WHY THE NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY IS INVINCIBLE AND VICTORIOUS
AND HOW THE PEOPLE'S WAR CAN RISE TO A NEW AND HIGHER LEVEL
Message of the Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
March 29, 2007
On the occasion of the 38th anniversary of the founding of the New
People's Army (NPA), we the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
the Philippines (CPP) salute the Red commanders and fighters of the New
People's Army (NPA) for their firm commitment, hard work, sacrifices and
achievements in the revolutionary struggle. We accord the highest honors
to the revolutionary martyrs and to all comrades who have dedicated
their entire lives to the revolutionary cause of serving the Filipino
people.
Today we renew our resolve to carry out the Filipino people's democratic
revolution under the leadership of the working class and its Party
against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big
compradors and landlords. We are determined to win total victory through
protracted people's war, culminating in the overthrow of the
counterrevolutionary state and establishment of the people's democratic
state. The New People's Army is the principal instrument of the Party
and the people in the armed revolution.
We joyously celebrate the accumulated victories of the NPA since its
founding on March 29, 1969. We are happy about the victories of the NPA
from year to year against the all-out war policy of the US-directed
Arroyo regime. The NPA has frustrated and defeated Oplan Bantay Laya I
in the five-year period of 2002-2006 and is in the process of delivering
even more lethal blows against Oplan Bantay Laya II, which the enemy has
launched since the beginning of this year. And yet the highest officials
of the Arroyo regime and those of the military and police forces keep on
boasting that they can either destroy or reduce the NPA to
inconsequentiality before Arroyo leaves office in 2010.
In response to the cowardly assaults and braggadocio of the enemy, let
us state why the NPA is invincible and victorious in the context of the
objective conditions and the development of the subjective forces of the
revolution. Then we proceed to identify the vulnerabilities and weak
points of the ruling system and show how to concentrate our political
and military offensives against these in order to further weaken,
isolate and destroy the enemy and raise the people's war to a new and
higher level.
I. Why the NPA Is Invincible and Victorious?
It is an incontrovertible fact of history that the NPA has grown from 60
Red fighters with only nine automatic rifles and some 26 inferior
firearms in the second district of Tarlac province in 1969 to so many
thousands of men and women with automatic rifles and other high-powered
weapons spread throughout the country. These are equivalent to a few
divisions and regiments, tens of battalions, scores of companies, a few
hundreds of platoons or many hundreds of squads nationwide. They are
deployed in more than 120 guerrilla fronts covering significant portions
of 70 provinces, 800 towns or 10,000 of the more than 40,000 barrios of
the Philippines.
The Marcos regime sought to nip the NPA in the bud in the years 1969 to
1972, using division-size task forces in every region where squads and
armed propaganda teams of the NPA appeared. It went so far as to declare
martial law in 1972 and impose a fascist dictatorship on the Filipino
people for 14 years, up to 1986. It murdered tens of thousands of
people, illegally detained and tortured some hundreds of thousands and
forcibly displaced five million people from their homes and farms. But
the NPA grew precisely because of the intolerable conditions of
oppression and exploitation under the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The NPA withstood and prevailed over the much-ballyhooed campaigns of
suppression unleashed by the post-Marcos regimes, including the
campaigns oflow-intensity conflict warfare and low-intensity democracy
strategy of the Aquino regime under US direction. Lambat Bitag I, II,
III appeared to be successful in the 1980s only because of the grave
errors of the incorrigible "Left" opportunists who engaged in
adventurism, ruined the revolutionary mass base and engaged in criminal
witchhunts to cover up their errors, as well as of the Right
opportunists who wished to end the people's war and join the reactionary
government, and who tried to propagate Gorbachovism, populism, reformism
and liberalism within the Party. But the proletarian revolutionaries in
the Party prevailed and launched the Second Great Rectification Movement
to identify, criticize, repudiate and rectify major errors, reaffirm
basic revolutionary principles and revitalize the Party and the entire
revolutionary movement.
The NPA has stood as the largest and strongest army of the Filipino
people in their entire history. It has surpassed the level of strength
of the Philippine revolutionary army in the old democratic revolution
against Spanish colonialism and then in the war of resistance against US
imperialism at the start of the 20th century. The NPA has also surpassed
by far the scope and level of strength attained by the People's Army
Against Japan (Hukbalahap) during World War II and the subsequent
People's Liberation Army, whose backbone was broken by the enemy in the
early 1950s.
Under the direction and influence of US imperialism, particularly the
Bush policy of global war of terror, the Arroyo regime has adopted the
policy of all-out war and unleashed Oplan Bantay Laya, with the
announced objective of destroying the NPA and entire revolutionary
movement. Both the imperialists and the Arroyo regime forget that the
Marcos regime imposed a fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people for
14 years, when the revolutionary movement was still small and the regime
had far greater access to foreign loans and US military assistance in
exchange for the continued stay of the US military bases and could
rapidly expand the puppet military forces from the level of 60,000
troops to more than 200,000 troops, excluding local police and the
paramiltary. Despite all this, the Marcos regime failed to destroy the
fledgling revolutionary movement and fell in 1986 under the blows of the
people's army, the revolutionary mass movement and the broad legal
opposition.
The Arroyo regime is now faced with a far larger and stronger NPA and a
comprehensive revolutionary mass movement with much richer experience
and sharper skills in various forms of struggle. The military and police
forces of the regime are stagnant and deteriorating in terms of the
number and capacity of personnel, training and equipment, despite the
hype about increased military assistance and training from US military
forces. The objective of Bantay Laya I was to concentrate military and
mobile police units on 600 barangays in six regions at every given time
to search and destroy the NPA and then proceed to another 600 barangays
for the same purpose. But only 300 barangays of the more than 40,000
barangays could be covered at every given time. Bantay Laya II is bound
to fare worse because it seeks to militarize and terrorize both the
rural and urban communities and in the name of "development" take over
the functions of the police and civilian officials.
The objective conditions in the world are not favorable to the Arroyo
regime. But they are favorable to the revolutionary movement. The crisis
of the world capitalist system has been deepened and aggravated rapidly
by the so-called free market policy of "neoliberal globalization." This
has been wrongly supposed by the US and other policymakers as the cure
to the problem of stagflation blamed on state interventions under the
Keynesian economic policy. The concentration and centralization of
capital in the US and a few other countries have accelerated and have
resulted in a global depression, afflicting mainly the underdeveloped
countries. These have suffered most from the worsening chronic crisis of
overproduction, unequal terms of trade and excessive debt burden. The
illusion of economic growth in the imperialist countries and a few other
economies like China and India has been conjured by sheer financial
flows. But the real global economy shows chronic mass unemployment,
widening deficits and unrepayable debts.
