Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines
July 1992

The Boycott Decisions of 1978 and 1986

The boycott error of 1986 has been rectified but it deserves some attention in this discussion for the purpose of comparing or relating it to other errors. It has been so overstated and drummed up that it has overshadowed the incomparably far bigger and more destructive line of armed urban insurrectionism and military adventurism. Here is a clear case of subjectivism, a gross failure to see all the major errors and evaluate them properly.

Before and after the reestablishment of the Party, the proletarian revolutionary cadres have had an extensive experience in working within the reactionary institutions, organizations and processes. It is permissible and necessary for cadres and Party groups to be assigned to work within the reactionary trade unions, churches, the army of the enemy and so on.

And, of course, certain legal mass organizations even if patriotic and progressive can operate viably and conduct legal political struggle by complying with the requirements of legality. For instance, they cannot declare in their documents that they are for the armed revolution. But neither is it correct for them to gratuitously declare themselves against armed revolution. As a matter of fact they can always assert the sovereign right of the people to decide on what it takes to defend their freedom.

It is not unprincipled for a Party member to have a legal occupation and carry legal documents. Neither is it unprincipled for a Party member or a Red fighter under arrest to retain the services of a lawyer and wage a legal struggle in order to defend his rights and prevent the enemy from doing worse to him.

But the question about Party cadres and Party groups operating in legal political parties and alliances and in the reactionary electoral process aroused bitter debates in the past. Such debates were over the 1978 and 1986 elections called by the Marcos fascist regime. Each time one side was for boycott and another side for participation.

The term boycott was used by the broadest spectrum of antifascist opposition, including the Party and the anti-Marcos reactionaries, to isolate the Marcos regime in the 1981 elections. In the 1984 elections, the Party leadership again referred to its position as boycott and this went along well with the boycott position of the broad antifascist popular movement and most of the anti-Marcos reactionaries. In both 1981 and 1984 elections, the 1978 boycott decision of the Party appeared vindicated. But the 1986 boycott position became problematic because this time, the middle and backward sections of the antifascist movement opted for critical participation. Even among the advanced section of the masses, there was great opposition to the boycott line.

We are most concerned about the bitter internal debates over the 1978 and 1986 elections. An understanding of these leads to a general understanding of the reactionary electoral processes and the correct stand and approach of the Party.

Whenever the issue in the debate is formulated as a choice between boycott and participation, those on the boycott side have the advantage of winning the debate on the simple ground that in the first place, the Party is banned and cannot participate and anyway the electoral process is reactionary on the whole, if not exclusively.

But should the issue always be formulated as a choice between boycott and participation? Cannot the issue be formulated within the Party as one of whether or not the Party deploys Party cadres and groups that are not known as such outside of the Party in order to operate in the reactionary electoral process, promote the national democratic line, attack the enemy and support the progressive side _ be it party, alliance or set of candidates? The Party itself is not participating because it cannot as a matter of revolutionary principle and even if it wants to, it cannot due to the enemy ban on the Party. The Party's own line of armed revolution regards the reactionary elections as farcical. But the Party certainly can do something by way of revolutionary dual tactics through Party cadres and groups that are not publicly known as such.

Revolutionary dual tactics are employed by the Party to reach a greater number of the people and to counteract the enemy's counterrevolutionary dual tactics of misrepresenting the electoral exercise as a democratic one, even if it is actually monopolized either by the reactionary ruling clique or by all the exploiting classes through a multiplicity of bourgeois reactionary parties and is intended to deceive the people into believing that they participate in a democratic process.

In the elections of 1969 and 1971, the Party kept to its antirevisionist line of not considering these reactionary elections as the sole or principal way of achieving revolutionary change or basic reforms and described these as farces on the whole and in essence. But the Party could issue statements on what constitutes the substance of democracy and what makes a truly democratic exercise, promote the national democratic line and encourage the legal progressive forces and candidates to take the patriotic and progressive line.

The central leadership took a decision to boycott the 1978 elections. In the process of making the decision, the leadership of the Manila-Rizal party organization argued for participation but was outvoted and was therefore bound to abide by the decision. But it did not carry out instructions for implementing the boycott. And in the ensuing fullblown struggle with the Executive Committee of the Central Committee, it resorted to secret meetings where committee members who did not agree with it were excluded, continuously refused to follow instructions about organizational arrangements, spread irresponsible talk to undermine the central leadership's credibility and which violated the secrecy of the identities of the Central Committee members, and threatened violence against certain Central Committee members. Hence, disciplinary measures were meted out to the regional leadership.

The central leadership decided to reorganize the Manila-Rizal Party organization. But only a provisional executive committee was formed to replace the Manila-Rizal Party Committee, many of whose members had either been suspended or reassigned. Increasingly, the Executive Committee of the Central Committee tried to run the Party organization and the mass movement in Metro Manila through central staff organs until the regional leadership was completely abolished in 1982.

In the absence of an effective regional leadership, the district Party committees, local Party branches and the community-based mass organizations became neglected and fell into disarray. The disarray in the Party organization in Metro Manila disabled the Party from bringing about the upsurge in the mass movement, participated in by a broad range of political forces. This upsurge had been well signaled by the "noise barrage", which was called on the eve of the 1978 farcical elections for the IBP (interim legislature) and which aside from the noisemaking was accompanied by various forms of street mass actions.

