Seize the Initiative, Launch the Offensives to Reap Victories for the 40th NPA AnniversaryMessage by the Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines March 29, 2008
With utmost joy, we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the founding of the New People's Army by the Communist Party of the Philippines. We salute all Party cadres and members, Red commanders and fighters and the broad masses of the people for their long-accumulated and recent victories in the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war against US imperialism and the local reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords.
We honor and congratulate you for achieving highly significant political and military victories. We pay our highest respects to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes for having sacrificed the most in order to advance the great red banner of our just revolutionary cause.
We look forward to the achievement of far greater victories in the revolutionary struggle in the forthcoming year. We wish to achieve these victories in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the NPA. We can reap great victories by continuing to seize the initiative and launching far more tactical offensives against the enemy than last year.
The US-Arroyo regime is daydreaming by boasting that it can destroy or reduce the NPA to inconsequentiality before 2010. Oplan Bantay Laya 1 failed miserably to destroy a single guerrilla front from 2002 to 2007. Oplan Bantay Laya 2 is bound to fail even more miserably in the few remaining years of the regime. The regime itself is in grave trouble and is on the brink of an ignominious downfall.
The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system is worsening rapidly. This oppressive and exploitative system will rot faster than ever before as the crisis of the world capitalist system has resulted in a global depression, unprecedented since the Great Depression, due to the unravelling of the US-dictated policies of "neoliberal globalization" and "global war on terror." The conditions are exceedingly favourable for the people's war in the Philippines and for all forms of revolutionary anti-imperialist resistance by the people throughout the world.
I. The World Capitalist System in the Throes of Depression
The world capitalist system is in the throes of a depression. Gone are the days when the abuse of credit could facilitate sales and conjure the illusion of growing economies. The core of the system, which is the US, is exposed as afflicted by a grave economic and financial crisis and is generating waves of economic and social ruin in all imperialist countries, in the largest so-called emerging markets and worse than ever before in the general run of underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
At the base of the global crisis is the crisis of overproduction in the real economy. New technology has raised higher the social character of production but has also whipped up the private monopoly character of appropriation. The policy of "neoliberal globalization" has accelerated the concentration and centralization of capital in the US and a handful of monopoly capitalist countries through the denationalization of the less developed countries, liberalization of investments and trade, privatization of public assets and deregulation, against the social rights of the working people, women, children and the environment.
The maximization of monopoly profit through the expansion of constant capital and the reduction of the wage fund and social spending by the government in the US and other imperialist countries has contracted global and domestic markets and have steadily resulted in the decline of industrial production and the increase of unemployment. More efficient means of transport and communications have pushed the imperialist powers to outsource the manufacturing of consumer goods in a few less developed countries like China and India in which the cost of labor is far lower. The high end of industrial production, especially of goods which are most profitable or are related to military policy and war, is retained. Growth of irregular employment in the service sector has failed to make up for the general decline of regular employment in the industrial sector.
Since the onset of the 1980s, the imperialist policy makers have presumed that growing the economy is merely a matter of making available an abundant supply of money and credit and countering the boom-and-bust cycles of capitalism with gentle manipulation of interest rates and with the least state intervention in the so-called free market. The fundamental crisis of overproduction has been recurrent and has become worse from period to period but it has been covered up by ever increasing doses of credit for generating consumption, piling debt on debt and pure speculation.
The celebration of the US as the engine of growth and as the market of last resort for the world economy is practically over. The US national debt of US$9.4 trillion is proving to be unsustainable. It is the result of higher trade deficits due to outsourcing of manufactured and semi-manufactured goods as well as budgetary deficits due to the tax cuts for the monopoly bourgeoisie and the ever growing payments to the military industrial complex, overseas military development and the wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is understandable why the US dollar is in rapid decline by looking at the US national debt and industrial decline.
But the financial crisis of the US involves not only the massive national debt. US monopoly corporations have also engaged in excessive borrowing through bank credit and sale of corporate bonds. The US investment houses and banks are facing the prospect of bankruptcies under the combined weight of corporate bad debts and the bankruptcies of most US households due to the current subprime mortgage meltdown on top of failed stock purchases during the high-tech bubble.
