Further strengthen the Communist Party of the Philippines to lead the people's democratic revolutionCentral Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines December 26, 2006
Introduction
Let us joyously celebrate the 38th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought (Maoism) and on the basis of the history and concrete circumstances of the Filipino people.
This is a time to celebrate our revolutionary victories, to review our history, basic principles and lessons and renew our resolve to lead and advance the Filipino people's struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
Let us salute and congratulate all our Party cadres and members for all the victories won by holding high the banner of working class leadership and leading the broad masses of the people in life-and-death struggles with the enemy. Let us pay the highest respects to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes. They have given the most to the revolutionary struggle.
We must further strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally. We must build on our solid achievements won under the inspiration of the Second Great Rectification Movement and through hard work and fearless struggle. Only thus can we lead the Filipino people to a new and higher level of revolutionary struggle through revolutionary armed struggle and the united front.
We are confronted today by a regime that is extremely oppressive and exploitative. It is carrying out an all-out war policy against the people and the revolutionary forces. It has repeatedly vowed to destroy the revolutionary movement. But instead of being cowed, the people and revolutionary forces recognize the desperation of a regime, which is increasingly being isolated for its servility to US imperialism, corruption, electoral fraud and brutality.
The worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords drives the imperialists and local reactionaries to shift the burden of crisis to the people. The people undergo terrible suffering. Thus, they desire revolutionary change through revolutionary armed struggle and other forms of struggle. The crisis conditions are therefore favorable for revolutionary struggle.
Worsening crisis of the US and world capitalist system
US monopoly capitalism is the main exponent and beneficiary of "free market" globalization. It has expected this to override permanently the problem of stagflation of the 1970s. It puts the blame for the problem on rising wage levels and social spending by government rather than on the crisis of overproduction, profit-taking by the monopolies, the decline of income among the workers and high military spending for the benefit of the military industrial complex. The policy makers and spin doctors of monopoly capitalism pontificate that unbridled profit-taking in the "free market" can fix everything and that the least-regulated flow of finance capital renders unnecessary the intervention of the state in countering economic crisis or enabling economic development in less developed countries.
According to them, "free market" globalization is beneficial as it accelerates the concentration and centralization of finance capital in the US through attractive interest rates and dividends for foreign investors on US bonds and stocks, because the funds are supposed to maintain the US as the main engine of growth for the entire world capitalist system, as the developer of information technology and other high technology, as producer of the biggest items in international trade (military goods and otherwise) and as the largest market for consumer products.
The US economy has been badly shaken since 2000, when the high-tech bubble burst, as a result of the overproduction of high-tech goods. This was the last phase of a series of crises of overproduction, which included the Great Commodities Depression which began in 1980 and the overproduction of basic industrial products (machinery and durable consumer goods) by the leading imperialist countries and the major newly industrialized economies, which began in the later half of the 1980s. Since the bursting of the high-tech bubble, the US economy has been buffeted by sharp falls in the stockmarket and collapses of major financial firms and has gone into stagnation.
Thus the US has devised ways of dealing with the stagnation. It has directed the flow of money into a housing boom as a way of backing the American consumers in absorbing imported consumer goods and fuel. The US pays for these in US dollars, which such suppliers of consumer goods as China, Japan, South Korea and the oil-producing countries convert mainly to US treasury bonds and secondarily to stock investments. The US has thereby become the biggest debtor in the world because of its huge trade deficits. The US treasury bonds and stocks in the hands of foreign entities are US debts.
There are indications that in early 2007, the bursting of the housing bubble and the decline of consumer demand will signal a conspicuous fall of the US economy into recession, the sharp reduction of US demand for imports and the fall in the value of the US dollar abroad which might trigger the dumping of the US currency.
Since coming to the presidency in early 2001, Bush has been determined to step up military production as a means of stimulating the US economy. This has been called military Keynesianism, despite the fact that high-tech military production employs a few and cannot really increase the purchasing power of the people in big numbers. But the flow of money to the military-industrial complex and to the housing boom can certainly bloat the economic accounts and increase the growth rate of the economy. Big military spending by the US government has generated a budgetary deficit and has lessened the funds for job generation, education, health, disaster relief and other social services.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US under Bush has found the effective pretext for whipping up war hysteria in the name of anti-terrorism and directing larger amounts of public money to military production and the deployment of US military forces abroad for military intervention and aggression. Bush has declared a "global war on terror," which is supposed to be permanent and preemptive. He has unleashed wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and promoted state terrorism and fascism on a global scale. He has designated as targets states that he calls "rogue" for asserting national independence as well as all revolutionary forces and leaders that he calls "terrorist" for being anti-imperialist and revolutionary.
The so-called neo-conservatives in the Bush administration have found the conditions favorable for pushing the Project for a New American Century. This is a scheme for the US to become incontestably supreme over all other countries by using the full spectrum of its power, especially its high-tech military power, to wage preemptive war on any state it regards as potential rival or as rogue. By waging aggression, the US is expected to gain profitable ownership and control over strategic resources (especially oil and gas) and to spread the "free market" and "democracy."
