PRESS RELEASE
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines

More NPA offensives to cause more military fractiousness and mutinies — CPP
July 28, 2003

The Communist Party of the Philippines instructed the New People's Army to exploit and exacerbate the fractiousness and mutinies within the miltary by launching more and more tactical offensives against the rotten AFP and the US-Arroyo regime and buying more arms from the AFP.

This instruction was voiced out by CPP spokesman Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal after the 20-hour July 27 mutiny by around 300 junior military officials and enlisted men in Makati City ended with indeterminate negotiations with officials of the Arroyo government.

Rosal also said tongue-in-cheek that NPA forces should not only launch more tactical offensives to wear down the AFP and defeat the Arroyo regime's all-out war of terror but should also buy even more arms from the military since this helps to worsen internal divisions and trigger mutinies within the AFP.

Rosal attibuted the vulnerability of the AFP as well as of the PNP to fractiousness and mutinies "to the rottenness of the entire ruling system which it is hopelessly defending."

Rosal added that "The mutiny of the Magdalo group was bound to fail," Rosal added "because they did not have mass support, they were not fighting for any program in the context of systemic socio-economic-political changes more serious than Honasan's shallow and phoney 'National Recovery Program,' and their reactionary factional links showed on their sleeves."

Rosal also said that is ironic that while they were airing some legitimate grievances against AFP and Arroyo government officials, they also willingly allowed themselves to be used as pawns in the factional strife of reactionary politics. Rosal cited concrete evidences now being uncovered revealing their links with former coup leader and now senator Gregorio Honasan, former senator Juan Ponce Enrile and jailed President Estrada, who have been washing their hands off the responsibility.

Rosal also attributed the Magdalo Group's failure to their wrong methods, their lack of determination to fight and their tendency to capitulate. He said that in the first place holing up in an isolated hotel and surrounding it with explosives for protection "was crazy." Rosal said that "since the farthest they could get to that was to talk, all they got were empty promises."

"The AFP is rotten because its foremost role is to defend the interests of foreign and big business and the local oligarchy against the interest and resistance of the exploited and oppressed people." Rosal added, "and also because its rotten high officials steal from the people and from their own helpless soldiers and send their confused and demoralized soldiers to difficulties and dangers to life-and-limb in fighting a losing war against highly-motivated revolutionary forces with strong mass support, guerrilla-war expertise and mastery of the place."

Rosal said that "as shown by the growth of the NPA in the past years, the protracted people's war is on a correct and winning course, while the AFP is accumulating more and more losses both in the battlefields and in the people's hearts."

He said that "the low morale of AFP soldiers against the high morale of the NPA, the inferiority of US-field manual oriented tactics of the AFP as against the superior guerrilla tactics of the NPA, the absence of support by the people, the corruption and callousness of its officers have all been put out to the open."

Rosal called on the officers and enlisted men of the military and police who want to really change the rotten system to join the revolutionary movement or find ways of cooperating or coordinating with the revolutionary forces. ###

Reference:
Anne Buenaventura
Media Officer
Cellphone Number: +63910-240-3553



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