The Katipunan ng mga Gurong Makabayan (KAGUMA) joins the Filipino people in celebrating the Golden Anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the most consolidated united front organization of all revolutionary and progressive classes and sectors forwarding the national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective through protracted people’s war.

April 23, 1973, the day the NDFP Preparatory Commission issued the manifesto “Unite to Overthrow the US-Marcos Dictatorship” which contained the NDFP’s 10-point program, is a historic moment in Philippine history. This day marked the founding of the NDFP as a center of gravity to the resistance to the dictatorship just a few months after the Marcos imposition of dictatorial rule upon the initiative of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

Established in 1971 amidst the storm of protests that rocked the 1960s and the early 1970s, the KAGUMA was one of the original founding organizations of the NDFP. We take pride in the fact that the NDFP alongside the CPP, its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), and the entire revolutionary movement was at the core of the resistance to the fascistic US-Marcos dictatorship and succeeding pseudo-democratic regimes.

Initially bringing together several organizations that were compelled by the declaration of martial law to go underground, the NDFP steadily grew to encompass more and more sectors engaged in anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, and anti-fascist struggles through the decades.

Today, the son of the late dictator Marcos Sr. sits at the Presidential Palace to the backdrop of worsening economic and political crisis of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal ruling system and the return of open fascist rule.

We see intensifying US military intervention in the country as part of its geopolitical strategy of containing its Chinese imperialist rivals in the Asia-Pacific region while sponsoring brutal counterinsurgency operations by the AFP and PNP against the revolutionary forces that result in wanton human rights and international humanitarian law violations.

We see the railroading of more neoliberal measures and policies that further open up the country to transnational corporations, secure the domination by big bourgeois compradors and in cahoots with dirty bureaucrat capitalists, and deepen the backward, import-dependent, export-oriented character of the economy. All these anti-people developments have the consequence of increasing poverty, inequality, joblessness, high prices, stagnant wages, imposing more hardships on the Filipino people.

In the face of the sharpening crisis of the ruling system and growing resistance of the Filipino people, we see the NDFP and its 12-point program as offering a revolutionary solution and alternative to the manifold social ills generated by a rotten status quo rooted in imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism.

In commemorating the historic and jubilant occasion of the NDFP’s 50th anniversary, revolutionary teachers and education workers under KAGUMA vow to do our utmost to contribute to the building of the people’s revolutionary strength and unity through the struggle for national democracy and a bright socialist future.

In this endeavor, we take inspiration from the sacrifices made by all our immortal martyrs and heroes who dedicated their lives to the victory of the people’s democratic revolution. We give special tribute to Ka Benito Tiamzon and Ka Wilma Austria, foremost and most-respected leaders of the Philippine revolutionary movement. We likewise honor revolutionary teachers like Ka Jose Maria Sison, Monico Atienza, Edberto Villegas, Bienvenido Lumbera, Gelacio Guillermo, Neil Doloricon, Alice Guillermo, and others who played important roles in advancing the revolutionary teachers’ movement and a nationalist, scientific, and mass-based education and culture as part of the wider people’s revolutionary struggles.

Long live the National Democratic Front of the Philippines!
Long live the martyrs and heroes of the Philippine revolution!
Long live the Filipino people!