Celebrate the 34th Anniversary of the Party
Strive to Win Ever Greater Victories!

Armando Liwanag
Chairman
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 2002

On behalf of the Central Committee, I convey warmest greetings of comradeship to all cadres, members and candidate-members of the Communist Party of the Philippines on the occasion of the 34th anniversary of the Party's reestablishment under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

I also extend sincerest greetings of revolutionary unity to all the Red commanders and fighters of the New People's Army, all the revolutionary mass activists, all functionaries in the organs of political power and the broad masses of the people.

Let us celebrate the accumulated and recent victories of the Party and the revolutionary masses. Let us honor our martyrs and heroes. Let us renew our resolve to serve the people and carry forward the Philippine revolution.

Let us strive to win ever greater victories in the new-democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local reactionary classes. Let us sum up our experience, evaluate our strengths and weaknesses and carry out the tasks of the Party as a whole and those of the organs and units to which we belong. Let us raise our revolutionary struggle to a new and higher level.

The daily worsening conditions of crisis are favorable for advancing the Philippine revolution and the world proletarian revolution. Oppression and exploitation drive the broad masses of the people to fight for their rights and interests. The revolutionary parties of the proletariat are called upon to lead the people in revolutionary struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism.

Imperialist crisis and war of terrorism

Since the collapse of the revisionist regimes and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1989-91 period, the US imperialists have carried out a three-pronged offensive, consisting of an ideological offensive proclaiming the end of the socialist cause, an economic offensive using the slogan of "free market" globalization and a politico-military offensive by which the sole superpower seeks to impose Pax America in a new world order. All three prongs have roused the resistance of the proletariat and the people.

The Party has made a major contribution in standing up for socialism against imperialism and modern revisionism through publications and conferences of communist parties. Other parties have listened to our party because they respect the correct Marxist-Leninist line that we take on issues and follow in our work.

The Party has also made a major contribution in removing from the face of monopoly capitalism the veil of "free market" globalization and exposing beyond doubt the ugly reality of an imperialism that is decadent and moribund, convulsed by a deep-seated crisis and given to the worst forms of terrorism, such as wars of aggression and repressive regimes.

The Party has exchanged views and experiences with other parties on the various forms of revolutionary struggle and has encouraged other parties to develop the forms of revolutionary struggle suited to their concrete circumstances. It has taken a special interest in encouraging the preparation and development of people's war, particularly in semifeudal and semicolonial countries.

It is of great importance that since the 1989-91 period, when imperialism gloated over the disintegration of the revisionist regimes and the Soviet Union, the Party has persevered in leading the new-democratic revolution in the Philippines and upholding the historic mission of the proletariat in building socialism.

Now, our Party is among the parties most prepared for and most confident in taking advantage of the rapidly worsening crisis of the entire world capitalist system and leading the revolutionary struggle of the people. The crisis of overproduction and financial collapses are unprecedented. All three centers of global capitalism, the US, Japan and Euroland, are conspicuously crisis-stricken.

The lesser capitalist countries that have some basic industries are more seriously stricken. But the most gravely stricken are the overwhelming majority of countries. These include the semicolonial and semifeudal countries of the third world and the countries that have long retrogressed under revisionist rule and continue to deteriorate even more rapidly under undisguised capitalism.

The rapid extraction of profits from the working class and peoples of the world and the accelerated concentration and centralization of such profits in a few imperialist countries under the slogan of "free market" globalization have served to decrease the income and purchasing power of the working people and to contract the global and national markets.

Since the 1989-91 period, Japan, Germany and the former Soviet-bloc countries have been conspicuously caught in the vise of economic stagnation and prolonged periods of recession. But in most of the 1990s, the US still appeared to be the irrepressible engine of growth that was expected to ultimately pull up the other centers of capitalism and the rest of the world capitalist system.

The US attracted and drew funds from abroad and whipped up an investment boom in US bonds and stocks. It stimulated overproduction in high-tech goods and services. It boasted of a "new economy" supposedly of high growth and high consumption but with no inflation, until the crisis of overproduction hit high-tech goods and services. Since March 2000, the boom has become a protracted bust, reminiscent of the Great Depression.

The solution being offered by the Bush regime to the US and global capitalist crisis is the delivery of more funds to the monopoly firms, especially to those in the military-industrial complex, and the stepping up of war production, under the stimulus of tax exemptions, research and development subsidies and federal government purchase contracts.

