1. How big is the NPA now compared to when it first started?
   How did the movement attain its present number of guerrilla fronts?



2. Aside from the number of guerrilla fronts throughout the archipelago,
   what else has the Party accomplished after 34 years?



3. How will we persevere in attaining even bigger victories in accordance
   with the call of Armando Liwanag?



4. Why is the revolutionary movement confident of victory?



5. When can we say that the revolutionary movement has attained
   enough strength to achieve victory? What is the measuring stick?
   What scenario do you foresee when such strength is attained?

1. How big is the NPA now compared to when it first started?
How did the movement attain its present number of guerrilla fronts?

The NPA started in 1969 with only 60 fighters and 34 long and short arms.
And it was only operating out of one small district in Tarlac province.

After a few years, the revolutionary movement was able to expand throughout the country. Despite the hardships and errors, the movement has prevailed and is able to operate in more than 70 provinces and establish more than 120 guerrilla fronts nationwide. The people's army operates in all of the major islands of the Philippines.

Among these guerrilla fronts, the smallest has the strength of one army platoon. On the other hand, most are company strength. Those are full-time armed guerrillas. They do not include the people's militia - the reserves of the NPA - those called "fighters by night and peasants by day."

The process of establishing guerrilla fronts has been somewhat difficult because all of the regimes that existed in the Philippines launched cruel counterrevolutionary campaigns against the revolutionary movement. Marcos called his campaigns Oplan Pedro Taga, Oplan Mamamayan, and there was even an Oplan Kadena de Amor in Southern Luzon. Cory had her Oplan Lambat Bitag 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Ramos thought that the NPA had already been defeated, and therefore he shifted his priority to modernizing the military. He had his Campaign Plan Kaisaganaan. During Erap's time - they saw once more that they could not defeat the NPA - they launched Oplan Makabayan. And now, under the GMA regime, the newest - Campaign Plan Bantay Bayan Laya which Defensor now calls Oplan Gordian Knot. Although in the initial phases they had caused difficulties to the NPA, all of these oplans were eventually surmounted, frustrated and defeated by the revolutionary movement.

That was the struggle that the NPA had to go through before it reached its present strength of about 27 battalions. The NPA is also quite spread out throughout the country. More than half of all congressional districts are covered by the more than 120 guerrilla fronts of the NPA and these are bound to increase in the next few years.

Comrades assure that any new counterrevolutionary campaign plan launched by the government will likewise be completely frustrated, because it will have no essential difference from previous ones.TOP

2. Aside from the number of guerrilla fronts throughout the archipelago, what else has the Party accomplished after 34 years?

In 1992, when the 10th Plenum of the Central Committee did a summing-up, it identified problems and reversals in revolutionary work and therefore decided to launch a rectification movement. It was necessary to pinpoint the errors and to rectify them. The leaders and members of the Party that could not accept the rectification movement and refused to recognize the errors, bolted the revolutionary movement. The handful that committed the biggest transgressions against the Party and revolutionary movement and the most active in carrying the erroneous and opportunist line proceeded to betray and sought to split and destroy the Party and the revolutionary movement. But they were frustrated, and they were the ones who disintegrated, eventually became irrelevant and ended up becoming mere special and paid agents and paramilitary forces of the enemy.

The Party and revolutionary movement meanwhile grew more lustrous in the furnace of thoroughgoing rectification and intense struggle against the opportunist renegades. As a result of the reaffirmation of basic principles, it is now stronger ideologically, politically and organizationally.

The NPA is now of higher quality. It has put a stop to military adventurism, which only wrought self-inflicted damage, resulted in gaps in relations with the masses, and invited excessive enemy retaliation. Militarist tendencies and coarseness were wiped out and the NPA grew even closer to the masses. The people's army was deployed according to the strategic line of extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare based on an ever widening and ever deepening mass base.

In urban areas, insurrectionism and reformism were corrected and the mutually supportive nature of revolutionary work in the countryside and cities and between armed and parliamentary struggle were once more put in order in accordance with the framework of protracted people's war and the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside.

The Party has also reached vast areas. It can proudly say that it is today the largest and most consolidated political party nationwide, especially compared to loose, intermittently active and bourgeois political parties that exist only for elections, such as the Lakas-NUCD, LDP and the like. And of course, the Communist Party of the Philippines has a people's army under its firm leadership.

Indications of the presence of the Party can be seen in all places. In the countryside, it is in the people's army, in the Party branches in the localities. In the cities, it is the same. Whenever I am asked about this by our friends in the media, I say, "You can see and feel the presence of communists in the factories, schools, marketplaces, government offices, and even in the churches." And perhaps even in the military camps, you will encounter communists, except that of course, they will not tell you they are communist. The Party operates in all places where there are people to arouse, organize and mobilize, especially among the ranks of the toiling masses and intellectuals. TOP

3. How will we persevere in attaining even bigger victories in accordance with the call of Armando Liwanag?

In the Party's anniversary statement last December 26, it was pointed out that the situation in the Philippines as well as the world is exceedingly favorable for further advancing the revolution. The Party and the revolutionary movement are in an excellent situation to take advantage of these conditions because it is much more consolidated ideologically, politically and organizationally after the completion of the Second Great Rectification Movement in 1998 and after recovering from the damage it sustained as a result of the grave disorientation during the 1980s. In the last three years, it has already continuously made big strides in all leading arenas of revolutionary work.

