Raise the level of the People's War and achieve All-round Advances

Armando Liwanag
Chairman
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
March 29, 2003

With utmost joy we celebrate the founding of the New People's Army (NPA) by the Communist Party of the Philippines thirty-four years ago on March 29, 1969.

We, the Central Committee of the Party, salute all the Red commanders and fighters. You are steadfast and courageous revolutionaries and we congratulate you for all your victories as a fighting, propaganda, organizing and productive force.

You have made great contributions to the overall victory of the Second Great Rectification Movement since it was launched in 1992. You have scored brilliant victories in accomplishing your tasks in the three-year plan of 1999 to 2002.

Your victories come from your firm commitment to the revolutionary cause, your hard work and relentless struggle and your high sense of self-sacrifice under the correct leadership of the Party and with the active participation and support of the people.

Let us honor our revolutionary martyrs and departed heroes. Let their selflessness and sacrifices inspire us. Let us renew our revolutionary resolve to fight more fiercely for the national and democratic rights and interests of the Filipino people.

Grave crisis besets US imperialism and the Arroyo puppet regime and has rendered them bankrupt, desperate and more exploitative and oppressive than ever before. They are carrying out an all-out war policy against the revolutionary forces and the people and demonizing them as "terrorist".

Our response is to raise the level of our people's war and achieve all-round advances in the entire revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

1. Taking stock of NPA strength

In its 2002 Plenum, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines summed up and analyzed the progress of the NPA since the launching of the Second Great Rectification Movement. In an all-round way, great advances have been made, especially in the course of fulfilling the Three-Year Plan of 1999 to 2002. A solid basis has been laid for raising the people's war to a new and higher level and for achieving greater advances in an all-round way.

As revolutionary party of the proletariat, the CPP leads the NPA. It has strengthened itself ideologically, politically and organizationally through the Second Great Rectification Movement and through steadfast revolutionary struggle.

The general line of new-democratic revolution through protracted people's war is firmly and clearly drawn against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

We have thoroughly criticized and repudiated the "Left" and Right opportunist lines that undermined the NPA during the 1980s and early 1990s and threatened to destroy the Party and the entire revolutionary movement up to the launching of the Second Great Rectification Movement. We have defeated the most vicious attempts of the enemy to wreck the revolutionary movement from within.

We have seen the continuous degeneration and self-discredit of the revisionist renegades and incorrigible opportunists who have exposed themselves as special agents of US imperialism and the local reactionaries, not only as anticommunist propagandists but in certain cases as intelligence agents and armed combatants.

We have strengthened the worker-peasant alliance as the foundation of our revolution. This is the combination of the leading class and main force of the revolution. It unites the working people, comprising more than 90 percent of the Filipino people.

The revolutionary class line requires the strategic line of protracted people's war and ensures the victory of the new-democratic revolution through the development of the people's army in stages over a protracted period of time.

Such a strategic line enables the people's army to accumulate armed strength in the countryside, mainly among the peasant masses, until the revolutionary forces and the people have gained the capability and created the conditions for seizing political power from the city-based enemy. The line enables us to make advances in solving the land problem and fulfilling the democratic content of the revolution. It enables us to expand and consolidate the mass base by building mass organizations and organs of political power.

The NPA has gained armed strength by carrying out intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever deepening and widening mass base. We are now fully developing the early phase of the strategic defensive. We have gained the critical mass of Red fighters for moving towards the middle phase of the strategic defensive.

The NPA has thousands of well-trained and battle-tested Red commanders and fighters, with automatic rifles and other high-powered weapons running into thousands. The number of Red fighters has increased at an annual rate of 10 to 15 percent from 1999 to 2001, up from the previous annual rate of 8 to 9 percent.

The number of our high-powered rifles has also increased by 11 to 16 percent from 1999 to 2001, up from the previous annual rate of 7.1 percent. Despite the significant increase in the number of our firearms, the Red fighters still outnumber the available rifles 3 : 2. This is a huge shortage of firearms relative to the number of trained fighters, not to mention the far bigger number of reserves.

The full-time fighters are augmented by the people's militia, which acts as the revolutionary police and reserve force in the barrios and by the self-defense units consisting of all able-bodied men and women in the mass organizations.

We now have 128 guerrilla fronts that cover some 8000 barrios and significant portions of some 700 to 800 municipalities and cities in more than 90 percent of the provinces nationwide. On the average, 12 barrios per municipality constitute part of a guerrilla front.

Fifty percent of the guerrilla fronts have a total NPA strength of one company and the other 50 percent of less than a company. Most of the fifteen regions designated by the Party have on the average no less than six guerrilla fronts, each with NPA company strength.

In 2001, the enemy chose 12 guerrilla fronts as national priority targets for prolonged campaigns of suppression, characterized by encirclement of each guerrilla front with large numbers of enemy forces and sending into the barrios special operations teams for psy-war and intelligence as well as teams for kill-loot-and-burn operations.