The Bush administration has further aggravated the crisis of the US
world capitalist system by trying to stimulate industrial production and
consumer demand since the bursting of the high-tech bubble in 2000 by
stepping up war production and encouraging consumerism based on borrowed
funds from abroad and from a domestic housing bubble (overvaluation of
private homes to support consumption loans). The 9/11 attacks have
facilitated the Bush mix of "military Keynesianism" and "neoliberal
globalization." But there are limits to war production, outsourcing of
consumer goods and debt-consumerism and overvaluation of stocks and real
estate property. These do not solve but aggravate the crisis of
overproduction and the financial overstretch and speculation.
In the name of anti-terrorism since 9/11, the US has whipped up war
hysteria, pushed repression and fascism on a global scale and unleashed
military intervention and wars of aggression. But the wars of
aggression, which are intended to secure oil sources and supply lines,
have put the US into a quagmire in Iraq. The US-NATO alliance in
Afghanistan is also facing stiff resistance from a resurgent Taliban.
The people's armed resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan has made US
aggression unprofitable and has inflicted heavy costs on the US in terms
of casualties, both killed and wounded, and the loss of financial
resources in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The US has undermined itself as well as its allies by overreaching in
the Middle East and Central Asia. Right within these regions, resistance
to the US and its allies is expanding and intensifying. The people of
Palestine and Lebanon have heroically resisted the combination of US
imperialism and Israeli Zionism. China, Russia and other neighboring
countries have also spearheaded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
for the purpose of economic cooperation and collective security outside
of US control.
In South Asia, there is a rising wave of people's wars, especially in
India. Particularly in Nepal, the Maoist party is leading the people and
striving to install a democratic republic as the fruit of people's war.
In East Asia, the US is exposing its weaknesses. It uses cheap Chinese
labor in the outsourcing operations of its multinational firms but it
depends on China and Japan for selling treasury bonds and financing
consumer imports. The Korean people and the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea have successfuly defied US imperialism and have put forward
their just demands. It has had to request China for assistance in order
to revive the six-party talks. In the Philippines, the Filipino people
continue to wage people's war and demonstrate that US military
intervention cannot stop them. In fact, the US military forces expose
from year to year their failure to destroy even only the small bandit
group Abu Sayyaf.
In Latin America, the anti-imperialist currents are running strong among
the people. The governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia are riding on
these currents. They are defying the impositions of the US. They are
trying to advance the nationalization of the economy and expand
employment and social services. Meanwhile, certain parties and
organizations are preparing to wage revolutionary armed struggle. In
Africa, the people continue to suffer from severe economic and political
crisis and are struggling hard to fight imperialism and neocolonialism.
There is social unrest and political turmoil in several African
countries. Such conditions are conducive to the emergence and growth of
revolutionary forces. China and Russia are taking diplomatic initiatives
in this continent while the US is overconcentrated in Iraq.
The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the
Philippines has become far worse than ever before. By following the US
policy of "neoliberal globalization," the Arroyo regime has pushed the
denationalization, liberalization, privatization and deregulation of the
Philippine economy for the benefit of the foreign monopoly interests in
investment, trade and finance. It has continually surrendered the
political and economic sovereignty of the people and auctioned off the
national sovereignty. It has tried to undertake the revision of the 1987
constitution in order to allow the foreign corporations to have 100%
ownership of all businesses. The multinational firms and banks have
prevented national industrialization and land reform. These are mocked
by the pro-imperialists as impermissible because they involve state
intervention and are supposedly contrary to the "free market."
The Arroyo regime has thus deepened and aggravated the underdevelopment
of the Philippine economy, the unequal terms of trade and the dependence
on foreign debt. The foreign monopoly firms have gone on a rampage of
plundering the country through free flow of exploitative capital and
surplus goods. The Arroyo regime has further made the Philippine economy
dependent on the export of raw materials and live labor (mostly women)
and the re-export of low value-added semimanufactures. These exported
goods are in oversupply in the global market and are being sold in
greater volume at lower prices. And finished manufactures and
agricultural products from abroad flood the country because of
much-lowered or negligible tariff walls and because of rampant
smuggling. The trade and budgetary deficits are ever increasing.
From year to year, however, the illusion of economic growth is conjured
by ever rising government spending and consumption of the few rich and
well-to-do. The financial flows are effected by increasing the foreign
and local public debt and, recently, the tax burden in order to cover
the ever growing trade and budgetary deficits, and to pay the debt
service on the accumulated debt. Of course, the Arroyo regime also grabs
the foreign exchange earnings of the overseas contract workers for
consumption and other counterproductive purposes. It has further
bankrupted and depressed the Philippine economy in real terms and faces
the limits of borrowing and raising taxes under conditions of economic
depression. Under these conditions, the regime cannot expand and satisfy
the reactionary armed forces and police without further exacerbating the
economic and social crisis.
Unemployment is massive and cumulative because of the total failure to
adopt a policy of national industrialization and land reform that can
expand capital and generate employment. Incomes are depressed and
dwindling, especially for the toiling masses of workers and peasants.
And yet the prices of basic commodities and services are rising. Hunger
is at record high. In budgetary appropriations, the regime gives the
highest priority to debt service, military spending and graft-ridden
infrastructure projects, while reducing the funds for education, health
and public housing. The infrastructure in the rural areas is always
rotting, while showy infrastructure projects are undertaken mainly in
urban areas and tourist areas. The promise of developing "super-regions"
through infrastructure projects is not a promise of development but
opportunities for corruption by the Arroyo ruling clique. Under Arroyo,
the puppet government has been rated as the most corrupt in the whole of
Asia, and one of the most corrupt in the whole world.
Social discontent is widespread and acute among the toiling masses and
even among the middle social strata. The Arroyo regime has used brute
force to suppress workers' strikes and legal protest rallies of the
broad masses of the people. It has gone as far as to issue a thinly
disguised martial law proclamation and makes false charges against the
broad united front of legal opposition forces. Under Oplan Bantay Laya,
it has deployed large military forces and mobile police units in
suspected guerrilla fronts of the NPA in order to massacre, round up,
detain and torture the peasant masses and national minorities and force
great numbers of them out of their homes and farms with the use of
arson, machinegun fire, bombardments and artillery.
It has extended Oplan Bantay Laya to the cities, conducting military
saturation drives and psywar in worker and urban poor communities and
student campuses especially where progressive party-list groups and
people's organizations are strong, campaigning against these parties and
organizations, and witch-hunting and harassing their leaders, members
and supporters, with the objective of denying them the legal and
parliamentary avenues of struggle. It has engaged in extrajudicial
killings, abductions and torture of unarmed legal activists, including
leaders of progressive party list groups, mass leaders of workers,
peasants, women and youth, the religious people, (including a bishop,
numerous priests and pastors), lawyers, doctors, human rights activists
and journalists. These barbarities have outraged the people of the
Philippines and the whole world.