In recent years the growth of the global economy has been conjured by the fluctuating growth rates of around 2-4% in capitalist countries (except Japan) and by the high growth rates in so-called emerging markets like China and India and in major oil-producing countries. But in the current and prospective years, the global growth rate is bound to go down drastically because of the tightening international credit and the consequent decline of production.
The financial crisis of the US has spread like an epidemic to the other imperialist countries. These countries also expect their exports to suffer as a result of the decline of the US dollar. China, India and the Southeast Asian countries that are dependent on US orders for the manufacturing or semi-manufacturing of consumer goods are bound to suffer from reduced production and closure of shops. At the same time, the rising costs of fuel and food imports will adversely affect most countries of the world.
The current socio-economic crisis in the world capitalist system is expected to be prolonged because it is extremely grave and deep-going. It is the result of so many decades of abusing domestic and foreign credit for the benefit of the imperialist powers and at the expense of the oppressed peoples and nations of the world. Even before the current severity of the crisis, the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have been in a constant state of depression since the overproduction of raw materials in the late seventies. The life of extreme oppression and exploitation for the broad masses of the people, especially the workers and peasants, is becoming far more intolerable than ever before.
We can expect that there will be more frequent and bigger outbursts of mass protests against the deterioration of socio-economic and political conditions in the US and other imperialist countries as well as in the so-called emerging market countries like China and India. Wherever life is most impoverished and miserable and the level of exploitation and oppression is escalating, the broad masses of the people are launching various forms of struggle, including militant mass protests and revolutionary armed struggle. The imperialists and their reactionary puppets do not heed grievances but unleash state terrorism against the people and pretend to be the ones conducting a "war on terror."
Under the auspices of US imperialism all the imperialists and reactionary puppets in the world continue to use the slogan of anti-terrorism in order to repress the people who fight for national liberation and democracy, to engage in wars of aggression against countries that assert national independence, and to persecute and destroy leaders and forces that take an anti-imperialist position.
For more than five years, the Bush regime has failed to defeat the Al Qaeda, which it has accused of responsibility for 9/11. Instead, it has concentrated its war of aggression on Iraq on false pretenses in violation of international law. This war has resulted in the death of more than 1.2 million Iraqis, the displacement of more than 4 million and the devastation of the economy and social infrastructure of Iraq. But it has also cost the US death casualties of 4,000 troops, serious injury to more than 30,000 and other illnesses of 260,000. The US has already officially allocated up to the present USS700 billion on the wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, exceeding the cost of war in Vietnam. Actual total cost of the war to the US has already run up to more than US3trillion, and this is estimated to double or triple before 2010. The US has put itself in a quagmire because of its greed for the oil resources of Iraq and its scheme to strengthen its hegemony over the Middle East and the rest of the world.
Because it is sinking in the quagmire in Iraq, the US is losing effectiveness even within the ambit of the Middle East and Central Asia. Farther away, it is still regarded as the sole superpower, but a fading one that is afflicted by industrial decline and financial crisis and whose military power is overextended and ineffective at close quarters fighting. In all global regions, the US has dual relations of economic cooperation and competition as well as political collusion and contention with other imperialist powers and certain regional powers.
The US and its closest imperialist allies have dual relations with Russia and China in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, with China in East Asia and Africa and with India in South Asia. In Latin America, the current Chavez government can dramatically stand up against the US policies because of US overextension elsewhere in the world. As the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens, there is increasing multipolarity and complexity and the tendency of the imperialist powers to struggle for a redivision of the world in terms of economic territory and political hegemony.
Various forms of anti-imperialist resistance are being waged by the people in imperialist countries and in all other kinds of countries. But the most decisive forms of anti-imperialist struggle are those that involve the struggle between armed revolution and armed counter-revolution. In this kind of struggle, the people answer the central question of revolution in the most effective way. The revolutionary armed struggles for national liberation and democracy in the Philippines, India, Colombia and other countries are playing an important role in taking advantage of the current and prospective crises of world capitalism. They show the way how to carry out the politico-military revolution to enable the people to carry out social revolution and defeat imperialism and its reactionary allies.
