Why the New People's Army is invincible and victorious and how the people's war can rise to a new and higher levelMarch 29, 2007 Message of the Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines
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On the occasion of the 38th anniversary of the founding of the New People's Army (NPA), we the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) salute the Red commanders and fighters of the New People's Army (NPA) for their firm commitment, hard work, sacrifices and achievements in the revolutionary struggle. We accord the highest honors to the revolutionary martyrs and to all comrades who have dedicated their entire lives to the revolutionary cause of serving the Filipino people.
Today we renew our resolve to carry out the Filipino people's democratic revolution under the leadership of the working class and its Party against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. We are determined to win total victory through protracted people's war, culminating in the overthrow of the counterrevolutionary state and establishment of the people's democratic state. The New People's Army is the principal instrument of the Party and the people in the armed revolution.
We joyously celebrate the accumulated victories of the NPA since its founding on March 29, 1969. We are happy about the victories of the NPA from year to year against the all-out war policy of the US-directed Arroyo regime. The NPA has frustrated and defeated Oplan Bantay Laya I in the five-year period of 2002-2006 and is in the process of delivering even more lethal blows against Oplan Bantay Laya II, which the enemy has launched since the beginning of this year. And yet the highest officials of the Arroyo regime and those of the military and police forces keep on boasting that they can either destroy or reduce the NPA to inconsequentiality before Arroyo leaves office in 2010.
In response to the cowardly assaults and braggadocio of the enemy, let us state why the NPA is invincible and victorious in the context of the objective conditions and the development of the subjective forces of the revolution. Then we proceed to identify the vulnerabilities and weak points of the ruling system and show how to concentrate our political and military offensives against these in order to further weaken, isolate and destroy the enemy and raise the people's war to a new and higher level.
I. Why the NPA Is Invincible and Victorious?
It is an incontrovertible fact of history that the NPA has grown from 60 Red fighters with only nine automatic rifles and some 26 inferior firearms in the second district of Tarlac province in 1969 to so many thousands of men and women with automatic rifles and other high-powered weapons spread throughout the country. These are equivalent to a few divisions and regiments, tens of battalions, scores of companies, a few hundreds of platoons or many hundreds of squads nationwide. They are deployed in more than 120 guerrilla fronts covering significant portions of 70 provinces, 800 towns or 10,000 of the more than 40,000 barrios of the Philippines.
The Marcos regime sought to nip the NPA in the bud in the years 1969 to 1972, using division-size task forces in every region where squads and armed propaganda teams of the NPA appeared. It went so far as to declare martial law in 1972 and impose a fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people for 14 years, up to 1986. It murdered tens of thousands of people, illegally detained and tortured some hundreds of thousands and forcibly displaced five million people from their homes and farms. But the NPA grew precisely because of the intolerable conditions of oppression and exploitation under the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The NPA withstood and prevailed over the much-ballyhooed campaigns of suppression unleashed by the post-Marcos regimes, including the campaigns oflow-intensity conflict warfare and low-intensity democracy strategy of the Aquino regime under US direction. Lambat Bitag I, II, III appeared to be successful in the 1980s only because of the grave errors of the incorrigible "Left" opportunists who engaged in adventurism, ruined the revolutionary mass base and engaged in criminal witchhunts to cover up their errors, as well as of the Right opportunists who wished to end the people's war and join the reactionary government, and who tried to propagate Gorbachovism, populism, reformism and liberalism within the Party. But the proletarian revolutionaries in the Party prevailed and launched the Second Great Rectification Movement to identify, criticize, repudiate and rectify major errors, reaffirm basic revolutionary principles and revitalize the Party and the entire revolutionary movement.
The NPA has stood as the largest and strongest army of the Filipino people in their entire history. It has surpassed the level of strength of the Philippine revolutionary army in the old democratic revolution against Spanish colonialism and then in the war of resistance against US imperialism at the start of the 20th century. The NPA has also surpassed by far the scope and level of strength attained by the People's Army Against Japan (Hukbalahap) during World War II and the subsequent People's Liberation Army, whose backbone was broken by the enemy in the early 1950s.
Under the direction and influence of US imperialism, particularly the Bush policy of global war of terror, the Arroyo regime has adopted the policy of all-out war and unleashed Oplan Bantay Laya, with the announced objective of destroying the NPA and entire revolutionary movement. Both the imperialists and the Arroyo regime forget that the Marcos regime imposed a fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people for 14 years, when the revolutionary movement was still small and the regime had far greater access to foreign loans and US military assistance in exchange for the continued stay of the US military bases and could rapidly expand the puppet military forces from the level of 60,000 troops to more than 200,000 troops, excluding local police and the paramiltary. Despite all this, the Marcos regime failed to destroy the fledgling revolutionary movement and fell in 1986 under the blows of the people's army, the revolutionary mass movement and the broad legal opposition.
The Arroyo regime is now faced with a far larger and stronger NPA and a comprehensive revolutionary mass movement with much richer experience and sharper skills in various forms of struggle. The military and police forces of the regime are stagnant and deteriorating in terms of the number and capacity of personnel, training and equipment, despite the hype about increased military assistance and training from US military forces. The objective of Bantay Laya I was to concentrate military and mobile police units on 600 barangays in six regions at every given time to search and destroy the NPA and then proceed to another 600 barangays for the same purpose. But only 300 barangays of the more than 40,000 barangays could be covered at every given time. Bantay Laya II is bound to fare worse because it seeks to militarize and terrorize both the rural and urban communities and in the name of "development" take over the functions of the police and civilian officials.
The objective conditions in the world are not favorable to the Arroyo regime. But they are favorable to the revolutionary movement. The crisis of the world capitalist system has been deepened and aggravated rapidly by the so-called free market policy of "neoliberal globalization." This has been wrongly supposed by the US and other policymakers as the cure to the problem of stagflation blamed on state interventions under the Keynesian economic policy. The concentration and centralization of capital in the US and a few other countries have accelerated and have resulted in a global depression, afflicting mainly the underdeveloped countries. These have suffered most from the worsening chronic crisis of overproduction, unequal terms of trade and excessive debt burden. The illusion of economic growth in the imperialist countries and a few other economies like China and India has been conjured by sheer financial flows. But the real global economy shows chronic mass unemployment, widening deficits and unrepayable debts.
