MESSAGE TO NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FRONT ON ITS 30TH ANNIVERSARY
April 24, 1973-2003

Ka Liga Salaknil
Cordillera People's Democratic Front Spokesperson
April 24, 2003

The Cordillera Peoples Democratic Front extends its warmest greetings to the National Democratic Front on its 30th anniversary today.

The NDF was founded on April 24, 1973, several months after the US-Marcos regime imposed open terrorist rule amidst the worsening economic and political crises, and promptly raised a 10-point program of struggle to rally the entire Filipino people and build a broad united front against the fascist dictatorship.

The NDF and its affiliate revolutionary organizations, including the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Party-led New People's Army, steadily grew during its first decade amidst the perseverance in armed struggle in the rural areas, and in working underground as well as at the forefront of a reinvigorated legal democratic movement. Its 10-point program was gradually fleshed out in the course of struggles against the enemy, as well as the various interactions within the broadening united front.

It was towards the end of this period that the revolutionary forces in the Cordillera region began to build the Cordillera Peoples Democratic Front and decided to affiliate the CPDF with the NDF. The Cordillera peoples enthusiastically welcomed the NDF's explicit and consistent stand on respecting the rights of national minorities, especially their right to self-determination and ancestral land.

The NDF's second decade, from 1983 to 1993, was a period of rapid growth of the forces rallying under its flag, on one hand, but it proved to be an unsustainable growth marred by disorientation in line and program, deterioration of its solid mass base, and confusion in organizational questions. The CPDF was equally affected by the internal crisis, even as we have had to address the reactionary state's deceptive schemes on ancestral land, regional autonomy, and other indigenous peoples' rights by trying to consolidate and elaborate our own program.

But thanks to the rectification movement led by the Party and the perseverance of all revolutionary forces in people's war and united front principles, the NDF's third decade from 1993 to the present proved to be most fruitful-- with unprecedented advances in all its affiliate organizations, terroritorial coverage, and major lines of work. Its 12-Point Program and Constitution, adopted in 1994 and ratified by all its 12 allied organizations by November 1995, represents a historic reiteration of the correctness of the line of national democratic revolution. We salute the CPP, NPA, and all revolutionary mass organizations within the NDF, for the innumerable gains we have accumulated in struggle, including the setbacks we have overcome, by hewing to and reaffirming the correct line and program through the past 30 years.

The CPDF is thus more confident than ever in playing a major role within the ranks of the NDF, and in joining hands with other revolutionary forces nationwide, within the region, and especially with organizations based among national minority peoples, to advance further the national democratic revolution from one victory to the next.

Long live the National Democratic Front!

Onward with the national democratic revolution!

Further expand and consolidate the united front for people's war!###

Back to top