Upon the utter failure of "free market" globalization, the Bush regime seeks to find a way out in militarist Keynesianism, pump-priming the economy by stepping up war production and military expenditures. Along this line, the regime is whipping up a hysteria of "war on terrorism", using the September 11 attacks as the license for waging wars of aggression and pushing fascist policies and laws on a global scale.

Within the US itself, the Bush administration is generating jingoism and fascism through the Patriot Act and other so-called anti-terrorist laws. Farther afield, it is spreading the terms of repression among its imperialist allies and puppets in order to facilitate the wars of aggression in which the US merely bombs the civilian population and fixed structures to compel submission of a target state.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the US has used the pretext of going after the Al Qaeda to conquer Afghanistan through a war of aggression. The conquest has enabled the US to acquire control over the sources of oil in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia and over a planned supply route to the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Driven by the same greed for oil, the US has also used the pretext of going after the Abu Sayyaf bandit gang in Basilan island in order to open a "second front" of the so-called war on terrorism in Asia. The real objective of the US imperialists is to strengthen their strategic position in the Philippines and tighten their control over oil and other natural resources in Southeast Asia. It has found the Al Qaeda scare a more convenient pretext than the old China scare.

The world is again on the verge of witnessing a new round of full-scale US war of aggression against Iraq. The objective for the US imperialists is to take direct control over the oil resources of Iraq and to further tighten their control over the Middle East and further humiliate the Palestinian and Arab peoples.

The US imperialists wish to recolonize peoples but also wish to avoid US casualties. Thus they resort to bombing or threatening to bomb civilian communities and infrastructures. This is generating the people's outrage and inciting broader and fiercer popular resistance than ever before.

The oppressed peoples of the world are invoking the right of national liberation and democracy and are resisting the impositions of US hegemony and the intensification of plunder, repression and war. A number of states in the third world are also asserting their national independence, especially because the US has classified them as "rogue" states, as "axis of evil" or as potential rivals.

The US and its imperialist allies are still united in oppressing and exploiting the people in the third world and in retrogressive countries. But Japan and Western Europe are increasingly becoming wary over US unilateral actions to threaten and wage wars and to monopolize oil and other natural resources and to seize markets, fields of investment and strategic points of control.

Within the imperialist countries, there is mass discontent among the workers and petty bourgeoisie who now suffer mass unemployment, reduced wages and erosion of social benefits. Popular resistance is developing against imperialist war and fascism, chauvinism and racism. The monopoly bourgeoisie is trying to obscure its responsibility for the crisis by seeking to split the proletariat and shifting the blame to immigrants and foreign countries. Communist parties in imperialist countries are being challenged to convert imperialist wars into civil wars.

Depression and repression

For so long as it wishes to keep the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in our country, the US-directed Macapagal-Arroyo regime has no way out of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system. The economy is sinking into a prolonged state of depression. And the regime has become ever more repressive in its attempt to silence the people.

The lack of basic industries has become even more pronounced. The only industries there are, that are import-dependent, have all gone into a state of depression. Office and residential towers have become largely vacant since the end of the private construction boom in 1997 when the Southeast Asian financial crisis struck as a result of overborrowing for the production of export-oriented semimanufactures and for real estate speculation.

The raw materials and low value-added semimanufactures that the Philippine economy brings to the world market are globally in oversupply relative to the depressed market. Even as the economy is mainly agrarian, agricultural production has decreased as a result of import liberalization and the high cost of imported agro-chemicals, milling equipment, transport and oil.

Foreign loans needed for covering trade deficits are in short supply. In the meantime, the amount required for debt service keeps on increasing. Like Estrada in the recent past, Macapagal-Arroyo keeps on begging Japan for infrastructure loans in order to be able to show some semblance of economic activity. But such loans in fact further burden the economy as they come with ever-heavier conditionalities and as they are prime target of bureaucratic corruption.

The bankruptcy of the Philippine economy is manifested by the plunging value of the peso in relation to the US dollar, the widening trade and budgetary deficits and the rapid growth of foreign and domestic public debts.

The Macapagal-Arroyo regime is aggravating the exploitation of the toiling masses and the middle social strata. It encourages mass layoffs, rising prices of basic goods and services, sharp reduction of real incomes, the erosion of social benefits and overcharging done by the private owners of public utilities. It considers these as measures necessary for the owners of capital to solve their problems and stabilize the "free market" economy.