The Bush administration has further aggravated the crisis of the US world capitalist system by trying to stimulate industrial production and consumer demand since the bursting of the high-tech bubble in 2000 by stepping up war production and encouraging consumerism based on borrowed funds from abroad and from a domestic housing bubble (overvaluation of private homes to support consumption loans). The 9/11 attacks have facilitated the Bush mix of "military Keynesianism" and "neoliberal globalization." But there are limits to war production, outsourcing of consumer goods and debt-consumerism and overvaluation of stocks and real estate property. These do not solve but aggravate the crisis of overproduction and the financial overstretch and speculation.
In the name of anti-terrorism since 9/11, the US has whipped up war hysteria, pushed repression and fascism on a global scale and unleashed military intervention and wars of aggression. But the wars of aggression, which are intended to secure oil sources and supply lines, have put the US into a quagmire in Iraq. The US-NATO alliance in Afghanistan is also facing stiff resistance from a resurgent Taliban. The people's armed resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan has made US aggression unprofitable and has inflicted heavy costs on the US in terms of casualties, both killed and wounded, and the loss of financial resources in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The US has undermined itself as well as its allies by overreaching in the Middle East and Central Asia. Right within these regions, resistance to the US and its allies is expanding and intensifying. The people of Palestine and Lebanon have heroically resisted the combination of US imperialism and Israeli Zionism. China, Russia and other neighboring countries have also spearheaded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization for the purpose of economic cooperation and collective security outside of US control.
In South Asia, there is a rising wave of people's wars, especially in India. Particularly in Nepal, the Maoist party is leading the people and striving to install a democratic republic as the fruit of people's war. In East Asia, the US is exposing its weaknesses. It uses cheap Chinese labor in the outsourcing operations of its multinational firms but it depends on China and Japan for selling treasury bonds and financing consumer imports. The Korean people and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have successfuly defied US imperialism and have put forward their just demands. It has had to request China for assistance in order to revive the six-party talks. In the Philippines, the Filipino people continue to wage people's war and demonstrate that US military intervention cannot stop them. In fact, the US military forces expose from year to year their failure to destroy even only the small bandit group Abu Sayyaf.
In Latin America, the anti-imperialist currents are running strong among the people. The governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia are riding on these currents. They are defying the impositions of the US. They are trying to advance the nationalization of the economy and expand employment and social services. Meanwhile, certain parties and organizations are preparing to wage revolutionary armed struggle. In Africa, the people continue to suffer from severe economic and political crisis and are struggling hard to fight imperialism and neocolonialism. There is social unrest and political turmoil in several African countries. Such conditions are conducive to the emergence and growth of revolutionary forces. China and Russia are taking diplomatic initiatives in this continent while the US is overconcentrated in Iraq.
The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines has become far worse than ever before. By following the US policy of "neoliberal globalization," the Arroyo regime has pushed the denationalization, liberalization, privatization and deregulation of the Philippine economy for the benefit of the foreign monopoly interests in investment, trade and finance. It has continually surrendered the political and economic sovereignty of the people and auctioned off the national sovereignty. It has tried to undertake the revision of the 1987 constitution in order to allow the foreign corporations to have 100% ownership of all businesses. The multinational firms and banks have prevented national industrialization and land reform. These are mocked by the pro-imperialists as impermissible because they involve state intervention and are supposedly contrary to the "free market." The Arroyo regime has thus deepened and aggravated the underdevelopment of the Philippine economy, the unequal terms of trade and the dependence on foreign debt. The foreign monopoly firms have gone on a rampage of plundering the country through free flow of exploitative capital and surplus goods. The Arroyo regime has further made the Philippine economy dependent on the export of raw materials and live labor (mostly women) and the re-export of low value-added semimanufactures. These exported goods are in oversupply in the global market and are being sold in greater volume at lower prices. And finished manufactures and agricultural products from abroad flood the country because of much-lowered or negligible tariff walls and because of rampant smuggling. The trade and budgetary deficits are ever increasing.
From year to year, however, the illusion of economic growth is conjured by ever rising government spending and consumption of the few rich and well-to-do. The financial flows are effected by increasing the foreign and local public debt and, recently, the tax burden in order to cover the ever growing trade and budgetary deficits, and to pay the debt service on the accumulated debt. Of course, the Arroyo regime also grabs the foreign exchange earnings of the overseas contract workers for consumption and other counterproductive purposes. It has further bankrupted and depressed the Philippine economy in real terms and faces the limits of borrowing and raising taxes under conditions of economic depression. Under these conditions, the regime cannot expand and satisfy the reactionary armed forces and police without further exacerbating the economic and social crisis.
Unemployment is massive and cumulative because of the total failure to adopt a policy of national industrialization and land reform that can expand capital and generate employment. Incomes are depressed and dwindling, especially for the toiling masses of workers and peasants. And yet the prices of basic commodities and services are rising. Hunger is at record high. In budgetary appropriations, the regime gives the highest priority to debt service, military spending and graft-ridden infrastructure projects, while reducing the funds for education, health and public housing. The infrastructure in the rural areas is always rotting, while showy infrastructure projects are undertaken mainly in urban areas and tourist areas. The promise of developing "super-regions" through infrastructure projects is not a promise of development but opportunities for corruption by the Arroyo ruling clique. Under Arroyo, the puppet government has been rated as the most corrupt in the whole of Asia, and one of the most corrupt in the whole world.
Social discontent is widespread and acute among the toiling masses and even among the middle social strata. The Arroyo regime has used brute force to suppress workers' strikes and legal protest rallies of the broad masses of the people. It has gone as far as to issue a thinly disguised martial law proclamation and makes false charges against the broad united front of legal opposition forces. Under Oplan Bantay Laya, it has deployed large military forces and mobile police units in suspected guerrilla fronts of the NPA in order to massacre, round up, detain and torture the peasant masses and national minorities and force great numbers of them out of their homes and farms with the use of arson, machinegun fire, bombardments and artillery.
It has extended Oplan Bantay Laya to the cities, conducting military saturation drives and psywar in worker and urban poor communities and student campuses especially where progressive party-list groups and people's organizations are strong, campaigning against these parties and organizations, and witch-hunting and harassing their leaders, members and supporters, with the objective of denying them the legal and parliamentary avenues of struggle. It has engaged in extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture of unarmed legal activists, including leaders of progressive party list groups, mass leaders of workers, peasants, women and youth, the religious people, (including a bishop, numerous priests and pastors), lawyers, doctors, human rights activists and journalists. These barbarities have outraged the people of the Philippines and the whole world.