The US has put itself in a quagmire in Iraq by launching aggression against it in 2003 even before its aggression against Afghanistan could result in destroying al Qaeda. Despite the terrible destruction of 665,000 Iraqi lives, public infrastructure and private property, the US has incurred nearly 3,000 death casualties among the US troops (excluding the so-called security contractors), more than 21,000 troops wounded in action and more than 24,000 medically evacuated due to illnesses and accidents and US$350 billion in expenses. It expects to own the new oil facilities to be set up in Iraq and encumber the old oil facilities with loans for repairs and renovation. But the Iraq resistance continues to attack the oil facilities, drastically reduce the oil production and render these unprofitable for the US and British aggressors.
The American people have become disgusted with the failure of the US objectives in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The US mid-term elections last November has installed a Democratic majority in both houses of the US Congress. The majority demand the withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq. Congressional investigations into Bush's outright lies and intelligence cherry-picking and corrupt practices in military contracts are bound to further unravel the "global war on terror," the neoconservative network and the systematic attack on civil liberties in the US and abroad in the name of anti-terrorism.
While preoccupied with Iraq, the US is unwittingly failing to pay prompt attention to and act adequately on problems in other countries of the Middle East and Central Asia and farther afield. Even Afghanistan is becoming a quagmire for the US and NATO, as the Taliban has become resurgent. The US has threatened Iran and Syria, which it regards as "rogue states," but has exposed an utter incapability or grave difficulty to expand its aggression to these countries. The popular anti-US forces in Lebanon have been able to frustrate the aggressive actions of Israel. After allowing the US to establish footholds in Central Asia and to attack Afghanistan, China, Russia and other former Soviet republics in Central Asia have formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to promote cross-border economic and security cooperation. Oil and gas pipelines independent of US oil companies are being built between the countries in the SCO.
Russia is deliberately using its oil resources as leverage for stabilizing its economy and reasserting its influence in former Soviet republics and in Eastern Europe. It is changing or cancelling contracts with US and other foreign oil companies that are disadvantageous to Russia. It is laying new pipelines that run directly to Germany to avoid use of old pipelines running through pro-US states in former Soviet republics. In Venezuela and other Latin American countries producing oil and gas, there is a wave of nationalization against US and other foreign oil companies. The drive of the US to practically own the oil wells in Iraq is generating powerful popular resistance in Iraq and goading other peoples to fight for sovereignty over their natural resources.
The US can still count on all other imperialist countries as allies in order to oppress and exploit the peoples of the world, especially those in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In this regard, the imperialist powers can harmonize their policies through the Group of 8, OECD, UN Security Council, IMF, World Bank, WTO and multilateral and bilateral economic and military treaties. But under the pressure of the crisis of overproduction in all types of goods, contradictions are becoming conspicuous among them. Germany, France and Russia have differed with the US and UK regarding Iraq, Iran and the Middle East in general. The US and the European Union have sharp differences over questions of trade, paralyzing the recent Doha negotiations and casting doubts on the viability of the WTO. These contradictions are manifestations of the bankruptcy of "free market" globalization.
Japan is still the main economic and military partner of the US against the proletariat and peoples of East Asia. But US-Japan relations are buffeted by sharpening economic competition due to the crisis of overproduction in industrial goods. Japan has continued to bend to US demands, even as it has suffered prolonged stagnation since the bursting of its real estate bubble in 1990. It has long agreed to hold a large amount of US securities, allow the entry of US investments and agricultural and manufactured exports and to subsidize the US military forces based in Japan. Like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan continue to be buffeted by the crisis of overproduction in industrial products and by financial crisis due to bad loans to the big companies and to an unsustainable housing boom. But they find a certain degree of relief from their trade with China.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has successfully defied the US economic and military blockade and the threats of the US against developing its missile and nuclear research programs. Since the successful DPRK testing of a nuclear bomb, the US has slid down from an arrogant and threatening position to a position of asking China to arrange the resumption of the six-party talks among the DPRK, US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea and the holding of bilateral talks between the US and DPRK. The DPRK is demanding the end of hostile US policy towards it, the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the lifting of the US economic blockade and the normalization of US-DPRK relations.
Regarding China, the US continues to apply the dual tactics of engagement and containment. Its main tactic is engagement because it expects China's growing capitalism and entry into the WTO to facilitate the eventual reintegration of Taiwan as a province and thus reduce the danger of war between the US and China over Taiwan. China itself has done everything to assure the US of its so-called peaceful rise. It has opened its economy to become the chief destination of imperialist investments by virtue of its cheap labor. It hosts many US and other foreign companies producing low-value added consumer goods for the US, Chinese and other markets. It has accumulated a holding of US$1 trillion, much of which is converted into US treasury bonds. But US and other multinational firms have the most claim on these US dollar holdings for the purpose of capital repatriation and profit remittance.
US strategists expect that under the WTO regime, the unlimited penetration of China by US finance capital would undermine and reduce Chinese political and economic independence and push the further dismantling of state-owned enterprises. China has the appearance of prosperity, which is real for less than 10% of its people, but which has relegated more than 90% of its people to suffer exploitation even more rapacious than, and oppression similar to pre-1949 conditions. Sweatshops, migrant workers, vagabonds and beggars abound. Workers frequently undertake protest actions against reduced real incomes and mass layoffs. Thousands of peasant uprisings have been launched against the arbitrary grabbing of land by bureaucrats and capitalist enterprises. A revolutionary communist party inspired by Maoism can take advantage of the fertile conditions for revolution. The phoney communists in power so far still succeed in destroying even the good name of real communists.