II. Arroyo Regime aggravates Crisis of Ruling System
The Arroyo regime has aggravated and deepened the chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system beyond what the Marcos fascist regime and the succeeding pseudo-democratic regimes of Aquino, Ramos and Estrada did. The systematic application of the US-dictated policy of neoliberal or "free market" globalization has thoroughly prevented economic development through national industrialization and genuine land reform and has kept open the floodgates to US and other foreign monopoly firms in violating economic sovereignty and selling out the national patrimony through the denationalization of the economy, liberalization of investments and trade, privatization of public assets and the most anti-social and anti-environmental forms of deregulation.
The Philippine economy has remained dependent on raw material (agricultural and mineral) production for export and the semimanufacturing of consumer goods for reexport to the imperialist countries in exchange for the far higher valued imports of essential consumer and producer goods, components of semimanufacturing, fuel and food. The Philippines is an agrarian country, but its agricultural production has been lopsidedly in favor of certain export crops and is subjected to dumping by foreign agricultural producers. Thus, it has become a net food importer at an increasing rate. Currently, it faces the grave problem of shortage and soaring price of rice. This problem has already caused malnutrition on a national scale and starvation in certain areas.
The way for the reactionary state to cover the deficits in trade and in the budget has been to engage in ever greater amounts of foreign and local borrowing from year to year. This is also the way how the Arroyo regime has been able to conjure the illusion of growth in gross domestic product, even as the borrowings and other resources are used for debt service, consumption at all levels, unbridled profit-taking by the multinational firms and cronies of the regime and the overpriced and graft-ridden state contracts for the equipment of the bureaucracy and the military and for substandard infrastructure projects.
The data for the foreign and local borrowings of the Philippine reactionary state are always understated through certain devices from period to period. The latest available figure places the national debt at PhP3.871 trillion or US$81.91 billion excluding the so-called contingency liabilities in which the state assume the liabilities whenever the state or private corporate borrowers fail to fulfil their obligations. The Arroyo regime has the distinction of having borrowed PhP2.83 trillion from 2001 to 2006, overshadowing the PhP1.51 trillion total borrowings of the Aquino, Ramos and Estrada regimes in 14 years, from 1986 to 2000.
In recent years, the Arroyo regime has been increasingly compelled to borrow from the global commercial market by selling bonds and to take tied loans or credit lines from China, Japan and other countries. It has also resorted to increasing the tax burden on the people but the collection of tax revenues has continued to decline because of bureaucratic corruption and the depression of the Philippine economy. The current economic and financial crisis of the world capitalist system is already resulting in such adverse conditions for the Philippines as the global credit squeeze, the rapid deterioration in terms of trade and larger budgetary deficits due to decreasing tax collection in a further depressed economy. The Philippine peso has started to rapidly depreciate and will further depreciate at an accelerated rate.
The yearly claim of the growth of the gross domestic product by the Arroyo regime does not show the distribution of income and the aggravation of poverty in the country. On the contrary, it covers up the fact that most of the social wealth created by the people and the foreign and local borrowings flow into the hands of the foreign multinational firms and banks, the big compradors, the landlords and the corrupt bureaucrats. The growth of the GDP does not signify socio-economic upliftment of the people but exposes how much they are fleeced by their exploiters.
Under the current conditions of economic crisis and depression in the Philippines, the political crisis of the ruling system is becoming more bitter and more heated than ever before. The contradictions among the factions of big comprador and landlord politicians are sharpening. The anti-Arroyo factions are encouraged by the growing democratic mass movement against the Arroyo regime and are gaining ground over the Arroyo ruling clique by exposing the regime's corruption, human rights violations and servility to foreign interests.
The Arroyo regime is terribly afraid of impeachment or ouster from power and possible prosecution for its high crimes against the people. Thus it is using the coercive apparatuses of the state to intimidate the legal opposition. It has gone to the extent of kidnapping and threatening the life of a government official who has agreed to testify before the Senate against the ruling clique in the National Broadband Network scam fixed by big comprador bureaucrats on the Philippine and Chinese sides.