The socio-economic crisis has generated a severe political crisis among the reactionaries of the truly rotten "strong republic" The contradictions between the Arroyo regime and those out of power have become bitter because of the regime's inordinate drive to enrich itself and perpetuate itself in power through brute force. The regime is notorious for its barefaced puppetry to imperialist interests, flagrant corruption and use of electoral fraud and state terror against all opposition and critics. It has tried to revise the 1987 constitution of the reactionary government in order to keep itself in power under the pretext of shifting from the presidential to the parliamentary form of government, and at the same to please the imperialists by allowing them to have 100% ownership of all businesses and to reestablish their military bases on Philippine territory. It has become even more brutal in the face of the growing resistance of the broad masses of the people and broad united front. The Arroyo regime's brutality is inspired by the Bush global war of terror.
The contradictions among the various reactionary political factions extend to the reactionary armed forces and police. These are factionalized according to their political masters and according to their interests in racketeering and criminal syndicates. In an attempt to override the factionalism and rising anti-Arroyo currents within the military, the regime has ordered and agitated the military and police to go into a rampage of extrajudicial killings, abductions, attacks on communities and other human rights violations against the revolutionary movement and the people. After having sabotaged the peace negotiations between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines since 2001, the Arroyo regime has pretended to hold on-and-off peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and has been launching sporadic attacks against MILF forces. The Arroyo regime is increasingly exposing its unwillingness to recognize the right of the Moro people to self-determination and their rights to ancestral land by launching military attacks on the Moro people, the MILF and its army.
The Arroyo regime and its loyalists within the military and police are hell-bent on using fraud and terrorism in order to prevent the opposition from getting a number of seats in House of Representatives sufficient to impeach Arroyo as well as in the Senate sufficient to convict her. Arroyo and her security and military establishments are ready to use the recently signed Anti-Terror Law in order to outlaw and suppress not only the revolutionary forces but also the legal progressive forces and the forces of the conservative opposition. They are out to prevent the broad united front and the broad masses of the people from rising up in mass actions to overthrow the Arroyo regime. They are making a hue and cry about destroying the CPP, NPA and the entire revolutionary movement before 2010 under Oplan Bantay Laya and the Anti-Terror Law in order in order to set the stage for the escalation of state terrorism against the broad opposition and the broad masses of the people.
They plan to use the Anti-Terror Law to impose martial law on the people without having to declare it and without having to comply with the 1987 constitution in order to ensure the political survival and even the perpetuation of the Arroyo ruling clique in power through the revision of the 1987 constitution after the 2007 elections. Arroyo is scheming to make herself or her choice to become the prime minister upon the shift from presidential to parliamentary form of government. To succeed, she has to use the Anti-Terror Law to suppress the armed revolutionary forces and the legal progressive forces and thus prevent the formation of an effective broad opposition, render weak and inutile the conservative opposition forces and relatively independent critics in the churches, civic and professional associations, business and mass media and silence them in the chilling climate of the unceasing gross human rights violations with impunity.
However, the Arroyo regime overestimates its power to strike down the opposition and the people. Like the Marcos fascist dictatorship, the current regime cannot destroy them but can only unwittingly push the rapid growth of the revolutionary movement and the broad alliance of democratic forces by aggravating the fundamentally oppressive and exploitative conditions of the Philippines. Arroyo and her military and police officers have unwittingly become the best recruiters of the NPA by attacking the people and driving them to join the NPA. They have likewise become the best transport and supply officers of the NPA by getting arms from the Pentagon and sending out their troops for ambush by the NPA in the guerrilla fronts and hinterlands.
The revolutionary forces are invincible and victorious because the semi-colonial and semi-feudal conditions in the Philippines provide the fertile ground for the growth in strength and advance of the people's army and people's war. The Filipino people, especially the workers and peasants, need the NPA so long as the three monsters, foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism oppress and exploit them. Without the NPA, they have nothing with which to fight the enemy. They do not even have hope of liberation, unless they have the NPA. On the basis of the objective conditions that are intolerable to the people, the subjective forces or organized forces of the revolution thrive and march forward.
The most important subjective factor for the invincibility and victories of the NPA is the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines. This revolutionary party of the proletariat is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and applies it to the study of history and current circumstances of the Philippines and the world. It inculcates among the Party cadres and members in the NPA and among the Red commanders and fighters the dialectical materialist stand, viewpoint and method, and it combats subjectivism, be it dogmatism or empiricism.
It propagates the basic teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao about nature and human history, the laws of motion in capitalism and imperialism, the economic, political and cultural aspects of society, the state and revolution, the corrosiveness of opportunism, reformism and revisionism, the strategy and tactics of the new democratic revolution through people's war, socialist revolution and construction, the cultural revolution in socialist society and the general outline of the communist future. The continuing recruitment, education and revolutionary work of Party cadres and members guarantee that there is an indestructible core of proletarian revolutionaries within the people's army and the revolutionary mass movement.
The Party has defined the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society and the corresponding general line of the national democratic revolution of a new type. It requires the building and correct handling of the Party, the people's army and united front as the three powerful weapons of the Philippine revolution. A clear understanding of the character of Philippine society, the current stage of the revolution, the friends and enemies of the revolution, the forces and tasks of the revolution and the socialist perspective is a guarantee against errors of Right and Left opportunism.
The Party can lead the people's army and the people's war from victory to victory so long as it pursues the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism against subjectivism, the general line of new democratic revolution against opportunism and the organizational line of democratic centralism against bureaucratism and ultra-democracy. The Party secures itself and other revolutionary forces from destruction by taking care not to expose its Party cadres and members to the enemy unnecessarily and without safeguards and at the same time always developing the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-fascist mass movement from which to recruit new Party members.