With the expected recession of the US economy next year, China is bound to suffer a drastic reduction of US consumer demand for its exports. Social unrest and political turbulence are expected to ensue. Likewise, Southeast Asia is expected to suffer from reduced foreign orders for raw materials and semi-manufactures. A new wave of economic disaster would come on top of the 1997 so-called financial crisis from which Southeast Asia has not fully recovered and which--at the level of the real economy--involved the overproduction of low-value added semi-manufactures and overconstruction of office and apartment buildings and the overconsumption of imported consumer goods financed by foreign loans. The conditions are favorable for the armed revolutionary movement in the Philippines to reach a new and higher level of development. The beginning of people's war for national liberation and democracy is also a distinct possibility in Indonesia.
The US tries to play mediator between Pakistan and India and in the process penetrate them. "Free market" globalization has led to further exploitation and degradation of the countries of South Asia. The people have been subjected to further impoverishment. Armed revolutionary movements are seething in several countries in South Asia today. Maoist parties are leading the people's wars in India and Nepal. The people's war in India has the potential of playing the role of the Russian revolution after World War I and of the Chinese revolution after World War II. The people's war in Nepal has been successful in bringing forward the democratic revolution to the point of compelling the monarchy to give up power and allowing the Maoist party to have a major share of power in the evolving bourgeois state in exchange for dismantling the people's army and the revolutionary organs of power.
As a result of the long period of revisionist rule and the subsequent open adoption of capitalism, former Soviet republics and East European countries have continuously deteriorated and become degraded to the level of most third world countries. The social wealth created by the working people has been privatized by a thieving criminal type of bourgeoisie and social services have been dismantled amid massive unemployment and widespread misery. The Balkans and Central Asia are the most combustible. The conditions are favorable for establishing Maoist parties and developing revolutionary mass movements. But various other types of parties have the headstart. These are bourgeois liberal parties, social democratic parties, neorevisionist parties and religious or religious-related parties.
In Latin America, "free market" globalization has become totally discredited for having long inflicted great suffering on the people. A series of bourgeois nationalist governments have arisen to defy US domination. They have undertaken the nationalization of oil and gas companies owned by the US and other foreign companies. There are revolutionary parties and mass movements in various countries. The FARC of Colombia has been the most persevering in carrying out protracted people's war against the reactionary state. The Communist Party of Peru (Sendero Luminoso) has proclaimed itself as a Maoist party and has waged people's war. But it has been weakened since the 1990s by an inability to wield the united front as a revolutionary weapon and by a premature presumption that the people's war had already reached strategic equilibrium, which was supposed to win complete victory by resorting to an urban uprising.
The conditions of Africa are appalling for the broad masses of the people. In most countries, the contradictions are sharp among political parties motivated by plain greed and subservience to competing imperialist powers, by ethno-centrism and by religious bigotry. The parties and movements that have taken power, after using the slogans of national liberation, democracy and socialism, have succumbed to neocolonialism and become swamped by corruption. The imperialist powers have never ceased to manipulate and subvert the countries in Africa and to oppose any government, as that in Zimbabwe, that strives to nationalize foreign-owned plantations and carry out land reform. The conditions are ripe for establishing Maoist parties and developing revolutionary mass movements.
The conditions of oppression and exploitation generate the desire and will of the broad masses of the people for national and social liberation. The world is wide open for the establishment of Maoist parties and the development of revolutionary mass movements. World conditions have greatly retrogressed since the US propagation of the line of "free market" globalization and the unleashing of several wars of aggression in a so-called new world order. The revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism apply on struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism. Maoism provides not only insight for winning the people's democratic revolution but also the foresight for combating revisionism, preventing the restoration of capitalism in a socialist society and for consolidating socialism.
Rottenness and isolation of the Arroyo regime
Among the Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines has been the most unable to recover from the financial crisis of 1997. Only through reliance on the remittances of overseas Filipino workers and heavy foreign and local borrowing has the Arroyo regime been able to maintain a certain level of economic and government operations. It has thus aggravated and deepened the crisis of the Philippine economy. It is also through such inflow of dollar remittances from abroad, massive public borrowing and spending resources in a profligate way that the regime has produced an illusory economic growth rate that beats even that of the imperialist countries.
The Arroyo regime has incurred foreign and local public debts at a rate far faster than all predecessor regimes, including the Marcos fascist regime. The debt has been used to cover trade and budgetary deficits. Priority is given to servicing the rising levels of debt and paying for stepped-up military spending, overpriced graft-ridden infrastructure projects and other parasitic government operations over such social services as education and health. The tax burden has been increased despite the depressed conditions of the real economy. But most of the revenue goes to debt service, military spending and corruption.
The character of the Philippine economy remains semicolonial and semifeudal, which has been aggravated and deepened under the US-imposed policy of "free market" globalization. This shuns national industrialization and genuine and thoroughgoing land reform and favors denationalization, privatization, liberalization and deregulation for the benefit of foreign multinational firms and banks and to the detriment of the national economy, working people, women, children and the environment.
Under such policy, the Philippines has been limited to production for export of raw materials and for reexport of low-value added consumer manufactures (semi-conductors, garments, toys, shoes and the like). These have been in global oversupply and their prices have remained depressed in the global market. At the same time, the Philippines has been inundated by food imports that harm local food production for the people and by luxury imports for the upper classes that divert precious resources to foreign shores.
