Ka Menandro Villanueva (Ka Bok, Ka Jude and Ka Gipo) served the Filipino people and their new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war for five decades and rose to the rank of member of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Philippines, National Commander of the New People’s Army and secretary of the Mindanao Commission.

He was a highly resolute, intelligent, diligent and effective cadre. At the same time, he was so humble and self-effacing that the enemy was unable to get a photo of him for a long time until his capture. His characteristics were emulated by other cadres who worked with him. Together they were honed by the revolutionary theory and practice of Marxism-Marxism-Maoism and by sessions of criticism and self-criticism to improve the style and outcome of revolutionary work.

According to a report from the CPP Mindanao Commission, Ka Menandro and Ka Sandra Reyes (Ka Kaye) were captured alive by the enemy armed forces in the same incident in Mabini, Davao del Sur on December 24-25, 2021. But Ka Sandra would be reported to the press by the reactionary military as killed in action on December 25.

On January 5, 2020, the reactionary military onesidedly fired several rounds of Howitzer artillery at Libodon, Mabini and despite no encounter with the NPA subsequently claimed on January 6 that Ka Menandro had been killed in action in the non-encounter of January 5, 2022. Obviously, he was tortured for at least ten days before he was murdered. The enemy prevented the family from claiming his body promptly as well as human rights defenders from viewing the body..

Not satisfied with violating the rights of Ka Menandro under the international law on human rights and humanitarian conduct and likewise under the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement of Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, the Duterte fascist regime and its military running dogs are gloating over the murder of Ka Menandro and boasting that his death is the beginning of the end of the revolutionary movement in Mindanao and the entire Philippines.

They overlook the fact that in his long and fruitful service to the Philippine revolution, Ka Menandro made great achievements in the recruitment, training and development of thousands upon thousands of CPP cadres and members, Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army and revolutionary mass activists.

These have built in five decades so many CPP branches and leading organs, units and commands of the people’s army, revolutionary mass organizations of various types, alliances under the National Democratic Front and organs of Red political power that constitute the people’s democratic government based in the countryside. These have acted as engines to generate the revolutionary successors of Ka Menandro.

Under the organizational principle of democratic centralism, the collective organs of the CPP and NPA have highly competent members and a system of deputy cadres that can automatically replace any leading cadre who falls in the course of the revolutionary struggle. Leading central cadres and Red commanders have been arrested or killed when the revolutionary forces were much smaller and weaker. But their sacrifices and martyrdom have served only to inspire the revolutionary movement.

Together with the CPP Mindanao Commission, the CPP Central Committee and the NPA National Operational Command are in the best position to sum up the ideological, political and organizational achievements of Ka Menandro as well as Ka Sarah who has been previously honored. To some extent, I have long been aware that Ka Menandro was one of the leading cadres responsible for the growth in strength and advance of the CPP, NPA, NDFP and the people’s democratic government in Mindanao among the various communities, especially the national minorities.

With his great achievements in developing the revolutionary movement in Mindanao, Ka Menandro contributed greatly to the over-all development of the entire Philippine revolution. He was among the principal cadres of Mindanao who in 2016 decided to redeploy more than a thousand CPP cadres and Red commanders and fighters from Mindanao to various regions in Luzon and Visayas. This was a great act of reciprocity for the deployment of cadres and Red commanders to Mindanao from said regions sincethe 1970s.

In view of the rapidly worsening crisis of the domestic semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system and the world capitalist system, the Filipino people and their new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war are confronting escalating conditions of oppression and exploitation and yet these conditions are driving them to fight back and are therefore favorable for their advance through perseverance and best efforts in the revolutionary struggle.

In his psychopathic anti-communist scheme to destroy the revolutionary movement, the Duterte rule of greed and terror has brought back the worst features of Marcos fascist dictatorship in less than six years, following the pseudo-democratic regimes from Cory Aquino to Noynoy Aquino. The Duterte regime is hated by the Filipino people and is notorious among the people of the world because of its brazen acts of treason, fascist terrorism, extrajudicial killings, plunder and mendacity.

Whoever becomes reactionary president of the Philippines in 2022, through electoral fraud or otherwise, will be certainly weighed down by such consequences of the Duterte regime as the aggravated mass poverty due to unemployment and inflation, criminality and militarization of the reactionary government, the use of state terrorism and the pandemic to carry out plunder, superprofit-taking by foreign monopoly capitalism, the bankruptcy of the economy due to bureaucratic and military corruption, the widening trade and budgetary deficits and the mounting debt burden.

Any regime that wishes to continue the devil’s work of Duterte will generate the conditions that will further drive the Filipino people to resist and to strengthen and advance the new democratic revolution with a socialist perspective. The best way to honor the revolutionary martyrs like Ka Menandro Villanueva and Ka Sandra Reyes is to draw inspiration from their revolutionary life and deeds and to continue the people’s democratic democratic revolution and proceed to the socialist revolution.

Long live Ka Menandro Villanueva and Ka Sandra Reyes!
Onward with the people’s democratic revolution with the socialist perspective!
Long live the Filipino people and the Philippine revolution!