The Party had anticipated this upsurge in 1974 on the basis of advances made among the workers and the youth in that year. There were expectations that the workers and the urban communities would rise up in an unprecedented manner in the last years of the 1970s at the latest, notwithstanding the tendency of some leading cadres in Manila- Rizal to overstress the antifascist struggle and to artificially heat up the street actions. These expectations could not be realized as a consequence of the boycott decision of 1978, the disciplinary actions in 1979 and the inability of the central leadership to build an effective regional Party leadership.

The central staff organs, especially the National Commission on Mass Movements, would promote Metro Manila-based national mass organizations which were then weak but they did not pay sufficient attention to the growth of community organizations and basic Party life at the grassroots level. Their attention and efforts were increasingly devoted to sweeping propaganda, building administrative structures related to the urban-based national mass organizations and coordinating these for mass mobilizations. Thus was laid the ground for bureaucratism.

This kind of bureaucratism involved central staff organs dividing among themselves aspects of work over the mass organizations, acquiring excessive political discretion and developing a unilateral topdown command system. These staff organs became in practice sources of political authority and tended to herd Party cadres and members into the administrative structure of mass organizations. By 1986, Party members were already critical of the existence of "two or three Party centers" in addition to the Executive Committee of the Central Committee.

Basic Party life in communities, factories and other work places would be neglected for a long time. Party cadres and members are piled up in administrative positions and in Party groups at various levels of mass organizations and are lacking in basic Party life at the grassroots level. So, to this day all-round Party life _ ideological, political and organizational remains weak at the basic level.

It was in the 1983-86 period that the Party and progressive urban mass organizations were able to recover significantly due to the powerful antifascist popular current that was let loose by the Aquino assassination. The mass movement in the cities developed in street actions, coordinated campaigns, sweeping propaganda and broad coalition and alliance-building. On the other hand, it had weaknesses in solid organizing, solid work at basic levels, sustained and solid efforts at political education, propaganda and agitation among the masses, and in building up strength in factories, schools and communities. Even at the height of the open movement and struggle in the 1983-86 period, Party activists and members reached only a few thousands among the workers and students and these were thinly spread in small secret Party groups and cells and branches within legal political mass organizations.

The boycott decision of 1978 had resulted in as much damage as, if not even more damage than, the 1986 boycott error. But the latter has been played up by honest elements who seek redress from what they perceive as unjust punishment for circumventing the 1978 boycott decision as well as by other elements who have seized upon the 1986 boycott error to obscure the far more devastating errors in Mindanao and who continue to promote the wrong line that caused the far bigger error _ the ultimate weakening of the revolutionary forces there as early as 1984 and the anti- informer hysteria in 1985-86.

The 1986 boycott was a major tactical error, as correctly described by the central leadership. During the short electoral campaign period, it separated and isolated the advanced section of the masses from the other sections which took the antifascist and anti-Marcos line. There was a failure to recognize that Marcos' cheating in the elections would incite the people to an unprecedented uprising as well as a grave split in the reactionary armed forces. The Party went into a vigorous effort and expense in order to impose its sectarian will on organizations and alliances with a mass and united front character for the duration of the snap presidential elections campaign period.

However, the Party leadership regained its composure and initiative when it called for the nationwide popular resistance in alliance with all the antifascist and anti-Marcos forces immediately after the farcical election exercise.

Nevertheless, there are _ outside the Party _ critics of the boycott error of 1986 who to this day overstate it in order to push their own erroneous lines and agendas but are not being significantly rebuffed by the Party. There are those who claim _ against the incontrovertible facts _ that because of the 1986 boycott error the Party and the progressive mass organizations and alliances were out of the EDSA mass uprising that caused the downfall of Marcos and go so far as to negate the role of the Party and the revolutionary movement in the 1983-86 mass actions and the longer process of undermining and isolating the fascist regime.

In overemphasizing the role of the spontaneous masses and the supposed lack of participation by the revolutionary and legal progressive forces, there are those who stress the role of their own small petty-bourgeois organizations and obscure the role of the U.S. and the Catholic officialdom and the reactionary classes in the making of the mass uprising cum relatively bloodless military mutiny. The fact was that there was a convergence of organized contradictory forces and the spontaneous masses on the widely detested fascist regime.

However, the most fantastic claim is that made by some proponents of urban insurrectionism. They claim that were it not for the boycott error, the revolutionary forces could have brought down the ruling system together with Marcos by leading the spontaneous masses to victory as in Nicaragua in 1979 or at the least there could have been a sharing of power with the Aquino clique, the Reform the AFP Movement (RAM) and the like. They therefore consider the boycott error of 1986 as the biggest error of the Party.

In fact the bigger ideological, political and organizational error had been the erroneous line and the anti-infiltrator hysteria that caused the devastation on the Party and the mass movement in Mindanao in 1985 and afterwards. How could the Party be expected to seize power when the year before the EDSA uprising the revolutionary forces and people in Mindanao were already being ravaged by the logical and real consequences of the erroneous line of urban insurrectionism cum military adventurism? Whether intentional or not, some who have been responsible for the disaster in Mindanao have promoted the wrong line and themselves within the Party by overstating the boycott error of 1986 and obscuring their own far bigger errors.