Foreign lenders have continued to lend money at commercial rates to the Philippines. As they are assured of the mandatory priority given to debt service, they can take the debt service from the next flow of loans and sale of government bonds, convert the debt to equity in local businesses or ownership of natural resources, stake a claim on the foreign exchange earnings of overseas contract workers and compel the reactionary government to raise taxes. There is an increasing dependence on the sale of government bonds and on portfolio investments.
The increased tax burden is excruciating for the people under the depressed conditions of the economy. The actual rate of unemployment is high, exceeding 45%. The level of income for the workers, peasants and the middle social strata is continuously being pushed down. Small and medium enterprises of Filipino entrepreneurs are being closed down due to bankruptcy. Even the enterprises for the production of low-value added semimanufactures are being bankrupted or shifted to China by the big foreign companies.
In view of the economic downtrend in the US, the Philippine economy is expected to suffer increasingly from reduced orders for primary commodities and low-value added semi-manufactures. The broad masses of the people are subjected to worse conditions of unemployment, low income, deprivation and misery. Social discontent becomes more widespread and acute. The socio-economic crisis leads to political crisis and turmoil, not only between the Arroyo regime and the people but also among the reactionary factions of the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
The Arroyo regime has incurred the ire of the broad masses of the people and has become isolated because of its illegitimacy through electoral fraud in 2004, scandalous corruption, subservience to US and other foreign monopoly interests and gross human rights violations. Under the ongoing severe socio-economic crisis, the regime's proclivity to monopolize bureaucrat loot and to take preemptive violent action against the broad range of opposition, especially against progressive legal activists has aggravated. Contradictions among the reactionaries have become more bitter and sharper. The intrasystemic opposition is encouraged to fight the regime because it seeks the support of the broad masses of the people.
So far, the Arroyo regime has been able to use brute force in harassing, hampering and breaking up the mass actions of the broad united front of opposition forces. It has also frustrated two attempts by opposition congressmen (who lack sufficient number) to impeach Arroyo. Mortally afraid that the opposition would gain enough congressional seats to impeach her, Arroyo has maneuvered to cancel the May 2007 mid-term elections under the pretext of a fake people's initiative, a Senate-less constituent assembly or a rushed constitutional convention to revise the 1987 constitution and change the form of government from presidential to parliamentary.
The Arroyo regime's charter change scheme is being frustrated by the vigorous manifestation of outrage by the people, the broad united front of opposition forces and the major religious institutions. Unless it wants to ignite political turmoil, the regime has no choice but to allow the holding of the May 2007 elections. The broad masses of the people are now deeply concerned that the regime will do everything in its power to prevent the opposition from winning in the elections. The regime is expected to engage again in heavy government spending for its candidates and in using military and electoral officials to commit electoral fraud. A repeat of the 2004 electoral fraud will certainly result in grave political turmoil and the ouster of the Arroyo regime.
Contradictions among the reactionaries are tending to become violent. This is indicated by increasing cases of assassinations and shootouts between factions of reactionary politicians at the local level and in the national capital region and more systematically by the increase of political factions among military and police officers at the national and lower levels. There is a long-running basis for the factionalization of the military and police forces because the factions are linked to criminal syndicates as well as to political patrons in the executive and legislative branches of the reactionary government.
But not all the military and police factions take shape according to selfish corrupt purposes. As a matter of course, there are pro-US and pro-Arroyo factions that are benefiting from the official chain of command. There are also pro-US but anti-Arroyo factions among senior officers. Further, there are either pro-US or anti-US but anti-Arroyo factions mainly among the junior officers who have some senior officers on their side. The anti-Arroyo factions have been preponderant since 2005. But to their temporary advantage, the Arroyo loyalists are in control of the chain of command.
There was a good chance to oust the Arroyo regime last February by a combination of anti-Arroyo mass actions and the open withdrawal of support by military and police forces from the regime. The First Scout Ranger Regiment of the Philippine Army, the First Marine Brigade of the Philippine Navy and the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police were supposed to spearhead the withdrawal of support. But the chance was lost through a mistaken and failed attempt to persuade the AFP chief of staff and deputy chief to join the anti-Arroyo forces in order to shift the entire chain of command to the people' side and prevent any shootout.
The running-dog character of the two highest AFP officials was underestimated. They squealed to Arroyo on those who approached them. Subsequently, the regime took draconian measures under Proclamation 1071 against the anti-Arroyo military and police officers and against the demonstrators. There was never any attempt at a military coup. But the pro-Arroyo chain of command has persecuted all those it can identify and suspect as being anti-Arroyo. There are, however, far more anti-Arroyo military and police personnel than it can identify and suspect.
As a result of the people's outrage over the charter change scheme, anti-Arroyo factions within the military and police forces have rapidly grown in number against the illegitimacy and criminal acts of the Arroyo regime. The vice president has also come out opposing the charter change scheme of his president and he has indicated that he would oppose electoral fraud by her. The ruling clique is showing signs of cracking as infighting between the Ermita group and other groups within the Arroyo cabinet are coming out into the open.
