In the recent years, the broad masses of the Filipino people have been subjected to extreme suffering due to the escalating conditions of oppression and exploitation generated by the worsening crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system and the world capitalist system.

The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated the socioeconomic and political crisis. It has become a major factor in the rapid widening of mass unemployment, shrinkage of incomes for the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata, the soaring prices of basic commodities and the further spread of mass poverty.

The Duterte regime has taken advantage of the crisis conditions to plunder the national treasury and the natural resources, to deprive the people of the assistance that they need to keep them alive and protect their health, to increase military overspending, to enact and enforce a law of state terrorism, to escalate campaigns of military suppression, to enlarge the trade and budgetary deficits and to further sink the economy and government in bankruptcy under a mounting burden of public debt.

We can expect that in the year of 2022 the traitorous, tyrannical, mass murdering, plundering and swindling Duterte regime will do everything in its power to intimidate the people with state terrorism and to rig the electoral process in favor of its slate of candidates in order to prevent his arrest for crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court and for the crimes of plunder and mass murder before the Philippine courts.

The year of 2022 will be a year of runaway crisis, armed counterrevolution and fraudulent elections. The broad masses of the people, the broad united front of opposition forces, the legal national democratic forces and the revolutionary forces of the people are challenged and are compelled to fight back against the worst political dynasties of big compradors, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists servile to foreign monopoly capitalism.

The Filipino people are always inspired by their historic feat of overthrowing the Marcos fascist regime after it rigged the 1986 snap presidential elections. They are confident that they can rise up again in gigantic mass protests in Metro Manila and nationwide. But they should also prepare themselves for the possibility of a longer period of both legal and revolutionary struggles because the Marcos and Duterte reactionary cliques are ready to unleash the worst forms of state terrorism.

Like Marcos, Duterte has the talent of doing the worst in benefiting from the reign of greed and terror and has the stupidity of making more favorable the conditions for armed revolution and rousing the broad masses of the people to rise up. We can still hear from him threats of martial law, mass arrests and massacres. But he and his alliance with the worst political dynasties are already isolated and cannot stay long in power beyond 2022.

At this point, let me congratulate the Communist Party of the Philippines for celebrating its 53rd anniversary as the leading force of the people’s democratic revolution. Its great ideological, political and organizational achievements belie the claims of Duterte and his military running dogs that they have succeeded at destroying the CPP, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and that there is no more obstacle to any fascist scheme of the regime. The armed revolution has become ever stronger precisely because of Duterte’s gross and systematic violations of the national and democratic rights of the Filipino people.

According to CPP publications, the CPP has 150,000 members in all Philippine provinces. The New People’s Army has thousands of full time Red commanders and fighters, with such auxiliary and reserve forces as the tens of thousands of people’s militia and hundreds of thousands of self-defense units of the revolutionary mass organizations in 110 guerrilla fronts covering more than 90 per cent of Philippine provinces. Together with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the CPP leads millions of Filipinos through the revolutionary mass organizations, alliances and local organs of political power of the people’s democratic government.

Since 1972 the ever worsening chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system has prevented the ruling classes from ruling in the old way, with the effective pretenses of democracy. The fall of the Marcos fascist dictatorship in 1986 has merely resulted in pseudo-democratic regimes and the return of fascist tyranny through Duterte. The Filipino people are exceedingly desirous of revolutionary change. They want to cast away the ruling system of big compradors, landlords subservient to foreign monopoly capitalism. Thus, they are happy to have nourished and supported the CPP as revolutionary party of the proletariat to lead the people’s democratic revolution with a socialist perspective.###