Raise the armed revolution to a new and higher level (message of greetings to all comrades)
Armando Liwanag
Chairman
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 1996 On behalf of the Central Committee, I extend warmest greetings of comradeship to all the Party cadres and members on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
We congratulate you for all the victories in the course of the Second Great Rectification Movement. We have expanded and consolidated the mass base for carrying out the national-democratic revolution through protracted people's war. We have the confidence to lead the intensification of guerrilla warfare and the mass movement.
We celebrate our significant successes and allow these to resound. Let there be no room for complacency. Let our successes inspire us to pursue the revolutionary struggle ever more vigorously. Let us constantly improve our style of hard work and arduous struggle. Let us continue to rectify and overcome our errors and shortcomings through comradely criticism and self-criticism. Let us unite more than ever before and work ever harder to carry the Philippine revolution forward.
I. All-Round Achievements of the Party
The Communist Party of the Philippines is stronger than ever before as it continues to win all-round victories in ideology, politics and organization in carrying out the critical and constructive tasks of the rectification movement.
All Party cadres and members adhere to the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They uphold and strive to apply this on the concrete conditions of the Philippines and on the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. They have learned important lessons from the rich accumulation of positive and negative experiences in 28 years of continuous revolutionary struggle.
They have tested and tempered themselves in all-round revolutionary struggle against the imperialists and the local reactionaries as well as against the subjectivists, revisionists and the "Left" and Right opportunists. Using the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method, they have gone repeatedly through the dialectical process of study and practice.
As a result of the Second Great Rectification Movement, the ideological level of the Party's rank and file and their revolutionary commitment of service to the people have risen. At the core of the Party are old and new cadres who have educated and trained themselves in the course of the rectification movement and revolutionary struggle against the enemy.
The Party has stood forthrightly against the modern revisionists and the capitalist-roaders in other countries where socialism had long been betrayed. It has won the respect of proletarian revolutionaries throughout the world by undertaking the rectification movement and by clarifying the Marxist-Leninist position for socialism against modern revisionism in the face of the imperialist ideological and political offensive.
The Second Great Rectification Movement has undergone two major phases. The first is identifying, criticizing and repudiating major errors and shortcomings for which the central leadership has been responsible. The second is dealing with errors and shortcomings arising at the level of specific organs and units, with or without the influence of errors and shortcomings from above.
The dialectical relationship of the two phases has enriched the living study of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The process involves the initiative of both the Central Committee and the lower organs of leadership. The departure of the incorrigible opportunists and liquidationists has enhanced this process. Comradely criticism and self-criticism has been promoted as a scientific method for raising the level of unity and fighting will and capabilities of the entire Party and the people.
Formal Party courses at the primary, intermediate and advanced levels are enthusiastically being undertaken. Party organs and units have taken the basic Party course and regional cadres, the intermediate course. All Party organ and units are being encouraged to move ahead in the reading and study of Marxist-Leninist texts. These texts are being reproduced and circulated, with the use of traditional and modern methods.
All Party cadres and members resolutely and militantly adhere to the general line of new-democratic revolution through protracted people's war in correspondence to the analysis of Philippine society as semicolonial and semifeudal in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution. The proletariat holds the class leadership and the perspective is socialist.
Together with the broad masses of the people, the Party pursues the general political line of struggle for national liberation and democracy to overthrow by armed force the ruling system of the big comprador bourgeoisie and landlord class and defeat its imperialist masters, chiefly US and Japanese imperialism. The Ramos regime is the current chief representative of the ruling system. It is the enemy escalating the oppression and exploitation of the broad masses of the people.
The political line is sharpened by resolute revolutionary struggle not only against the violence and deception perpetrated by the US-Ramos regime but also against "Left" and Right opportunism and the thinly disguised counterrevolutionary line of the renegades and various types of anticommunist petty-bourgeois grouplets that the enemy is using in the anti-CPP psychological warfare in the US-instigated low-intensity conflict.
With the correct ideological and political line, the Party strengthens itself as the advanced detachment of the proletariat and as the vanguard of the Philippine revolution. By leading the New People's Army, the CPP differentiates itself in principle and in practice from all those that pretend to be Left but take a reformist position against the revolutionary movement.
