Deep and wide mass support is the key reason why the New People’s Army (NPA) and the armed revolution it wages will never be defeated. Though the enemy is a gigantic monster using all the evil means, it won’t ever succeed in severing the ties that bind the masses and the NPA nor in crushing their determination to march forward along the path of the people’s war.

The NPA is firmly resolved to carry out its task to arouse, unite and mobilize the peasant masses in their numbers, and thus, strengthen and expand the army’s mass base. The key here is to carry forward a widespread antifeudal movement in the countryside to fight the worsening forms of oppression and exploitation of peasants.

Always concerned about the masses’ well-being, the NPA looks into their situation and grievances to help them collectively find solutions. The NPA pays careful attention to problems concerning the economy, livelihood, production, health, sanitation, education, culture, peace and order, security, drugs and others.

Of these, the key is the economy or the issue of production and how the masses reap or are ripped off the wealth they have created. The NPA painstakingly exposes how landlords, loan-sharks and big traders do not have any god-given right to unjustly take away the fruits of their sweat and blood. The NPA must bring their efforts at rousing, organizing and mobilizing the peasant masses to a higher level of intensity and breadth. In line with the Party’s Revolutionary Guide to Land Reform, they must exert all efforts to carry forward the struggles to reduce land rent, raise the wages of farm workers, bring down interest rates on loans and raise farm gate prices. Widespread struggles must be waged against the Rice Tariffication Law, the Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act, import liberalization of pork, poultry and other agricultural products and other laws and measures that oppress the peasant masses. This has become urgent in the face of the severe crisis in the economy and people’s lives.

Amid rising food prices and scarcity, the NPA and the masses must continue to cooperate in mounting campaigns to produce root crops and vegetables. They must also strengthen the mass movement to address the Covid-19 pandemic by raising the people’s knowledge and implementing measures for prevention, taking care of people’s health, preparing facilities and giving the necessary care for the elderly and denouncing the incompetence of the reactionary regime.

The struggle of the peasant masses and minority people against the different forms of land grabbing by big landlords and big capitalists for setting up and expanding plantations, mining operations, energy, ecotourism and other projects, must be intensified.

Local revolutionary mass organizations and Party branches must be strengthened and consolidated. They must function regularly. Ensure that their links with territorial organs of the Party and NPA commands in the fronts and districts are not cut. Strengthen the training and development of local cadres and mass leaders, raise their capacity to lead and mobilize the masses.

Cadres, leaders, activists and the masses must determine the methods of strict secrecy to keep the fascist blind and deaf, even if they are right under the enemy’s noses. They must master the tactics of fighting militarization in their areas, using various direct or indirect methods of disobeying fascist soldiers who order them around, opposing restrictions, fighting forced paramilitary conscription, illegal arrests and killings, exposing and denouncing all disinformation and lies peddled by the enemy in media and social media, and rejecting their presence. Units of the NPA must be good at maintaining links with the masses and mounting armed actions against fascists lording it over the villages.

The concerned army commands and Party committees must plan to expand their territory and form new guerrilla fronts, while consolidating and fighting tooth-and-nail in existing guerrilla fronts and base areas. As the theater of the people’s war expands, the enemy will be forced to stretch its forces and expose its weak parts for the NPA to target in tactical offensives.

By continually expanding its area of operations, the NPA can have more military initiative. It must continue to mount annihilative tactical offensives that can win certain victory against the weak isolated units of the enemy with the aim of seizing its weapons. In line with these are the attritive tactical offensives to retaliate, disrupt or make the enemy suffer sleepless nights in their detachments and camps. The NPA must deploy partisan units in the cities or town centers to target the fascists behind the crimes against the masses, and to sabotage the enemy’s communication, transportation and supply lines.

Conditions for waging people’s war in the Philippines are becoming more favorable in the face of the worsening crisis of the ruling system and extreme fascist cruelty under the tyrannical regime. The intolerable hardships and intensifying oppression and exploitation are rousing the Filipino people to take the path of armed revolution. The Party and the NPA must continue to master the right balance and combination of armed and political struggles, of mass work and military work, to mobilize the masses along the path of the people’s democratic revolution.