Fight for national liberation, democracy and peace through protracted people's war

Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
March 29, 2004

With utmost joy, we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of the New People's Army (NPA)by the Communist Party of the Philippines as well as all the brilliant victories won by the Red commanders and fighters. These victories have been won under the correct leadership of the Party and with the militant participation of the broad masses of the Filipino people.

We pay the highest tribute to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes. Their sacrifices and struggles have made the victories of the armed revolution possible. They inspire us to fight more resolutely and more courageously than ever before in order to advance and win complete victory in the national democratic revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

We can achieve national liberation, democracy and peace only by putting an end to US domination over the Philippines and to the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords. We can and must do so by persevering in protracted people's war, guided by the revolutionary party of the working class and reliant on the combined strength of the working class and peasantry.

Global and Domestic Crisis

The crisis of the world capitalist system is worsening. All kinds of goods have been overproduced relative to a global market shrunken by bankruptcies, production cutbacks, mass unemployment and reduction of the people's incomes. The imperialist drive under the "neoliberal" policy of "free market" globalization has accelerated the extraction of superprofits from the working people, the privatization of public assets, the destruction of industries in most countries and the concentration and centralization of capital in the imperialist countries, chiefly the US.

The No. 1 imperialist power, the sole superpower, is conspicuously on the path of decline. It has sunk into a grave economic and financial crisis since 2000. The global and domestic market for its high tech consumer goods and basic industrial products has become constricted. The large US domestic consumer market has been maintained by incurring huge trade deficits and by the inflow of foreign funds. The US has gained notoriety as the NO. 1 debtor of the world. Now, it is vulnerable to capital flight as a result of financial collapses.

The Bush regime continues to use "neoliberal" slogans even as it resorts to "military Keynesianism". It is determined to give tax cuts to the monopoly bourgeoisie, drive down the wage level, cut back on social spending and push further its policy of privatization, liberalization and deregulation. At the same time, it seeks to stimulate the US economy by increasing military contracts for the military-industrial complex. Thus, it has taken advantage of the 9/11 attacks and has adopted the so-called "neoconservative" policy of imposing Pax Americana on the whole world by aggressively using its military supremacy.

But the US can only plunge in economic crisis because high-tech military production cannot generate employment to make up for the huge unemployment resulting from the general industrial decline. The American people are becoming outraged by cutbacks on social spending while the US government pours money into the war machinery and into wars of aggression. A big percentage of the American people robbed of their savings and pension funds as a result of the collapse of the high-tech driven "new economic" bubble in the stock market. The US is at a loss as to how to revive the US market in the face of rising budgetary and trade deficits.

The current global crisis is pushing the sole superpower and other imperialist powers to intensify the oppression and exploitation of the people of the world and to take the road of fascism and war. But the drive of the US to unleash wars of aggression and monopolize the spoils of war is exacerbating the contradictions among the imperialist powers and intensifying their struggle for a redivision of the world. The US has seized the sources and supply routes of oil and gas and other major advantages in connection with the wars against Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. In the last year it has been at loggerheads with France, Germany, Russia and China because it seeks to monopolize the spoils consequent to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The crisis is generating all forms of resistance from the people of the world, in the imperialist countries, in the third world and in the regressive countries. The people have launched militant protest rallies and strikes on a wide scale to oppose imperialism, crisis and war. Some countries and governments are defiantly assertive of national independence in response to excessive impositions of the US and other imperialist powers. Armed revolutionary movements for national liberation are spreading and intensifying. They are progressing in Colombia, Peru, Nepal, India, Philippines, Palestine, Turkey and Iraq, to mention some.

In the Philippines, the rapacity of the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords and their imperialist masters has rendered the semicolonial and semifeudal system hopelessly rotten. All Philippine products for export are in oversupply in the global market. At the same time, foreign consumer goods swamp the local market. Even the local production of staple food is now squeezed by imports. The foreign exchange income of the overseas contract workers is decreasing and is being used for nonproductive purposes.

The economy has plummeted. The budgetary and trade deficits are ceaselessly increasing. The sources of foreign credit have all dried up.

In recent years the Macapagal Arroyo regime has borrowed heavily from the US capital market. But the current rating of the Philippines as an untrustworthy debtor is starting to block this source. The financial crisis of the domestic ruling system is daily worsening, as indicated by the rapid fall in the value of the peso.

The regime is unbridled in aggravating the economic and financial crisis as it rabidly follows the dictates of US imperialism, violates national sovereignty and auctions off the national patrimony. The demand for land reform and national industrialization is ignored. There is no way out of the crisis being offered by the regime. The US is taking advantage of the social and economic crisis to make political and military impositions under the pretext of anti-terrorism and containing China and North Korea.

There is grave discontent among the toiling masses of workers and peasants. They are afflicted by rising unemployment, reduced incomes, soaring prices of basic commodities and the devaluation of the peso. They are victimized by the coercive apparatuses of the state. Thus, they are engaged in widening mass protests and strikes and are intensely desirous of armed revolution. Even the middle social strata are increasingly impoverished and are disgusted with the ruling system. The broad masses of the people are thoroughly disgusted by the puppetry, corruption, mendacity and brutality of the Macapagal Arroyo regime.

