The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) extends its solidarity and sympathies to the millions of Filipinos who are currently facing the immense struggle to survive in the face of the widespread flooding and landslides triggered by the torrential rains, winds and storm surges brought on by Tropical Storm Kristine.

The broad masses of the toiling people are the ones enduring the brunt of the disaster. Thousands upon thousands of families, especially those in inundated communities, have lost their homes and meager possessions. Children and the elderly are left exposed to harsh conditions in their damaged homes or evacuation centers, increasing their risk of illness and disease.

The impact of the floods on people’s livelihoods is severe. Workers who cannot reach their workplaces do not receive wages and face threats of penalties, while small fisherfolk cannot venture out into rough seas. Many others who rely on daily earnings from their toil face similar difficulties. The plight of peasant tillers, from Luzon to Mindanao, is even more dire due to the loss of their crops to deep floodwaters, which wipes out their income and leaves them deep in debt. Millions of peasants have yet to recover from recent disasters and have not received compensation for their losses.

Members of the Party, along with those of mass organizations, have taken action to extend all possible assistance to the victims of flooding and landslides. The Party calls on people in areas less affected by the devastation, as well as the international community, to organize and mobilize all available resources, including food and water, clothing and construction materials, as well as manpower, to aid in rehabilitation efforts in the coming days and weeks. Units of the NPA have deployed their fighters to assist the peasant masses in their emergency needs, such as assisting them rebuild their homes or repair their fields.

The series of tropical storms that have battered the Philippines over the past two months, compounded by earlier droughts, has unleashed waves of devastation across the country. It is grossly insufficient that amid these disasters, the disaster response of the Marcos regime is limited mostly to distributing grocery bags of emergency food supplies. Bureaucrat capitalists are taking advantage of the situation to project themselves in preparation for the upcoming 2025 elections.

Marcos is deliberately ignoring and obscuring the fact that this situation is a consequence of the accumulated destruction wrought by relentless logging and mining operations, dam and other infrastructure projects, land reclamation and real estate construction over the past decades.

Profit-hungry foreign and local big capitalists have carried out their plunderous operations in complete disregard of the destruction of the environment, as well as for people’s lives and livelihood. Instead of heeding the people’s cries to put a stop to these operations, the Marcos regime continues to encourage mining and infrastructure companies to destroy and poison the mountains, rivers and coastal areas. These companies are owned by his cronies, big bourgeois comprador friends and relatives.

The people demand that all these plunderers be made to pay for all the ruin they have caused, and that they be compensated by the state for its failure to fulfill its obligation to guarantee their well-being.