First of all, the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Regional Operational Command (Chadli Molintas Command) of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Ilocos-Cordillera Region (ICR) bestow the highest tributes to Comrade Jose Maria Sison! He has been a great Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) thinker, leader and teacher of the Filipino revolutionaries for the past six (6) decades. His revolutionary works and deeds will guide the CPP to lead the Filipino people’s National Democratic Revolution (NDR) up to final victory!

Contrary to the egotistical and juvenile pronouncements of the pro-US imperialist and reactionary Department of National Defense (DND), the terrorist Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) and their Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-trained military and police commanders that “with Sison’s death, no one else fit to head CPP” and that “his death is a ‘symbol of the crumbling hierarchy of the CPP-NPA-NDF’”, Ka Joma’s six-decade work and deeds have produced and will continue to generate hundreds of thousand Filipino revolutionaries with the capabilities to lead and intensify the people’s war and the united front, establish the democratic organs of political power, and carry forward up to final victory the NDR.

Also contrary to the anti-Filipino and infantile declaration of the anti-peace presidential adviser on peace Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. that “Sison’s death would put an end to the local communist armed conflict in the country”, it is actually the three basic problems of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism that unceasingly stimulate the oppressed and exploited Filipino masses to arouse, organize and mobilize themselves in their millions to join the armed revolution in order to overthrow the terroristic government that allows class oppressors and exploiters to stay in power and commit treason, thievery and tyranny against the Filipino people. Toppling down the fascist puppet state is the Filipino people’s revolutionary requirement to terminate the class rule of oppressors and exploiters for the full achievement of national liberation and people’s democracy.

Similarly contradictory to the false, conceited and deceptive statement of the DND that “Joma Sison’s death ends ‘greatest stumbling block’ to peace” is the reality that the counter-insurgency war that is fully guided and supported by US imperialism, its focused military operations by the pro-US imperialist AFP-PNP, the tyrannical National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and the Anti-Terrorism Law of the fascist puppet regime are futile attempts that are being continued currently by the reactionary Marcos Jr.-Duterte regime to obstruct the aspiration of the Filipino people for a just and lasting peace which Ka Joma and the whole revolutionary movement have always wanted to achieve through national peace negotiations that would help resolve the basic causes of the armed conflict. In reality, the class oppressors and exploiters – who control the whole fascist puppet government, command the reactionary AFP-PNP and are dictated by US imperialism – are actually the greatest stumbling block to the resumption of the national peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).

The fascist and corrupt puppet state rulers and their pro-US imperialist military and police commanders adamantly refuse to implement into actual practice the agreements reached during the past national peace negotiations such as the Sept. 1, 1992 GRP-NDFP joint statement called The Hague Joint Declaration (that set the four substantive agenda of the formal peace negotiations on human rights and international humanitarian law, socio-economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms and end of hostilities and disposition of forces), the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees and the 1998 Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). They deliberately stopped the resumption of national peace negotiations to finalize up to signing the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms (CASER) because tyrant Duterte issued Proclamation No. 360 that formally terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations on November 23, 2017 and signed on December 5, 2017 Proclamation No. 374 listing the CPP-NPA as terrorist organizations. Then the tyrant puppet regime issued Executive Order No. 10 on June 2018 wherein autocrat Duterte and the reactionary AFP-PNP commanders called for a fake “localized peace negotiations” under the direct control of the anti-Filipino and pro-US imperialist AFP officers.

What the fascist AFP and PNP commanders have proclaimed in the social media that the NPA forces “were recruited because they have socio-economic problems” is the only truthful fact in the sense that these socio-economic problems do serve as external objective factors that continually compel the Filipino people to take the road of armed revolution. What these pro-US imperialist military and police commanders refuse to recognize and do not explain to the Filipino people is the objective situation that the chronic problems of landlessness, unemployment, hunger, poverty, inequalities and injustices, exacerbated daily by the countless human rights violations by the anti-Filipino army and police against the Filipino masses, are instigated by the semicolonial and semifeudal system of the fascist and corrupt puppet state rulers that are composed of the big landlords, big comprador bourgeoisie and big bureaucrat capitalists who are all dictated mainly by the US imperialists. All such socio-economic problems and anti-national and anti-democratic glitches, created and caused by the class oppressors and exploiters who totally control the fascist and terroristic puppet government now under the Marcos Jr.-Duterte tandem, impel daily the Filipino people especially the workers, the peasants, the fisherfolks, the urban poor, the national minorities, the women, the youth and the enlightened intelligentsia to join and advance up to final victory the NDR as the necessary prerequisite to start the construction of a bright socialist future of Philippine society.