Appropriate to his superior military strength, the enemy military goes on the strategic offensive, tries to encircle the NPA and seeks to "search and destroy" or, in certain selected areas, to "clear, hold, consolidate and develop". But the problem of the enemy forces is that the people hate them as the instrument of the imperialists and the exploiting classes and keep them blind and deaf in relation to the NPA.

Moreover, the NPA has developed a sizeable number of guerrilla fronts. The enemy forces can concentrate on twelve of them but leaves open more than 100 guerrilla fronts to develop. When the enemy military is hell-bent on concentrating and occupying any area, we trade space for time and shift to another area. Then, we launch tactical offensives on exterior lines of the enemy.

The number of guerrilla fronts has stayed at around 128 for two to three years mainly because of the emphasis on consolidation work and not because of the effectiveness of the enemy campaigns of suppression. In fact, in the aftermath of every enemy campaign of suppression, the attendant gross violations of human rights so outrage people that they become more eager than ever before to join the armed revolution.

The mass organizations for workers, peasants, women, youth, cultural activists and children constitute the most solid mass base of the guerrilla fronts. Hundreds of thousands of members are enlisted in such mass organizations. They increased on the average of 19.4 percent annually in the period of 1999 to 2001.

The population under the existing organs of political power constitutes an expanded mass base that runs into millions. Those not yet enlisted in the mass organizations can give various forms of support to the people's army. They can be mobilized to participate in mass actions.

The geographic distribution of guerrilla fronts is relatively well-balanced. Fifty percent of them are in Luzon, 20 percent in the Visayas and 30 percent in Mindanao. The NPA regional commands have seven guerrilla fronts on the average.

As a matter of course, the NPA regional commands and guerrilla fronts are unevenly developed in terms of armed strength, extent of land reform and scale and quality of mass base. The Party has identified which guerrilla fronts are the most developed, less developed and least developed for the purpose of helping those lagging behind to catch up with the more developed ones and raising the overall level of development to a new and higher one.

As the main organization of the Party, the NPA has the highest concentration of Party members. It is the main organization for linking up intimately with the largest number of the toiling masses. It is the most powerful instrument of the Party and the people for seizing political power.

The NPA draws strength mainly from the worker-peasant alliance. Moreover, it draws strength from the alliances of progressive forces, the patriotic forces and the alliances with unstable and unreliable allies in the broadest type of alliance for isolating and defeating the enemy at every given time.

The NPA has the strength to take advantage of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system and to raise the level of the people's war and achieve all-round advances in the new-democratic revolution.

2. Crisis of the US and world capitalist system

The US and its Filipino reactionary puppets boast that it is futile for the Filipino people and revolutionary forces to fight them because supposedly the US is the sole superpower, which is by far the strongest economic and military power. Supposedly, no force on earth can stop it from doing what it wishes.

In fact, US imperialism is rotten to the core. The Filipino people and revolutionary forces can confidently fight it because its economic and financial crisis has deepened and worsened more than ever before since the end of World War II and because its imperialist and terrorist policy of aggression and repression has isolated it.

Among the imperialist countries, the US benefited the most from "free market" globalization. With its high interest and profit rates, the US attracted foreign investments in stocks, bonds and other assets from its own imperialist allies and from the oil producing countries. It used the foreign funds to finance consumerism, unbridled speculation in stock issues and corporate mergers, overseas investments and military production.

The US boasted of its "new economy" as ever growing at full employment but without wage inflation purportedly due to US lead in high technology and, most importantly, due to wage cuts and cutbacks on social spending. In fact, foreign borrowings artificially buoyed up the US economy.

Soon after its peak in 2000, the US "new economy" has fallen abruptly from year to year. Since then, the stock market has been in a protracted free fall, destroying more than USD 8 trillion. Industrial production has declined rapidly and huge corporate scams in stocks, bonds and loans have surfaced. Brief spells of small growth are followed by further downturns.

The US economy is practically bankrupt. It has an outstanding public debt of US$6.4 trillion and a net foreign debt of 2.8 trillion. Its trade deficit is incessantly growing. Its budgetary surplus under the Clinton regime has disappeared and given way to huge budgetary deficits under the Bush regime. This regime is bent on raiding social security funds even after the loss of the pension funds and personal savings used for stock purchases on margin by more than 40 percent of the US families.

And yet the Bush administration is providing the monopoly bourgeoisie with huge tax cuts amounting to US$2.65 trillion over a ten-year period, spending USD 400 billion for the military, engaging in two wars of aggression in quick succession and threatening wars also against Syria, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The Bush regime took advantage of the outpouring of sympathy from people all over the world for the families of victims and the American people in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and immediately used the attacks as pretext for threatening or waging a US war of terror against governments assertive of their independence and against national liberation movements.

In the name of anti-terrorism, the Bush regime is deliberately whipping up war hysteria, pushing fascism and repression on a global scale and actually engaging in military intervention, as in the Philippines, and waging wars of aggression, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, in order to step up war production and to grab sources and supply routes of oil.

Being closely connected with the military industrial complex and oil monopolies, the Bush ruling clique holds the view that by favoring these sectors the US would stimulate not only the US economy but also the entire world capitalist system.