Elections and Peace Negotiations

The various factions of the local exploiting classes are now engaged in an electoral contest, from the presidential level downwards. The people cannot expect any significant change for the better from the forthcoming May elections. On the whole, the elections will put into office the political representatives of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class. However, at the national and lower levels of the electoral contest, it is possible to work out alliances for the benefit of the people and their struggle. The relatively more enlightened political leaders know the strength of the revolutionary mass base and they are therefore interested in cooperation and mutual support.

A few progressive parties and candidates outside of the major parties of the exploiting classes are vying for a few seats in the Lower House of Congress. Despite the campaign of slander against them and their lack of campaign funds, they are acknowledged as capable of getting at least 16 per cent of the votes. However, their strength is not sufficient to cause an immediate significant change for the better within the system. They are even in danger of being cheated of the votes that they get from the people . What they can do with certainty is to expose the rottenness of the system and defend the national and democratic rights of the people.

The Macapagal-Arroyo regime has agreed to resume the formal talks in the peace negotiations between the Government of Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines NDFP) within the framework of The Hague Joint Declaration and subsequent agreements on safety and immunity guarantees, on reciprocal working committees and on respect for human rights and international humanitarian law. It is clear in the Oslo Joint Statement that the GRP and NDFP can resume the formal talks because they agree on the principles and premises for undertaking the pertinent effective measures and calling on the US and other governments to remove the names of the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant from the list of "terrorists."

It is timely and urgent for the negotiating parties to operationalize the Joint Monitoring Committee, as required by the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, in the face of rampant human rights violations, and to accelerate the negotiation and agreement on social and economic reforms in the face of the rapidly worsening economic and social crisis. The peace negotiations provide the NDFP and all the revolutionary forces and people to put forward the basic reforms needed to realise national liberation and democracy.

The GRP and NDFP can move towards an alliance and truce through the peace negotiations only if GRP can join the NDFP in a common patriotic stand against the interventionism and interferences of US imperialism in Philippine affairs in general and in the peace negotiations in particular and, if the prospective comprehensive agreements on social and economic reforms and political and constitutional reforms can stop US economic and political domination over the Philippines.

US imperialism is the No. 1 enemy of the Filipino people. It is the chief obstacle to the attainment of national liberation and democracy in the Philippines. It is the principal impediment to a just and lasting peace. The US imperialists seek to perpetuate the poisonous fruits of their aggression against the Filipino people. They are using the pretext of waging war on "terrorism" in order to intimidate the people. They are using the "terrorist" listing in order to blackmail the NDFP and sabotage the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

But US imperialism is actually weakening as it overreaches and seeks to impose its hegemony over the entire people of the world. Its deployable forces are conspicuously being exhausted as they are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its military presence in 140 countries offends so many peoples of the world. The US has plunged itself further into an unprecedented economic and financial crisis by pouring funds into contracts for military production, by building and using the department of homeland security for spying on and scaring the American people and by unleashing wars of aggression and intervention. It is whipping up war hysteria and fascism by pushing the USA Patriot Act as a model of "anti-terrorist" legislation and decree-making by the executive.

Right now, the US is serializing its military presence in the Philippines and laying the ground for reestablishing its military bases by using several pretexts, such training exercises, war on terrorism, civic action, humanitarian work, and so on. But in time to come, the US will have increasing difficulties in giving economic and financial accommodations to its puppet regime in the Philippines in exchange for extraterritorial privileges. Even the political representatives of the exploiting classes are bound to become interested in gaining room for maneuver through good relations with ASEAN, China, Japan and Europe rather than with the US in the main.

But far more important to the Filipino people than any consideration of what the Philippine reactionary government can do in any direction is the continuity and advance of the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war and other forms of mass struggles against US imperialism and the puppet reactionaries. The Filipino people can best uphold, defend and promote their own national and democratic rights and interests through the advance of the armed revolution from one stage to another.

Growth and Advance of the New People's Army

Under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army has benefited comprehensively and profoundly from the critical and creative achievements of the Second Great Rectification Movement. It has learned valuable lessons from its long and rich revolutionary experience. It has acquired strength significant enough for the reactionary state to recognize it as its main protagonist.

To oppose the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the domestic ruling system, the Party has correctly declared the general line of national democratic revolution, under working class leadership and through protracted people's war. Revolutionary politics is in command of the NPA. As a people's army, it serves the people. It arouses, organizes and mobilizes the them. It has built 128 guerrilla fronts all over the country. These involve millions of people and cover significant portions of most provinces and municipalities of the Philippines.The NPA has the people as its inexhaustible source of strength.

The NPA is the main organization of the Party and the people for fighting the enemy and building the organs of political power, for realizing land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution and for building the revolutionary mass base. The NPA is the force for carrying out revolutionary armed struggle as the principal form of struggle. Without this struggle, there is no way for the people to overthrow the reactionary state power of the big compradors and landlords and establish the people's democratic state of workers and peasants.

