Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines
July 1992

Security Problems in Urban Areas

Learning lessons from long experience in the urban underground work since the beginning of the ongoing armed revolution and giving due attention to precision raids and arrests by the enemy in 1988 onwards, the central leadership has issued a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on security for all Party cadres and members since 1989.

Among the problems recognized by the guidelines and instructions are the following:

1. Party cadres and members are far more vulnerable in the cities than in the countryside.

2. There have been several years of laxity in security, rising in the 1983 to 1986 period, further rising in the 1986-87 ceasefire period and onward and still further rising.

3. Party cadres on the manhunt list of the enemy have accumulated in urban areas and are endangering themselves and others by being in contact with former political detainees, as well as personalities, organizations and institutions under probable and certain enemy surveillance.

4. Party cadres on the manhunt list themselves and persons they have been in contact with, places and facilities which they have used are already under surveillance and are practically in boxes of the enemy's intelligence agencies.

5. The precise capture of important Party cadres, documents, equipment and other things prejudices the safety and security of the people and resources and paves the way to further enemy surveillance and action.

6. Modern equipment and facilities (telephones, computers, radio and so on) facilitate our work but if improperly used help the enemy more as they surveil or capture these.

7. The enemy accumulation of information from captured documents in computer discs and on paper as well as from tactical surveillance of fixed points (persons, houses, buildings and public places) used by Party and related personnel give the enemy the basis for its confidence in long-term surveillance.

8. That the enemy has not yet captured all cadres and things already within his knowledge means that he captures some and leaves others as tracers to more cadres and things.

Amidst the practical instructions given to secure the safety of Party and related personnel, the most important instruction is for Party cadres and members on the manhunt list to leave Metro Manila and other urban areas for the countryside in order to cut off the enemy. Other Party cadres and non-Party persons who can work legally in the urban areas can meet them in the countryside whenever necessary.

The biggest number of losses of upper level cadres has been the result of their being captured in urban areas, especially in Metro Manila. Since 1988, more than 100 regional and national level cadres have been captured by the enemy in raids and arrests in urban areas. In spite of this, many Party cadres in the enemy manhunt list have insisted on staying in Metro Manila, except for brief periods of seeming or token compliance with the security guidelines and instructions.

The comprehensive guidelines and instructions have been ignored and violated. The best proof is the continuing capture of such Party cadres and volumes of computer diskettes and documents under their care.

What is needed is a more fundamental criticism of this phenomenon of central staff organs and Party cadres on the enemy manhunt list who stick to Metro Manila and other urban areas. The ideological and political roots of the concentration of central staff organs (including the NPA general command) and Party personnel on the enemy manhunt list must be pulled out. For their own good and for the good of the revolutionary movement and the people, all those unsuitable for Party work in urban areas must be ordered to go to the countryside to help expand and consolidate the mass base. The urban-based staff organs which are more appropriately based in the countryside must be based there.

It is true that since the start of the armed revolution it has been recognized that there must be Party cadres posted in urban areas in order to facilitate communications of the regions with the central leadership and within regions because of the specific archipelagic character of the Philippines. But why is it that, even after the rebuilding of the legal mass organizations and the further development of the united front since the 1980s, Party cadres on the enemy manhunt list are still in charge of work and communications in the urban areas instead of cadres who can work there legally and viably? Why is it that leading and staff organs that should be best positioned in the countryside are based in and elaborated on in the urban areas?

Why should the NPA general command and its central staff organs, which should properly and correctly be in the countryside, be based in Metro Manila? Why is it that exactly at the time that the general command was claiming that all the strategic points of the country had been covered by the people's army, that the number of guerrilla fronts were already enough and that the main point was to build companies and battalions, the NPA general command chose to base itself in Metro Manila?

There is now a dangerous situation which arises from the fact that Party cadres and members are concentrated in urban-based administrative structures, such as the central staff organs and the Party groups in the multilayered national mass organizations. These administrative structures in the urban areas are extremely vulnerable to one fatal blow by the enemy in a general crackdown or to ceaseless piecemeal arrests.

For the long term positive development of the armed revolution, the Party must now withdraw immediately all Party cadres on the enemy manhunt list from the urban areas, streamline the central staff organs in favor of work at the grassroots level, and transfer to the countryside those cadres and organs that properly belong there.

However, it is not enough to transfer cadres on the enemy manhunt list to the countryside. A rectification and reeducation campaign must be carried out among them. They must reaffirm the basic revolutionary principles, line and the strategy and tactics of the Party. They must be disabused of whatever conveniences, habits, thoughts and illusions that have kept them in the urban areas. They must accept that they have to stay in the countryside on a long-term basis in order to contribute to the recovery of lost ground and to expand and consolidate the revolutionary movement.

If they go to the countryside without sufficient rectification and reeducation, they will be dissatisfied with being assigned there, they will contaminate others with the wrong ideas and dissatisfactions that they have and they will soon be back in the urban areas after one more short stint of token compliance with the order to go to the countryside. What the countryside now needs are more cadres who are determined to serve the people and advance the revolutionary cause.