Amado Guerrero

July 30, 1970

VIII. The Present Puppet Republic of the Philippines

By waging a people's war and building a people's army against the Japanese fascists and their puppets, the Communist Party of the Philippines achieved the status of being a powerful instrument of the Filipino people and the position of being able to play a significant role in Philippine history. Before U.S. imperialism landed its troops in Luzon, the Hukbalahap under the leadership of the Party had liberated almost the entire region of Central Luzon, had organized provincial and municipal governments and had dispatched armed units to Manila and Southern Luzon.

There was however no ideological and political preparation against the return of U.S. imperialism and the reimposition of feudalism in the countryside. Consistently acting as the instrument of U.S. imperialism within the Party, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs harped on loyalty to the U.S. government and the puppet commonwealth government and hoped to engage in parliamentary struggle under the dispensation of these monsters. Yet, U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes were determined to attack the Party, the people's army and the people with real bullets as well as with sugar-coated ones.

Misled by the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs, the Hukbalahap welcomed the U.S. imperialist troops that marched through Central Luzon from Lingayen in 1945. Some units of the people's army fought together with the U.S. imperialist troops in dislodging the Japanese troops from the Floridablanca airfields but were surprised when after the battle the U.S. troops turned their guns on them and disarmed them. In Manila, the imperialist aggressors also disarmed and turned back units of the Hukbalahap that had preceded them. Squadron 77, a unit of the people's army, was massacred in Malolos, Bulacan while on its way from Manila after having been disarmed.

To suppress the Filipino people, U.S. imperialism put together under its Military Police Command its USAFFE puppets and the erstwhile pro-Japanese Philippine Constabulary. It encouraged the traitor landlords to take back full control over the lands that they had left during the war, to demand rent arrears from the peasants and to organize private armed gangs, then known as the civilian guards, to enforce their class rule in coordination with the military police. In their attempt to dissolve the provincial and municipal governments established by the Party and people's army, the U.S. imperialists and the landlords unleashed a campaign of white terror against the people. The general headquarters of the Hukbalahap in San Fernando, Pampanga was raided by the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps. Mass arrests and imprisonment of Party cadres, Red fighters and common people were made all over Central Luzon. Massacres, assassinations, torture and other forms of atrocities were perpetrated by the military police and civilian guards.

So incensed were the people that they wanted to fight back and continue the people's war. But the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs insisted on the line that the people were tired of war and that a campaign for "democratic peace" was called for. The hidden traitors within the Party hailed the fake independence promised by U.S. imperialism in their desire to occupy high positions in the puppet reactionary government. So the headquarters of the Party was moved out of the countryside to the city. They organized the Democratic Alliance so that it could help U.S. imperialism put up a sham republic. They converted the Hukbalahap into the Huk Veterans' League and thus put the people at the mercy of the enemy. The people's committees, tempered by the anti-fascist war, were turned into mere chapters of a legal peasant association and these were used to spread the false illusion that land reform could fall from the palms of the enemy.

The bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs regarded as top item in its agenda of parliamentary struggle the question of turning the Communist Party through the Democratic alliance into a mere adjunct of either the Nacionalista Party or the Liberal Party in the 1946 elections. It chose to put the Democratic Alliance on the side of the Nacionalista Party against the Liberal Party, which had only been recently a mere faction of the Nacionalista Party. There was no basic difference between the Liberal Party and its mother party.

Osmena, the presidential candidate of the Nacionalista Party, had in his capacity as president of the puppet commonwealth government participated in absolving Roxas, the founder of the Liberal Party, of the charge of pro-Japanese collaboration. In accordance with the orders of his imperialist masters, Osmena convened the prewar Congress the majority of whose members had become pro-Japanese collaborators during the war. This assemblage of traitors elected Roxas, the former top rice collector of the Japanese imperial army, to the position of Senate president, a position from which he could challenge the puppet leadership of Osmena. This puppet Congress even collected backpay services it had rendered to the Japanese fascists.