The Macapagal-Arroyo regime is already thoroughly isolated, because of its excessive puppetry to US imperialism, its repressiveness and its corruption. The Party will lead the campaign to oust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. There are forces who were with us then in ousting Erap that are ready to unite with the revolutionary movement in order to oust the present chief puppet, GMA.

Even if GMA is not ousted through a people's uprising similar to what toppled Marcos and Estrada, the revolutionary movement will take all the steps to ensure her defeat in the 2004 election in the event it pushes through and she still decides to run.

In the meantime, the revolutionary movement will give emphasis to further advancing people's struggles:

• foremost is the peasant struggle for land reform and against the government's anti-peasant policies, such as neo-liberalization which is resulting in greater hardship for them and is destroying the country's agriculture;
• the workers' struggle for a just, living wage and for democratic rights;
• the struggle of the urban poor, lower government employees, youth and students, small professionals;
• the struggle of small and middle entrepreneurs, from hog raisers up to cement manufacturers, who are also being squeezed dry by neo-liberalization and the flooding of the country with the surplus products of the imperialists;
• the people's struggle against the Arroyo regime's corruption, repression and violation of human rights;
• the struggle of patriotic forces against worsening US military intervention in the Philippines.

We will pay greater attention to advancing the armed struggle. This year and in the next succeeding years, one of the principal challenges facing the Party is the strengthening of the people's army in order for it to keep pace with and fulfill the firm demand of the people to intensify tactical offensives against the most detested units of the AFP and the PNP that now wreak havoc in the countryside and punish the hated plunderers, the leading violators of human rights and others who deserve to be meted revolutionary justice.TOP

4. Why is the revolutionary movement confident of victory?

With the guidance of revolutionary theory and as a result of our grasp of history and social conditions, we are confident that the revolutionary movement will achieve victory sooner or later. The process of achieving complete social change is really a protracted one. It is unlike merely changing the president which can be done every four years. And because revolutionaries are conscious of this, they are prepared to be of service no matter how long it takes, even to the point of offering their whole life, and even if it is only the succeeding generations who will be able to fully enjoy the changes effected.

But, in truth, the much awaited victory will not take that long. The Party has been clearly confident even as early as 2000 that-because of the worsening isolation, corruption and collapse of the system on the one hand and the continuous strengthening of the revolutionary movement on the other-the revolutionary struggle in the Philippines will achieve victory within the first decades of the new millennium.

Especially now, the situation is most favorable. If Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is fast digging her own grave in the Philippines, in the international arena, Bush is likewise accelerating recruitment into the anti-imperialist movement as a result of his obsession to wage war on Iraq and others he accuses of being "terrorists."

The Party, the NPA and the revolutionary movement now have a great advantage in being well consolidated. The ranks of the people who embrace the aspirations being championed by the revolutionary movement are rapidly expanding. This is indicated primarily by the further rapid increase in the number of mass organizations and the membership of the Party. Recruitment into the New People's Army is also becoming vigorous not only in the countryside but also in the cities-from the ranks of the youth and students, workers and semi-proletariat. Despite the scare tactics employed on the people and the Arroyo government and mercenary AFP's portrayal of the NPA as "terrorists," many still decide to go to the countryside, to integrate with the masses and the NPA and join their struggle. Still others among them have decided to work fulltime in the armed struggle.

From these indicators alone, we can say that it will not take too long before total victory is achieved.TOP

5. When can we say that the revolutionary movement has attained
enough strength to achieve victory? What is the measuring stick?
What scenario do you foresee when such strength is attained?

The simplest measure is the people's army's achievement of its target to operate in, and for the guerrilla fronts to cover, two-thirds of the total number of municipalities throughout the Philippines, and to have an NPA platoon in each one of them. In this manner, we can attain the critical mass in guerrilla warfare in order to proceed to the strategic stalemate towards the general offensive. We can also consider this a signal for us to start planning for the seizure of political power. Following this, other municipalities will be more easily covered, even those where the enemy is firmly entrenched. By then, bigger formations would of course be needed to overcome the large enemy concentrations, together with launching partisan warfare and people power uprisings and insurrections to shake down the centers of power in the cities.

Of course, it is not only the people's army that will be strong at this time, even the revolutionary mass movement will be strong. If, at the present stage of the strategic defensive of people's war, the people have already been able to replace two presidents through people power, how much more when the revolutionary movement and struggle are at a more developed stage. Did we ever suppose that in 1986, with the revolutionary movement so disoriented, that the people could still be capable of ousting a dictator through a people's uprising? If in 1986 we were not as prepared, in 2000 we had already seen it early on, and we planned and prepared for the ouster of the rotten Estrada regime by means of a new people power uprising. The militant democratic mass movement under the leadership of the Party played a decisive role. We will purposely launch many more of these uprisings until they culminate in a general uprising together with general military offensives and partisan operations of the NPA and the armed populace.TOP

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