Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines
July 1992

The Central Leading and Staff Organs

For a long time, there has been no Party Congress. However, this has been made up for by the holding of plenary conferences of the Central Committee. In the history of other parties engaged in bitter armed struggle, wide time gaps between Party congresses occur due to extreme difficulties posed by the enemy. The ongoing time gap in our case is, at any rate, extraordinary and must be dealt with. Even the plenary meetings of the Central Committee could have been held more frequently under particular circumstances when the Party was confronted by serious problems regarding the conduct of the struggle or important shifts in the situation of general and long-term significance.

But far more disturbing than this time gap is the tendency of certain elements since the early 1980s to disregard and deviate from the basic principles and organizational rules set down by the Party Constitution and Program. The delay in the holding of a Congress may be regarded as a blessing in disguise insofar as the basic principles remain intact and can be reaffirmed by proletarian revolutionary cadres.

It would be utterly disastrous now if, in a Party Congress at any time in the 1980s, certain elements had succeeded in withdrawing the analysis of Philippine society, the antirevisionist critique and the theory of people's war from the Party Constitution and Program. As a matter of fact, these basic documents were invoked by the central leadership in 1985 to defend the Party's line against the attempts to push the line of hastening military victory through the combination of prematurely enlarged armed formations and armed urban uprisings. Ironically at that time, this erroneous line was already resulting in disaster but the reputation of those who pushed this line was high on the basis of the temporary success in their military offensives in a major island in 1981-83.

At any rate, there is another obvious departure from the Party Constitution that has run for so long. The office of the General Secretary, required by the Constitution, has been practically abolished. No leading organ can abolish this office, which is meant by the Constitution to take charge of daily administrative and routine matters on behalf of the central leadership.

Instead, structures revolving around commissions focused on principal lines of work have been created. One result has been the increasingly loosened supervision over and weakening of the basic tasks of organization and education in the Party, something that has become even more widespread in the entire Party when the decision to replicate these structures in the regions was implemented.

Another result has been a proliferation of central staff organs directly under the Central Committee through the Executive Committee. These are meant to assist the central leadership (the Central Committee, Political Bureau and the Executive Committee) and not to hamper, exhaust or ignore it.

But insofar as these central staff organs have increasingly acquired discretion and power, they have become so autonomous that they can either decide on policies on their own without the prior approval of the central leadership; circulate so-called orientation, strategy, program and policy papers under the guise of drafts; and generate long meetings, long papers and issues of controversy with other staff organs (e.g., NOC versus NUFC over slogans and procedural issues) and lower leading organs (NOC versus MR on the issue of national democratic or socialist "orientation" of the workers' movement). The controversial issues and papers are dumped from time to time on the central leadership, or the latter must run after them.

The central leadership assumes responsibility for this bureaucratic state of affairs which victimizes itself. As the daily core of the central leadership, the Executive Committee must issue the timely statements on major public issues, national and international; solve the problems promptly and decisively; run the central staff organs with concise notes of instruction or directives; restore the General Secretariat to take care of daily administrative and routine matters; and streamline the other central staff organs, define the limits of the functions of the staff organs, correct their style of work, transfer to the countryside those staff organs that properly belong there and send to the regions and countryside the excess of urban-based staffers, especially those on the enemy manhunt list.

Whenever a major difference of view or controversy arises between staff organs or between a staff organ and a lower leading organ, the issue should be immediately reported to the Executive Committee and should not be prolonged nor generate long meetings, long papers and disruption of work. Just as the Executive Committee and its executive officers are expected to issue timely guidelines, statements and directives, the central staff organs and lower leading organs must make timely reports and recommendations.

The territorial (interregional) commissions were originally conceived as CC administrative organs, each covering several regions. The 9th plenum of the Central Committee in 1985 converted them into the highest policymaking body within their scope but also pointed out that the commissions must facilitate the flow of reports from the regional committees to the Executive Committee of the Central Committee. In practice, reports from the regions became fewer and farther between and in many ways, the Executive Committee was sealed off from the regions.

