NDF-Bikol is one with the nation in welcoming the Manila Regional Trial Court’s dismissal of DOJ’s case proscribing CPP and NPA as terrorists. This comes along with news of several reversals of guilty verdicts and dismissals of warrants against individuals charged with trumped up charges throughout the country. These saw the release of 35 wrongfully detained progressives as well as NDF consultants and staff.

For six years under Duterte, the whole civilian bureaucracy, including the judiciary, had been up against unprecedented attacks. The public bore witness as to how all government agencies were forced to submit to the draconian rule of the National Task Force-End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Its word became the law of the land, ubiquitously demanding and pressuring courts to release warrants and file false charges against anyone it capriciously says so. These recent decisions are steps in the right direction of the bench finally fighting back against this banal ‘anti-terrorism’ doctrine used to silence and suppress the people’s rightful struggle for their democratic interests. It is heartening to see certain members of the judiciary exercising their mandate of serving the nation and pursuing what is just.

NDF-Bikol emphasizes that the most important political implication all these legal verdicts have in common is that these vindicate the fact that seeking genuine socioeconimic justice and demanding democratic interests are not acts of terrorism. The Filipino people, be they revolutionaries or not, must not be branded as terrorists nor persecuted as criminals just for aspiring a better future and decent lives for themselves.

The recent turn of events also shows the need for a closer look on the cause and goals of the armed revolution. Since time immemorial, the state has not only been willfully indifferent and negligent but outright in abandoning the people’s demands. For the majority of the Filipino masses, legal remedies have proven ineffective or insufficient to their cause. The government has time and again refused to sincerely address the people’s plight let alone sincerely engage in peace talks that could have given avenue for comprehensive reforms. How else then can people attain their democratic interests but by exercising their sovereign right of waging a protracted war – one that is just and that genuinely serves the common good?

May these successive rulings act as precedents for Bikolano courts still hearing the cases of not less than 149 political detainees maliciously arrested under Duterte as well as other political prisoners jailed during previous administrations. Most of whom are activists and mass leaders imprisoned just because they have been a hindrance for the interests of those in power.

The Bikolano people are hoping that Bikolano members of the bench and the bar will act in the same way. Some of them have proven themselves faithful to the independent performance of their duties even amidst aggressive intimidation. A few, like Judge Jeaneth San Joaquin and Atty. Ron Espinosa, have even had their lives openly targeted by state agents for their unwavering assertion of fairness and justice. But they never backed down. So must all the other legal practitioners in the region. In these trying times, it is even more crucial for them to use their knowledge of the law for the pursuit of what is genuinely just.