As a result of the rectification movement, the Party cadres and members have widened and deepened the revolutionary mass base, have recovered many of the areas lost because of "Left" and Right opportunist errors and have expanded into new areas. The mass base is more than ever ready for the intensification of guerrilla warfare nationwide. The regional Party committees and the guerrilla front commands can form, train and direct combat units to carry out tactical offensives, using flexible tactics.
Under the guidance of the central leadership and the closer direction of the regional Party committees, the guerrilla front commands can collect accurate information for discovering or creating opportunities for tactical offensives and assign the fighters for the core combat units, rotate them periodically for combat duty and mass work and augment their strength with small units or with fighters who know best the target and the pertinent social, political and physical terrain.
In the course of the rectification movement, the New People's Army has carried out tactical offensives and other armed operations and campaigns in the strategic defense of the people and in securing the advance of revolutionary mass work. In accordance with the demands of the masses, it is high time to raise the level of revolutionary armed struggle within the capabilities of the revolutionary forces and the masses. The NPA must launch only the tactical offensives that they are capable of winning and must let the enemy punch the air when he comes in superior force and there is no way to defeat him.
Land reform is being carried out as the main content of the democratic revolution. The minimum land reform program of rent reduction, elimination of usury, raising of farm wages, improving farm-gate prices and promoting production is being pursued vigorously. It needs to be carried out on a wide scale, especially in new areas as well as in recovered areas where previous gains in land reform have been lost. In only a few areas has land rent been reduced to as low as 10 percent of the crop. In far more areas, the antifeudal struggle need to be revived or even started for the first time.
The preliminary organ of political power, the barrio organizing committee, is a means of rapid expansion, following contact work and social investigation. It initiates the immediate assumption of responsibility by persons appointed and starts the process of consolidation, which entails building the mass organizations and conducting the mass movement in preparation for the regular elected organs of political power and building the local branches of the Party.
Mass campaign are being undertaken to wipe out illiteracy and conduct revolutionary education, organize and mobilize the masses, train the militia and self-defense units, promote production and sideline occupations, collect contributions and taxes, safeguard public health and sanitation, settle disputes among the people and create a healthy cultural life. Depending on the political and security situation, the barrio revolutionary committees can be elected by the representatives of the mass organizations or directly by the local people.
The legal democratic mass movement has developed dramatically since the beginning of the rectification movement. The mass organizations and alliances that take the national and democratic line have expanded and consolidated themselves. They are at the forefront of the struggle against the intensified oppression and exploitation by the US-Ramos regime.
The workers, peasants, urban poor, ethnic minorities, fisherfolk, women, student youth, professionals, patriotic businessmen, religious and other people have engaged in militant mass actions on class and sectoral issues as well as national and international issues. With more Party cadres and members at the grassroots level and doing painstaking mass work in urban and rural areas, the Party has maintained its leadership in the mass movement and has undertaken mass actions and campaigns on a self-reliant basis.
Since 1992, and especially since last year, the Party has demonstrated the growing strength of the organized masses and has debunked the lie of the imperialists, the reactionaries and the reformists that the masses have turned away from the struggle for national liberation and democracy led by the Party.
There is coordination between the revolutionary armed struggle as the main form of struggle for overthrowing the ruling system and the legal struggle as the secondary but indispensable form of struggle for confronting the enemy in his own urban citadels and trunklines. The legal democratic mass movement has energetically broadcast the revolutionary message throughout the country.
Because of the rapid class polarization in the Philippines, the Party can further develop the united front in support of the revolutionary armed struggle against the enemy. The basic alliance of the toiling masses, the alliance of basic revolutionary forces (including the urban petty bourgeoisie) and the alliance of the positive forces (including the middle bourgeoisie) can be strengthened. Further on, the Party can take advantage of the splits among the reactionaries. The objective is to range the broadest array of forces in order to isolate and destroy the power of the enemy.
The Party upholds the organizational principle of democratic centralism. It is centralized leadership based on democracy and democracy guided by centralized leadership. There is both discipline and democracy in opposition to revisionism and liquidationism and to bureaucratism and ultrademocracy.
The Party has recruited many candidates and full members from the ranks of the advanced activists in the mass movement in the urban and rural areas. It has continued to grow in strength on a nationwide scale and is closely linked with the toiling masses of workers and peasants.
