Philippine left's website popularity

Leftist and socialist philosophies permeate many societies' public policies. It is easy to spot the groups and individuals who advocate these philosophies. How? Just observe their language and policy pronouncements: Personal and parental responsibility, individual liberty, these are strange concepts for them, you seldom or will never, find such terms in their literature. Instead, you will find these keywords very often -- "more government responsibility and intervention", "more government regulation and taxation", "social equality", and sometimes, "nationalist industrialization."

The most leftist organization in the Philippines of course, is the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA). These groups are fighting for, nothing else but communism in the Philippines (with transition stage in "national democracy" then socialism then communism) via armed struggle and armed revolution.

Both CPP and NPA have no websites of their own. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) handles their online presence with its website, http://www.ndfp.net/joomla/.

I checked its global traffic rank via alexa.com, somehow high:


1 month 1,802,559
3 month 1,601,986

There are above-ground or legal organizations, later became party-list groups in Philippine Congress, that have similar goals and advocacies as the CPP-NDF. One may say that these are just "front organizations" but these groups will deny such accusation. Instead of spending time proving or disproving such allegations, suffice it to say that their advocacies and social goals are the same as the underground communist organizations.

Below are the left-leaning party-list groups which currently have 1 or 2 Congressmen/women in the House of Representatives. I searched their global traffic rank via alexa, to see how popular and potentially influential their websites are, in attracting the global web audience. Here they go.

1. www.bayanmuna.net, BAYAN MUNA (mother organization)

1 month 6,247,454
3 month 7,540,570

2. http://www.gabrielawomensparty.net/ GABRIELA (women's organization)

1 month - -
3 month 15,671,952

3. http://kabataanpartylist.com/ KABATAAN (youth organization)

1 month 5,145,489
3 month 6,095,690

4. http://anakpawis.net/ ANAKPAWIS (workers' and farmers' organization)

No Data

5. http://www.agham.org/ AGHAM (science and technology advocacy but heavy on politics and "nationalist industrialization")

1 month -
3 month 24,376,881

In short, all the five party-list groups of the mainstream left in the Philippines have poor web presence. These groups are rather noisy in the streets, where they frequently hold rallies and street demonstrations -- and cause inconvenience to many ordinary motorists and passengers. But the more independent-minded web readers are less swayed by their rhetorics and leftist pronouncements. It is their relatively strong grassroots presence, the mostly non-internet literate people, who believe their promises and pronouncements.

BAYAN MUNA's top ideologue is its former party-list Congressman and former NDF head, Satur Ocampo. Satur has no blog yet. He now writes a column for the Manila Times, I think.

Now, there is another left-leaning party-list group, more socialist-leaning but non-advocate of armed struggle, and relatively strong, the Akbayan partylist.

* http://akbayan.org.ph/, AKBAYAN

1 month 14,114,987 -
3 month 26,290,014

Like the national democratic ("nat-dems") groups, it also has a non-impressive web presence and popularity. Akbayan's chief ideologue and most prominent personality is Dr. Walden Bello. He writes a lot, and talks a lot.

http://waldenbello.org/

1 month -
3 month 25,733,089

I know of two groups and a think tank that are among the major supporting organizations behind Akbayan. These are:

a. http://filipinosocialism.wordpress.com/ BISIG (Union of Filipino Socialists)

No data

[Disclosure: I was a former member of BISIG, when I was also a Marxist-socialist in the 80s]

b. http://fdc.ph/ Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC)

1 month 15,683,920
3 month 17,840,797

3. http://staging.ipd.org.ph/ Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD)

1 month 14,628,204
3 month 27,201,62

So the Philippine left, except the underground NDF, has little popularity among the web-literate Philippines and global audience.

It seems that the most popular party-list group in the country is the labor union TUCP. Obviously populist but non-socialist leaning.

http://www.tucp.org.ph/, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP)

1 month 325,701
3 month 367,194

I haven't checked the other party-list groups. Will do so in future blog entries.