The big monopoly capitalist owners of the privatized public utilities in energy and water have amassed huge profits and the consumers are demanding that these utility companies reimburse to them the overcharges. Their services have gone from bad to worse and yet they are demanding the increase of rates to be paid by the consumers. After pretending to threaten the companies with nationalization, the Arroyo regime now collaborates with them on how they can keep their assets and further gouge the consumers.

The grave economic crisis is resulting in seething social discontent. The regime continue to inflame the toiling masses by its disdain for the workers' demand for across the board wage adjustment and the peasants' demand for land reform. Other social sectors are also aggrieved by the disregard for their demands. Discontent is breaking out in the form of sectoral and multisectoral strikes and other mass protests by workers, peasants, fishermen, women, youth, teachers, health workers and other sectors.

The economic crisis has resulted in a severe political crisis. Several factions within the ruling system as well as within the ruling coalition are in bitter rivalry. The national pie available for bureaucratic looting has become so small that the tendency of the ruling clique to monopolize the loot provokes whistle blowing even within the ruling coalition.

Cases of corruption at various levels of the reactionary government have become more rampant and more conspicuous than ever before. Most shocking to the people are the cases of corruption being brought against the presidential couple and those closest to them.

Within the ruling coalition, there is grumbling and a growing view that Ms. Macapagal-Arroyo will have difficulty keeping her office before the 2004 elections or making a creditable run for the presidency in 2004. Vice-president Guingona is open to replacing her before 2004. The De Venecia faction is publicly proposing the adoption of a parliamentary system through constitutional amendment as the gracious way out for Ms Macapagal-Arroyo.

The opposition parties and organizations are now intensifying their campaign to expose anomalies of the regime and to discredit the regime totally. Certain forces that participated in the overthrow of Estrada are making themselves available for a broad united front and a broad mass movement to remove Macapagal-Arroyo from office in 2003.

Even if she is not removed from office by popular uprising, she would become debilitated and isolated before the 2004 elections. Many believe that she has already disqualified herself from public campaigning in 2004 as a result of the extremely brutal military offensives that her regime has launched against the people.

Out of desperation, the regime is following the most brutal dictates of the US and is parroting the Bush slogans of "war on terrorism" and "preemptive strikes". In abject puppetry, the regime has collaborated with the US to violate Philippine national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

It has acceded to the US-RP Mutual Logistical Support Agreement, which comes on top of the US-RP Military Assistance Agreement, the Mutual Defense Pact and the Visiting Forces Agreement. US military forces can enter Philippine territory as they please and occupy any part of it for any length of time under such pretexts as fighting terrorism, training exercises, civic action and what else.

The Bush administration has collaborated with the Arroyo regime in using the so-called anti-terrorist campaign against the CIA-created Abu Sayyaf bandit gang to bring US combat forces into the Philippines and show off US high-tech military equipment. But it has only succeeded in exposing its inability to destroy even such a small gang using the rough and well-foliaged terrain of its native island. The imperialist and puppet troops can only fare worse against the nationwide revolutionary movement led by our Party.

Within the ruling circle of Arroyo, cabinet members in charge of national defense, national security advice and peace negotiations have directed the regime towards repressiveness and bellicosity. They have paralyzed the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and asked the US to put the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant in the US list of terrorists, thereby violating the GRP-NDFP Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees and other joint agreements between the GRP and the NDFP.

They are pushing Macapagal-Arroyo to go berserk on her all-out war policy. They imagine that they can compel the NDFP to capitulate by escalating military and police campaigns of suppression against the workers and peasants and by putting under duress the NDFP negotiators, consultants, staffers and supporters abroad. They are behind the scheme of kidnapping, torturing and murdering local leaders and members of Bayan Muna.

In the meantime, the reactionary armed forces and national police remain fractious as a result of the factional strife among military and police officers who have aligned themselves with various political leaders or who run competing criminal syndicates engaged in smuggling, drugs, gambling, prostitution and the like.

The puppetry and corruption of the ruling reactionary politicians and the military and police officers outrage the people. As more public funds are allocated to the military and police, the people rise in protest against the diversion of funds from public education, health, low-cost housing and the like, especially in the regions outside Metro Manila.

The violations of the economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights of the people are intensifying. The demand of the workers for better wages and living conditions is brutally suppressed. Likewise the peasant demand for land is met with increased military and political campaigns to suppress the land reform being undertaken by the organized masses and the revolutionary forces and to further dispossess the poor peasants and national minorities of their land and communal resources.

The puppetry, incompetence, corruption and brutality of the regime incite the broad masses of the people to rise up. The growing contradictions among the reactionaries indicate to the people that the entire ruling system can be overthrown because it is rotten to the core.