In the course of people's war, the NPA is the main instrument for arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses in the rural areas. It carries out land reform in order to let the peasant masses achieve economic, social and political revolution and realize the main content of the democratic revolution. It wages the revolutionary armed struggle in order to seize weapons and other resources from the enemy and thereby expand and further strengthen itself in order to defeat the enemy. It assists the Party in organizing the organs of political power and the associations of the workers, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural activists. It facilitates the mass campaigns for the self-organization of the masses, public education, land reform, production, health and hygiene, defense and internal security, settlement of disputes, sports and cultural activities.
The basic alliance of the working class and peasantry is the strongest foundation of the national united front for the armed struggle and for all intents and purposes. In the anti-feudal united front, the Party must rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, win over the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the splits among the landlords in order to weaken and destroy the power of the despotic landlords. We may come upon various groupings and various levels of political consciousness among the workers and peasants. It is our task to unite with them and raise the level of their consciousness and organizations according to their best interests in the immediate circumstances and in the long run.
The worker-peasant alliance must win over the urban petty bourgeoisie in order to build the progressive alliance. In turn, the progressive alliance can win over the national bourgeoisie in order to build the patriotic alliance against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The united front can be further broadened to include unreliable and unstable allies from the reactionary classes in order to accelerate the isolation and defeat of the worst reactionary faction in power or the faction most servile to imperialism. The progressive, patriotic and broad unstable alliances for legal forms of struggle can become stronger if, in the first place, there is a strong basic worker-peasant alliance at work in the people's war.
If the line of the Party is correct, then the NPA and other revolutionary forces can keep on gaining strength and winning victories. But errors and shortcomings can arise as a result of deviations from the line. Thus, the old merger party of the Communist and Socialist Parties was defeated in the early 1950s. The Party had to carry out the First Great Rectification Movement to draw lessons and reestablish the Communist Party of the Philippines. There were also grave errors within the Party in the decade of the 1980s. Thus, the Party had to carry out the Second Great Rectification Movement, in order to learn lessons. The Party has amply demonstrated its ability to identify and rectify errors and to raise the fighting will and capability of the people and all revolutionary forces.
The Party is at the head and at the core of the New People's Army. It makes sure that revolutionary politics is in command of the gun. The Party and the NPA work together to pursue the general political line of national democratic revolution and the mass line of learning from the masses, relying on them and mobilizing them to accomplish revolutionary tasks. Within the Party and the NPA, periodic and timely meetings for study, summing up, evaluating work and criticism and self-criticism are conducted. Thus, the Party and NPA strengthen and sharpen themselves as the weapons of the people against the current enemy and the entire ruling system.
II. How to Define and Attack the Weak Points of the System
The three monsters, foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, which are oppressing and exploiting the Filipino people, appear to be so solid, strong and indivisible. But in fact they make the entire ruling system rotten and destructible. Each monster is quite extended, divisible and has vulnerable parts spread out all over the country. The entire semi-colonial and semifeudal ruling system is actually unstable and can be made to collapse through the protracted people's war. We can observe the weak points of the system and define these as the targets against which we can concentrate our attacks.
The main determinant of the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society is US imperialism. When the US shifted from direct colonial rule to semicolonial rule in 1946, it made the Philippines nominally independent and passed on national administration to the high politicians and bureaucrats of the local exploiting classes, who were generally united in serving US monopoly capitalism and their own big comprador and landlord interests even as they competed for political power in the name of bourgeois democracy. But the US made sure that it would continue to control the Philippines in an all-round way--economically, politically, militarily, culturally and diplomatically.
Military control is the alpha and omega of US hegemony over the Philippines. It has continuously controlled the Philippine puppet state by providing the indoctrination, strategic plans, officer training, equipment and other supplies to the reactionary armed forces and police. Up to 1991, the US had military bases in the Philippines. But even without these, it has never ceased to surveil the country with the use of nearby US military bases, spy satellites, radar stations and lorans, air and naval patrols and intelligence assets in the reactionary armed forces and police, in the entire bureaucracy and in various non-governmental organizations and institutions. Under the pretext of mutual defense, it can invade and occupy the Philippines anytime. Right now, it can engage in military intervention and deploy US military forces for any length of time and on any scale on various pretexts, including anti-terrorism, joint military exercises, civic action, humanitarian work, disaster relief, anti-drugs and anti-epidemic mission. The US has recently been hyping the lie that illegal drugs production and trafficking are proliferating in NPA and MILF areas and using this as pretext for further intensifying US military intervention and intelligence activities in the Philippines.
The US has been engaged in massive military intervention in the Philippines since after the 9/11, under the pretext of combating terrorism in the "second front" of the so-called global war of terror. It claims to be running after the Abu Sayyaf bandit gang, which the CIA and the Philippine Army formed in 1992 in an attempt to outflank the Moro National Liberation Front. The US has steadily increased the number of its troops and deployed them in various parts of the country, especially those near and within the NPA guerrilla fronts. The US troops have collaborated with the Philippine puppet troops not only in military training but also in intelligence and surveillance, occupying outposts and patrolling, and joining the puppet troops in combat operations. There is a growing possibility that the US military intervention would become a war of aggression and the current revolutionary civil war would become a national war against foreign aggression.
Foreign monopoly capitalism has so overloaded the Philippines with loans that it draws more profits from debt service than from returns on direct investments. Of course, it continues to extract profits from the direct investments in various types of business enterprises and from the lopsided exchange of manufactured imports and the raw material exports and the low-value added reexports. The growing current account deficits have resulted in a huge foreign debt whose interest and amortization are becoming more and more difficult to pay. The multinational banks and firms are ever eager to convert the loans to equity in Philippine corporations and to expand investments in raw material production (mineral and agricultural), fuel production and distribution, transport and communications, construction, trading and so on. Thus, the Arroyo regime is eager to revise the 1987 constitution to allow the US and other foreign monopoly corporations to have unlimited ownership of all businesses.
The export-oriented mining, logging and agricultural operations of the multinational firms and the big compradors are among the most exploitative and plunderous activities. But they are in the hinterlands and are the most vulnerable to actions by the people and the NPA. The foreign-owned mines must be closed down because they have proliferated in violation of the economic sovereignty and national patrimony under the infamous Mining Act of 1995. They take out the irreplaceable natural wealth of the country and devastate the environment and the entire economic and social future of the people. Logging for export must also be stopped totally because it has ruined the environment and brought about the extremes of flooding and drought on a wide scale.
