The National Democratic Front of the Philippines turns 46 with accumulated achievements and gains on its watch! We celebrate with heads high the NDFP’s indispensable role in advancing the Philippine revolution and in propagating our people’s struggle against imperialism in other countries abroad.

The NDFP has made a mark as the genuine representative of the Filipino people in our struggle against US imperialist domination, feudal and big bourgeois comprador exploitation and state fascism. In peace negotiations with all reactionary puppet regimes from Corazon Aquino to the present US-Duterte tyrannical regime, the NDFP has staunchly stood for the people’s interests and has persistently rejected all schemes for surrender, capitulation and cooptation.

The NDFP in Panay scoffs at and rejects the ploy of the puppet and swindler Duterte to hold local peace talks while summarily arresting and incarcerating NDFP consultants, dismantling the GRP’s original peace panel and replacing it with fascist and militarist “peace” negotiators with former chief-of-staff General Carlito Galvez at the helm. Duterte’s notorious record of arbitrarily suspending peace talk, offering local peace talk, then resuming it at the national level and again suspending it bespeaks of his mental and political insanity to govern the country. He is actually against a just and lasting peace that the Filipino people have long been struggling for.

The whole revolutionary forces in Panay reiterate our full trust and confidence in the present negotiating panel of the NDFP at the national level and considers whatever “local-level peacetalk” as bogus and anti-peace.

Hand in hand with our counterpart organizations in the country NDFP-Panay is proud to call out our achievements in the past year in spite of the tyrant’s fascist military attacks in the countryside and the Red-tagging and vilification of legal and democratic organizations and individuals in the cities. Taking up the CPP’s call and direction to boldly advance and intensify the people’s struggle against the US-Duterte regime NDF-Panay has vigorously set about its tasks in the region.

Membership in our allied organizations has increased by 20% by the end of 2018. NDFP formations are at the core of more than a hundred thousand organized in legal, progressive and democratic organizations and alliances. The anti-tyranny alliance in the region has broadened thanks to the butcher president’s killing spree executed by his killing machines named DDS, PDEA, RDEU, CIDG, PNP-6, the 301st Bde and 61st IBPA which are being commanded by Duterte’s chief executioners in the region – Brig Gen John Bulalacao, Brig Gen Dinoh Dolina and the newly-replaced Col Sisenando Magbalot.

Duterte started the year 2018 with the first package of the TRAIN law and shamelessly ended it with the promise of the 2nd package this year. He has become callous to the disastrous consequences of the Train which effected a 6.4% inflation rate nationwide, the highest in a decade. But the Panayanons suffered more since the inflation rate in Western Visayas soared to 7.4%, the fourth highest in the country. It is not hard to understand why the people of Western Visayas specifically Panay and Negros loathe Duterte so much and are fighting his tyranny thru all forms of struggle.

Fighting the fascist regime principally thru arms is the New People’s Army in Panay which has increased its tactical offensives by 40% and has inflicted casualties to not less than 50 enemy troops. Not only a fighting force but also a mass-organizing unit, the NPA has widened its areas of maneuver by recovering more territories and increasing and broadening its mass base in the process thru painstaking political work and striking deep roots among the masses.

The Pambansang Katipunan ng Magbubukid (PKM), the foremost revolutionary peasant organization and a reliable allied organization in the NDFP continues to lead the peasant masses in their struggle for genuine land reform. It has successfully led the peasant struggle to lower usurious rates by launching a number of municipal level campaigns that has significantly lowered interest rates. Not less than 1,500 families have directly benefitted from the organized and united actions of the masses. Almost the same number also benefitted from winning their struggles to assert their right to till uncultivated public land, seeking compensation for their land destroyed by “eco-tourism” projects and by their campaigns to increase production thru mutual exchange of labor.

Members of the Kabataang Makabayan, Makibaka, PKM, Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions and other allied organizations of the NDFP have continually filled the ranks of the NPA and CPP, immersing themselves with the masses in the countryside and cities while others perform underground work in urban areas.

As the most consolidated revolutionary united front of the Filipino people the NDFP is an essential instrument in building the broadest alliance of all patriotic, progressive and democratic forces and individuals who genuinely desire to be rid from the clutches of imperialist domination and fascist rule presently personified by the murderous, treasonous, corrupt and tyrannical US-Duterte regime.

NDFP-Panay vows to further broaden, increase and strengthen its forces and influence in the region. We must be more vigilant and more militant against the US-Duterte reign of terror. We must organize the masses in their hundreds of thousands and lead them in their millions to topple down and crush all puppet and fascist regimes. Let us build a country that is truly independent, free and prosperous. Let us build a people’s government that is truly democratic and serves the people’s rights and welfare. #