The Arroyo regime has rabidly supported the Bush "global war on terror" in order to expand US military intervention in the Philippines under the guise of military exercises, bootlick for more US military assistance, scuttle the peace negotiations between the Manila government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and carry out Oplan Bantay Laya under the all-out war policy against the people's army and revolutionary masses led by the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The Arroyo regime has estimated that the all-out war policy against the armed revolutionary movement would unify the military and police forces behind her and would actually weaken or destroy the revolutionary forces that it presumes to be the most solid part of the broad united front of opposition forces. The Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security headed by Phoenix Plan and Marcos fascist regime veteran Eduardo Ermita is directly in charge of Oplan Bantay Laya and plans the dirty tactics carried out mainly by special operations teams for psywar and by death squads for extrajudicial killings. Their tactic is to denounce the intended victims as communists and, after they are killed, to blame the communists for killing them in a "purge."
Oplan Bantay Laya has two ugly aspects. First, it concentrates military and police forces on a number of guerrilla fronts at every given time in order to perpetrate massacres, mass intimidation, arbitrary arrests, torture and forced evacuations of entire communities though bombings, artillery fire, machine gun fire, arson and bulldozing. Second, it engages in the extrajudicial killing, abduction and torture of legal activists, including local progressive party leaders, workers, peasants, women, youth, religious, journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates.
The Arroyo regime's scheme to destroy the people's democratic revolution before 2010 is a mere pipedream. Not even the Marcos fascist dictatorship, which received plenty of US military assistance in exchange for the stay of US military bases, which had a far bigger allowance for official concessional borrowings from abroad and which rapidly increased the AFP's troop strength could destroy the people's army that was then far smaller than its current size. Not even the Aquino regime could bank on its anti-Marcos popularity to destroy the people's army. Oplan Bantay Laya has run for five years and has failed to destroy the armed revolutionary movement in a single region.
The armed revolutionary movement is gaining more ground and strength than ever before because it upholds a just cause, fights for the people's national and democratic rights and defends the people against the puppetry, exploitativeness, corruption and brutality of the Arroyo regime and the entire reactionary ruling system. Our Party leads the democratic revolution, not only by wielding the weapon of revolutionary armed struggle but also the revolutionary united front. Thus, it has brought about the widest popular base for the revolutionary war.
The extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture, misrepresentation of children as NPA fighters in order to kill or detain them, forced mass evacuations and other gross human rights violations by the military and paramilitary forces of the regime have outraged the people of the world and the most respected institutions, organizations and personages concerned with human rights. It has come to the point that even governments friendly to the Philippine government have called on the Arroyo regime to take responsibility for and stop the gross human rights violations. Like the Marcos fascist regime, the repressive Arroyo regime is finding itself isolated not only among the Filipino people but also in the international community of nations.
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) has consistently asserted that peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines are still ongoing in the absence of any side properly terminating the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees. It has repeatedly called for the resumption of formal talks upon the resolution of prejudicial questions, such as the so-called terrorist listing of the CPP, NPA and chief political consultant, the gross violations of human rights under Oplan Bantay Laya, the release of political prisoners and the indemnification of victims of human rights violations under the Marcos regime.
The NDFP has gone so far as to offer a concise immediate agreement for a just and lasting peace, which would serve to commit both the NDFP and GRP to definite principled points of agreement in the national and democratic interest of the Filipino. Such an offer is in response to the unjust demand of the GRP for surrender of arms or an indefinite ceasefire without agreement on substantive issues. It would lead to a truce in the civil war while the two sides implement the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and negotiate practicable economic, social and political reforms in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration.
As the Arroyo regime is hell-bent on carrying out its all-out war policy and finds no use for peace negotiations, the armed revolutionary movement led by our Party has no choice but to expand and intensify all over the archipelago. We know from our experience in peace negotiations how malicious and treacherous is the Arroyo regime. We have also observed the same character of the regime in its negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Our Party and the NDFP have all the patience to wait for the next regime to see the wisdom of peace negotiations and the benefits for the Filipino people.
Growing strength of the revolutionary movement
Our Party has continued to make all-round achievements. We have propagated the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in all Party leading organs and organizations, among the cadres, members and the candidate members. We have carried forward the general political line of people's democratic revolution against foreign monopoly capitalism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. We have upheld and applied the principle of democratic centralism in organizational matters.
Our Party is indestructible and ever advancing because it consists of cadres and members who grasp Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the ideological line and who keep on strengthening their proletarian class standpoint, viewpoint and method in dealing with world and Philippine history, current circumstances, various types of work and struggle and the necessary strategy and tactics in carrying out the people's democratic revolution.
Our cadres and members keep on studying dialectical and historical materialism in relation to their work. They apply materialist dialectics in understanding and solving problems. They broaden and deepen their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism in order to oppose and defeat the empiricist and dogmatic kinds of subjectivism, modern revisionism, opportunism and reformism and other petty-bourgeois trends of thought like liberalism, neoliberalism, social democracy, neo-Kautskyism, Trotskyism, anarchism, clerico-fascism and NGOism.
Our Party cadres and members read and study the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and the documents of the Central Committee. Our comrades who are more knowledgeable in theory help those who wish to learn more through formal study courses at basic, intermediate and advanced levels, through study and work meetings of leading Party organs and organizations and through informal and leisurely group discussions and conversations.