Large tracts of land owned or controlled by foreign and big comprador agri-corporations for producing and exporting various types of agricultural products must be broken up to stop the foreign exploiters from owning or controlling land, to make way for land reform for the benefit of the poor peasants and farm workers, to enforce the union rights and fair wages for the farm workers, to free the small and medium landowners from the clutches of the unfair grower agreements, and to allow some reasonable amount of Filipino entreneurship in agriculture. The building of hydroelectric dams, irrigation systems, road and bridges should not be used as a pretext for grabbing land from the poor peasants and indigenous people, destroying their means of livelihood and environment and expanding the landholdings of the big foreign corporations and the local big landlords.
The US and other foreign oil giants have mercilessly squeezed the people by raising fuel prices. The people and the NPA must take action against the greed of these foreign companies and cause the nationalization of the oil industry. They must also fight the so-called independent power producers for having overpriced their plants and benefited from state-guaranteed loans and for making their power supply excessively expensive. We must study how to create the conditions for the nationalization of oil and exploration and production in the Philippines.
Most and eventually all foreign-owned and local big comprador firms engaged in any kind of business, including oil and gas exploration, production and distribution, power generation, manufacturing, transport and communications, construction, trading, tourism, real estate development and other businesses have installations, warehouses, motor pools and delivery lines inside and near the territory of the people's democratic government. All these must comply with the laws and regulations of the people's government. In case of non-compliance and refusal to negotiate with the revolutionary authorities, they are subject to appropriate actions by the people and the NPA.
If Filipino entrepreneurs are ready to take over any foreign-owned enterprise, they may be supported by the people and the revolutionary forces in the spirit of promoting the nationalization of the economy and fighting for national liberation against foreign domination. Every effort may be undertaken to favor the Filipino entrepreneurs and force out the foreign monopoly interests, especially the US. Irrespective of the nationality of the owners, an enterprise which is useful to the people but cannot be taken over by the people or by Filipinos, may be tolerated, provided such enterprise complies with the laws and regulations of the people's democratic government. In all cases the rights of the workers and the trade unions must be upheld and safeguarded.
Agrarian revolution is the process by which the largest class of the people in the Philippines, particularly the poor and lower middle peasants, can be aroused, organized and mobilized to take actions on feudal landholdings and thereby realize the main content of the democratic revolution. We must take the initiative in carrying forward the agrarian revolution, and respond to the longrunning demands of the peasants against bogus land reform programs and against the ongoing reactionary disdain for land reform under the slogan of "neoliberal globalization." Studies and decisions must be made in order to raise land reform higher from the level of the minimum land reform program of reducing land rent, eliminating usury and controlling interest rate, raising the wages of farm workers, raising the farm-gate prices of the products, and promoting agricultural and sideline occupation through rudimentary forms of cooperation.
We have extensive experience in driving out land grabbers in the hinterlands, in restituting the grabbed land to the owner-cultivators and in confiscating land from selected despotic landlords who are hated by the people. Confiscation of the land can be effected, with the peasants becoming determined not to deliver the rent to the landlord, and with the people in general and the NPA preventing the entry of the overseers and other running dogs of the landlord. If the landlords use force to attack the peasants, then the people's government can order the NPA to arrest, try and punish the criminally culpable landlords. When the landlords are armed and protected by armed guards, the NPA is justified to give battle and do everything possible to to bring the landlords in question to justice.
Efforts at confiscation of the land planted to rice, corn and other staples can be made where we have successfully carried the minimum land reform on a wide scale. We can certainly target for confiscation the landholdings of the biggest and most despotic landlords. We can study and carry out confiscation on a much wider scale by targeting landholdings bigger than 50 hectares, provided those landlords owning less than 50 hectares follow the laws and regulations of the people's government. We must be well prepared to arrange the equitable distribution of the land among the landless tillers, the credit facilities from creditors who comply with the rules set by the peasant association and the people's government and the simple forms of cooperation, including labor exchange, to raise production and reduce the costs of production and sale of the produce.
In the case of land planted to sugar and coconut, which require some kind of central milling, we must make sure that we have alliance with the millers or some landlords who can have the product milled. We must ensure that the tenants and farm workers get their respective fair shares of the income from selling the product. We must also encourage them to plant staple crops in parts of the land. They can increase the land for staple crops if cash income from sugar and coconut is likely to fall short of their needs. There are large export-oriented plantations which are better taken over by the peasants for land reform and for food production for the domestic market.
We must continue with the anti-feudal line of relying mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the rich peasants and taking advantage of the splits among the landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the big and despotic landlords. As soon as land confiscation from the landlords occurs anywhere, we can expect the enemy to attack the peasants. But the peasant masses will prevail and the enemy will not have enough strength to take the initiative. In due course, we can create and make effective the organs of people's government at the municipal and provincial levels, with the help of the urban petty bourgeoisie, middle bourgeoisie, if in the first place the peasant masses take power and the land on a wide scale in the barrios under the leadership of the Party and with the support of the NPA.
Under the direction of US imperialism, the Arroyo regime has issued since the beginning of 2002 the orders to the reactionary armed forces and police under Oplan Bantay Laya to destroy the entire revolutionary movement by attacking a number of guerrilla fronts at every given time and engaging in so-called clear-hold-consolidate-develop (or, as they call it now, win-hold-win) military operations, involving massacres, mass intimidation and forced evacuation or eviction of people (now numbering 3.2 million, with more than half of these displaced during the Arroyo regime), and at the same time carrying out extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture against unarmed legal activists who are labeled as "communists" and "enemies of the state." In a vicious campaign of bloody intrigue, the regime misrepresents those murdered by its own special teams or death squads as victims of an "internal purge" in the CPP and NPA.
After murdering hundreds of unarmed legal activists, including mass leaders, religious people, lawyers, journalists and human rights activists, the Arroyo regime has outraged the broad masses of the people and respected institutions in the Philippines and in the entire world. International fact-finding missions of human rights, civic and religious institutions and organizations, UN special rapporteurs of human rights treaty bodies have listened to and verified the testimonies of surviving victims, witnesses and the relatives, colleagues and friends of the dead victims. They have noticed the pattern of the reactionary armed forces and the police stigmatizing the targeted victim as a "communist" or "enemy of the state," then "neutralizing," i.e., murdering him or her and blaming the NPA for the crime. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Arroyo has refused to accept command responsibility and has not made the lower commanders accountable for the extrajudicial killings and abductions occurring within their jurisdiction. The fascist killers are so arrogant and so power-drunk that they flagrantly kill witnesses and facilitators in the investigations of the killings.