The socio-economic crisis has generated a severe political crisis among
the reactionaries of the truly rotten "strong republic" The
contradictions between the Arroyo regime and those out of power have
become bitter because of the regime's inordinate drive to enrich itself
and perpetuate itself in power through brute force. The regime is
notorious for its barefaced puppetry to imperialist interests, flagrant
corruption and use of electoral fraud and state terror against all
opposition and critics. It has tried to revise the 1987 constitution of
the reactionary government in order to keep itself in power under the
pretext of shifting from the presidential to the parliamentary form of
government, and at the same to please the imperialists by allowing them
to have 100% ownership of all businesses and to reestablish their
military bases on Philippine territory. It has become even more brutal
in the face of the growing resistance of the broad masses of the people
and broad united front. The Arroyo regime's brutality is inspired by the
Bush global war of terror.
The contradictions among the various reactionary political factions
extend to the reactionary armed forces and police. These are
factionalized according to their political masters and according to
their interests in racketeering and criminal syndicates. In an attempt
to override the factionalism and rising anti-Arroyo currents within the
military, the regime has ordered and agitated the military and police to
go into a rampage of extrajudicial killings, abductions, attacks on
communities and other human rights violations against the revolutionary
movement and the people. After having sabotaged the peace negotiations
between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the
Government of the Republic of the Philippines since 2001, the Arroyo
regime has pretended to hold on-and-off peace negotiations with the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front and has been launching sporadic attacks against
MILF forces. The Arroyo regime is increasingly exposing its
unwillingness to recognize the right of the Moro people to
self-determination and their rights to ancestral land by launching
military attacks on the Moro people, the MILF and its army.
The Arroyo regime and its loyalists within the military and police are
hell-bent on using fraud and terrorism in order to prevent the
opposition from getting a number of seats in House of Representatives
sufficient to impeach Arroyo as well as in the Senate sufficient to
convict her. Arroyo and her security and military establishments are
ready to use the recently signed Anti-Terror Law in order to outlaw and
suppress not only the revolutionary forces but also the legal
progressive forces and the forces of the conservative opposition. They
are out to prevent the broad united front and the broad masses of the
people from rising up in mass actions to overthrow the Arroyo regime.
They are making a hue and cry about destroying the CPP, NPA and the
entire revolutionary movement before 2010 under Oplan Bantay Laya and
the Anti-Terror Law in order in order to set the stage for the
escalation of state terrorism against the broad opposition and the broad
masses of the people.
They plan to use the Anti-Terror Law to impose martial law on the people
without having to declare it and without having to comply with the 1987
constitution in order to ensure the political survival and even the
perpetuation of the Arroyo ruling clique in power through the revision
of the 1987 constitution after the 2007 elections. Arroyo is scheming to
make herself or her choice to become the prime minister upon the shift
from presidential to parliamentary form of government. To succeed, she
has to use the Anti-Terror Law to suppress the armed revolutionary
forces and the legal progressive forces and thus prevent the formation
of an effective broad opposition, render weak and inutile the
conservative opposition forces and relatively independent critics in the
churches, civic and professional associations, business and mass media
and silence them in the chilling climate of the unceasing gross human
rights violations with impunity.
However, the Arroyo regime overestimates its power to strike down the
opposition and the people. Like the Marcos fascist dictatorship, the
current regime cannot destroy them but can only unwittingly push the
rapid growth of the revolutionary movement and the broad alliance of
democratic forces by aggravating the fundamentally oppressive and
exploitative conditions of the Philippines. Arroyo and her military and
police officers have unwittingly become the best recruiters of the NPA
by attacking the people and driving them to join the NPA. They have
likewise become the best transport and supply officers of the NPA by
getting arms from the Pentagon and sending out their troops for ambush
by the NPA in the guerrilla fronts and hinterlands.
The revolutionary forces are invincible and victorious because the
semi-colonial and semi-feudal conditions in the Philippines provide the
fertile ground for the growth in strength and advance of the people's
army and people's war. The Filipino people, especially the workers and
peasants, need the NPA so long as the three monsters, foreign monopoly
capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism oppress and
exploit them. Without the NPA, they have nothing with which to fight the
enemy. They do not even have hope of liberation, unless they have the
NPA. On the basis of the objective conditions that are intolerable to
the people, the subjective forces or organized forces of the revolution
thrive and march forward.
The most important subjective factor for the invincibility and victories
of the NPA is the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
This revolutionary party of the proletariat is guided by
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and applies it to the study of history and
current circumstances of the Philippines and the world. It inculcates
among the Party cadres and members in the NPA and among the Red
commanders and fighters the dialectical materialist stand, viewpoint and
method, and it combats subjectivism, be it dogmatism or empiricism.
It propagates the basic teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao
about nature and human history, the laws of motion in capitalism and
imperialism, the economic, political and cultural aspects of society,
the state and revolution, the corrosiveness of opportunism, reformism
and revisionism, the strategy and tactics of the new democratic
revolution through people's war, socialist revolution and construction,
the cultural revolution in socialist society and the general outline of
the communist future. The continuing recruitment, education and
revolutionary work of Party cadres and members guarantee that there is
an indestructible core of proletarian revolutionaries within the
people's army and the revolutionary mass movement.
The Party has defined the semicolonial and semifeudal character of
Philippine society and the corresponding general line of the national
democratic revolution of a new type. It requires the building and
correct handling of the Party, the people's army and united front as the
three powerful weapons of the Philippine revolution. A clear
understanding of the character of Philippine society, the current stage
of the revolution, the friends and enemies of the revolution, the forces
and tasks of the revolution and the socialist perspective is a guarantee
against errors of Right and Left opportunism.
The Party can lead the people's army and the people's war from victory
to victory so long as it pursues the ideological line of
Marxism-Leninism against subjectivism, the general line of new
democratic revolution against opportunism and the organizational line of
democratic centralism against bureaucratism and ultra-democracy. The
Party secures itself and other revolutionary forces from destruction by
taking care not to expose its Party cadres and members to the enemy
unnecessarily and without safeguards and at the same time always
developing the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-fascist mass
movement from which to recruit new Party members.
