Advance the People's War!

Armando Liwanag
Chairman
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
March 29, 1995

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, I convey warmest comradely greetings and congratulations to the Red commanders and fighters as well as the Party cadres and members in the New People's Army on the occasion of its 26th anniversary of establishment.

The Filipino people and the Communist Party of the Philippines cherish you for your hard work, fearless struggle and sacrifices. We joyfully celebrate the victories of the NPA in its long history and in the past year.

Victories of the New People's Army

Let me cite your most brilliant achievements in reaffirming basic revolutionary principles, in serving the people, in further strengthening your ranks and in fighting the enemy.

1. You have strengthened your unity by upholding and defending the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which is the revolutionary party of the proletariat under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, and by resolutely pursuing the general line of the people's democratic revolution against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, now chiefly represented by the U.S.-Ramos regime.

2. You have frustrated the major campaigns of the enemy to destroy the NPA under the U.S.-inspired "total war" policy or low-intensity conflict strategy even as these have been assisted by the ultra-Left opportunist currents of premature strategic counteroffensive, urban insurrectionism and militarism and the Right opportunist currents of reformism, capitulationism and liquidationism.

3. You have triumphed in the rectification movement against the opportunist traitors, have overcome the errors, crimes and damage perpetrated by them and have reinvigorated the armed revolutionary movement. You have summed up your experience at various levels, drawing positive and negative lessons, criticizing and repudiating errors and raising your fighting will and capabilities against the enemy.

4. You have firmly followed the line of trusting and relying on the masses and you have put revolutionary politics in command of all your activities, including military training and combat, mass work, production and so on. You have integrated armed struggle, land reform and mass base building, all within the framework of the people's democratic revolution.

5. You have persevered in the strategic line of protracted people's war, which is to encircle the cities from the countryside and accumulate strength until it becomes possible to seize the cities. You have streamlined your organization ad redeployed your units for mass work, carried out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of widening and deepening mass base and have significantly increased the number of tactical offensives nationwide in the past year.

6. You have expanded and consolidated the mass base in scores of guerrilla fronts and hundreds of guerrilla zones, have recovered areas previously lost due to enemy onslaughts and grave errors and have opened new areas for revolutionary work. Your guerrilla fronts cover significant portions of more than 60 provinces and more than 600 municipalities, far beyond the capacity of the reactionary armed forces to occupy and control.

7. You have organized a great number of appointive temporary organs of political power (barrio organizing committees) and people's organizing committees in expansion work and proceeded to organize the elective permanent organs of political power (barrio revolutionary committees), militia and self-defense units and the mass organizations of peasants, workers, youth, women, children and cultural activists in consolidation work.

8. You have mobilized millions of people for their empowerment and social benefit in the course of campaigns for land reform, mass education, higher production, health and sanitation, self-defense, environmental protection and so on. These campaigns are being undertaken by the mass organizations and the organs of political power.

9. You have increased the number of Red fighters and Party members within the NPA by training and tempering them through studies, practical work and struggle. You have also encouraged the cadres and advanced mass activists from the urban-based legal democratic movement to learn from your ranks and the people and to join the armed revolutionary movement.

10. You have become far more self-reliant than ever before by adopting guerrilla warfare and removing the unnecessary and unsustainable costs of prematurely larger military formations and by relying on the contributions of the people, on your own production and on taxation.

Fertile Ground for the People's War

The socio-economic and political crisis of the domestic ruling system is the fertile ground for the growth in strength and advance of all the revolutionary forces. The chronic character of this crisis makes possible and necessary the development of protracted people's war.

The U.S.-Ramos regime viciously opposes and works against national industrialization and land reform. The Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) and other related economic policies of the regime, dictated by the foreign monopolies and their international agencies (IMF, World Bank, WTO and ADB), cannot industrialize the Philippines by the year 2000 but can only aggravate and deepen the agrarian, underdeveloped and semifeudal character of the economy.

The liberalization of investments, trade, foreign exchange and credit in favor of the foreign monopolies and big compradors is further ruining the economy. The growing trade and budgetary deficits, the mounting foreign and local public debt, the sale of state assets (enterprises and land) and dependence on short-term speculative capital from abroad are all manifestations of the bankruptcy of the economy. The claim of investment- led growth by 5.1 percent in 1994 is false and misleading because the GNP is in fact the sum of goods and services without real industrial development and is now puffed up by the estimated income of overseas contract workers, short-term speculative capital, overpriced energy and infrastructure projects, falsified data about increased agricultural production and so on.

The budget of the reactionary government is as absurd and counterproductive as ever, overloaded by debt service, military expenditures, overpricing of supplies and the overcompensation an corruption of the bureaucratic capitalists. The claim of budgetary surplus amounting to 18 billion pesos is false. It is the result of the nonrecurrent revenues from the privatization of state assets, the postponement of expenses for infrastructure and social services, nonpayment of the advances made by the Philippine National Bank and so on. While it uses tax exemptions to benefit the foreign investors, the regime increases the tax burden on the people, especially through the expanded value-added tax and wasted the revenues on debt service, military expenditures and bureaucratic corruption.

The exploitation of the workers and peasants and even the middle social strata is accelerated. The rapidly rising costs of subsistence and production relentlessly cut down their real incomes. The policy of the regime is to press down their incomes, do away with the workers' job security through casualization and even the land tenure and ancestral rights of peasants and ethnic minorities. Accumulated unemployment goes beyond 40 percent. Seventy-six percent of the population fall below the poverty line. There is a general breakdown of social services and infrastructure. The social, economic, political and cultural rights of the people are being suppressed comprehensively.