Under the direction of the US-instigated global war of terror, the Arroyo regime has used state terrorism under Oplan Bantay Laya not only to seek the destruction or weakening of the armed revolutionary movement but also to intimidate and destroy the broad range of opposition forces. It has engaged in extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture of progressive legal activists and the filing of false charges against the progressive opposition leaders not only to destroy the legal forces of the national democratic movement but also to frighten the anti-Arroyo reactionary forces and discourage them from going into a broad united front with the legal patriotic and progressive forces.
However, the broad united front against the corrupt and brutal Arroyo regime is resilient and becoming more vigorous mainly because of the resoluteness and militance of the forces of the national democratic movement. The opposition forces headed by those expecting to replace Arroyo from the presidency are wary that if she were ousted and her vice-president would take over the presidency in her interest and would have enough time to consolidate power for running for the presidency in 2010. But if the broad united front fails to discredit, isolate and put Arroyo always on the brink of downfall she could recover to some extent and gain the position of choosing her successor in order to protect herself against criminal prosecution.
The long running division among the reactionary military and police officers into political factions and criminal syndicates is a major manifestation of the rottenness and weakness of the ruling system. However, certain patriotic military and police officers have emerged to denounce and oppose the Arroyo regime and a number of them have been imprisoned since 2003. They are inspiring the military rank and file to uphold the principle of civilian supremacy, to respect the people's right to speak and assemble and to withdraw support from the Arroyo regime. They are eagerly awaiting the protest mass actions to reach the level of at least 100,000 at Edsa or before the presidential palace in order to make a dramatic act of withdrawing support from the regime.
The broad masses of the people are seething with outrage over the Arroyo regime's puppetry to imperialist interests, its unbounded corruption and its gross and systematic human rights violations. They are determined to wage protest mass actions in the national capital region and on a nationwide scale until the Arroyo regime is ousted from power. The demand for the ouster of the Arroyo ruling clique rings loud in the factories, farms, communities and institutions like the schools and churches, and in various types of gatherings of whatever size. All forms of mass media are being used to expose and oppose the Arroyo regime and call for its ouster from power.
The people are rallying to the calls of the organized forces of the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata and the issue-based organizations and movements. The people are being mobilized by an echelon of alliances: the basic alliance of the workers and peasants, the progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of the progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie and the broad united front that includes the anti-Arroyo reactionaries who are temporary and unstable allies.
It is the immediate aim of the people to oust the Arroyo regime from power before 2010. All efforts are being exerted to achieve this aim. But if the regime persists and tries to puts its own successor in power, the people's outrage will become even sharper. The weaknesses of certain allies in the broad united front do not discourage the patriotic and progressive forces but encourage them further to use their independence and initiative to enlarge the mass movement, determine its course and accelerate its advances. The growing protest mass actions have compelled the Arroyo regime to deploy more military and police personnel in urban areas. At the same time, the New People's Army has been intensifying its tactical offensives in the rural areas.
The prospects for resuming the formal talks in the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) are dim or nil. The Arroyo regime is unwilling to do away with the many obstacles it has put up and even demands the capitulation of the NDFP as precondition to mere exploratory talks. The main and essential thrust of the Arroyo regime is to seek the destruction or strategic defeat of the revolutionary movement before 2010. It is opposed to peace negotiations within the framework of The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992. Instead, it tries in vain to use deceptive tactics, such as so-called "localized peace talks" and "amnesty and rehabilitation" as adjuncts of the military campaigns of suppression. These tactics are all calculated to mislead and divide the people and at the same time allow the regime and its military agents to enrich themselves by fabricating fake lists of amnesty beneficiaries.
The CPP, NPA and NDFP are prepared to resume formal talks in the GRP-NDFP negotiations after the downfall of the Arroyo regime or to end the peace negotiations if the next reactionary regime continues the policy of the Arroyo regime on the question of peace negotiations. They must intensify the people's war and take advantage of the people's outrage over the crimes of the Arroyo regime in order to isolate and weaken and eventually overthrow the ruling system of the big compradors and landlords.