But fattening up these sectors does not generate employment enough to generate increased consumer demand relative to the crisis of overproduction in the US and world capitalist system.

The economic and financial crisis now afflicting all the three centers of global capitalism (the US, Japan and European Union) is breeding the most reactionary trends such as fascism, racism, and aggressive wars. The monopoly bourgeoisie uses the most reactionary arguments to lay the blame on people of color for the crisis and impels fascist, racist and bellicose currents to run high.

The US is the No. 1 imperialist power. The crisis is driving it to grab more economic territories (semicolonies and dependent countries) and to exploit these as sources of raw materials, fields of investment, market, salient points of control and spheres of influence.

The US is the No.1 terrorist power. It is the biggest producer, stockpiler and user of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. It is the only power that has used atom bombs to incinerate city populations, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has used chemical agents to kill and afflict entire communities and poison the environment as in Indochina. It wantonly employs an array of such hideous munitions as cluster bombs, smart bombs, bombs with depleted uranium, etc., against nonmilitary targets, causing widespread death injury, illness and destruction.

It has killed more than 10 million people in wars of aggression since the end of World War II, as in the Korean War (4.5 million Koreans), Vietnam War (6 million Vietnamese) and in the first war of aggression against Iraq (150,000). It has instigated anticommunist massacres, like the killing of 1.5 million Indonesians in 1965. It has caused fratricidal wars, killing more than a million people as in Rwanda and hundreds of thousands as in the Congo and former Yugoslavia.

Through embargoes, the US has caused the death of 1.5 million Iraqis and some 750,000 children. Worst of all, even without any conspicuous act of physical violence, the US imperialists inflict the daily violence of neocolonial exploitation on billions of people from one generation to another.

In the current war of aggression against Iraq, we witness the so-called coalition forces victimizing most of all the Iraqi people and punishing the Iraqi government for asserting national independence. At the same time, we see a significant breach in the alliance of imperialist powers, with the US and Britain conspicuously taking one side and France, Germany and Russia taking another side.

Although generally united against the people of the world and against revolutionary movements, the imperialist powers are driven by the crisis of the world capitalist system to compete with each other more intensely than ever before and to resent the unbridled avarice of the sole superpower in grabbing the lion's share of spoils.

In the first war of aggression against Iraq, the US made its allies pay most of the costs of the war. But it grabbed most of the spoils from the war by imposing on the oil producing countries US military and other contracts, by tightening control over the oil supply to Japan, Europe and other parts of the world and by compelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization to bend to a US-Israel Zionist scheme of domination over Palestine and the Middle East.

The US and Europe collaborated in systematically breaking up the former Yugoslavia. But it is the US that grabbed the most benefit by expanding the NATO according to the US strategic plan and blocking more economical oil pipelines to Central and Western Europe via Russia or the Danube and the Rhine.

From its war of aggression against Afghanistan, the US has gained the ground for further penetrating Central Asia and the Caspian Sea Region and for an oil pipeline via Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea coast and the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Gulf and discouraging others from investments on pipelines to Russia and to China.

In the current war of aggression against Iraq, the US aims to control directly the second largest oil producer in the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) and consequently further control the OPEC, the Middle East and the adjoining regions of Central Asia and Caspian Sea. It also aims to reverse the trend among the OPEC countries to adopt the Euro as the currency of oil transactions in lieu of the US dollar and to punish Iraq for starting the trend in late 2000.

The workers and the oppressed peoples of the world have risen up in huge mass actions to protest against the US imperialist war of aggression against Iraq. These indicate rising conscious opposition and resistance of the people to imperialism. The people of the world have long been seething in anger over the economic and social disasters that monopoly capitalism has unleashed against them.

The major contradictions in the world as those between the imperialists and the oppressed peoples, between the imperialists and governments that assert national independence, among the imperialist powers and between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat in imperialist countries are sharpening. The economic and financial crisis has led to social and political crisis and turbulence on a global scale.

The US struts with hyperpower arrogance, trampling down on the national sovereignty of the peoples of the world and plundering their social wealth. The current political ringleaders of the US monopoly bourgeoisie pontificate that the US can build the biggest empire ever in the history of mankind, by using its overwhelming high-tech military power and taking advantage of the economic and social degradation of the third world and the former Soviet-bloc countries, both of which are now pressed down by foreign debt of US$ 3 trillion.

The US imperialists are using every pretext to pounce upon governments that assert their independence. They are increasingly at loggerheads even with their own imperialist allies and some erstwhile puppet governments. And in the imperialist homegrounds, the proletariat and people are resisting more than ever before.

The Filipino people and revolutionary forces are not at all deceived by promises of the US and its Filipino puppets that economic recovery of the US and the world capitalist system is in sight and that this is the way out from economic depression, mass unemployment and widespread poverty in the Philippines. The US and its puppets are relentlessly aggravating the oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people. Neither are the Filipino people and revolutionary forces intimidated by the technological and military power of US imperialism. They have seen how such power failed in earlier people's wars in Asia, such as those in China, Vietnam and Korea. They themselves have succeeded in thwarting every US scheme to destroy the revolutionary mass movement. They have prevailed over the US-sponsored Marcos fascist dictatorship and the succeeding reactionary regimes.

