ago, when Lean was still active at the University of the Philippines. We were immediately struck by their commitment, their intelligence, their frankness and their capacity for reflection and analysis, as well as by their kindness.
We saw them again during our trips. The last time was only a short while ago, in the aftermath of the attempted coup d'etat of August 28. General secretary of Bayan, the New Patriotic Alliance, Lean stressed the gravity of Colonel Honasan's putsch.
As the central personality in the legal popular left in the Philippines, Lean Alejandro was a symbol and a target for the military extreme right. He was fully aware of that. He kept on with his political activities, as did Liddy, who headed Bayan's international commission.
Only six months ago, Lean became the father of a little girl. He was 27 when he was killed. He was coming back from a press conference where he announced the mass actions that Bayan intended to involve itself in building to fight against the growing militarization of the country and the regime. He died, shot down by killers, so that others would not suffer the same fate in the future. auan will not be footien by his friends. 27 Paul Petitjean and Sonia Rupon *
October 12, 1987 • International Viewpoint
Assassination of a administration and the government again been purged of elements have considered by the military to be too far to the left.
The departure of the head of the customs service, Alexander Padilla, is significant. As a progressive (a former leader of the Nationalist Alliance) who fought all sorts of traffickers, especial-