On the occasion of the 54 Anniversary of Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), re-established through the most excellent leadership of Comrade Jose Maria Sison on December 26, 1968, the Regional Committee of the CPP and the Regional Operational Command (Chadli Molintas Command) of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the llocos-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 and the people for the past six (6) decades.

The llocos-Cordillera Regional Committee (ICRC) and the Chadli Molintas Command (CMC) owe greatest gratitude to Ka Joma whose MLM works and deeds have guided Filipino revolutionaries to establish the Party and the NPA in the Ilocos-Cordillera. Ka Joma’s MLM theoretical writings — specially Struggle for National Democracy (1967), Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party (1968), Philippine Society and Revolution (1970) and Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War (1974) — have generated thousands of and stimulated Filipino revolutionaries, including those from the llocos-Cordillera provinces, to build the Party and the NPA in order to expand and advance through protracted people’s war the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) in the llocos-Cordillera on the basis of the concrete conditions and for the achievement of the genuine national and democratic interests of the people in the region who, together with the entire Filipino people, have been victimized for a century by the three basic problems of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

In particular, Ka Joma’s Preliminary Report on Northern Luzon (1971) has shown in concrete and comprehensive way the development of the three basic problems of the Filipino people in the three geographical divisions of Northern Luzon at that time: the Ilocos sub-region, the mountainous sub- region (now the Cordillera) and the Cagayan Valley sub-region. It has pointed out the principal and particular political lines for each of the sub-regions and how the political work of the Party and the NPA would advance in the whole of Northern Luzon. Thus, on the basis of Ka Joma’s Preliminary Report on Northern Luzon and through the cadres of the Party and the NPA, who were a product of the urban mass movement in the 1960s and were given politico-military trainings in Tarlac and Isabela, the preparation and building of guerrilla zones began in the provinces of the Ilocos-Cordillera in 1971; and the NPA grew to bigger formations as contiguous guerrilla zones, that were rapidly expanded, were transformed into guerrilla fronts during the two decades that followed.

More importantly, the ICRC and the CMC actively participated in the Second Great Rectification Movement, which was outstandingly guided by Ka Joma, in order to correct ideologically, politically and organizationally the subjectivist error in describing the mode of production not as semicolonial and semifeudal, the predominantly “Left” errors of military adventurism and urban insurrectionism in violation of the strategic line of protracted people’s war and other errors such as reformism, liberalism, sectarianism, bureaucratism, populism, liquidationism, factionalism, splittism (concretely the CPLA) and so on. The deviation was most especially from the anti-revisionist line and it undermined the universality of Mao Zedong Thought and its relevance to the Philippine revolution. The Second Great Rectification Movement was characterized by intense inner-Party struggle up to the wholescale anti-Party campaign of destruction and splits, and the defeat of the counter-revolutionary renegades.

The concrete practice of the revolutionary golden lessons set by the Second Great Rectification Movement has served and will persist as revolutionary guides for the revolutionary forces and the NPA in the ICR in the launching of victorious tactical offensives against the pro-imperialist and reactionary forces that attempt to plunder the rich resources of the Filipino people. These lessons would certainly continue to guide the intensification of victorious guerrilla warfare in the region.

More specifically, Ka Joma’s MLM insights concerning national minorities in the Philippines — as expounded on in the Philippine Society and Revolution, Preliminary Report on Northern Luzon as well as in his other selected writings on the national minority question — have guided Party cadres in the ICR to develop and advance the fight of the Cordillera people against national oppression (NO) and the struggle for their right to self-determination and democracy within the overall framework of the NDR. Ka Joma’s MLM comprehensions on the Philippine national minorities have led to the establishment of the Cordillera People’s Democratic Front (CPDF).

The CPDF defines NO, not as the oppression of the majority against the minority, but as the violation of the state, controlled by the ruling classes, of the national minority right to self- determination and democracy. This means that NO, besides the three basic problems, is an added problem of the Cordillera people and other national minorities in the Philippines. Thus, the CPDF is the revolutionary mass organization of the peasants, workers and all other poor people of Cordillera. It advances the national democratic revolution and the right of the national minority to self- determination, genuine regional autonomy and people’s democracy. It also serves as the revolutionary alliance of the different democratic sectors among the national minority of Cordillera such as the youth, women, the rich peasants, professionals, church people, government employees and officials and other middle class forces that struggle for national democracy. It is a member organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), unites with the New People’s Army (NPA) in waging the revolutionary armed struggle in the Philippines and is guided by the Communist Party of the Philippines.

While in utmost grief over his death but with what have been elucidated above, the ICRC and the CMC, therefore, proclaim that Comrade Jose Maria Sison lives as the Philippine revolution progresses to higher levels!

Agbiag ni Ka Joma! His MLM works and deeds will remain as guides of the CPP to lead the Filipino revolutionaries and the entire people to ceaselessly advance up to final victory the NDR as the necessary prerequisite to start the construction of a bright socialist future of Philippine society.