The territorial commissions are appointive and should function as staff organs. They must effect the timely exchange of communications between the Executive Committee and the regional committees. They can give the appropriate cover letter, including recommendations, to the EC but they cannot priorly assume that they can make decisions on behalf of any higher leading organ on major issues that involve the question of compliance with the Party's line or not.

The central leading organs, the Military Commission and the Party organization within the New People's Army must see to it that no army command disregards the strategic line of people's war and the comprehensive requirements of people's war. Not even the general command of the New People's Army can generate strategy papers and conferences and make decisions that run counter to or deviate from the strategic line of people's war. The absolute leadership of the Party means that the Party decides the line and well-balanced deployment of Party cadres and resources and ensures the growing participation and support of the people.

At no time should the Party and the masses be "left behind" chasing after the supposedly "independent and separate" initiative of any army command at any level. It is not the case that the Party leadership is the deliberate sluggard, when initiatives that deviate from the strategic line gobble up the cadres and resources for premature and unsustainable bigger military formations and staff. At no time can the Party and the masses catch up with a line that gobbles up cadres and resources in a narrow way and eventually leads to the drastic reduction of mass base and all-round disaster. It is the constant duty of Party cadres and members to assert the basic principles and implement the correct line rather than tail after an erroneous line. The concept of a separate military structure should not also be allowed to lead to the abolition of Party collectives and Party life at any level of the people's army.

Certain elements in staff organs as well as leading organs based in Metro Manila and other cities exaggerate the importance of their urban work by touting the insurrectionist line as the principal way to seize political power irrespective of the development of the people's war and the people's army. The practical consequence has been the dwindling of Party cadres with a good level of education, professional and technical competence who are willing to serve the people in the countryside and join the people's army.

The peasant masses and the countryside do not by themselves produce these cadres. If these cadres are not provided by the urban areas, then the people's war and the people's army will decline and collapse; and the legal progressive mass organizations and the armed city partisans become easy prey for the enemy. Violations of the specific line that the principal character of the urban struggle is legal and defensive can provoke a crackdown by the enemy on the highly vulnerable legal democratic mass organizations and even on the underground staff organs. Without the guerrilla fronts and the rural mass base, where will our city-bred comrades go to pursue revolutionary work if they can no longer work effectively in the urban areas?

The concept of armed urban insurrection should cease to be the rationale for withholding cadres from the countryside in favor of armed city partisan units and urban-based staff organs or the lopsided attention given to recruiting "brave" or "exposed" elements of dubious political commitment into the armed city partisan units.

While central staff organs enjoy a high degree of autonomy, some to the point of independent kingdoms, and lower leading organs have unquestioned political authority over their jurisdiction, there is the wrong notion held by certain elements to deprive the Executive Committee of political authority and to reduce it to being a mere convenor of PB meetings.

The view spread by a certain element that there is no more EC or that the EC lacks political authority can only result in the weakening of the Party and in whipping up centrifugal tendencies like the independent actions by individual leading cadres and certain central staff organs beyond their authority and against central policies and decisions.

The daily core of the central leadership of the Party is the Executive Committee. It can make decisions in accordance with the basic principles in the Constitution and Program and the policies and standing decisions of the higher leading organs. It assumes responsibilities and risks within this frame. If there is no daily core of the central leadership, if the Executive Committee and its officers have no political authority and discretion between meetings of any higher leading organ, then the Party becomes headless and brainless on a daily basis.

Without the daily political authority of the Executive Committee, then it becomes possible for certain elements (including the enemy) to take advantage of the time gaps between meetings of the Political Bureau and the Central Committee. Any disrupter can claim to represent the PB or the CC, to relay PB or CC decisions according to his own peculiar view and to do any mischief against the Party's line because the PB, the CC or the Congress is not yet in session.

It must be understood that there is a series of delegations of powers from the general Party membership to the Congress to the Central Committee, to the Political Bureau and to the Executive Committee; and a series of collective responsibilities from the lower to the higher organ/s and organization/s. The Party Constitution even describes the Executive Committee as a direct organ of the Central Committee. It is superior to any individual member of whatever rank, although it is subordinate to the PB, CC and the Congress.