The US has exposed its impotence by failing in its efforts to destroy a small bandit gang, the Abu Sayyaf, which it created in the 1990s to undermine the Moro National Liberation Front. At any rate, it has used the CIA-organized terrorist gang as the pretext for US military intervention against the revolutionary forces of the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro, particularly the armed forces of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). As it becomes more expansionist and more aggressive, driven as it is by crisis, the US imperialists find themselves increasingly confronted by the resistance of the workers and oppressed peoples, independent governments and their own imperialist rivals.

The armed revolutionary movements in the Philippines, Nepal, India, Turkey, Palestine, Colombia, Venezuela, Iran, Peru and other countries can become stronger and inspire more peoples to take the road of armed revolution. The governments of China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Libya and other countries can in varying degrees assert national independence to oppose US acts of aggression.

Under current and prospective conditions, the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces can intensify the revolutionary armed struggle and aim for the victory of the new-democratic revolution. They are ready to confront and fight every escalation of US military intervention and even an all-out US war of aggression.

They welcome the challenge and opportunity to exact retribution from the imperialists for 1.5 million Filipinos murdered by the US occupation forces from the start of the Filipino-American War in 1899 to the end of the US pacification campaigns in 1913 and to terminate the exploitation and oppression that generations of Filipinos have suffered under US imperialism in more than a century.

3. Worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system

The much worsened crisis of the US and world capitalist system has spelled disaster for the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines. The all-round chronic crisis of the system is rapidly worsening. The exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords have no way out of the crisis.

Under the slogan of "free market" globalization, US imperialism has pointedly prohibited the Philippine puppet state from marshalling public funds to engage in or stimulate national industrial development. It has dictated upon the state to liberalize the entry of foreign capital and goods, to privatize state assets and remove regulations that provide some protection to working people and the environment.

The Philippines does not have any type of goods to sell to the world market other than raw materials and low value-added semimanufactures. All these are in oversupply. More of the same can be exported but at far lower prices. At the same time, the state has opened the Philippine market to the flood of all types of goods, including agricultural staples, to the detriment of local producers.

Despite its comprehensive national resource base and its large population, the Philippines has a lopsided economy due to imperialist and feudal exploitation. It imports a lot of everything: manufactures mainly for consumption, equipment and raw materials for limited processing, a great amount of fuel and luxuries for the upper classes.

The usual annual result is a big increase in the trade deficit and in the foreign debt, which has gone beyond $54 billion. Whenever there is a trade surplus in any exceptional year, it is the result of cutting down imports and local production. Right now, the Arroyo regime is extremely dependent on and beholden to the US because it borrows from US banks a monthly average of US$51.7 million at onerous terms.

The bankruptcy of the Philippine economy is exposed not only by the mounting foreign trade deficits and foreign debt but also by the ever-growing budgetary deficits and local public debt of the reactionary government. Tax and other revenue collection fall far below the rising levels of government expenditures for the most counterproductive purposes.

The fall in state revenues is due to the economic depression, trade liberalization, the previous privatization of government corporations and bureaucratic corruption. Government spending for debt service, the military and police, graft-ridden infrastructure projects, and luxury facilities of the highest government officials is spiralling. Social spending for public education, health care and housing is declining.

The broad masses of the people are outraged by the puffed up figures for production values in the service sector and by the false claims of the regime to a relatively high growth rate of the gross national product. Production has actually broken down because of the high cost of imported inputs and drop in demand due to reduced income.

Bankruptcies and mass layoffs are widespread. Even the regime admits a double-digit rate of unemployment. Real accumulated unemployment runs up to at least 50 percent, if we properly define employment. Incomes for the overwhelming majority of workers and peasants have become inadequate for bare subsistence and have sunk them deeper into indebtedness. Eighty-six percent of the people fall below the poverty line. The majority of women and children suffer from malnutrition.

The toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata suffer soaring prices of basic necessities, rising taxes and increasing fees for such basic social services as water, electricity, public transport and so on. The youth are victimized by the rising costs of education and yet have difficulty getting employment. Women have far less chances of employment in the country than men. Thus, they comprise the majority of Filipinos becoming overseas contract workers.

The lack of economic development and high rate of unemployment have driven ten percent of the population to become overseas contract workers, who are deprived of trade union rights and who are made to accept extremely low wages relative to the wages of citizens of the host country. Women are the most vulnerable to many kinds of abuses, especially when they are recruited as entertainers and menial servants.

The regime does nothing to alleviate the economic and social suffering of the people but goes to the extent of maligning the workers as "terrorists" for exercising their trade union rights and demanding better wage and living conditions. It pays lip service to land reform but is pushing a reclassification of agricultural land to put this beyond the pale of land reform. It is encouraging the further concentration of land in the hands of a few corporations and landlord families.