In the course of people's war, the NPA is the main instrument for
arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses in the rural areas. It
carries out land reform in order to let the peasant masses achieve
economic, social and political revolution and realize the main content
of the democratic revolution. It wages the revolutionary armed struggle
in order to seize weapons and other resources from the enemy and thereby
expand and further strengthen itself in order to defeat the enemy. It
assists the Party in organizing the organs of political power and the
associations of the workers, peasants, women, youth, children and
cultural activists. It facilitates the mass campaigns for the
self-organization of the masses, public education, land reform,
production, health and hygiene, defense and internal security,
settlement of disputes, sports and cultural activities.
The basic alliance of the working class and peasantry is the strongest
foundation of the national united front for the armed struggle and for
all intents and purposes. In the anti-feudal united front, the Party
must rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, win over the
middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the
splits among the landlords in order to weaken and destroy the power of
the despotic landlords. We may come upon various groupings and various
levels of political consciousness among the workers and peasants. It is
our task to unite with them and raise the level of their consciousness
and organizations according to their best interests in the immediate
circumstances and in the long run.
The worker-peasant alliance must win over the urban petty bourgeoisie in
order to build the progressive alliance. In turn, the progressive
alliance can win over the national bourgeoisie in order to build the
patriotic alliance against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat
capitalism. The united front can be further broadened to include
unreliable and unstable allies from the reactionary classes in order to
accelerate the isolation and defeat of the worst reactionary faction in
power or the faction most servile to imperialism. The progressive,
patriotic and broad unstable alliances for legal forms of struggle can
become stronger if, in the first place, there is a strong basic
worker-peasant alliance at work in the people's war.
If the line of the Party is correct, then the NPA and other
revolutionary forces can keep on gaining strength and winning victories.
But errors and shortcomings can arise as a result of deviations from the
line. Thus, the old merger party of the Communist and Socialist Parties
was defeated in the early 1950s. The Party had to carry out the First
Great Rectification Movement to draw lessons and reestablish the
Communist Party of the Philippines. There were also grave errors within
the Party in the decade of the 1980s. Thus, the Party had to carry out
the Second Great Rectification Movement, in order to learn lessons. The
Party has amply demonstrated its ability to identify and rectify errors
and to raise the fighting will and capability of the people and all
revolutionary forces.
The Party is at the head and at the core of the New People's Army. It
makes sure that revolutionary politics is in command of the gun. The
Party and the NPA work together to pursue the general political line of
national democratic revolution and the mass line of learning from the
masses, relying on them and mobilizing them to accomplish revolutionary
tasks. Within the Party and the NPA, periodic and timely meetings for
study, summing up, evaluating work and criticism and self-criticism are
conducted. Thus, the Party and NPA strengthen and sharpen themselves as
the weapons of the people against the current enemy and the entire
ruling system.
II. How to Define and Attack the Weak Points of the System
The three monsters, foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and
bureaucrat capitalism, which are oppressing and exploiting the Filipino
people, appear to be so solid, strong and indivisible. But in fact they
make the entire ruling system rotten and destructible. Each monster is
quite extended, divisible and has vulnerable parts spread out all over
the country. The entire semi-colonial and semifeudal ruling system is
actually unstable and can be made to collapse through the protracted
people's war. We can observe the weak points of the system and define
these as the targets against which we can concentrate our attacks.
The main determinant of the semicolonial and semifeudal character of
Philippine society is US imperialism. When the US shifted from direct
colonial rule to semicolonial rule in 1946, it made the Philippines
nominally independent and passed on national administration to the high
politicians and bureaucrats of the local exploiting classes, who were
generally united in serving US monopoly capitalism and their own big
comprador and landlord interests even as they competed for political
power in the name of bourgeois democracy. But the US made sure that it
would continue to control the Philippines in an all-round
way--economically, politically, militarily, culturally and diplomatically.
Military control is the alpha and omega of US hegemony over the
Philippines. It has continuously controlled the Philippine puppet state
by providing the indoctrination, strategic plans, officer training,
equipment and other supplies to the reactionary armed forces and police.
Up to 1991, the US had military bases in the Philippines. But even
without these, it has never ceased to surveil the country with the use
of nearby US military bases, spy satellites, radar stations and lorans,
air and naval patrols and intelligence assets in the reactionary armed
forces and police, in the entire bureaucracy and in various
non-governmental organizations and institutions. Under the pretext of
mutual defense, it can invade and occupy the Philippines anytime. Right
now, it can engage in military intervention and deploy US military
forces for any length of time and on any scale on various pretexts,
including anti-terrorism, joint military exercises, civic action,
humanitarian work, disaster relief, anti-drugs and anti-epidemic
mission. The US has recently been hyping the lie that illegal drugs
production and trafficking are proliferating in NPA and MILF areas and
using this as pretext for further intensifying US military intervention
and intelligence activities in the Philippines.
The US has been engaged in massive military intervention in the
Philippines since after the 9/11, under the pretext of combating
terrorism in the "second front" of the so-called global war of terror.
It claims to be running after the Abu Sayyaf bandit gang, which the CIA
and the Philippine Army formed in 1992 in an attempt to outflank the
Moro National Liberation Front. The US has steadily increased the number
of its troops and deployed them in various parts of the country,
especially those near and within the NPA guerrilla fronts. The US troops
have collaborated with the Philippine puppet troops not only in military
training but also in intelligence and surveillance, occupying outposts
and patrolling, and joining the puppet troops in combat operations.
There is a growing possibility that the US military intervention would
become a war of aggression and the current revolutionary civil war would
become a national war against foreign aggression.
Foreign monopoly capitalism has so overloaded the Philippines with loans
that it draws more profits from debt service than from returns on direct
investments. Of course, it continues to extract profits from the direct
investments in various types of business enterprises and from the
lopsided exchange of manufactured imports and the raw material exports
and the low-value added reexports. The growing current account deficits
have resulted in a huge foreign debt whose interest and amortization are
becoming more and more difficult to pay. The multinational banks and
firms are ever eager to convert the loans to equity in Philippine
corporations and to expand investments in raw material production
(mineral and agricultural), fuel production and distribution, transport
and communications, construction, trading and so on. Thus, the Arroyo
regime is eager to revise the 1987 constitution to allow the US and
other foreign monopoly corporations to have unlimited ownership of all
businesses.
The export-oriented mining, logging and agricultural operations of the
multinational firms and the big compradors are among the most
exploitative and plunderous activities. But they are in the hinterlands
and are the most vulnerable to actions by the people and the NPA. The
foreign-owned mines must be closed down because they have proliferated
in violation of the economic sovereignty and national patrimony under
the infamous Mining Act of 1995. They take out the irreplaceable natural
wealth of the country and devastate the environment and the entire
economic and social future of the people. Logging for export must also
be stopped totally because it has ruined the environment and brought
about the extremes of flooding and drought on a wide scale.