III. The Invincibility and Advances of the New People's Army
The New People's Army is invincible and continues to score revolutionary victories because it is led by the Communist Party of the Philippines along the line of new democratic revolution through people's war. It serves the national and democratic rights and interests of the people and it therefore enjoys the active participation and support of the people in the revolutionary movement against the extremely oppressive and exploitative system of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class.
The US-directed Arroyo regime are engaged in wishful thinking by repeatedly announcing their intention to destroy or "reduce to inconsequentiability" the people's armed revolution before 2010. History has shown that the Marcos regime failed to destroy the newly resurgent revolutionary movement from 1969 to 1986, including 14 years of fascist dictatorship from 1972 onwards. It merely succeeded in generating conditions for the growth in strength and advance of the NPA and all other revolutionary forces. Despite bourgeois democratic pretenses to sugarcoat the armed counter-revolution, the post-Marcos regimes, from Aquino to the Arroyo regime, have likewise failed to destroy the NPA and the entire revolutionary movement.
The NPA is battle-tested and tempered like steel in the crucible of revolutionary armed struggle for nearly forty years. It has an inexhaustible source of strength in the broad masses of the people. It has accumulated rich experience in persevering and further strengthening itself, fighting the enemy and winning victories in the political, military, economic and cultural fields. The rank and file of the CPP and NPA have remained steadfast in upholding their revolutionary cause. The incorrigible subjectivists and Right and Left opportunists have served only to push the proletarian revolutionaries in the CPP and the revolutionary movement to undertake the Second Great Rectification Movement and to win resounding victories in educating the revolutionary rank and file on the basic principles, rectifying errors and shortcomings, developing all-round strength and defining the revolutionary tasks in the clearest of terms.
Together with the CPP and NDFP, the NPA has become stronger precisely at the time that the Arroyo regime is thoroughly discredited and isolated and that the entire ruling system has become more rotten and weaker than ever before. The crisis of the world capitalist system and that of the domestic ruling system have become far worse than ever before. The conditions are exceedingly favorable for the NPA and the entire revolutionary movement to grow in strength as a fighting, propaganda, productive and cultural force, to seize initiative and intensify the armed struggle and gather the widest possible popular support through the united front policy and tactics.
Oplan Bantay Laya 2 failed miserably in its objective in 2007, as OBL 1 has failed in 2001-2006, to concentrate the reactionary armed forces and regional mobile police units in 600 barangays in some 10 to 12 guerrilla fronts in six regions all at the same time in order to clear barangays of the NPA, hold them for an extended period and develop them against the people's army. The military and police forces could hardly occupy 300 barangays at every given time and have failed to destroy a single guerrilla front of the NPA. The enemy simply does not have enough troops and resources to cover extensive areas of the country. The NPA can freely move in at least 80% of Philippine territory.
The NPA has easily moved in the wide gaps in the deployment of enemy brigades between enemy battalions, between companies and between platoon-size special operation teams. The NPA has been able to maneuver in order to be on the exterior line in concentrating the Red fighters for tactical offensives to wipe out enemy units. It has been able to disperse and shift position in order to evade the enemy with superior strength and at the same time secure a position for launching offensives against the enemy. Enemy units are withdrawn from a guerrilla front either because of the need to be deployed in other guerrilla fronts where the NPA is launching more frequent tactical offensives or in Moro areas whenever the level of armed conflict rises there. Whenever enemy forces vacate an area, the NPA disperses its units in order to do mass work and further develop the mass base and mass support.
From Phase 1 to Phase 2, Oplan Bantay Laya has perpetuated gross human rights violations. It has carried out mass intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detention, massacres, assassinations and torture, enforced disappearances, rape, arson, food blockades and forced evacuation of rural and indigenous communities to serve the landgrabbing interests of foreign corporations, mining companies, high bureaucrats and local tyrants. Oplan Bantay Laya has gained global notoriety for the killing of legal mass activists of workers, peasants, youth, women, religious leaders, journalists, lawyers and judges, human rights activists and NDFP consultants. The victims are first maligned by the military as "communists" and "enemies of the states" before they are murdered or disappeared. After murdering or disappearing them, the political, military and police authorities of the Arroyo regime blame the NPA for the criminal deed and further malign the victims as having been victimized by their own comrades for supposedly malversing funds or being enemy spies. The murderous and deceptive scheme of the criminals in power cannot hoodwink even the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings.