Despite the clarity of their command responsibility and exposure of their culpability for the heinous crimes, Arroyo and her military and police minions keep on repeating the lie and intrigue that communists are killing communists or NPA fighters are killing NPA fighters. They continue to hope that they can destroy the revolutionary movement by murdering its suspected members and then claiming that it is destroying itself. The dirty trick of the Arroyo regime looks smart. But it is practically pushing us to hurry up with actions to render justice to the victims and their murderers. In the meantime, while we are still making the necessary preparations for the just actions to be undertaken against the brutal enemy, they continue to murder people and blame the murder on us. Their bloody intrigue fails especially when they make it appear that the erroneous anti-infiltration campaigns of more than twenty years ago can be passed off as an ongoing "internal purge," and further concoct stories and "testimonies" and recycle and transfer "evidence" from interior community cemeteries and from one "mass grave" to another.
Everyone who has studied the history of the CPP knows that through the Second Great Rectification Movement, an educational campaign which was launched by the Party Central Committee in 1992, the CPP criticized and condemned the anti-informer campaigns of hysteria that occurred mainly from 1985 to 1988, like Kampanyang Ahos, OPML and the like. The few who were most responsible for the crimes left the CPP to evade responsibility, established anti-CPP groups and sought employment in the reactionary system. It is well known that the CPP has firmly upheld the principle of due process in administrative cases of discipline within its ranks and in criminal cases before the people's court. The broad masses of the people know and even the UN special rapporteurs have determined that the Arroyo regime and its military and police have been fabricating "evidence" and are lying when they try to confuse the anti-former hysteria in certain areas in the 1980s with the Second Great Rectification Movement of the 1990s, and make the false claim that there is an ongoing "internal purge."
As a result of the severe socio-economic and political crisis of the ruling system, especially after having engaged in electoral fraud and terrorism in 2004, the Arroyo regime has been obsessed with political survival against the broad popular demands for its ouster and is deliberately using the slogans of anti-communism and anti-terrorism in order to ingratiate itself with US imperialism and the local exploiting classes. It calculates that only if it could destroy or paralyze the revolutionary movement or at least the legal progressive forces with murderous attacks, then it would be easier to control and even coopt the conservative opposition. It has thereby become increasingly violent not only against the people and revolutionary forces in the suspected guerrilla fronts but also against the legal patriotic and progressive forces.
The problem of the Arroyo regime is that the people are outraged by its gross human rights violations. The broad united front against the regime has become stronger. Instead of mending its ways, the regime has become even more arrogant and more violent. It is overdependent on the use of the coercive apparatuses of the state (army, police, courts and jails) and has a strong proclivity for using force even against the broad legal opposition and the people.
The Arroyo ruling clique has inflamed the contradictions among the reactionaries. We can expect more bitter and violent strife among them, especially after the 2007 elections. The contending reactionaries have private armed groups and their own factions among the officers of the armed forces and police. They are increasingly engaged in violent attacks against each other. In the face of the fratricidal strife within the ruling system, we must intensify the tactical offensives and raise the level of the people's war. We must take advantage of the splits within the ruling system and its general weakness. And we must also recognize that the Arroyo regime is trying to deceive the Moro revolutionary forces and deliver surprise blows on them. We must encourage the Moro people to persevere in the armed struggle for self-determination. Their armed struggle has served significantly to weaken the current regime and the entire ruling system. We must strengthen our alliance, cooperation and coordination with the revolutionary forces of the Moro people.
The simplest and best way to take advantage of the fractiousness and instability of the ruling system is to concentrate fire on the Arroyo ruling clique and its retinue of traitors, murderers and torturers, plunderers, racketeers and election-riggers. The broad masses of the people and the families of the victims of human rights violations cry out for justice. The people's court must issue the warrants for the arrest of the criminal suspects at every level. Then the NPA and its auxiliary forces can act to surveil, arrest them and give battle to them if they are armed or protected by armed personnel and resist arrest. The people and the NPA are not at all helpless against those who inflict state terrorism on them.
There must be a priority list in the standing order of criminal suspects to be arrested or to be given battle when they and/or their companions are armed and are dangerous. The highest priority must be given to those liable for the extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture. Since the actual human rights violators are often masked, the NPA must hold criminally responsible those with command responsibility, from the level of the commander-in-chief and her fellow plotters in the cabinet oversight committee on internal security to every lower level of command. At the same time, efforts must be exerted to conduct countersurveillance operations on the death squads or special teams when they are on the job or when they park the motorcycles or vans in enemy camps or safehouses.
To help ensure that justice is carried out for the victims of human rights violations, those most concerned about the victims and most determined to counter-attack the enemy may be allowed to help in the pertinent intelligence and surveillance work. The barbaric attacks against the leaders and activists of democratic parties and organizations and against the people in both urban and rural areas impel all of us to accelerate the recruitment into the NPA as well as promptly provide the necessary sanctuaries and appropriate organizations and tasks for those whose lives and liberty are threatened by the enemy forces. Comrades, relatives, associates and friends of victims who wish to join the revolutionary underground or the NPA should be given priority in politico-military training. We can draw positive results from the martyrdom of the victims.
We can accelerate the rendering of revolutionary justice to those who are culpable for the heinous human rights violations. These are themselves vulnerable because their arrogance of power often makes them complacent and are not always in the protective company of their criminal accomplices. We may also avail of the assistance of anti-Arroyo elements within the military and police to identify these criminals or even act against them.
We must persevere in the strategic line of protracted people's war along the line of the national democratic revolution of the new type. We must encircle the cities from the countryside and accumulate our armed strength until we have enough to be able to seize power in the cities and on a nationwide scale. We expect to go through the probable course of three stages: strategic defensive (when the enemy is on the strategic offensive), strategic stalemate (when our strength and that of the enemy are more or less the same) and strategic offensive (when the enemy is on the strategic defensive).