1. The Roxas Puppet Regime, 1946-48

As predetermined by the heavy financial and propaganda support extended by U.S. imperialism to his electoral campaign, Manuel Roxas was elected as the last president of the puppet commonwealth government in April 1946. He became automatically the first president of the puppet republic of the Philippines upon the proclamation of nominal independence on July 4, 1946. His imperialist masters favored him because he could be threatened with prosecution for his pro-Japanese collaboration and he could therefore be bound to bat for the unequal treaties that they wanted to extort in return for a general amnesty exculpating him and others of the ruling classes from the charge of treason.

The newly-established Liberal Party prevailed in the reactionary elections over the Nacionalista Party but, despite the fraud and terrorism perpetrated by the military police and civilian guards, six congressional candidates in Central Luzon and three senatorial candidates who had run under the DA-NP alliance and who were known to be opposed to the unequal treaties being prepared by U.S. imperialism won. Their number was enough to prevent a three-fourths majority necessary for ratifying treaties in Congress and so they were prevented from taking their seats in Congress on the first day of its session on the trumped-up charge of committing electoral fraud and terrorism in Central Luzon.

On the very day that the sham independence of the Philippines was granted and the puppet republic was inaugurated under a proclamation enacted by a foreign government, the puppet president Roxas had to sign the U.S.-R.P. Treaty of General Relations nullifying Philippine independence. This treaty empowered the U.S. government to retain its supreme authority over extensive military bases which it could expand at will, guaranteed the property rights of U.S. corporations and citizens as being equal to those of Filipino corporations and citizens and put Philippine foreign relations under U.S. government direction.

Under the Roxas puppet regime, other major treaties and agreements were made to elaborate on the basic colonial subservience of the Philippines to U.S. imperialism. These were the Property Act, the Bell Trade Act, the U.S.-R.P. Military Bases Treaty, and the U.S.-R.P. Military Assistance Pact. The Property Act provided that all real estate and other property acquired by the U.S. government or its agencies before and after July 4, 1946 would be respected. The Bell Trade Act explicitly required the Parity Amendment in the colonial constitution to enable the U.S. monopolies to plunder at will Philippine natural resources and operate public utilities, prolonged free trade relations between the Philippines and the United States and placed Philippine tariff and peso currency under U.S. dictation. The U.S.-R.P. Military Bases Treaty gave to U.S. imperialism extraterritorial rights for 99 years in U.S. military bases at more than twenty strategic points in the Philippines. The U.S.-R.P. Military Assistance Pact provided for continued U.S. control over the local reactionary armed forces through the JUSMAG which would advise and lend or sell weapons and other equipment to them.

The Tydings Rehabilitation Act required the ratification of the Bell Trade Act, with the Parity Amendment, before the U.S. government would pay war damage claims exceeding $500. Also, the Vogelback Treaty turning over U.S. war surplus property to the Philippine puppet government made it an obligation for the latter to accept the Bell Trade Act and other unequal treaties. When the war damage payments were made, these went mostly to the U. S. monopolies, the comprador big bourgeoisie, the landlord class, the bureaucrat capitalists and religious organizations. In the disposition of the U.S. war surplus property, there was rampant graft and corruption similar to that in the disposition of relief goods during the Osmena puppet regime.

Aside from being responsible for the imposition of unequal treaties upon the Filipino nation, the Roxas puppet regime was responsible for the extremely vicious attacks against the peasant masses which were intended to strengthen landlord power in the countryside. The Maliwalu massacre and the Masico massacre were some of these heinous crimes. And yet, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs persisted on the line of bourgeois parliamentarism. It caused the Pambansang Kaisahan ng mga Magbubukid to submit a memorandum to Roxas begging for land reform, the dissolution of the civilian guards and the recognition of the right of peasants to bear arms for self-defense. The tricks of the shyster were being employed in a life-and-death struggle instead of implementing a firm policy of arousing and mobilizing the people for revolutionary armed struggle.