But the NPA can only grow from small to big and from weak to strong. It can grow in stages, from strategic defensive through the strategic stalemate to the strategic offensive. Thus, it must pursue the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside over a protracted period of time in order to accumulate armed strength until it can seize the cities on a nationwide scale.

In the current stage of strategic defensive, it strives to defeat the enemy by launching tactical offensives. It wages only those battles that it is sure of winning. It exercises flexibility by using the tactics of concentration, dispersal and shifting in accordance with the demands of a war of fluid movement. In this regard, it has waged intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on an ever widening and deepening mass base in order to advance from the early to the middle phase of the strategic defensive.

Now, the NPA is in the process of developing armed units at the regional level. These are mobile and flexible, in relative concentration and closely linked to the masses. They secure the regional Party leadership and regional army command and are capable of frequently deploying a strike force in coordination with the units of one or more guerrilla fronts to concentrate a superior force for annihilating weak parts of the enemy force. They use guerrilla strategy and tactics. They play a key role in the accelerated seizure of weapons from the enemy and in the maturation of the middle phase of the strategic defensive.

Relative to the regional army unit of the NPA as the regional center of gravity, the guerrilla fronts are the relatively dispersed base of the NPA in a particular region. But every guerrilla front retains its previous internal structure, with a center of gravity and dispersed units. The platoon as main guerrilla unit is based in the guerrilla base and the guerrilla squads as secondary guerrilla units are based in the guerrilla zones. The guerrilla front retains its decentralized operations and launches offensives that it can win. It can also be integrated into bigger operational plans undertaken by the regional force.

Cruise missiles and other weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the US military forces are useless against the NPA. Even the planes and artillery their puppet forces are not more useful. However, the enemy can put to effective tactical use night vision goggles, cellphones, trackers, GPS gadgets, bullet proof vests and the like. We have some of these and other ways and means to counter the enemy. But the most effective form of counteraction is to ceaselessly increase our mass base and launch offensives against the enemy as often as possible. We can thus capture his portable gadgets and other equipment.

We must apply materialist dialectics against the enemy in fighting. The enemy forces are never solid and indivisible. They are divided by the archipelago, by the rough terrain on land, by levels of command, by area deployments and by unit or team assignments. The NPA must observe well the exact disposition of the enemy force in order to discover the weak points or create the opportunities for an effective offensive. Whenever an enemy hard point seems to be impregnable, the NPA unit must gather intelligence and study the effective form of offensive.

The NPA conducts basic offensive operations in order to wipe out the enemy forces and seize weapons from them. We must excel at these operations because they are the only way by which the power of the enemy can be destroyed and his armed strength is transferred to our side. At the same time, we must know how to disintegrate the enemy forces. We must treat captives leniently in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and Protocol I and demonstrate that we treat well those who surrender or or rendered incapable of fighting in the course of combat.

We must carry out special offensive operations in order to disrupt enemy military operations, enforce the implementation of revolutionary laws and policies and to arrest or disable the worst of human rights violators, plunderers and merchants of prohibited drugs. As a matter of principle, we arrest for investigation and trial the worst of criminals. We give battle to these only if they are armed and dangerous and we need to ensure the safety of our arresting teams.

Against U.S. Intervention and Aggression

The US is escalating military intervention and offensive operations in the Philippines. Its ultimate objective is to station its troops permanently and reestablish its military bases in the Philippines in order to intimidate and "contain" other countries in East Asia. As of now, US combat troops are being deployed in the battlefield and are asking for a fight with the NPA. We must warn the US to cease and desist from fielding US military forces and violating the national sovereignty of the Filipino people and territorial integrity of the Philippines.

Under international law, the character of the war between the GRP and the people's revolutionary government (represented by the NDFP) is a civil war even as the GRP depends heavily on US indoctrination, training and equipment. However, in the face of current US military intervention, the Filipino people and all revolutionary forces should be ready to fight against a US war of aggression of whatever scale at any time. The aggression can occur at anytime when the US unilaterally believes that it can easily wipe out the NPA or decides that the puppet armed forces are no longer capable of keeping the local ruling system.

To fight and win against a US war of aggression is to render justice to those 1.5 million Filipinos murdered by the US imperialists from the start of the Filipino-American War in 1899 to the end of the pacification campaigns in 1913, to achieve the victory of the new democratic revolution and to contribute to the revolutionary struggle of humanity against imperialism and for national liberation, democracy, socialism and world peace.

In the final analysis, US imperialism is the most brutal protector of the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords. We must either render ineffective US imperialism by defeating its reactionary puppets through civil war or defeat the war of aggression that US imperialism is likely to launch. We must prepare against the worst in order to be able to hope for the best.

The spread and intensification of the people's revolutionary struggles against US imperialism on a global scale can remove or reduce its ability to launch aggression against the Filipino people. We must act in concert with the people of the world. We must contribute the most that we can to the global anti-imperialist struggle. Then we can also hope for the best from the revolutionary struggles of other peoples. Humanity must be freed from the scourge in order to make a new and better world of greater freedom and all-round progress. ###