While we are on the strategic defensive, we change the balance of forces by launching tactical offensives, seizing arms from the enemy and making him bleed from a thousand wounds. In the face of the Arroyo regime's heightened total war and fascist aggression, we define the following central tasks at present: the intensification of our guerrilla warfare; the frustration and defeat of Oplan Bantay-Laya II; the fight to oust the Arroyo regime; and the further strengthening and advance of the armed revolution.
The intensification of our guerrilla warfare to frustrate and counter the Arroyo regime's fascist attacks and terrorism is our most important urgent task. We must launch more frequent tactical offensives in each region, province and front, especially in areas where the revolutionary forces are larger and stronger. We must inflict heavier blows on the fascist enemy more often than it can strike at the people's army. The NPA can seize and maintain the initiative in battle through numerous, frequent and extensive tactical offensives.
We must put more focus and effort on tactical offensives that have major political effect. We must grasp the fact that each tactical offensive and battle contributes to our propaganda. In the face of the aggravating crisis and intensified political battles this year and the remaining years of the Arroyo regime, our delivery of head blows in concert with multiple body blows to the much despised regime is of particular importance. At stake is the preservation and further strengthening of our guerrilla forces and mass base. The intensification and spread of people's protests in various forms and the entirety of people's struggles are crucial in bringing down the hated regime.
The Arroyo regime pins on Oplan Bantay Laya II its vain hope of debilitating the armed revolutionary movement and the militant legal opposition forces before the end of its present term. We should study well its design, direction, components, tactics and weaknesses, and prepare all our forces in the people's army, the revolutionary mass base and the broad mass movement to effectively confront and defeat it. By frustrating and countering the enemy's attacks and exploiting its weaknesses, we can defeat Oplan Bantay Laya II as we did its predecessor Oplan Bantay Laya I.
The Arroyo regime wants to increase concentration of military operations and has principally targeted for encirclement and suppression campaigns one-third of NPA guerrilla fronts. But the reactionary armed forces can only concentrate on 10 or just a few more guerrilla fronts at any given time, and yet has failed to crush a single consolidated front. The Armed Forces of the Philippines has also diverted a significant part of its forces to extend Oplan Bantay Laya II and conduct military saturation drives and terror campaigns in the urban poor and worker community constituencies of progressive parties and open, legal democratic organizations.
The people's army has not only been able to preserve its forces, it has creatively devised means to maintain a certain level of operations, continue with its work among the people and make sure to strike back at the enemy in areas where it concentrates its attacks and sows fascist terror. In untenable situations, the NPA can easily shift and gain momentum in over a hundred more guerrilla fronts where enemy forces are thinly spread and weak and where the NPA forces remain free to expand and consolidate their strength and launch more tactical offensives against the regime.
Even in the midst of relentless battles, we must persevere in expanding and consolidating our forces, guerrilla fronts and mass base. Opportunities are excellent for the NPA to organize the masses, recruit more Red fighters, establish local organs of revolutionary political power, respond to the needs of the masses and launch tactical offensives to seize weapons and weaken the enemy.
The intensification of the revolutionary armed struggle is coordinated with expanding and invigorating antifeudal, antifascist and anti-imperialist mass struggles and campaigns. We must give thorough attention to advancing campaigns that promote the people's livelihood and production, education and culture, health and enable them to achieve at least immediate relief to their various other daily problems.
The Party, the NPA and the revolutionary movement have developed further the capacity to engage the enemy's intensified fascist attacks and terrorism. Even as it needs to enlarge and strengthen itself to make greater advances, the NPA presently has the necessary capability and a deep and wide mass support to fight the attacks and ravages of the enemy forces and make these pay dearly for their fascist crimes.
In spite of the Arroyo regime's all-out war and fascist viciousness, the Party, the people's army and the revolutionary movement have solid confidence and concrete basis in declaring with utmost certainty that Oplan Bantay Laya II will fail and turn out as nothing more than bluster.
We are carrying out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. To be able to do so, we must form more company-strength guerrilla fronts and more NPA combat platoons. At best, a guerrilla front has the strength of a company, with a platoon relatively concentrated to serve as the center of gravity and the other platoons relatively dispersed as squads or armed propaganda teams for the development of an extensive mass base.
The militia and self-defense units set up in every organized barrio in the guerrilla fronts serve as auxiliaries and reserves and as deep reservoirs of recruits for the NPA far more numerous than the present full-time fighters. They can multiply the strength of the present crop of full-time NPA fighters as soon as arms and politico-military training are provided. At the same time, we urgently need to deploy more cadres and step up the recruitment of urban-based workers and educated youth for revolutionary work in the countryside and the people's army and combine them well with the peasant fighters and veteran fighters.
We wish to advance from the early phase of the strategic defensive and develop the middle phase by multiplying the guerrilla fronts and guerrilla platoons as maneuver units until we reach the advance phase in which the guerrilla fronts shall have merged as stable base areas and developed companies as the maneuver units. We expect that in the course of time, as we seize more arms from the enemy, we can train and develop the personnel and units for higher levels of administration above the guerrilla front and higher levels of command above the guerrilla front's company command.
On the basis of the guerrilla fronts, we aim for the development of municipal, district, provincial and regional levels of administration and command. Now, it is possible for higher levels of administration and command to avail of, direct and coordinate combined units from lower levels for the purpose of tactical offensives. The national operational command and regional operational commands have their own centers of gravity.
For the purpose of preserving our forces and having a constant basis for growth, the guerrilla fronts should not send any unit into battle without sufficient preparation and the certainty of winning through superior position and strength and the element of surprise. Also, a guerrilla front should not put into battle all or most of its armed strength in any decisive win-or-lose engagement with the enemy. But there can be nationally and regionally coordinated tactical offensives in which the guerrilla front commands can participate by carrying tactical offensives well within their capabilities and without putting at risk the continued existence and growth of all the units under each command. The level of command, tactics, armaments and technique can rise on the basis of victories in the battlefield.
The NPA uses flexible tactics in a war of fluid movement. These include concentration, dispersal and shifting. It concentrates enough force to gain superiority over the targeted enemy unit. It also chooses the time and place for the attack and takes advantage of the element of surprise. It can disperse in order to retreat from the site of its own successful offensive and regroup elsewhere, in order to "disappear" before an advancing superior enemy forces, or in order to conduct mass work while conditions are favorable for such or while the enemy force is away. It can shift in order to circle around and evade a superior enemy force, or transfer to another area because the enemy is concentrating a large force on an area for an extended period.