Millions of people have left the country to become low-paid migrant workers because of deteriorating economic and social conditions. There is a high popular awareness that as a matter of policy the reactionary government pushes the Filipinos to accept low wages abroad and does not protect them in order to make the labor export more saleable and increase the foreign exchange earnings from this. Thus, a giant wave of public outrage has arisen from the unjust execution of Flor Contemplacion in Singapore.

As the socioeconomic crisis worsens, the social unrest spreads and becomes more intense. Thus, since last year, mass protest rallies and strikes have intensified nationwide. Among the issues were the "Philippines 2000", IMF structural adjustment loans, antilabor policies, the oil price hike, the expanded VAT, the GATT issue and the violence of the reactionary state. The social discontent is already so widespread and intense that a wave of mass protests can easily arise from any of so many specific social issues. Under current conditions, the armed revolution can advance.

The class dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeosie and landlord class reigns over the country. The open rule of terror against the working people has persisted in the form of the U.S.-directed total war policy or low-intensity conflict scheme since the fall of the Marcos fascist autocracy. The bourgeois reformists and the special psy-war agents commit a grave offense to the people and the revolutionary movement and support the U.S.-Ramos regime by claiming that there has been democratization since 1986.

Human rights violations are rampant and have become more brutal, especially in the course of base-denial operations or forced mass evacuations in the countryside. Since 1986, more than two million people have become refugees as a result of aerial and ground bombardments and bulldozing. Massacres, selective murders, illegal arrests and detention, torture, arson and looting bave been perpetrated by the military, police and paramilitary forces. These barbarities are a clear manifestation of the crisis of the ruling system and in the inability of the exploiting classes to rule in the old way prior to 1972.

The increasingly conspicuous predominance of the political descendants of the Marcos fascist dictatorship exposes the rottenness of the ruling system. This is accompanied by the persistence of the armed reactionary factions, the rise of military politicians and the growing involvement of military and police officers in criminal syndicates.

The political crisis of the ruling system is bound to take the form of violent contradictions among the reactionaries as the socioeconomic crisis limits the ground for amicable relations among them and as the revolutionary forces carry the people's war forward and the Moro people intensify their own struggle for self-determination.

The crisis of the world capitalist system interacts with and aggravates the crisis of a neocolony like the Philippines. The global crisis of overproduction generated by the use of jobkilling high technology for profit and by the overextended abuse of finance capital is driving the global centers of capitalism to compete with each other and yet unite to further exploit the countries of the third world and the former Soviet bloc. This is pushing the Philippines further into a worse condition of neocolonial underdevelopment.

This crisis of capitalism has already caused a new world disorder which discredits and scatters the attention of the imperialist powers. It favors the development of the people's war in the Philippines and the eventual resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movement on a global scale. The people's war waged by the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines is outstanding and exemplary amidst the new world disorder wrought by monopoly capitalism, neocolonialism and revisionist betrayal of socialism.

Call for the Intensification of the Revolutionary Struggle

The Communist Party of the Philippines calls for the intensification of both the armed revolutionary movement based in the rural areas and the legal democratic movement based in the urban areas. The directive of the Party to the NPA is clear: carry out the rectification movement through to the end and carry forward the people's war through extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of a widening and deepening mass base.

Armed struggle is the principal form of struggle in the people's democratic revolution because it is the way by which the oppressors and exploiters of the people are overthrown and democratic power of the people is established. Social revolution is impossible without the people's democratic power, replacing the state of the exploiting classes.

At the same time, it is absolutely necessary to advance the urban-based legal democratic movement. It is the way to arouse, organize and mobilize the people on a wide scale. The mass protest actions and strikes are the most potent weapon of the legal democratic movement so long as these adhere to the national democratic line and is based on solid mass organizing.

The forthcoming legislative and local elections are a farce, a variety show staged by the reactionaries for conjuring the illusion of democracy. These elections limit the electorate to a choice of personalities and factions that will continue to oppress and exploit them.

As a matter of principle, the revolutionary forces can neither participate in these elections nor entertain the question of participating in them or not, as if participation were a real choice. In fact, the reactionaries ban the revolutionary forces from participation. However, without proclaiming participation, the revolutionary forces can oppose the reactionary candidates and support the relatively patriotic and progressive candidates in approriate ways in accordance with the CPP's united front policy.

The formal negotiations of the NDFP and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines, which is scheduled to open on June 1 in Brussels, Belgium, provide the revolutionary forces with one more specific form of legal struggle through the duly-authorized NDFP negotiating panel.

In the course of these negotiations, the NDFP negotiating panel is duty-bound to pursue the line for national liberation and democracy as the line for a just and lasting peace. There should be no presumption that these negotiations are by themselves the way to a just and lasting peace. The NDFP negotiating panel must resolutely uphold, defend and advance the position of the revolutionary forces and frustrate the attempts of the GRP to spread false illusions and undermine the revolutionary movement.

The NDFP confronts the GRP across the table on equal legal terms in a foreign neutral venue and under "mutually acceptable principles" and "no precondition which negates the character and purposes of peace negotiations (no surrender in principle and in fact). The revolutionary forces and the people must intensify their mass struggles in order to push the basic demands for national liberation and democracy and strengthen the position of the NDFP in the negotiations.

I am confident that the New People's Army will be able to raise its fighting will and capabilities to a new and higher level and win ever greater victories in mass work and guerrilla warfare in order to advance the people's war in the year ahead.

Long live the New People's Army!

Pursue the correct revolutionary line set by the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the Filipino people and the Philippine revolution!