The Education Department of our General Secretariat and education and propaganda organs of the Party see to it that all sorts of study materials are made available. Simplified materials, brief texts and visual and audio-visual aids in various major Philippine languages are also provided for the benefit of comrades who come from the working class and peasantry and who have limited formal education. There is a mutually beneficial interaction between comrades who can easily understand the concepts and terms from reading materials and those who have rich practical experience for analysis.
Our Party cadres and members grasp the ideological line easily because it deals with life-and-death questions for the Party. Those who committed major errors of petty bourgeois subjectivism and the consequent Left and Right opportunist errors as well as crimes against our Party and our people could have destroyed us and the revolutionary movement from within had the proletarian revolutionaries not taken action to criticize and repudiate their wrong ideas and actions. The documents and lessons of the Second Great Rectification Movement continue to be studied in order to fortify our ranks against the misrepresentation and slander by the enemy and the renegades who have become special agents of the enemy.
Our Party cadres and members use Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the ideological weapon against the persistent ideological offensive of the imperialists and local reactionaries who prate that the cause of scientific socialism and the ultimate goal of communism are hopeless and that humanity cannot go beyond capitalism and liberalism. They therefore continue to study the definitive stand of our Party for socialism against modern revisionism.
We have generated a stream of articles to counter and debunk the claims and arguments of the neoliberal exponents of "free market" globalization, bourgeois liberals, social democrats, neo-Kautskyites, Trotskyites, anarchists, clerico-fascists and NGOists. These are well-funded by the imperialists to attack us from behind and from the flanks in order to cut us off from the petty bourgeois intelligensia and the educated youth who are inclined to adopt the revolutionary position and join our Party. Our Party combats petty bourgeois thinking within the Party but attracts petty bourgeois elements to remould themselves and join our Party or become allies in the progressive united front.
We have victoriously advanced the general line of people's democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes through protracted people's war. We have raised high the banner of working class leadership and have aroused, organized and mobilized the broad masses of the people in the urban and rural areas. We have successfully employed revolutionary armed struggle and the united front as political weapons in the service of the working people.
Our New People's Army operates militarily and conducts mass work in more than 120 guerrilla fronts which cover thousands of barrios in more than 800 municipalities in 70 provinces of the Philippines. By doing mass work, it is instrumental in the formation of mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth and cultural activists and in setting up local organs of political power, at first barrio organizing committees and finally barrio revolutionary committees with the support of the mass organizations and committees for mass organizations, public education, public health, land reform and economy, self-defense, arbitration and cultural work.
The peasant movement for genuine and thoroughgoing land reform is the main mass movement for realizing the democratic revolution. It is thus that the peasant majority of the people can liberate themselves economically, socially and politically and become the main component of the people's democratic revolution. The minimum land reform program consists of rent reduction, reduction of interest rates, raising of farm wages, increasing prices of farm products and promoting agricultural production and sideline occupations. The maximum land reform program of confiscation and free distribution of land as well as rudimentary forms of cooperation is applicable against landgrabbers, against despotic landlords and wherever landlord power has collapsed on a relatively wide scale.
Our people's army is engaged in extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever deepening and widening mass base. It is still in the process of increasing the number of platoons and guerrilla fronts on a nationwide scale. At the same time, it is developing the ability of regional commands to administer several guerrilla fronts, lead a headquarters platoon and to concentrate several platoons for offensive operations. The guerrilla front commands have the flexibility to launch platoon-size offensive operations and guide squads to carry out operations on a wide scale. The structure, mode of deployment, tactics and technique have been effective in carrying out raids, ambushes and arrest operations and in inflicting losses of personnel and weapons on the side of the enemy.
Oplan Bantay Laya has failed in its objective of destroying the NPA by concentrating military and mobile police units on a number of regions and a number of guerrilla fronts within every given period and, after supposedly destroying the NPA, move on to another set of regions and guerrilla fronts. In no region whatsoever has the enemy succeeded in destroying the NPA. The military and mobile police forces simply do not have the military strength to cover and control effectively 10% of the population at any given time. They can concentrate on a few guerrilla fronts and make life difficult for the people. But the NPA units can evade them in every guerrilla front or shift to another area for guerrilla front development. In scores of other guerrilla fronts, the NPA operates freely because of the overconcentration of enemy forces on a few guerrilla fronts elsewhere.
The enemy forces are frustrated due to deadly blows from the NPA in ambushes and raids and blindly carrying out patrols and other operations without any definite target. They often find themselves vulnerable to sniping teams of the NPA and militia units, RPG fire and command-detonated land mines. They boast of amplifying their force by arming the local people as CAFGU, CVO, barangay tanods, and the like. But in fact they distrust the people and they prefer to concentrate their effort in trying to intimidate them through humiliation, cedula checks, food blockades and other worse human rights violations, including massacres, illegal detention, torture, arson and forced evacuation. They also know that those who agree to receive arms from them are ultimately vulnerable to the disarming operations of the NPA.
Aside from waging armed struggle against the enemy, our Party uses the policy and tactics of the united front. In the main, the united front is for the armed struggle. Thus, the antifeudal united front is of primary importance. Our Party relies mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, wins over the middle peasants, neutralizes the rich peasants, takes advantage of the contradictions between the enlightened and evil gentry in order to isolate the despotic landlords and destroy their political power in the country. The antifeudal united front is an integral part of the overall national united front, which is anti-imperialist, antifeudal and antifascist.
