It is with heads up high and obvious exuberance that NDF-Panay joins the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in celebrating our golden 50th year. To have reached fifty years of arduous struggle with acclaimed achievements nationally and internationally is indeed a cause for celebration.

As we commemorate our anniversary we also pay tribute to our heroic leaders who played indispensable roles as part of the driving core of the national democratic movement. We deeply grieve for Ka Benito Tiamzon, member of the NDFP negotiating panel and Ka Wilma Tiamzon, head of the NDFP committee on political and constitutional reforms who were mercilessly tortured and murdered by the fascist 8thID-PA last August 2022. We join all revolutionaries and rights defenders in the Philippines and the international community who strongly condemn this gross violation of human rights and international humanitarian laws of the Marcos II regime. Their death together with eight other comrades massacred by the enemy has only left us dauntless and more resolute to carry on.

With the Party in the lead, the formation of NDF-Panay started in 1985 at the height of the people’s anti-Marcos dictatorship struggle. The anti-fascist movement swelled throughout Panay region including the island province of Guimaras and encompassed scores of thousands coming from the peasantry, student-youth, out-of-school youth, urban poor, government employees, other professionals such as teachers, doctors, nurses and other medical workers, journalists and other media workers, lawyers and from the business sector. The religious sector from the hierarchy, priests, nuns, seminarians and lay workers played a very significant role in the anti-fascist crusade with almost all denominations supporting the democratic movement. One duly notable were the militant women who cut across all sectors of society crying for freedom and democracy.

Through all this epoch of defiance and discontent, NDF cadres and activists were at the lead of hundreds of rallies, demonstrations, transport, workers and student strikes, protests against demolition, price increases and demand for higher wages. Since all post-Marcos regimes have continued to serve as puppets and tools for the US imperialists, big landlords and big bourgeoisie, the NDFP has persevered to broaden and deepen the people’s struggle for national freedom and democracy.

NDF cadres have also succeeded in forming formal, informal and tactical alliances with other progressive and liberal democratic groups and personalities. The broad anti-dictatorship campaign even abled to gather members from the bureaucracy, big business, landlords and other elements from the reactionary classes to support the open democratic struggle and to some extent the underground movement as well. A number of these tactical alliances continue up to the present.

In the countryside, poor peasant political power is being built and strengthened, led by the PKM (Pambansang Katipunan ng Magbubukid) – a major member organization of the NDFP- thru successful campaigns to lower land rent and interest rates, raise farm wages, farmgate prices of farmers’ produce, increase their production output and advance their right to cultivate the land.

All throughout its formal inception in Panay and even before that, the most enlightened, advance and militant elements from the allied organizations of the NDFP have opted to take up arms in the fight against imperialism, local feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Most of them have come from the people’s militia, from the PKM of the peasantry, the KM of the youth and Makibaka of women. However, many of our comrades-in-arms also have come from the middle forces such as teachers, doctors, nurses, priests and nuns who have contributed their abilities for the furtherance of our revolutionary people’s war.

NDF-Panay has heeded and reaffirm its commitment to the Party’s call to stir up and spread the flame of the people’s war for national freedom and democracy. We shall frustrate the US-Marcos II regime’s counterrevolution and state terrorism as we have frustrated all previous puppet and reactionary regimes. We shall persevere to boldly broaden and solidify our member organizations. We shall continue to support all people’s actions that carry their genuine and legitimate interests and lead them to more militant forms in order to effect tangible gains. NDF-Panay looks forward to brighter, golden achievements in our arduous struggle for national liberation and democracy.

Long live the 50th anniversary of NDFP!