As the economic and social crisis worsens, so does the political crisis of the ruling system. The rival political factions of the exploiting classes compete more bitterly than ever before as the spoils of power have shrunk. They tend to expose each other more easily in vying for public support amidst social discontent and strife.

Intense political rivalry exists not only between one political party and another or between one coalition and another but also within the ruling and the opposition parties and coalitions. Competition often appears as one among personalities and families of the exploiting classes.

The ruling coalition of Arroyo is so fractious and so riven by competition in corruption that Arroyo herself has been so discredited and isolated for her inability to express any credible policy to alleviate the dismal social conditions. Thus, at the end of the year, she announced that she would no longer run for the presidency in 2004.

Whether she meant what she said or not, the point is that she has been compelled to make an unusual announcement which betrays her weak political position. In fact, the broad united front promoted by the legal democratic forces and oppositionists within and outside her ruling coalition had already proven successful in isolating her because of the puppetry, corruption, incompetence and repressiveness of her regime.

The rivalries of factions among military and police officers reflect those among the reactionary politicians and are a major factor in the worsening political crisis. Military and police officers owe their promotions to their political sponsors and are therefore easily involved in political struggles and at the highest levels in threats of coup and countercoup.

The worst of military and police officers compete in lording over criminal syndicates engaged in gambling, prostitution, drugs, kidnap-for-ransom, smuggling and so on. The most ambitious of them deck themselves out as candidates for the presidency, the Senate and Congress and local executive officers. They get capital for political buildup and electoral campaign from criminal operations.

US intervention in economic, political and military affairs is becoming more and more conspicuous in connection with the Bush policy of "war on terrorism". This capitalizes on and uses as pretext the September 11 attacks in order to further tighten US control of Philippine economic and political affairs and reintroduce US combat troops and military bases in Philippine territory.

Arroyo is a shameless puppet of US imperialism. She is notorious for pushing "free market" globalization and placing pro-US agents (belonging to the shadowy group called AGILE) in the bureaucracy for the purpose of making policies and laws beneficial to the US and US multinational corporations.

The US uses defense secretary Angelo Reyes as her handler. He has pushed her to paralyze and scuttle the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and to declare an all-out war policy against the revolutionary forces. He has also led her to adopt an anti-terrorism law patterned after the USA Patriot Act, accept the Mutual Logistic Support Agreement (MLSA) and allow US troops to engage in combat operations in the Philippines.

Plans are afoot for the amendment of the 1987 constitution of the reactionary government in order to remove the national restrictions on foreign investments and the prohibition of US combat troops and bases in the Philippines.

Speaker Jose de Venecia hopes to become prime minister through the adoption of the parliamentary system by a constituent assembly of the two houses of Congress. But the US is already grooming Reyes to succeed Arroyo. It also prefers the holding of a constitutional convention.

CIA agents and Reyes have been responsible for emboldening the Abu Sayyaf to engage in kidnap-for-ransom and engaging in terrorist bombings in order to justify the participation of US troops in combat operations against the revolutionary forces of the CPP and the MILF.

Reyes has escalated the military campaigns of suppression against the revolutionary forces since 2001, thus continuing under the Arroyo regime the all-out war policy that he pushed under the Estrada regime. He is also responsible for violating the GRP-MILF ceasefire agreement. He is now under the advice of the US CIA psy-war experts to create trouble and then to run for the presidency, presenting himself as the toughie who would restore order.

Arroyo is in full agreement with the US and defense secretary Angelo Reyes in demanding the capitulation of the NDFP. Their common objective is to scuttle the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations upon the certain refusal of the NDFP to capitulate by agreeing to a "final peace agreement" that the GRP has one-sidedly prepared.

To scuttle the peace negotiations between the GRP and the NDFP, the GRP has collaborated with the US government in putting the Party, the NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant in a list of "terrorists" and in campaigning for other governments (Britain, Canada and Australia) and the Council of the European Union to follow suit. The GRP aims to intimidate the NDFP negotiating panel and to render the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations untenable.

Arroyo is following the dictate of US imperialism to further escalate the armed counterrevolution in the name of antiterrorism. She ignores the fact that the prioritized military campaigns of suppression against twelve guerrilla fronts of the NPA since 2001 have failed to stem the advance of the revolutionary movement. She still hopes in vain that she might be able to run for the presidency if she could destroy the New People's Army.

The US and its puppets in the Philippines seem to forget that the armed revolutionary movement gained strength even when the Marcos fascist dictatorship ran for 14 years and benefited from the presence of US military bases for which the puppet regime received huge military supplies and financial assistance.

The US and its puppets are practically compelling the Filipino people and the revolutionary forces to intensify the armed revolution by subjecting them to further repression and threatening them with a new regime of open terror.

The crisis conditions push the imperialists and the local reactionaries to unleash violence. But the same conditions are favorable for the revolutionary forces to intensify the armed revolution.