Large tracts of land owned or controlled by foreign and big comprador
agri-corporations for producing and exporting various types of
agricultural products must be broken up to stop the foreign exploiters
from owning or controlling land, to make way for land reform for the
benefit of the poor peasants and farm workers, to enforce the union
rights and fair wages for the farm workers, to free the small and medium
landowners from the clutches of the unfair grower agreements, and to
allow some reasonable amount of Filipino entreneurship in agriculture.
The building of hydroelectric dams, irrigation systems, road and bridges
should not be used as a pretext for grabbing land from the poor peasants
and indigenous people, destroying their means of livelihood and
environment and expanding the landholdings of the big foreign
corporations and the local big landlords.
The US and other foreign oil giants have mercilessly squeezed the people
by raising fuel prices. The people and the NPA must take action against
the greed of these foreign companies and cause the nationalization of
the oil industry. They must also fight the so-called independent power
producers for having overpriced their plants and benefited from
state-guaranteed loans and for making their power supply excessively
expensive. We must study how to create the conditions for the
nationalization of oil and exploration and production in the Philippines.
Most and eventually all foreign-owned and local big comprador firms
engaged in any kind of business, including oil and gas exploration,
production and distribution, power generation, manufacturing, transport
and communications, construction, trading, tourism, real estate
development and other businesses have installations, warehouses, motor
pools and delivery lines inside and near the territory of the people's
democratic government. All these must comply with the laws and
regulations of the people's government. In case of non-compliance and
refusal to negotiate with the revolutionary authorities, they are
subject to appropriate actions by the people and the NPA.
If Filipino entrepreneurs are ready to take over any foreign-owned
enterprise, they may be supported by the people and the revolutionary
forces in the spirit of promoting the nationalization of the economy and
fighting for national liberation against foreign domination. Every
effort may be undertaken to favor the Filipino entrepreneurs and force
out the foreign monopoly interests, especially the US. Irrespective of
the nationality of the owners, an enterprise which is useful to the
people but cannot be taken over by the people or by Filipinos, may be
tolerated, provided such enterprise complies with the laws and
regulations of the people's democratic government. In all cases the
rights of the workers and the trade unions must be upheld and safeguarded.
Agrarian revolution is the process by which the largest class of the
people in the Philippines, particularly the poor and lower middle
peasants, can be aroused, organized and mobilized to take actions on
feudal landholdings and thereby realize the main content of the
democratic revolution. We must take the initiative in carrying forward
the agrarian revolution, and respond to the longrunning demands of the
peasants against bogus land reform programs and against the ongoing
reactionary disdain for land reform under the slogan of "neoliberal
globalization." Studies and decisions must be made in order to raise
land reform higher from the level of the minimum land reform program of
reducing land rent, eliminating usury and controlling interest rate,
raising the wages of farm workers, raising the farm-gate prices of the
products, and promoting agricultural and sideline occupation through
rudimentary forms of cooperation.
We have extensive experience in driving out land grabbers in the
hinterlands, in restituting the grabbed land to the owner-cultivators
and in confiscating land from selected despotic landlords who are hated
by the people. Confiscation of the land can be effected, with the
peasants becoming determined not to deliver the rent to the landlord,
and with the people in general and the NPA preventing the entry of the
overseers and other running dogs of the landlord. If the landlords use
force to attack the peasants, then the people's government can order the
NPA to arrest, try and punish the criminally culpable landlords. When
the landlords are armed and protected by armed guards, the NPA is
justified to give battle and do everything possible to to bring the
landlords in question to justice.
Efforts at confiscation of the land planted to rice, corn and other
staples can be made where we have successfully carried the minimum land
reform on a wide scale. We can certainly target for confiscation the
landholdings of the biggest and most despotic landlords. We can study
and carry out confiscation on a much wider scale by targeting
landholdings bigger than 50 hectares, provided those landlords owning
less than 50 hectares follow the laws and regulations of the people's
government. We must be well prepared to arrange the equitable
distribution of the land among the landless tillers, the credit
facilities from creditors who comply with the rules set by the peasant
association and the people's government and the simple forms of
cooperation, including labor exchange, to raise production and reduce
the costs of production and sale of the produce.
In the case of land planted to sugar and coconut, which require some
kind of central milling, we must make sure that we have alliance with
the millers or some landlords who can have the product milled. We must
ensure that the tenants and farm workers get their respective fair
shares of the income from selling the product. We must also encourage
them to plant staple crops in parts of the land. They can increase the
land for staple crops if cash income from sugar and coconut is likely to
fall short of their needs. There are large export-oriented plantations
which are better taken over by the peasants for land reform and for food
production for the domestic market.
We must continue with the anti-feudal line of relying mainly on the poor
peasants and farm workers, winning over the middle peasants,
neutralizing the rich peasants and taking advantage of the splits among
the landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the big and
despotic landlords. As soon as land confiscation from the landlords
occurs anywhere, we can expect the enemy to attack the peasants. But the
peasant masses will prevail and the enemy will not have enough strength
to take the initiative. In due course, we can create and make effective
the organs of people's government at the municipal and provincial
levels, with the help of the urban petty bourgeoisie, middle
bourgeoisie, if in the first place the peasant masses take power and the
land on a wide scale in the barrios under the leadership of the Party
and with the support of the NPA.
Under the direction of US imperialism, the Arroyo regime has issued
since the beginning of 2002 the orders to the reactionary armed forces
and police under Oplan Bantay Laya to destroy the entire revolutionary
movement by attacking a number of guerrilla fronts at every given time
and engaging in so-called clear-hold-consolidate-develop (or, as they
call it now, win-hold-win) military operations, involving massacres,
mass intimidation and forced evacuation or eviction of people (now
numbering 3.2 million, with more than half of these displaced during the
Arroyo regime), and at the same time carrying out extrajudicial
killings, abductions and torture against unarmed legal activists who are
labeled as "communists" and "enemies of the state." In a vicious
campaign of bloody intrigue, the regime misrepresents those murdered by
its own special teams or death squads as victims of an "internal purge"
in the CPP and NPA.
After murdering hundreds of unarmed legal activists, including mass
leaders, religious people, lawyers, journalists and human rights
activists, the Arroyo regime has outraged the broad masses of the people
and respected institutions in the Philippines and in the entire world.