It is sheer fantasy for the enemy to think that Oplan Bantay Laya 2 can destroy or reduce the NPA to "inconsequentiality" within the period of 2007 to 2010. The NPA has mastered the strategy and tactics of the people's war against the brutality and deceptiveness of Oplan Bantay Laya. It has delivered fatal blows to wipe out enemy units and to render impotent the rest of the armed forces and police.
In the one year period before the current NPA anniversary, the NPA was able to launch more than 500 major and minor tactical offensives against the enemy. It has been able to increase the number of NPA units as a result of the seizure of weapons from the enemy and the progress of mass work. It has been able to maintain 120-130 guerrilla fronts and to expand and upgrade most of them. It is now in a position to increase the number of guerrilla fronts. These can be the building blocks of relatively stable base areas and even as the enemy causes some fluctuation in the number of guerrilla fronts due to concentrated onslaughts.
The NPA owes its great victories to is resolute and militant implementation of the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war. It follows the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines as the advanced detachment of the working class. The Party makes sure that the national democratic revolution is to be basically completed through the overthrow of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system before the socialist revolution can follow. It wields the revolutionary armed struggle and the united front as the two powerful and invincible weapons of the revolution.
The Party is at the head and at the core of the NPA. It makes sure that the three integral components of people's war are developed. These are the building of the people's army through revolutionary armed struggle, the carrying out of agrarian revolution and the building of base areas as the political, military, economic and cultural bulwark of the revolution.
To build the NPA, the Party makes sure that the Red fighters are recruited from the revolutionary mass movement, particularly from the ranks of cadres and mass activists, the local militia and the self-defense units of the mass organizations. It provides the recruits with politico-military training, and the soonest possible participation in tactical offensives. More and more Red commanders and fighters gain experience and the arms to increase the number of NPA units by launching tactical offensives against the enemy.
The people's army and the people's war have developed in the countryside over a protracted period of time because of the support of the peasant masses. They join and support the people's war because they are interested in agrarian revolution. They are the majority of the people. The fulfilment of their outcry for land is the main content of the democratic revolution.
The minimum land reform program has been implemented on a national scale. In many areas, the land in the hands of brutal agricorporations, despotic landlords and landgrabbers have been recovered and redistributed to the peasants, farm workers and national minorities. The time has come to extend in a big way, the main land reform program. This is becoming possible through the success of the minimum land reform program as well as the growing strength of the revolutionary peasant movement and the people's army. The growing strength of the peasant movement and that of the people's army interact and support each other to advance genuine land reform and destroy the power of the land-based exploiters and oppressors of the people.
All basic factors for building relatively stable base areas are present. These can grow from the existing guerrilla fronts which cover 9,000 barangays in 70 provinces and 800 municipalities. The most advanced guerrilla fronts can merge to form the relatively stable base areas. At the same time, efforts are being exerted to increase the number of guerrilla fronts in each one of the 173 congressional districts in the provinces .The NPA plays a decisive role in building the guerrilla fronts as well as developing them to become stable base areas at the provincial level. These serve as stronger political, military, economic and cultural bastions of the revolution.
As political bastions, guerrilla fronts have the organs of political power at the barrio, municipal and district levels, which are supported by the mass organizations and the working committees assisting the organs of political power in matters of mass organization, mass education, economy, finance, health, defense, arbitration and cultural activities. As military bastions, they have the NPA as well as the militia units and the self-defense units. As economic bastions, they implement the land reform program and raise production in agriculture and sideline occupations. As cultural bastions, they promote the activities of the cultural troupes of the NPA and those of the various mass organizations.
IV. The Fighting Tasks of the NPA
The NPA must take full advantage of the rapid worsening of the crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system. As the broad legal united front exerting all efforts to oust the Arroyo regime from power, the NPA must intensify its tactical offensives and carry out vigorously related revolutionary activities with the active participation and support of the masses.