Rising revolutionary mass movement

Since the beginning, our Party has integrated Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the concrete conditions of the Philippines and has thereby correctly set forth the general line of new-democratic revolution through protracted people's war. This line corresponds to the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the ruling system.

We score great political victories when we pursue the general line set by the Party. Otherwise, we incur serious errors and suffer serious setbacks that only a movement of self-criticism and rectification, like the Second Great Rectification Movement, can solve.

We have criticized and repudiated the erroneous line that the Philippines has ceased to be semifeudal -- a false and treacherous assumption as it credits Marcos with having carried out industrial development and land reform. We have thereby rooted out the "Left" opportunist line that urban armed insurrection is the main form of armed struggle as well as the Right opportunist line that legal struggle is the main form of struggle.

We have also criticized and repudiated the erroneous line that the struggle for national liberation has become passe on the erroneous and treasonous assumption that under "free market" globalization the question of national sovereignty is rendered irrelevant by the supposed development of a prosperous borderless global economy.

Through the Second Great Rectification Movement, we have overcome not only the "Left" opportunist errors but also the destructive effects of the bloody crimes perpetrated by the worst of the "Left" opportunists who whipped up anti-informer hysteria to rationalize the failure of their erroneous line as the handiwork of "deep penetration agents".

We have overcome not only the Right opportunist errors but also the schemes of the Right opportunists to liquidate the Party, capitulate to the enemy and drum up reformism and revisionism. The counterrevolutionaries would have wrecked the Party and the entire revolutionary movement had it not been for the rectification movement launched by the Central Committee in 1992.

In the course of our ideological and political struggle against the traitors who were using a confused babble of blatant bourgeois liberalism, Gorbachovite revisionism and Trotskyite petty-bourgeois revolutionism, our Party has strengthened itself ideologically and become recognized as an outstanding defender of the socialist cause and an exemplary leader and fighter for the cause of national liberation and democracy.

The claims of the enemy that we have lost the struggle because there are no more big socialist countries to finance our revolutionary efforts are simply ludicrous. We regard as absurd the shallow misrepresentation of the revisionist regimes as socialist and as sources of inspiration or financial support. As a revolutionary party of the proletariat such as ours, we have long upheld Marxism-Leninism against modern revisionism and have followed the principle of self-reliance in our revolutionary struggle.

We have reasserted in our country the strategic line of protracted people's war, which involves encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating strength until we gain the capability to overthrow the enemy forces in the cities. We have built the New People's Army as the main organization of the people for waging the armed revolution, carrying out the antifeudal struggle and building mass organizations and the organs of democratic power.

Right now, the NPA has a sum total of at least three divisions or nine brigades or 27 battalions of full-time Red fighters with high-powered rifles. These are augmented by tens of thousands in the people's militias and further on by hundreds of thousands in self-defense units of the mass organizations.

Our Red fighters are deployed in 128 guerrilla fronts, which include significant portions of 800 municipalities and 70 provinces. Every guerrilla front has a center of gravity consisting of a platoon or an over-sized platoon within the radius of a few barrios. Relatively more dispersed squads are deployed for mass work and are further divisible into armed propaganda teams. We are resolutely and militantly consolidating and expanding these guerrilla fronts.

We have given stress to the antifeudal struggle because this is the way to fulfill the democratic demand for land among the peasant masses. We reduce land rent, eliminate usury, raise the wages of farm workers (taking into account whether the buyers of labor power are other peasants or are landlords), raise farm-gate prices for the peasants' produce and promote agricultural and sideline occupations. We carry out minimum land reform as we look forward to the maximum land reform program.

We have built organs of political power, from appointed ones to elected ones. At their base, we have built mass organizations of peasants, workers, fishermen, women, youth and cultural activists. Aside from land reform, we have been able to carry out mass movements in production, mass education, self-defense, health and sanitation, cultural work, settling disputes and so forth.

The mass movements that we carry out in the countryside, especially land reform, liberate and empower the peasants who have long been oppressed and exploited. They have encouraged mass activists to come forward in the rural areas and have also attracted cadres and activists from the urban-based mass movement to learn from the peasants and exchange experiences.

The rural-based mass movements and urban-based ones interact with each other and strengthen each other. All revolutionaries are conscious that in case of a fascist crackdown in urban areas, as in the time of Marcos, mass activists can seek refuge by shifting from the urban areas to the countryside and can serve the mass revolutionary mass movement there.