International fact-finding missions of human rights, civic and religious
institutions and organizations, UN special rapporteurs of human rights
treaty bodies have listened to and verified the testimonies of surviving
victims, witnesses and the relatives, colleagues and friends of the dead
victims. They have noticed the pattern of the reactionary armed forces
and the police stigmatizing the targeted victim as a "communist" or
"enemy of the state," then "neutralizing," i.e., murdering him or her
and blaming the NPA for the crime. As commander-in-chief of the armed
forces, Arroyo has refused to accept command responsibility and has not
made the lower commanders accountable for the extrajudicial killings and
abductions occurring within their jurisdiction. The fascist killers are
so arrogant and so power-drunk that they flagrantly kill witnesses and
facilitators in the investigations of the killings.
Despite the clarity of their command responsibility and exposure of
their culpability for the heinous crimes, Arroyo and her military and
police minions keep on repeating the lie and intrigue that communists
are killing communists or NPA fighters are killing NPA fighters. They
continue to hope that they can destroy the revolutionary movement by
murdering its suspected members and then claiming that it is destroying
itself. The dirty trick of the Arroyo regime looks smart. But it is
practically pushing us to hurry up with actions to render justice to the
victims and their murderers. In the meantime, while we are still making
the necessary preparations for the just actions to be undertaken against
the brutal enemy, they continue to murder people and blame the murder on
us. Their bloody intrigue fails especially when they make it appear that
the erroneous anti-infiltration campaigns of more than twenty years ago
can be passed off as an ongoing "internal purge," and further concoct
stories and "testimonies" and recycle and transfer "evidence" from
interior community cemeteries and from one "mass grave" to another.
Everyone who has studied the history of the CPP knows that through the
Second Great Rectification Movement, an educational campaign which was
launched by the Party Central Committee in 1992, the CPP criticized and
condemned the anti-informer campaigns of hysteria that occurred mainly
from 1985 to 1988, like Kampanyang Ahos, OPML and the like. The few who
were most responsible for the crimes left the CPP to evade
responsibility, established anti-CPP groups and sought employment in the
reactionary system. It is well known that the CPP has firmly upheld the
principle of due process in administrative cases of discipline within
its ranks and in criminal cases before the people's court. The broad
masses of the people know and even the UN special rapporteurs have
determined that the Arroyo regime and its military and police have been
fabricating "evidence" and are lying when they try to confuse the
anti-former hysteria in certain areas in the 1980s with the Second Great
Rectification Movement of the 1990s, and make the false claim that there
is an ongoing "internal purge."
As a result of the severe socio-economic and political crisis of the
ruling system, especially after having engaged in electoral fraud and
terrorism in 2004, the Arroyo regime has been obsessed with political
survival against the broad popular demands for its ouster and is
deliberately using the slogans of anti-communism and anti-terrorism in
order to ingratiate itself with US imperialism and the local exploiting
classes. It calculates that only if it could destroy or paralyze the
revolutionary movement or at least the legal progressive forces with
murderous attacks, then it would be easier to control and even coopt the
conservative opposition. It has thereby become increasingly violent not
only against the people and revolutionary forces in the suspected
guerrilla fronts but also against the legal patriotic and progressive
forces.
The problem of the Arroyo regime is that the people are outraged by its
gross human rights violations. The broad united front against the regime
has become stronger. Instead of mending its ways, the regime has become
even more arrogant and more violent. It is overdependent on the use of
the coercive apparatuses of the state (army, police, courts and jails)
and has a strong proclivity for using force even against the broad legal
opposition and the people.
The Arroyo ruling clique has inflamed the contradictions among the
reactionaries. We can expect more bitter and violent strife among them,
especially after the 2007 elections. The contending reactionaries have
private armed groups and their own factions among the officers of the
armed forces and police. They are increasingly engaged in violent
attacks against each other. In the face of the fratricidal strife within
the ruling system, we must intensify the tactical offensives and raise
the level of the people's war. We must take advantage of the splits
within the ruling system and its general weakness. And we must also
recognize that the Arroyo regime is trying to deceive the Moro
revolutionary forces and deliver surprise blows on them. We must
encourage the Moro people to persevere in the armed struggle for
self-determination. Their armed struggle has served significantly to
weaken the current regime and the entire ruling system. We must
strengthen our alliance, cooperation and coordination with the
revolutionary forces of the Moro people.
The simplest and best way to take advantage of the fractiousness and
instability of the ruling system is to concentrate fire on the Arroyo
ruling clique and its retinue of traitors, murderers and torturers,
plunderers, racketeers and election-riggers. The broad masses of the
people and the families of the victims of human rights violations cry
out for justice. The people's court must issue the warrants for the
arrest of the criminal suspects at every level. Then the NPA and its
auxiliary forces can act to surveil, arrest them and give battle to them
if they are armed or protected by armed personnel and resist arrest. The
people and the NPA are not at all helpless against those who inflict
state terrorism on them.
There must be a priority list in the standing order of criminal suspects
to be arrested or to be given battle when they and/or their companions
are armed and are dangerous. The highest priority must be given to those
liable for the extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture. Since the
actual human rights violators are often masked, the NPA must hold
criminally responsible those with command responsibility, from the level
of the commander-in-chief and her fellow plotters in the cabinet
oversight committee on internal security to every lower level of
command. At the same time, efforts must be exerted to conduct
countersurveillance operations on the death squads or special teams when
they are on the job or when they park the motorcycles or vans in enemy
camps or safehouses.
To help ensure that justice is carried out for the victims of human
rights violations, those most concerned about the victims and most
determined to counter-attack the enemy may be allowed to help in the
pertinent intelligence and surveillance work. The barbaric attacks
against the leaders and activists of democratic parties and
organizations and against the people in both urban and rural areas impel
all of us to accelerate the recruitment into the NPA as well as promptly
provide the necessary sanctuaries and appropriate organizations and
tasks for those whose lives and liberty are threatened by the enemy
forces. Comrades, relatives, associates and friends of victims who wish
to join the revolutionary underground or the NPA should be given
priority in politico-military training. We can draw positive results
from the martyrdom of the victims.
We can accelerate the rendering of revolutionary justice to those who
are culpable for the heinous human rights violations. These are
themselves vulnerable because their arrogance of power often makes them
complacent and are not always in the protective company of their
criminal accomplices. We may also avail of the assistance of anti-Arroyo
elements within the military and police to identify these criminals or
even act against them.
We must persevere in the strategic line of protracted people's war along
the line of the national democratic revolution of the new type. We must
encircle the cities from the countryside and accumulate our armed
strength until we have enough to be able to seize power in the cities
and on a nationwide scale. We expect to go through the probable course
of three stages: strategic defensive (when the enemy is on the strategic
offensive), strategic stalemate (when our strength and that of the enemy
are more or less the same) and strategic offensive (when the enemy is on
the strategic defensive).