The main offensive tactics of the NPA is annihilation of targeted enemy units. The main objective in fighting is to wipe out the enemy unit and seize its arms. Most of the time this is possible by ambushing enemy units. At certain times, it is possible to raid the enemy position. When it is not possible to raid a well-fortified enemy position, it is the better part of wisdom and valor to wait for the enemy to come out to the road for an ambush. However, it is sometimes possible to disarm the enemy through surprise raids, arrest operations and checkpoints without firing a shot or with some casualties on his side.
Offensive tactics are of many types, from the simple ones to the relatively complex ones.
The simple ones include the ambush, the raid and arrest operation on the enemy force in one limited place at one time, without any elaborate deployment of NPA fighters (such as attack, containing and blocking units). The relatively complex ones involve more elaborate troop deployment and wider time and geographic scale. Some of these tactics include: baiting an enemy unit to investigate an incident, ambushing an enemy unit to make a bigger ambush on the reinforcement, feigning an attack on the East to attack the West, attacking the vacated or weakened position where the enemy came from, using a small unit to lure the enemy into a big trap or a series of traps, zapping the enemy vehicles while these are stationary, delivering head blows on the enemy while he is minding the body blows and making the enemy bleed from a thousand wounds in regionally or nationally coordinated offensives.
It is self-defeating for the NPA to engage in attritive actions in which it loses plenty of ammunition and does not seize arms and ammunition. But the NPA can engage in certain attritive actions at the expense of the enemy, especially acts of harassment at little cost and with far-reaching benefit to the NPA. Sniping, grenades, land mines and mortars can inflict casualties on enemy troops in vehicles, marching or resting. The enemy troops can thus become demoralized, jittery and strained in their relations with their officers and fellow soldiers. The NPA can also use explosives and flames to destroy enemy positions, installations, transmission towers and lines, depots, vehicles and the like and compel the enemy to go into static guard duty. Actions of armed city partisans can also compel the military to go into guard duty in urban areas.
In the course of battle, we shoot to render the enemy troops incapable of fighting. But subsequently we allow those who wish to surrender to do so, we give medical treatment to the wounded and we also deal with the dead enemy troops respectfully in accordance with the NPA Rules of Discipline, International Humanitarian Law and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law. It is up to the NPA commander to decide on detaining ordinary troops as prisoners of war. But as much as possible, the enemy officers must be detained for the purpose of investigating them whether they are liable for crimes or whether they are qualified for prisoner exchange.
Our policy of leniency towards prisoners of war is not only a matter of respect for human rights, discipline and legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions and CARHRIHL. It is also a matter of political consideration that the enemy troops come from the working classes and the junior field officers often come from the middle class. It is a matter of taking the moral high ground against the barbarism and inhumanity of the enemy. In accordance with our policy of disintegrating the enemy forces, we try to convince them that our revolutionary cause is just and that they can join it or stop fighting it. However, we do not take it against them if they return to their enemy units and we capture them again from the enemy side.
We must encourage anti-imperialist and democratic elements, groups and movements within the reactionary army and police. We must develop secret cells of the CPP and NDFP among them without their knowing each other as such. There are several groups of officers and their respective followers that are opposed to the Arroyo regime and its favorite officers. We should encourage these anti-Arroyo officers to develop their political and organizational strength against the Arroyo regime and not to expose this to the Arroyo favorites until the mass actions shall have become large enough for them to support these actions openly. Before then, they must promote within their ranks respect for human rights and the people's right to free speech and assembly. While we relate to allies in the military and police, we must have reliable links and adopt safeguards against counter-intelligence and betrayal. Allies are independent of us as much as we are independent of them.
As we celebrate the 38th anniversary of the NPA, we do not spend time discussing whether to resume the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations or not, because in the first place it is absolutely clear that the Arroyo regime has scuttled these negotiations and has vowed to destroy the revolutionary movement. We demand compliance by GRP with all agreements with the NDFP from The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 to the Oslo joint statements. And we cannot take lightly and let pass the criminal and treacherous abduction and probable murder of national and regional consultants of the NDFP and their staffers, the blacklisting of holders of NDFP documents of identification and the escalating human rights violations by the GRP. With all resoluteness and valor, we respond to the clamor of the people for revolutionary change. We must defeat the brutal campaigns of the enemy and advance the national democratic revolution. We are highly confident that we shall win greater victories in intensifying our tactical offensives and in striving to raise our people's war to a new and higher level.
III. Prospects of the People's War
So long as imperialism and local reaction persist to oppress and exploit us, the Filipino people will persevere in the national democratic revolution through protracted people's war. We will continue to fight until we win national liberation, realize our democratic rights and proceed to the socialist revolution. It took our ancestors more than 300 years to attain national unity and liberate themselves from Spanish colonialism. It will take much less time to achieve national and social liberation from imperialism and local reaction because of the cumulative force of history even as this goes through ups and downs and twists and turns.
The crisis of the world capitalist system and domestic ruling system inflict intolerable suffering on the Filipino people. But this impels them to fight back and struggle for national liberation and democracy. The vow of the Arroyo regime to destroy the revolutionary forces, especially the NPA, before 2010 will not come true. Instead, before then, the NPA has ample opportunity to prove the inability of the regime to rule and has a good chance of causing its downfall. At any rate, we must intensify the tactical offensives and raise the people's war to a new and higher level. The crisis conditions are favorable to the growth in strength and advance of the NPA.
The US-directed policy of neoliberal globalization and the policy of global war of terror have brought to an unprecedented level the new world disorder of economic and financial crisis, fascism, racism and religious bigotry and wars of aggression. In so short a time, since the US became the sole superpower, it has accelerated the worsening of the crisis of the world capitalist system. It is floundering in its own economic, social and political crisis at home and in the quagmire of Iraq. The struggles of the people for national liberation, democracy and socialism are clearly resurgent and are resounding throughout the world.
We are confident that the struggle of the proletariat and people of the world for greater freedom, democracy, social justice and all-round progress will continue to expand and intensify against imperialism and reaction. The resurgence of the anti-imperialist and democratic struggles throughout the world is of great help to the strengthening and advance of the Philippine revolution. In turn the revolutionary victories of the Filipino people are contributory to the advance of the revolutionary struggles of the people of the world. ###
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