We have developed the mass base and skills for wielding the national united front as a weapon of the armed revolution under the leadership of the working class. The basic alliance of the working class and peasantry constitutes the mass base for both the antifeudal struggle for democracy and the anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation.

By strengthening the basic alliance of the toiling masses, we are in a better position at every step to build the alliance of the progressive forces (which includes the urban petty-bourgeoisie), the alliance of the patriotic forces (which includes the middle bourgeoisie) and the broad united front (which includes sections of the reactionary classes) for the purpose of isolating, weakening and defeating the enemy.

We have twice employed the broad united front to overthrow a ruling clique in the Philippines, the first in the antifascist movement against Marcos and the second in the anticorruption movement against Estrada. We can avail of the broad united front to overthrow the Macapagal-Arroyo ruling clique before 2004 or make it lose the 2004 presidential elections.

It may suffice for a broad united front to use legal means for overthrowing a ruling clique. But it cannot overthrow an entire ruling system. For that, it is necessary for the armed struggle to become the principal form of struggle and to actually destroy the bureaucratic and military machinery of the joint class dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class.

It is absolutely necessary to wage people's war and win victory by force of arms. It is only thus that we can destroy the domestic ruling system and thwart the US imperialist scheme to preserve such system through military intervention or a full-scale war of aggression.

Strive to win ever greater victories

The Party can maintain its high level of theoretical knowledge and revolutionary consciousness as the advanced detachment of the proletariat only by continuing to build itself along the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. All Party members must be made conscious of the integration of this revolutionary theory of the proletariat with concrete Philippine conditions and with the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution.

They must understand how the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method are applied in the Program for a People's Democratic Revolution, in the documents of the First and Second Great Rectification Movements, in the documents issued by the Central Committee and in the summing up of experience and learning of lessons issued by various organs and units of the Party.

All Party members must undergo the primary Party course within the first year of their Party membership. With such education, they gain sufficient understanding of their commitment and work and the capability to read and study further within their units and on their free time.

Subsequently, they can take the intermediate course, which has the objective of enabling them to draw lessons from their experience in the light of successful revolutionary struggles in the Philippines and abroad. Then they can proceed to the advance course, which has the objective of deepening their knowledge of philosophy, political economy, social revolution, revolutionary strategy and tactics and the history of the international communist movement.

The Party has accumulated political strength through armed struggle and united front work. Thus it has gained all-round capability to lead the armed revolutionary movement in advancing at an accelerated rate. The Central Committee issues the guidelines for the regional Party committees and the Party committees and NPA commands at the guerrilla front level to take stock of the balance of forces, study the vulnerabilities of the enemy, sharpen intelligence work and plan tactical offensives within their capability.

Let us undertake tactical offensives at a rate that does not prejudice attention to mass work. At any given time, the existing mass base and armed strength allow tactical offensives for seizing more weapons from the enemy, either by arrest operations, raids or ambushes. The success of our tactical offensives must be measured mainly in terms of favorable political effect and capturing weapons.

The people and the NPA must intensify the people's war to fight the all-out war policy of the US-Arroyo regime and the escalating US military intervention under the pretext of anti-terrorism. The daily worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is driving the US imperialists to launch wars of aggression and promote state terrorism. In turn these generate greater popular resistance and revolutionary struggles that are lethal to imperialism and all reaction.

The basic alliance of workers and peasants provides the great mass base for both the antifeudal struggle and the struggle for national liberation. All types of alliances, the progressive, patriotic and the broad but unstable, must be utilized to extend the strength and influence of the revolutionary forces.

In confronting the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, we have again an opportunity to further develop the broad united front, with the objective of overthrowing the regime or making it fail in the 2004 presidential elections. The current volatile crisis situation in the Philippines provides us with the favorable conditions for advancing both the armed struggle and developing the united front.

The Party is guided by the organizational principle of democratic centralism. We must be united and firm in carrying out decisions after a democratic discussion of issues. Such decisions are upheld until they are superceded by new decisions on the basis of new facts and developments arising from revolutionary practice.

We must continue to build a nationwide party with intimate links to the workers and the peasants. We must recruit Party members from the ranks of the toiling masses and the educated youth. We must build a Party strong enough to lead the Filipino people in the new-democratic revolution to victory.

Following the current stage of the Philippine revolution, we shall carry out the socialist revolution and construction and continue to contribute to the global defeat of imperialism and the attainment of the ultimate goal of communism. ###

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