4. Raise the level of the People's War

It is precisely due to the grave crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system that the US-directed Arroyo regime has desperately adopted an all-out war policy and invited US military intervention, under the guise of a "war on terrorism" in the attempt to terrorize the broad masses of the people.

But in its recent Plenum, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines has drawn up a 3-Year Plan for 2003-2005 to raise the level of the people's war and make all-round advances in the revolution. It has done so after summing up and drawing lessons from the previous 3-Year Plan for 1999-2002, under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and in particular the Second Great Rectification Movement.

The overall objective of the plan is to resolutely combat and defeat the escalating onslaughts of the US-Arroyo regime and to advance the people's democratic revolution to a new and higher level.

The main objectives are:

1. Further expand and intensify the anti-imperialist, antifeudal and antifascist struggle. Isolate and bring down the US-Arroyo regime. Fight the escalating US military intervention and state terrorism.
2. Extend the guerrilla fronts to the majority of municipalities, especially those in the strategic parts of the archipelago. Build the requisites to reach the middle phase of the strategic defensive through further expansion and through heightened attention on the wave upon wave consolidation of every municipality. Intensify guerrilla warfare, expand and increase the tempo of the agrarian revolution, and strengthen the organizational, political, economic, defense and cultural capabilities of the mass base.
3. Uphold the leadership of the Party over the NPA and the armed revolution. Draw the people in the millions to the armed revolution through the united front policy and tactics. Expand and strengthen relations and cooperation with all possible allies.
4. Strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally. Propagate Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Pursue the new-democratic revolution. Carry out a Party recruitment drive with the goal having some hundreds of thousands of Party members.

Build the guerrilla fronts

We must build guerrilla fronts in the majority of municipalities and increase the existing number by 20 percent. We must attain NPA company strength in every guerrilla front. We must consolidate a platoon as center of gravity in every municipality in the guerrilla front.

Regions lagging behind in armed strength must be helped in three ways to catch up: more attention and guidance from the center, more support from the cities with regard to cadres, propaganda and invigoration of the mass movement and conscious support from the strong regions.

In most regions, we must have at least six guerrilla fronts, each with NPA company strength. In each guerrilla front with NPA company strength, we must develop three or more clusters of seven consolidated barrios on favorable terrain.

We must base our expansion on consolidation. We must do well at consolidating and developing the guerrilla fronts in order to produce the political and military strength and capability to build additional guerrilla fronts. At the same time, we must maximize the support from the cities and other urban centers in terms of cadres from the ranks of workers and educated youth, professional and technical expertise and material assistance.

We must pay attention to the joining up of guerrilla fronts and developing back-to-back relations in order to maximize cooperation. We must anticipate the development of stable base areas from the joining up of several guerrilla fronts. We must develop our foothold in every strategic area of every region and every major island. We must identify these strategic areas and report these to higher organs.

A guerrilla front may be divided into guerrilla base area and guerrilla zones. The platoon as center of gravity bases itself in the guerrilla base area. This is the most consolidated area of the guerrilla front because of more intensive mass work within its radius. The platoon or platoons, subdivisible into squads or armed propaganda teams, depending on the situation or objective, are based in the guerrilla zones within the wider radius beyond the guerrilla base area. The guerrilla zones are the less consolidated part of the guerrilla front.

A platoon can initiate the building of a guerrilla front. It conducts mass work, builds and trains the people's militia and undertakes tactical offensives to acquire additional firearms to achieve company strength.

We must monitor and study closely the enemy's Campaign Bantay Laya in order to be able to effectively frustrate it. We must study in detail the experience in any cluster of barrios held for a long time by special operations teams of the enemy, point out the problems and the steps to solve them.

Enlarge and strengthen the people's army

We must develop the platoon as the basic formation. We must be good at leading and operating the platoon as the center of gravity in the guerrilla fronts and regions. Together with the regional Party committee, the regional operational command must have a platoon, oversized platoon or company as the center of gravity at the regional level.

Let us improve our recruitment and training of fighters. We must comply with the requirements of age, politics, organization and mental and physical fitness. We must recruit more workers and educated youth and combine them well with the fighters of peasant origin. Let us train at least 25 percent of our Red fighters to become officers at various levels. We must develop the formal course for officer training.

Let us systematize politico-military training on a wide scale. Let us allot time to conduct regular drills in the course of our work. Let us strengthen the leadership of the Party and conduct lively political work in the army. Let us promote the general political education and the basic Party course, democracy in three fields and promote discipline and team work.

Let us confront the problem of fighters who de-list from the army. We must comply with the standards of recruitment, carry out political work among the fighters, help them to cope with difficulties and problems and combat any condescending attitude towards new recruits.

The Party Central Committee and the Regional Party Committee must pay attention to military affairs. From time to time, we must assess and evaluate military work and questions in order to guide the Party and the army in their concrete tasks, quickly respond to changes in the situation and the actions and tactics of the enemy, and promptly solve problems.

We must study military theory, conduct research and solve problems in strategy and tactics. We must strengthen the system of command. We must revitalize the national and regional operational commands. Priority must be given to planning, training, special operations, intelligence, ordnance, logistics and medical needs.