A broad united front has emerged and is further developing against the US-Arroyo regime. It consists of the organized forces of the workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, entrepreneurs and merchants, politicians, religious and even the anti-Arroyo groups among the military and police officers. In political terms, the Left is uniting, cooperating and coordinating with the Middle and the anti-Arroyo part of the Right against the worst part, which is the Arroyo ruling clique. In the broad united front, the patriotic and progressive forces of the Left and Middle can unite with the unstable and unreliable allies in the Right for the purpose of isolating and defeating the enemy and in the process gaining strength through struggle.
Both the revolutionary armed struggle and the united front have their respective ways of arousing, organizing and mobilizing the broad masses of the people. The revolutionary armed struggle has made possible solid mass organizing and building organs of political power in the countryside. The united front has aroused, organized and mobilized the people in the entire country in order to facilitate their eventual organization by the Party. Legal united front work has directly helped in the organizational work of legal democratic mass organizations.
In our organizational life, we follow the principle of democratic centralism. The essence of centralism is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It guides democracy within our Party and is in turn based on it. The democratic process allows our leading organs to gather facts and ideas from the corresponding organization and to deliberate on them freely in order to arrive at policies and decisions. Individuals and the minority are subject to the will of the majority. The lower organ or organization is subject to the higher organ or organization. The Central Committee is the highest organ, while the Congress is not in session.
Our Party cadres and members uphold the two-way relationship of centralism and democracy. We are critical of any tendency towards bureaucratism or commandism, in which decisions and orders are one-sidedly made from top to bottom, without the benefit of reports and recommendations from below. At the same time, we are critical of ultra-democracy or anarchism, which means not recognizing the authority of higher organs and insisting on the limited view of the ground to the exclusion of the comprehensive view of a higher organ.
Our Party organization is of national scale and is deeply rooted among the masses of workers and peasants. The Party branches are in communities, factories, plantations, transport lines, schools and offices. Our Party groups or cells are at various levels of various types of organizations and institutions, progressive or reactionary. We have Party elements and cells even within the military and police forces of the enemy. Thus, we are well-informed about enemy movements, plans and activities. The well-known existence of patriotic and progressive groups of military and police officers indicates our effective work within the enemy camp.
The regime's pipedream is to destroy our Party by murdering those whom they suspect as Party cadres and members. But the reactionary military and police machinery and killing capacity are limited by the fact that our Party has been clandestine since its reestablishment in 1968 and constantly takes care to preserve and secure itself, expand its membership and raise its quality through revolutionary education and practice. The enemy can concentrate its attacks on certain areas but leaves open many more areas for our Party to grow in strength and advance. Whenever some of our comrades are unavoidably martyred, we honor them so as to inspire our entire Party and our people to fight the enemy ever more resolutely and fiercely. Commands of the NPA at various levels are named after our martyrs who are exemplary in armed struggle.
We recruit our Party members from the armed revolutionary movement and the legal democratic mass movement. These have trained and tested so many activists worthy of recruitment into the Party. The intense and widespread armed and legal forms of struggle are providing a continuous flow of fresh highly motivated and militant Party recruits who come from the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata and who bring with them rich experience, their closeness to the masses and various types of abilities that are useful for advancing the people's democratic revolution.
Our Party systematically deploys workers and educated youth from the urban areas to the countryside in order to serve in the New People's Army and the peasant communities. Thus, we raise and widen our capabilities as a Party in the countryside. We bring into the service of the people and the people's army their professional and technical capabilities. In turn, our Party personnel from the cities further remould themselves in the heat of the revolutionary armed struggle. Service in the people's army also provides safety and a fighting chance to Party members and mass activists who are under threat of death or arrest by the enemy.
Our Three fighting tasks
We must further strengthen the Communist Party of the Philippines in order to lead more effectively then ever before the people's democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. We must accelerate the recruitment of Party members from the ranks of the Red fighters of the New People's Army and the advanced activists of the mass movement in the urban and rural areas. We must allow them to advance from being candidate-members to full members within the prescribed period of candidature by providing them promptly with the basic Party course and making sure that they conscientiously perform their tasks within their units in the Party and in the people's army or in mass organizations.
- Further strengthen the revolutionary party of the proletariat!
According to plan, we must increase our Party membership by the tens of thousands every year. We have an acute need for a larger number of Party cadres and members in order to carry out various types of work among the millions of people and in order to raise the revolutionary struggle to a new and higher level. Because our Party recruits come from the ranks of Red fighters and mass activists and they have some experience in the revolutionary struggle, they have an interest in completing as soon as possible the basic Party course, complying with their tasks within their units in the Party and in the people's army or mass organizations.
After they are sworn in as full Party members, they can take higher formal Party courses in their work units in accordance with the curriculum and syllabus or in study sessions specially arranged by a higher Party organ. They must always improve their grasp of the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method, know the correct line and oppose subjectivism and opportunism, modern revisionism and various trends of petty bourgeois thinking. The theoretical and political education of Party members must further develop through conscious application of the basic revolutionary principles of our Party in the study of Philippine history and current circumstances and through the assessment and evaluation of work, criticism and self-criticism and the setting forth or adjustment of tasks.
Every higher Party organ must know within its jurisdiction the quantity and quality of Party cadres and members in any of the various territorial and functional organizations. Thus, it can decide to raise higher the strength of a given Party organ or unit or to redeploy Party cadres and members in order to strengthen other Party organs or units or to establish new ones. The Party must always ensure that the proletarian revolutionaries take the lead and that the Party cadres and members of worker and peasant origin must increase, without pressing down the number of those who come from the urban petty bourgeoisie.