The Arroyo regime is now so afraid of the people that it is increasing the number of military troops in urban areas to guard the high bureaucrats and their big private collaborators and intimidate the broad masses of the people. It is also deploying more troops to guard mines, plantations, logging areas and installations like fuel depots, power lines and towers, communication towers and others. There is therefore a decreasing number of troops for direct offensive actions against the NPA. With the enemy forces being compelled to take guard duties, they become more dispersed and are more vulnerable to tactical offensives by the NPA.
The NPA must harvest greater victories in the current year to celebrate its forthcoming 40th anniversary and to avail of the opportunities for launching offensives as a result of the worsening crisis of the ruling system, the people's outrage over the puppetry, corruption and brutality of the Arroyo regime and the growing mistakes and weaknesses of the enemy. Greater victories must also be achieved in developing the united front for armed struggle as well as for legal struggle.
The guerrilla fronts must increase in number from the current level of 120-130 to 173 in order to cover all congressional districts in the provinces. These must be seed units for building new guerrilla fronts. The seed units could be at least two squads or platoons divisible into armed propaganda teams. In building relatively stable base areas, it is a matter of administrative political cohesion at first and all-round development of a number of guerrilla fronts.
The regional Party committee and the regional operational command must see to it that Party committees and operational commands at the provincial and congressional or guerrilla front level are working effectively and developing further. The assignment of Party cadres especially from the ranks of workers and educated youth to the NPA must be accelerated. The recruitment of Red fighters must be heightened. They must come from the ranks of mass activists, the militia and self-defense units. They must be provided with politico-military training and assigned to offensive actions to gain experience as soon as possible.
The main purpose of intensifying the tactical offensives is to seize weapons and increase the number of Red fighters and fighting units of the NPA. Certain enterprises (mines, plantations, logging, etc.) and certain installations are targeted by the NPA because these are detrimental to the interest of the people. By attacking these, the NPA compels the enemy to deploy guard units at separate places, each one of which or whose line of supply is vulnerable to further offensive actions by the NPA. It is of strategic importance to disseminate mining, plantation, logging and other operations of foreign and big comprador firms because the people do not want to be robbed of their natural resources and because they wish to use these in the future for the development of their own country. The Arroyo regime has wantonly opened the natural resources to answer for the foreign debts.
The NPA must arrest for trial the worst of plunderers, human rights violators and other anti-social criminals. Formal complaints must be drawn up to serve as basis for the people's court to issue warrants of arrest and seizure of case-pertinent materials. If the criminal suspect does not surrender himself for investigation and is armed and dangerous or has armed bodyguards, those assigned to arrest him should be ready to give battle. A criminal suspect for whom a warrant of arrest has been issued by the people's court may be considered resisting arrest if he does not surrender himself to or through any authority of the people's government.
The minimum land reform program must be raised to the level of the maximum program whenever the latter is already possible due to the success of the minimum land reform program, the sufficient strength of the peasant mass movement and the NPA, and the weakness, paralysis or flight of the class enemy. Production in agriculture and other lines of economic activity must be raised. The Party, the NPA and the peasant movement must firmly and vigorously apply the anti-feudal united front policy of relying mainly on the poor peasants and workers, winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the rich peasants, taking advantage of the splits in the landlord class and isolating and destroying the political power of the despotic landlords.
Under the leadership of the Party, the NPA must play a major role in building the guerrilla fronts and the stable base areas. In its mass work, it must establish the organs of political power and the mass organizations. It must augment its military strength by training the militia and self-defense units for the mass organizations. It must develop propaganda and cultural teams and urge the mass organizations to do likewise. It must encourage the public school teachers who are still paid by the reactionary government to undertake revolutionary education among the students. It must support the work of the people's court and enforce its decisions.
We are confident that in the near future we shall be able to develop the revolutionary struggle from the middle to the advanced phase of the strategic defensive, multiply the number of platoons for extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of ever widening and deepening mass base, gain the capability to undertake company-sized and battalion-sized offensives under provincial and regional commands, carry out agrarian revolution on an ever widening scale at an accelerated rate, and govern combinations of guerrilla fronts as relatively stable base areas.
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