The most blatant act of obsequiousness perpetrated by the bourgeois gang of the Lavas and Tarucs was its support for the "pacification" campaign launched by the Roxas puppet regime against the Party, the army and the people. Party cadres were put under the custody of the military police and went around asking the people to lay down their arms. This act of sabotage of the Lavas and Tarucs cost the lives of so many people, cadres and Red fighters. The Lavas and Tarucs spread the lie among cadres that the "pacification" campaign was a mere speaking tour. It was in fact a campaign of terror against the people, the Party and the people's army. Workers in the city and peasants in the countryside fell victims to this campaign.

The people could not be cowed. They were eager to defend themselves and as a matter of fact did so in a spontaneous way against the depredations of the enemy. But every time they raised a clamor for armed revolution, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs would seize the initiative within the Communist Party and pretend to respond to the clamor. In 1947, it removed Pedro Castro as general secretary on the ground that he proposed to convert the Party into an open mass party on an equal footing with the Nacionalista Party and the Liberal Party. But in his place it put Jorge Frianeza who was even worse because he openly advocated all-round cooperation with the Roxas puppet regime notwithstanding the brazen acts of fascist terror against the Party, the army and the people.

Knowing no bounds in its hatred of the people, Roxas' puppet regime outlawed the Hukbalahap and the Pambansang Kaisahan ng mga Magbubukid by presidential edict on March 6, 1948. On behalf of U.S. imperialism and the local reactionary classes, the Roxas puppet regime never hesitated to attack the people.

2. The Quirino Puppet Regime, 1948-53

After the death of Roxas in April 1948, Elpidio Quirino who was then his vice-president served the rest of the presidential term. Fearing the onrush of the revolutionary mass movement, Quirino acted to inveigle the people with an offer of amnesty to the Hukbalahap and a pledge to reinstate and pay the back salaries of the Democratic Alliance congressmen who had been ousted in 1946. The principal condition set for the granting of such concessions was the surrender of arms and the registration of the Red fighters of the Hukbalahap.

Even as the Party leadership represented by Jorge Frianeza had been removed in May 1948 due to its rightist support for the Roxas puppet regime, the Party leadership now represented by Jose Lava allowed the traitor Luis Taruc in June 1948 to discuss the sell-out of the revolution to the Quirino puppet regime. The flimsy excuse peddled within the Party was that Taruc would merely make use of the negotiations to make propaganda. The surrender negotiations turned out to be propaganda in favor of the enemy. When an amnesty agreement was reached and Taruc reclaimed his seat in the reactionary Congress, the troops and secret agents of the Philippine Constabulary were allowed to mingle with the Red fighters of the Hukbalahap and enjoyed safe conduct in the barrios of Central Luzon. The most reliable cadres of the Party were exposed to the enemy who came to facilitate the surrender of arms and the registration of Red fighters.

The Taruc-Quirino amnesty agreement did not even last for two months. Even as the reactionary armed forces were once more ferociously attacking the people, the Jose Lava leadership again made a mockery of the revolutionary integrity of the Party in December 1948 when it prepared a memorandum for the Committee on Un-Filipino Activities (CUFA) which was read by Mariano Balgos, posing as the Party general secretary. The submission of the memorandum was another act of conceding to the authority of the reactionaries. Furthermore, the text of the memorandum contained such counterrevolutionary views as that the Party would always continue to support the colonial constitution of the reactionary government and that the new-democratic revolution would have a capitalist basis.

In 1949, the Jose Lava leadership repeated the counterrevolutionary practice of directly participating in the puppet elections by campaigning for a particular reactionary faction and becoming a tail thereof. It supported Laurel against Quirino, that is to say, the Nacionalista Party against the Liberal Party. It obscured the dark record of Laurel as the top puppet of Japanese imperialism and ballyhooed him as a nationalist and a democrat. While Quirino campaigned on a platform of complete loyalty to U.S. imperialism, Laurel declared lamely that like Roxas his puppetry to Japanese imperialism had also been a form of loyalty to U.S. imperialism with the secret blessings of Quezon. At any rate, Quirino employed fraud and terrorism to ensure the electoral defeat of Laurel.

