Officials of the reactionary regime are like vultures circling an imaginary carcass, rambling on about matters that escape their understanding as local lackeys of the US-Marcos II regime. They speak foolishly guided by prepared talking points on Ka Joma’s death. They are like morons unwittingly exposing their ignorance of the roots of the on-going civil war and, more importantly, of the people’s plight, particularly of the Negrosanon masses.

Urging rebels to “abandon armed struggle following Joma’s death” is absurd since revolutionary armed struggle waged by the New People’s Army (NPA) under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is necessary for the Filipino people in order to liberate themselves from the exploitative and oppressive rule of US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Tens of thousands of revolutionaries in nearly 54 years of the national democratic revolution led by the CPP have given sweat and blood not for Ka Joma but for the democratic cause of the revolution.

Big landlords and bureaucrats in Negros, like Governor Eugenio Lacson, are basically opposed to agrarian revolution which is the main content of the present Philippine revolution and they will benefit greatly once it ceases. Lacson’s call for “rebels to work towards lasting and genuine peace” is hollow when his true intention is to get rid of the revolutionary movement that stands against land grabbers and plunderers such as agricultural, logging and mining corporations that destroy farmlands and the environment; defends peasants and indigenous people’s from military attacks; and, most of all, fights to end oppression and exploitation of peasants and farm workers.

Meanwhile, RTF-ELCAC6 spokesperson Flosemer Gonzales remains faithful to his verbose lies as to who the “single most destructive and most notorious terrorist organization” is in the Philippines. He is straightforwardly contradicted by the countless massacres, extrajudicial killings, illegal arrests and detention, abductions, tortures, forced evacuations, forced surrenders, bombings and other human rights violations perpetrated by state forces mostly during massive militarization in the countryside, not only on Negros Island but nationwide.

State terrorism under Marcos Jr has actually cultivated more fertile ground for armed revolution by suppressing all resistance to its reign and pushing the Filipino people further into socio-economic crisis. Time and again, like the Marcos fascist dictatorship and post-Marcos regimes despite presenting a false democratic space, the US-Marcos II regime will fail to extinguish the revolutionary movement.

MGen. Benedict Arevalo, on the other hand, will be put to shame especially by the deep bench of young Party cadres and NPA commanders and Red fighters who are ever inspired by Ka Joma and are more than capable of carrying forward what the past generation of Filipino revolutionaries began.

The CPP leadership, from each Party branch to the central committee, works as a collective and does not depend on any single leader. Party cadres and members and all revolutionaries are tested and tempered in the crucible of revolutionary struggle. There they learn and grow in strength. It is very much unlike the cut-throat culture in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that molded Arevalo into the butcher and truth-spinner that he is.

As I already pointed out in an earlier tribute to Ka Joma, inspired by the immortal revolutionary spirit of Comrade Jose Maria Sison, revolutionary forces in Negros are further emboldened to defeat the counterrevolutionary war of the current US-Marcos II regime in the island and carry forward through protracted people’s war the national democratic stage of the Philippine revolution until victory.#