The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today released the following statement:
The December 26 and 27 statements issued by Prof. Jose Ma. Sison, NDFP Panel Chief Political Consultant, have more than sufficiently addressed the December 26 "open letter" of Akbayan party officials Etta Rosales and Walden Bello that disparaged Prof. Sison, the CPP, the NPA and the people's revolutionary struggles through lies and deceit.
To Prof. Sison's statement, we would just like to add and emphasize the following points:
The revolutionary justice system make careful distinction between counterrevolutionaries in words and counterrevolutionaries in deeds. This is a distinction between those who confine themselves to verbal attacks against the revolutionary movement; and those who engage in criminal and fascist acts such as murder, kidnapping for ransom, drug-pushing, large-scale embezzlement that harm the people.
The CPP and the revolutionary forces do battle with counterrevolutionaries in words through ideological and political debate, precisely to expose the latter's reformist and counter- revolutionary essence. This is especially important vis-a-vis persons who pose as progressives.
It is within this field of political and ideological debate that the CPP's official organ Ang Bayan published a diagram in its December 7 issue detailing the international Trotskyite and social democrat linkages of local counterrevolutionary groups.
The CPP makes particular effort to expose and oppose Trotskyism and social democracy. Around the world, these movements pretend to represent the interests of the people, but in reality, act to preserve the prevailing oppressive and exploitative social system. They do this by exerting all effort to oppose the revolutionary struggles of the working class, leading them either to the path of reformism or ultra-"Left" actions. Either way, they do harm to the revolutionary movement.
In the Philippines, these political trends are invariably opposed to people's war even as they are resentful of the fact that revolutionary forces are able to gain substantial victories in conducting legal struggles.
By misrepresenting the December 7 diagram as a "hit list", Akbayan dovetails the psywar ploy of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) which aims to demonize Prof. Sison, the CPP and the NPA and portray them as "terrorists."
Akbayan has consistently been echoing the line of AFP psywar operatives, showing just how closely it has been working with the AFP psywar department in spewing venom against the CPP. Like an AFP spokesman, Etta Rosales, in particular, has been making wild and unsubstantiated accusations against the CPP and NPA. She has made the utterly baseless accusation that the NPA has killed Bayan Muna members, and has in the process shown herself to be in the same league as Gen. Palparan, who has also made such preposterous prevarications in a condemnable attempt to cover up the AFP's responsibility for these killings.
By allowing themselves to serve as instruments of the AFP psywar campaign to conjure up a so-called hit list, Rosales and Bello have likewise allowed themselves to be set up by AFP psywar tacticians as possible sacrificial lambs by the military. The AFP's malevolence is without bounds. Many times in the past, the military has targeted persons opposed to the revolutionary movement, even those without any criminal culpability, in order to put the blame on the CPP and the NPA.
Rosales and Bello should beware of maintaining such dangerous liaisons with the AFP.