An increasing number of Party members and candidates-members from the ranks of workers and educated youth are going to the countryside to serve in the New People's Army or as cadres among the peasant masses in the community. At the same time, the vibrant legal democratic mass movement is testing and tempering an ever growing number of mass activists from the ranks of the workers, peasants, educated youth, women, ethnic minorities and other people and preparing them to become Party candidate-members and full Party members.
The removal of incorrigible opportunists renegades and traitors from the Party has made the Party and mass movement healthy and strong. If they had their way, these scoundrels would have destroyed the Party from within. They would have brought the Party to where they are now -- collaborators of the US-Ramos regime. The correctness of the rectification movement is verified not only by the resounding victories of the Party but also by the flagrant degeneration of the few who have been removed or have removed themselves from the Party.
To let them announce publicly the status of their work, all central staff organs and regional Party organs are enjoined to submit within the next three months to the Central Committee the draft of a communique of five to ten pages reporting on their ideological, political and organizational achievements, major problems already solved or still to be solved, in their respective spheres of responsibility since the start of the Second Great Rectification Movement but especially in the year of 1996. These communiques shall be published in Rebolusyon and Ang Bayan.
II. Bankruptcy and Instability of the Ruling System
The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system continues to deepen and worsen. It provides the fertile ground for the subjective forces of the new democratic revolution to grow in strength. The ever intensifying exploitation and oppression drives the broad masses of the people to wage revolutionary struggle.
The Philippine economy has further deteriorated because of the unbridled rapacity of the foreign monopolies and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. The US-Ramos regime has been extremely servile to the neocolonial and neoliberal dictates of the US, Japan and other imperialists, directly and through such multilateral agencies as the IMF, World Bank and WTO.
The regime's promise to turn the Philippines into a newly- industrializing country by the year 2000 and a "new economic tiger" is patently false. In fact, the policies of trade and investment liberalization, deregulation and privatization prevent industrial development and aggravate the agrarian character and underdevelopment of the country.
Unlike Taiwan and South Korea during the cold war, the Philippines does not protect the investments of the state and domestic private sector, does not carry out land reform and does not have nor use savings to build basic industries. The Philippines is now confronted with a global crisis of overproduction of the low value-added products of export-oriented manufacturing, with reduced consumption in the stagnant industrial capitalist countries and with the export drive of the US in nearly all types of manufactures, including consumer electronics and textile.
The so-called GDP growth rate of more than 5 percent and the GNP of more than 7 percent in the Philippines means neither the industrial development nor any rise in the standard of living. In fact, the bigger the GDP and GNP becomes, the more the exploitation and impoverishment of the overwhelming majority of the people.
These macro-data are bloated by the rising cost of imported goods for local consumption and export-oriented manufacturing, the double counting of export receipts and remittances of overseas contract workers, the big bubble in real estate speculation and private construction, the high cost of importing energy, transport, tele- communications and office computer equipment, the revenues from selling off state assets, bureaucratic corruption and military spending, the rising tax and debt burden, the understatement of the inflation rate and the usual false estimates of gross output in agriculture, industry and services.
There can be no industrial development where the basic industries are not being established but where manufactures are imported in larger proportion than ever before and where land reform is not at all carried out beyond the tokens of the past but where land accumulation has been accelerated by so many old and new devices. Even the infrastructure (roads, bridges and the like) has become rotten and inadequate because funds have gone into far more unproductive spending as cited in pointing to the content of the GDP and the GNP.
Import-dependent manufacturing for domestic consumption and agricultural production (rice, corn, sugar and coconut) are threatened and cut down by import liberalization. The entire service sector, from banking to retail trade, has been opened to 100 percent foreign ownership. The land is open to massive acquisition by foreign and domestic speculators under the signboards of industrial zones, real estate development, integrated forest management agreement (IFMA), the Mining Act of 1995 and so on.
The ever growing foreign trade deficit and foreign debt burden show quickly the bankrupt status of the Philippine economy. The current accounts deficit is actually far bigger than what it appears to be. It is reduced by window-dressing, especially by double counting of the foreign exchange deposits of exporters and overseas contract workers as new nonmerchandise income when these are converted into pesos.