After the 1949 elections, the Jose Lava leadership took the line that it could seize power within two years and for this purpose prepared a timetable of military operations and rapid recruitment into the Party. Without relying mainly on the strength of the Party and the people's army and without rectifying a long period of unprincipled compromises with U.S. imperialism and the local reactionaries, the Jose Lava leadership considered as basic factors for the victory of the Philippine Revolution such external conditions as the "certainty" of a third world war, the economic recession in the United States and the liberation of the Chinese people. Within the Philippines, it overestimated the struggle between Quirino and Laurel as a basic factor for the advance of the revolutionary mass movement. In January 1950, the adventurist line of quick military victory was formally put forward by the Jose Lava leadership through resolutions of the Party Political Bureau.

All units of the people's army were ordered to make simultaneous attacks on provincial capitals, cities and enemy camps on March 29, August 26 and November 7, 1950. The attacks of March 29 and August 26 were executed. But these overextended the strength of the people's army. On October 18, the enemy counterattacked by raiding all central offices of the Party in Manila, arresting among others the Politburo-In led by Jose Lava. Subsequently, campaigns of encirclement and suppression were launched in the countryside against the thinly spread people's army. Overextended lines of supply and communications of the People's Liberation Army became easy targets of the reactionary armed forces. Because of its putschist orientation, the Jose Lava leadership brought the most crushing defeats on the Party and the people's army.

The principal service rendered by the Quirino puppet regime to U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes was the crushing blow it inflicted on the Party and the people's army. The writ of habeas corpus was formally suspended to enable the fascist military led by Ramon Magsaysay to make the most unbridled abuse of democratic rights. The objective conditions for waging a protracted people's war were extremely favorable and yet the Jose Lava leadership chose to exhaust and overextend the revolutionary forces under an adventurist policy. It thwarted the advance of the people's democratic revolution by violating the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism.

Towards the end of the forties, the funds derived by the puppet republic from war damage and rehabilitation payments, relief goods, sale of war surplus materials, expenditures of U.S. military personnel and veterans' payments were already being exhausted by the unrestricted importation of consumption and luxury goods, by public works, by the reconstruction of agricultural mills, offices and palaces of the comprador-landlords and by rampant graft and corruption. Import controls had to be imposed in 1949 to conserve the dollar reserves of the reactionary government. In 1953, an entire system of foreign exchange controls was applied to further put a brake on the depletion of the financial resources of the puppet government.

Taking advantage of the political and economic difficulties of the Philippines, the U.S. government dispatched the Bell Mission to make an economic survey and make recommendations to the Quirino puppet regime. The Bell Mission paved the way for the imposition of the Economic and Technical Assistance Agreement of 1951 which required the placement of U.S. advisers in the strategic offices of the puppet government to ensure the perpetuation of the colonial policy. The newly-established Central Bank, desperately in need of dollars, became a ward of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and other U.S. banks.

In the guise of complying with resolutions of the U.S.-controlled United Nations, the Quirino puppet regime sent expeditionary forces to the Korean War to help U.S. imperialism in its war of aggression against the Korean people in 1950. The representative of the puppet president signed the San Francisco Treaty in 1951 in accordance with the wishes of U.S. imperialism to revive Japanese militarism as its principal partner in Asia. At that time, Japanese monopoly capitalism was being rapidly revived with contracts directly related to the Korean War.

In 1951, the Quirino puppet regime had the U.S.-R.P. Mutual Defense Treaty ratified, allowing the United States to intervene arbitrarily in Philippine affairs under the pretext of mutual protection. In 1953, Quirino signed the agreement extending indefinitely the effectivity of the U.S.-R.P. Military Assistance Pact which was first signed in 1947. Also in 1953 the Agreement Relating to Entry of U.S. Traders and investors was signed, facilitating the entry of U.S. capital and managerial personnel into the Philippines. To the end of his term, Quirino remained a rabid puppet of U.S. imperialism despite the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency was particularly interested in replacing him with Magsaysay as puppet president.

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