While we are on the strategic defensive, we change the balance of forces
by launching tactical offensives, seizing arms from the enemy and making
him bleed from a thousand wounds. In the face of the Arroyo regime's
heightened total war and fascist aggression, we define the following
central tasks at present: the intensification of our guerrilla warfare;
the frustration and defeat of Oplan Bantay-Laya II; the fight to oust
the Arroyo regime; and the further strengthening and advance of the
armed revolution.
The intensification of our guerrilla warfare to frustrate and counter
the Arroyo regime's fascist attacks and terrorism is our most important
urgent task. We must launch more frequent tactical offensives in each
region, province and front, especially in areas where the revolutionary
forces are larger and stronger. We must inflict heavier blows on the
fascist enemy more often than it can strike at the people's army. The
NPA can seize and maintain the initiative in battle through numerous,
frequent and extensive tactical offensives.
We must put more focus and effort on tactical offensives that have major
political effect. We must grasp the fact that each tactical offensive
and battle contributes to our propaganda. In the face of the aggravating
crisis and intensified political battles this year and the remaining
years of the Arroyo regime, our delivery of head blows in concert with
multiple body blows to the much despised regime is of particular
importance. At stake is the preservation and further strengthening of
our guerrilla forces and mass base. The intensification and spread of
people's protests in various forms and the entirety of people's
struggles are crucial in bringing down the hated regime.
The Arroyo regime pins on Oplan Bantay Laya II its vain hope of
debilitating the armed revolutionary movement and the militant legal
opposition forces before the end of its present term. We should study
well its design, direction, components, tactics and weaknesses, and
prepare all our forces in the people's army, the revolutionary mass base
and the broad mass movement to effectively confront and defeat it. By
frustrating and countering the enemy's attacks and exploiting its
weaknesses, we can defeat Oplan Bantay Laya II as we did its predecessor
Bantay Laya I.
The Arroyo regime wants to increase concentration of military operations
and has principally targeted for encirclement and suppression campaigns
one-third of NPA guerrilla fronts. But the reactionary armed forces can
only concentrate on 10 or just a few more guerrilla fronts at any given
time, and yet has failed to crush a single consolidated front. The Armed
Forces of the Philippines has also diverted a significant part of its
forces to extend Oplan Bantay Laya II and conduct military saturation
drives and terror campaigns in the urban poor and worker community
constituencies of progressive parties and open, legal democratic
organizations.
The people's army has not only been able to preserve its forces, it has
creatively devised means to maintain a certain level of operations,
continue with its work among the people and make sure to strike back at
the enemy in areas where it concentrates its attacks and sows fascist
terror. In untenable situations, the NPA can easily shift and gain
momentum in over a hundred more guerrilla fronts where enemy forces are
thinly spread and weak and where the NPA forces remain free to expand
and consolidate their strength and launch more tactical offensives
against the regime.
Even in the midst of relentless battles, we must persevere in expanding
and consolidating our forces, guerrilla fronts and mass base.
Opportunities are excellent for the NPA to organize the masses, recruit
more Red fighters, establish local organs of revolutionary political
power, respond to the needs of the masses and launch tactical offensives
to seize weapons and weaken the enemy.
The intensification of the revolutionary armed struggle is coordinated
with expanding and invigorating antifeudal, antifascist and
anti-imperialist mass struggles and campaigns. We must give thorough
attention to advancing campaigns that promote the people's livelihood
and production, education and culture, health and enable them to achieve
at least immediate relief to their various other daily problems.
The Party, the NPA and the revolutionary movement have developed further
the capacity to engage the enemy's intensified fascist attacks and
terrorism. Even as it needs to enlarge and strengthen itself to make
greater advances, the NPA presently has the necessary capability and a
deep and wide mass support to fight the attacks and ravages of the enemy
forces and make these pay dearly for their fascist crimes.
In spite of the Arroyo regime's all-out war and fascist viciousness, the
Party, the people's army and the revolutionary movement have solid
confidence and concrete basis in declaring with utmost certainty that
Oplan Bantay Laya II will fail and turn out as nothing more than bluster.
We are carrying out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the
basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. To be able to do so,
we must form more company-strength guerrilla fronts and more NPA combat
platoons. At best, a guerrilla front has the strength of a company, with
a platoon relatively concentrated to serve as the center of gravity and
the other platoons relatively dispersed as squads or armed propaganda
teams for the development of an extensive mass base.
The militia and self-defense units set up in every organized barrio in
the guerrilla fronts serve as auxiliaries and reserves and as deep
reservoirs of recruits for the NPA far more numerous than the present
full-time fighters. They can multiply the strength of the present crop
of full-time NPA fighters as soon as arms and politico-military training
are provided. At the same time, we urgently need to deploy more cadres
and step up the recruitment of urban-based workers and educated youth
for revolutionary work in the countryside and the people's army and
combine them well with the peasant fighters and veteran fighters.
We wish to advance from the early phase of the strategic defensive and
develop the middle phase by multiplying the guerrilla fronts and
guerrilla platoons as maneuver units until we reach the advance phase in
which the guerrilla fronts shall have merged as stable base areas and
developed companies as the maneuver units. We expect that in the course
of time, as we seize more arms from the enemy, we can train and develop
the personnel and units for higher levels of administration above the
guerrilla front and higher levels of command above the guerrilla front's
company command.
On the basis of the guerrilla fronts, we aim for the development of
municipal, district, provincial and regional levels of administration
and command. Now, it is possible for higher levels of administration and
command to avail of, direct and coordinate combined units from lower
levels for the purpose of tactical offensives. The national operational
command and regional operational commands have their own centers of gravity.
For the purpose of preserving our forces and having a constant basis for
growth, the guerrilla fronts should not send any unit into battle
without sufficient preparation and the certainty of winning through
superior position and strength and the element of surprise. Also, a
guerrilla front should not put into battle all or most of its armed
strength in any decisive win-or-lose engagement with the enemy. But
there can be nationally and regionally coordinated tactical offensives
in which the guerrilla front commands can participate by carrying
tactical offensives well within their capabilities and without putting
at risk the continued existence and growth of all the units under each
command. The level of command, tactics, armaments and technique can rise
on the basis of victories in the battlefield.
The NPA uses flexible tactics in a war of fluid movement. These include
concentration, dispersal and shifting. It concentrates enough force to
gain superiority over the targeted enemy unit. It also chooses the time
and place for the attack and takes advantage of the element of surprise.
It can disperse in order to retreat from the site of its own successful
offensive and regroup elsewhere, in order to "disappear" before an
advancing superior enemy forces, or in order to conduct mass work while
conditions are favorable for such or while the enemy force is away. It
can shift in order to circle around and evade a superior enemy force, or
transfer to another area because the enemy is concentrating a large
force on an area for an extended period.