The deterioration of the Philippine economy is reflected in the abuse of a widening range of financial devices, including the following: foreign loans (public and private), local public debt (especially the sale of treasury bills at high interest), conversion of foreign loans into local equity, foreign portfolio investments, privatization of state assets, expanded coverage of the value-added tax, repeated oil price increases and so on. The tax burden is being increased at the expense of the toiling masses and the middle social strata.
The budget of the reactionary government is becoming more ludicrous than ever. Most of the appropriations go to debt service and to the military, police and other coercive apparatuses of the state. The rest are mainly for bureaucratic purposes, including a splurge on office computer equipment. The so-called budgetary surplus in recent years has been created by revenues from the sale of state assets, borrowings from the banks and social security funds and, of course, by the increasing tax burden of the people.
The US-Ramos regime is obsessed with "modernizing" the armed forces and police rather than making any pretense at industrialization or providing social services. Under the cover of appropriating 331 billion pesos for a 15-year period, the regime intends to spend more than 30 billion pesos for "military modernization" within the 1993-1998 period. The money goes mainly to graft-ridden acquisition of weapons, communications equipment, planes and naval vessels, supplied by US companies.
The "social reform agenda" of the US-Ramos regime is a sham. This regime falsifies the data on the social conditions of the people, conceals or minimizes the havoc wrought on their lives by its policies and actions, exaggerates tokens of pretended social concern, and makes false promises. The acknowledgement of any social problem becomes an excuse for channeling public funds for bureaucratic corruption. Brute military force has been used to destroy the homes of the urban poor and to deprive ethnic communities of their land. Even such a huge natural disaster as the lahar overflow from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo becomes an occasion for the officials of the regime to steal billions of pesos.
Unemployment continues to go beyond 40 percent. The prices of basic commodities keep on rising, pulled up by heavier taxation, rising cost of imports and repeated oil price increases. Inflation cuts down the real income of the employed. The impoverishment of the broad masses of the people is accelerated. At the same time, the infrastructure is deteriorating and social spending for education, health and the like is being reduced in favor of military spending.
There is superabundance of urban and rural oddjobbers. The unemployed from both the ranks of the toiling masses and middle social strata, are driven to look for employment abroad. Thus, documented and undocumented overseas contract workers are now nearly ten percent of the total population. Under the "flexible labor policy", dictated by the imperialists, the regime escalates exploitation and oppression of the working people in order to further cheapen labor and thereby to attract foreign investments and overseas labor contracts. Such labor policy corresponds to the policy of preventing national industrialization and land reform.
The ruling system is thoroughly rotten. The people detest the oppressive and corrupt character of all branches of the government. They are also outraged by the fact that all the current key players in reactionary politics, in parties and coalitions, are all descendants and beneficiaries of the US-Marcos regime.
The Aquino regime was merely a passing device to do away with Marcos in person and at the same time to preserve the ruling system. Against the interests of the broad masses of the people, the post-Marcos regimes have reconciled the interests of the political descendants of Marcos and the anti-Marcos reactionaries. General Ramos represents most the continuity of the ruling system under the direction of US imperialism.
The repressive character of the state has sharpened particularly against the workers and peasants, even as the regime tries to conjure the illusion that it is benign and seeks national reconciliation. The objective of the psychological warfare in the US-instigated "low- intensity conflict" strategy is to create the illusion of political stability and democratization, split the patriotic and progressive forces and isolate the revolutionary forces. Thus, the regime has cultivated and handled special agents to pose as Left and to attack the Left.
The political parties and coalitions of the big compradors and landlords unite against the people and the revolutionary movement. But they also compete against each other and tend to weaken and put their own political system in crisis and disarray. The electoral exercises among them do not mean onesidedly the stabilization of the ruling system but also mean the exposure of their severe differences, which the revolutionary movement can take advantage of. The ever worsening socioeconomic crisis generates more bitter rivalry over economic loot and power. And in turn the political crisis aggravates the socioeconomic crisis. These conditions present opportunities for the revolutionary movement to use the armed struggle and the united front to put the ruling system in an even more desperate and hopeless course.
The US-Ramos regime wants to perpetuate itself in power. If Ramos himself cannot stay in power beyond 1998, he is bent on picking his successor and maxim | 