Let us build the Party branch at the platoon level and the Party group within the squad. The Instruction Bureau should supervise general political education and Party education while the Politico-Military School should conduct politico-military training. Let us hold politico-military conferences more often to exchange views and experiences more extensively.

We must strengthen the system of reporting, summing up and evaluation of tactical offensives. It is of vital importance in propaganda that we report to the people promptly our victories in the battlefield.

The national and regional levels of command must pay attention to key battles, special operations, coordinated operations in accordance with the directives of higher organs, like the CC, PB, MC, EC and the Regional Party Committee.

We must be able to increase the armed strength of the people's army mainly through tactical offensives. To augment these, we can produce certain weapons and we can also purchase them through friends and dealers.

We must seriously form the people's militia as our local police and as an auxiliary and reserve force of the full-time units of the people's army. We can train at least a platoon per barrio in the guerrilla front in police and internal security work.

We must also encourage the mass organizations to form self-defense units and give them training and instruction in methods of surveillance on the enemy and in transport and communications work, in the face of the enemy campaigns of suppression.

We must lay a widespread active intelligence network by mobilizing the masses for this. We must be good at conducting surveillance and identifying the intelligence net of the enemy in order to dismantle it. We must systematize the reporting, analysis, evaluation and consolidation of the information collected.

The people's army must be good at conducting security work, maintaining secrecy and frustrating the schemes and onslaughts of the enemy. We must always be conscious of and observe the rules regarding these. We must avoid being placed on the defensive when the enemy launches his own tactical offensives against us.

We must form units armed city partisans from among Red fighters who have served in the NPA for at least two years and who are knowledgeable about the city to which they are assigned. When not preparing for or carrying out a tactical offensive in the city, the armed city partisans must be based in the countryside.

Intensify tactical offensives

To ensure that the armed revolution is widely and deeply-based among the people, the people's army devotes 90 percent of its time to political work and 10 percent to tactical offensives.

The main platoon, as center of gravity in a guerrilla front, must strive to launch one tactical offensive every three months. For the purpose, prior intelligence work must be undertaken on two to three possible targets. Then we choose the easiest target for attack by ambush or raid. The regional operational commands can directly undertake an average of one tactical offensive every three months by arranging the forces for the ambush or raid or by coordinating offensives for the guerrilla fronts under its command to undertake within the same period. However, no regional army organization or guerrilla front should ever put at risk two-thirds or more of its total armed strength in a single battle.

The platoons assigned to armed propaganda work or mass work must try to carry out a tactical offensive once every four months. The frequency can increase on the basis of previous victories.

The tactical offensives must always be decided and carried out to strengthen the armed revolution as well as to inspire the people to join or support it. Basic tactical offensives must be carried out to seize arms from the enemy and special tactical offensives must be carried out on the basis of appropriate orders of a people's court or an appropriate political authority to arrest or give battle to human rights violators, plunderers and renegades who have incurred blood debts and committed grave malversation of revolutionary funds and other assets.

We must properly deploy the people's army for guerrilla warfare. We must use the tactics of concentration, dispersal and shifting with flexibility. We concentrate a force capable of conducting an offensive. We disperse our force to conduct mass work. We shift our forces to evade the offensive of a superior enemy force.

We must discover through observation and intelligence opportunities for tactical offensives. We can also create such opportunities by inducing the enemy to commit mistakes. In any circumstance, we must plan and carry out only those tactical offensives that we are sure of winning.

Thirty-four years of armed struggle have taught us so many tactics for defeating and disarming parts of the enemy armed forces. We can raid or ambush small enemy units. We may not be able to raid big well fortified camps but we can certainly wait for a small unit to move out of these and come to our ambush point.

We can either wipe out or harass an enemy unit with our small force at a certain point, while we maintain a much bigger force waiting at another point to ambush the reinforcement or investigating unit of the enemy. We can contain or encircle an area with a platoon or company in order to accomplish the tactical offensive or whatever other mission requiring perimeter control of that area.

After we win a number of tactical offensives in an area, the enemy can be expected to unleash his own counteroffensive. It may be of short or long duration. We can evade and circle round an enemy offensive of short duration. We need to shift to another area when the enemy offensive is of long duration and large scale.

As soon as the enemy spreads his forces by trying to occupy too much of a territory, we can choose the weak spots in the same area for our attacks from exterior lines or, when conditions permit, behind enemy lines. The target may be a small detachment, stationary or moving.

The NPA can increase its arms and raise the level of its tactics and technique only by carrying out and winning tactical offensives against the enemy forces. Upon further growth of the NPA, our Red commanders and fighters improve their fighting skills and instruments and attract new recruits that can bring professional and technical expertise useful to the armed revolution.

We must be alert to the US military intervention. We must defend the people as US troops trample down on national sovereignty and the territory of the people's democratic government. We must be ready to fight US military intervention and aggression.

Since its defeat in Indochina, the US has succeeded in attacking and overthrowing foreign governments by using high-tech weaponry and blitzkrieg tactics. Lately, the US wants to use the Philippines as a field for testing and demonstrating its armed strength against a revolutionary movement engaged in protracted people's war.