Because the people's war is expanding and intensifying, it is of urgent necessity that more Party cadres and members arise and develop in the New People's Army and in the rural mass movement and that workers and educated youth be redeployed from the urban to the rural areas, without impairing the urban mass movement. We must preserve and increase our Party cadres and members. Those who are endangered by the rising wave of state terrorism in their publicly known places must take precautionary measures and be ready to be assigned to other places.
- Expand and intensify the armed revolution!
We must carry out people's war in order to seize political power and establish the people's democratic state. We must strive to advance from the early to the middle phase of the strategic defensive by multiplying the platoons and the guerrilla fronts, and improving command at the levels of the region and guerrilla fronts. They must implement in their respective areas of responsibility the guidelines for nationally coordinated offensives. We must expand and intensify the tactical offensives of the people's army against the enemy. We must seize more arms from the enemy in order to form more platoons of the New People's Army and build more guerrilla fronts.
We must conduct politico-military training of Red commanders and fighters in the various formations and at various levels of command. The political significance and purpose of training for any major tactical offensive must be explained to boost fighting morale. We must also provide training to the militia units and self-defense units so that they can perform their responsibilities and they can stand as reserves and augmenting forces of the people's army. Thus, we can find out in advance who should have the priority for joining the people's army upon the increase of arms.
We must accelerate the waging of extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and ever deepening mass base. We can launch offensives and frustrate enemy counter-offensives only by having a strong mass base. We must build organs of political power and mass organizations and undertake campaigns for mass organizing, public education, land reform and production, health care, self-defense, settlement of disputes and cultural work. We must pay close attention to land reform as the way to engage the peasantry in the armed revolution.
In the revolutionary armed struggle, we have given priority to tactical offensives and other work to increase our political and military strength in the guerrilla fronts. We have not yet carried out to a significant extent our already declared policy to punish the most notorious perpetrators of human rights violations and corruption. So far, we have not retaliated dramatically against the high bureaucrats and the military and police officers responsible for the acts of state terrorism and fascism against the people in worker and peasant communities and against unarmed legal activists.
For the purpose of obtaining revolutionary justice against those officials with blood debts, we must accumulate the necessary information through intelligence and surveillance, form teams with the determination and skills and choose the time and place for arresting the criminals and bringing them to justice or for giving battle to those who are well-armed and cannot be peaceably arrested.
We are well aware that when we start to arrest or fight the criminals, more military and police forces will be pushed towards doing guard duty to protect them. The best time to arrest or give battle to the monsters in the Arroyo regime is when they are already in a state of rapid political decline. In the meantime, the Arroyo regime and its murderous military and police minions are the targets of the people's outrage in the Philippines and the whole world.
- Mobilize the people through the united front!
We must mobilize the broad masses in their millions through various types of the united front. We must develop further the basic alliance of workers and peasants, the progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of progressive forces and the vacillating national bourgeoisie and the broad united front of patriotic forces and reactionary forces that are temporary and unstable allies against the worst reactionary force, which is the enemy.
The enemy at this time is the US-directed Arroyo regime. We must do everything possible and necessary to expose its crimes against the people in order to isolate, weaken and remove it from power. In the process, we further strengthen the revolutionary forces and people and spur their advance in the revolutionary struggle. If we cannot yet destroy the ruling system by ousting the Arroyo ruling clique from power, we can accumulate the strength to engage the next regime in the resumption of the peace negotiations or to fight it as soon as it makes clear its antipeople, antinational and anti-democratic character. By fighting one enemy regime after another, we accumulate the strength to destroy the reactionary ruling system eventually.
We expect the crisis of the ruling system and world capitalist system to worsen further and inflict ever more terrible suffering on the broad masses of the people. We anticipate that the Arroyo will become even more servile to the US and other imperialists, continue its career of corruption, commit a bigger number of human rights violations and engage in electoral fraud in the 2007 elections. The fake president Arroyo is terribly afraid that the opposition would gain seats in Congress sufficient to her impeachment in the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. Thus, she is preparing to cheat in the elections and to use violence against opposition parties and candidates.
The Arroyo regime arrogantly underestimates the power of the people and the broad united front and knows no bounds for its crimes against the people. The broad masses of the people are already fed up with the regime. All that is needed to drive them to occupy the streets is one inciting incident or issue, like a repeat of the 2004 electoral fraud in 2007 or acts of violence against the legal opposition. The sight of hundreds of thousands of people in the streets would move most military and police officers of the reactionary government to prevail upon the chain of command in the military to respect the right of the people to speak and assemble and would persuade the dominant church to facilitate the replacement of the Arroyo regime by a successor or transition government.
The Communist Party of the Philippines and all the people and revolutionary forces it leads wish to remove the Arroyo ruling clique as soon as possible. But if this clique persists in power because it uses violence and deception against the people and the dominant church condones it, all revolutionary forces will gain more ample opportunity to gain strength from the broad united front and the people's movement. The people's war will gain ground and intensity as the broad masses of the people seek the effective way to get rid of the intolerable oppression and exploitation unleashed by the Arroyo regime, with the support of the US and other imperialists. ###
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