The main offensive tactics of the NPA is annihilation of targeted enemy
units. The main objective in fighting is to wipe out the enemy unit and
seize its arms. Most of the time this is possible by ambushing enemy
units. At certain times, it is possible to raid the enemy position. When
it is not possible to raid a well-fortified enemy position, it is the
better part of wisdom and valor to wait for the enemy to come out to the
road for an ambush. However, it is sometimes possible to disarm the
enemy through surprise raids, arrest operations and checkpoints without
firing a shot or with some casualties on his side.
Offensive tactics are of many types, from the simple ones to the
relatively complex ones.
The simple ones include the ambush, the raid and arrest operation on the
enemy force in one limited place at one time, without any elaborate
deployment of NPA fighters (such as attack, containing and blocking
units). The relatively complex ones involve more elaborate troop
deployment and wider time and geographic scale. Some of these tactics
include: baiting an enemy unit to investigate an incident, ambushing an
enemy unit to make a bigger ambush on the reinforcement, feigning an
attack on the East to attack the West, attacking the vacated or weakened
position where the enemy came from, using a small unit to lure the enemy
into a big trap or a series of traps, zapping the enemy vehicles while
these are stationary, delivering head blows on the enemy while he is
minding the body blows and making the enemy bleed from a thousand wounds
in regionally or nationally coordinated offensives.
It is self-defeating for the NPA to engage in attritive actions in which
it loses plenty of ammunition and does not seize arms and ammunition.
But the NPA can engage in certain attritive actions at the expense of
the enemy, especially acts of harassment at little cost and with
far-reaching benefit to the NPA. Sniping, grenades, land mines and
mortars can inflict casualties on enemy troops in vehicles, marching or
resting. The enemy troops can thus become demoralized, jittery and
strained in their relations with their officers and fellow soldiers. The
NPA can also use explosives and flames to destroy enemy positions,
installations, transmission towers and lines, depots, vehicles and the
like and compel the enemy to go into static guard duty. Actions of armed
city partisans can also compel the military to go into guard duty in
urban areas.
In the course of battle, we shoot to render the enemy troops incapable
of fighting. But subsequently we allow those who wish to surrender to do
so, we give medical treatment to the wounded and we also deal with the
dead enemy troops respectfully in accordance with the NPA Rules of
Discipline, International Humanitarian Law and the Comprehensive
Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian
Law. It is up to the NPA commander to decide on detaining ordinary
troops as prisoners of war. But as much as possible, the enemy officers
must be detained for the purpose of investigating them whether they are
liable for crimes or whether they are qualified for prisoner exchange.
Our policy of leniency towards prisoners of war is not only a matter of
respect for human rights, discipline and legal compliance with the
Geneva Conventions and CARHRIHL. It is also a matter of political
consideration that the enemy troops come from the working classes and
the junior field officers often come from the middle class. It is a
matter of taking the moral high ground against the barbarism and
inhumanity of the enemy. In accordance with our policy of disintegrating
the enemy forces, we try to convince them that our revolutionary cause
is just and that they can join it or stop fighting it. However, we do
not take it against them if they return to their enemy units and we
capture them again from the enemy side.
We must encourage anti-imperialist and democratic elements, groups and
movements within the reactionary army and police. We must develop secret
cells of the CPP and NDFP among them without their knowing each other as
such. There are several groups of officers and their respective
followers that are opposed to the Arroyo regime and its favorite
officers. We should encourage these anti-Arroyo officers to develop
their political and organizational strength against the Arroyo regime
and not to expose this to the Arroyo favorites until the mass actions
shall have become large enough for them to support these actions openly.
Before then, they must promote within their ranks respect for human
rights and the people's right to free speech and assembly. While we
relate to allies in the military and police, we must have reliable links
and adopt safeguards against counter-intelligence and betrayal. Allies
are independent of us as much as we are independent of them.
As we celebrate the 38th anniversary of the NPA, we do not spend time
discussing whether to resume the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations or not,
because in the first place it is absolutely clear that the Arroyo regime
has scuttled these negotiations and has vowed to destroy the
revolutionary movement. We demand compliance by GRP with all agreements
with the NDFP from The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 to the Oslo joint
statements. And we cannot take lightly and let pass the criminal and
treacherous abduction and probable murder of national and regional
consultants of the NDFP and their staffers, the blacklisting of holders
of NDFP documents of identification and the escalating human rights
violations by the GRP. With all resoluteness and valor, we respond to
the clamor of the people for revolutionary change. We must defeat the
brutal campaigns of the enemy and advance the national democratic
revolution. We are highly confident that we shall win greater victories
in intensifying our tactical offensives and in striving to raise our
people's war to a new and higher level.
III. Prospects of the People's War
So long as imperialism and local reaction persist to oppress and exploit
us, the Filipino people will persevere in the national democratic
revolution through protracted people's war. We will continue to fight
until we win national liberation, realize our democratic rights and
proceed to the socialist revolution. It took our ancestors more than 300
years to attain national unity and liberate themselves from Spanish
colonialism. It will take much less time to achieve national and social
liberation from imperialism and local reaction because of the cumulative
force of history even as this goes through ups and downs and twists and
turns.
The crisis of the world capitalist system and domestic ruling system
inflict intolerable suffering on the Filipino people. But this impels
them to fight back and struggle for national liberation and democracy.
The vow of the Arroyo regime to destroy the revolutionary forces,
especially the NPA, before 2010 will not come true. Instead, before
then, the NPA has ample opportunity to prove the inability of the regime
to rule and has a good chance of causing its downfall. At any rate, we
must intensify the tactical offensives and raise the people's war to a
new and higher level. The crisis conditions are favorable to the growth
in strength and advance of the NPA.
The US-directed policy of neoliberal globalization and the policy of
global war of terror have brought to an unprecedented level the new
world disorder of economic and financial crisis, fascism, racism and
religious bigotry and wars of aggression. In so short a time, since the
US became the sole superpower, it has accelerated the worsening of the
crisis of the world capitalist system. It is floundering in its own
economic, social and political crisis at home and in the quagmire of
Iraq. The struggles of the people for national liberation, democracy and
socialism are clearly resurgent and are resounding throughout the world.
We are confident that the struggle of the proletariat and people of the
world for greater freedom, democracy, social justice and all-round
progress will continue to expand and intensify against imperialism and
reaction. The resurgence of the anti-imperialist and democratic
struggles throughout the world is of great help to the strengthening and
advance of the Philippine revolution. In turn the revolutionary
victories of the Filipino people are contributory to the advance of the
revolutionary struggles of the people of the world. ###
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DAVAO TODAY
Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines
http://www.davaotoday.com
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