To fight US imperialism, we have our general line, our strategy and tactics and our rich experience to rely upon. Moreover, we review the victorious revolutionary struggles of the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese comrades and peoples in overcoming US intervention and aggression.

In fighting the enemy, our main policy is to annihilate his forces. At the same time, we have a secondary policy of disintegrating such forces by persuading them to abandon the enemy side or joining the revolutionary side. We must have a special organ and special operatives for putting or developing in place patriotic and progressive elements in the reactionary army and police. We must develop a democratic movement within their ranks. We must have a strategic view in this regard.

In the mass movement, we must pay attention to reaching the soldiers in the reactionary army and their families. We must extend cooperation to victims of abuse by officers, corruption and human rights violations within the reactionary army and police.

We must neutralize the local police and the CAFGU, whenever possible. We must find ways of disarming them without or with little bloodshed. But in the case of the reactionary army, we can use all the tactics necessary to defeat them in the battlefield.

We must treat captured enemy soldiers and police personnel leniently, respect their human rights and accord them humane treatment. We treat them as prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention and its protocols as well as the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.

We may release ordinary soldiers and police as soon as possible. We must detain enemy officers until such time that their government can agree with the NDFP on the ground procedure for safe and orderly release.

Mass work and united front

We must arouse, organize and mobilize the people in their millions. We must do so by conducting painstaking mass work and solid mass organizing as well as by making agreements with allies, sweeping mass propaganda and mobilizations that draw in the masses along the line of the united front.

We must increase our organized mass base by 30 to 40 percent every year in the next three years. We must organize the people in hundreds of thousands in all regions. We must reach a new peak in solid mass organizing.

We must form the barrio organizing committee preparatory to the barrio revolutionary committee, the organizing committees of various types of mass organizations, the mass organizations, the militia, the self-defense units of mass organizations and the Party branches in clusters of barrios and towns.

Every NPA squad must form 15 to 20 organizing groups every month. The organizing groups must develop into full mass organizations in one year and the organizing committees, into full mass organizations in 6 months.

We must strive to maintain a ratio of 3 to 1 in expansion and consolidation. In planning our area work, we must take into account whether the area provides sufficient room for maneuver and a favorable terrain. Mass organizing should be faster in barrios where we previously did work when the problems that compelled us to leave the area are solved.

We must form the barrio organizing committee and as many as possible organizing committees of various types of mass organizations in order to cover the entire barrio and relate to all democratic and progressive elements. The barrio revolutionary committee stands as the organ of people's government elected by representatives of the mass organizations or, when circumstances allow, directly by the people in the barrio.

We must form the municipal committee of any type of mass organization when such mass organization is already organized in 15 to 20 barrios of a municipality. In due course, we can proceed to build committees at the district and provincial levels.

The mass organizations must undertake campaigns in order to mobilize the people for their own benefit and lay the basis for further recruitment and further mobilization. In cooperation with the mass organizations, the armed propaganda teams must carry out widespread political education. More instructors must be trained among the masses. They must be encouraged to creatively use available effective methods and tools of education.

We must expand and invigorate the antifeudal struggle. We must carry forward the minimum land reform program. Let the peasant associations pursue the campaign to reduce land rent, lower interest rates, raise wages of the farm workers, raise prices at the farm gate, raise the wages of the farm workers and increase agricultural production and sideline occupation.

We must combat the return of the land to the landlords, fake cooperatives, land reclassification and crop reclassification, agricultural "globalization", merchant usury, various types of landgrabbing and so on. The reactionary government must be stopped from taking away the land previously granted to or amortized by the former tenants.

We must conduct other types of mass campaigns pertinent to the following: political education, organization, production, health, literacy, culture, self-defense training, human rights, preparedness against natural and man-made disasters and so on. We must bring to the rural areas whatever expertise and assistance we can get from urban areas.

We must strengthen the worker-peasant alliance as the base of the united front for armed revolution. The Party and the NPA must rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, win over the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the contradictions between the enlightened and despotic landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the latter.

Furthermore, we must develop the alliance of progressive forces with the urban petty bourgeoisie, the alliance of patriotic forces with the middle bourgeoisie and the unstable alliance with sections of the reactionary classes against the enemy.

By having our own organized mass base led by the Party, we can avail ourselves of the united front policy and tactics to arouse, organize and mobilize the people in their millions in the fastest way possible. We can thus most effectively coordinate the forces and people in the urban and rural areas.

We must bring about mutual support and assistance between the rural and urban areas. And we must use most effectively legal, semilegal and illegal forms of organizations and struggle for the purpose of expansion and consolidation.

With utmost confidence, let us all work hard and struggle to raise the level of the people's war and achieve all-round advances in the new-democratic revolution. Let us realize the targets of the new Three-Year Plan and score great victories in the next three years. Let us do our best to contribute to the advance of the world proletarian revolution and the broad anti-imperialist movement. ###

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