Revolutionary forces across Eastern Visayas today give the highest honors to the Imelda 6, heroic martyrs of the people which included leaders of the Regional Party Committee, who were killed in an early morning air raid by the 8th ID in Barangay Imelda, Las Navas, Northern Samar three years ago. The memory of Comrades Helenita “Ka Elay” Pardalis, Gil “Ka Biboy” Giray, “Ka Mamoy” Sablan, “Ka Maddie,” “Ka Joshua,” and “Ka Mike” lives on in the renewed fervor imbuing the new breed of Party cadres now leading the revolutionary movement in the region.

Since the Party Central Committee announced the rectification movement in December 2023, the regional leadership has directed the painstaking effort of implementing at different levels the eight parts of the rectification movement. These include a study campaign of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, campaign to reaffirm the Party constitution and program, study campaign of important documents of the First and Second Great Rectification Movement, assessments and summings-up, social investigation, criticism and self-criticism, evaluation and promotion of cadres, and implementation of the three-level Party course.

All of these are instrumental to further forge the Party leadership in carryng out the grueling tasks of frustrating the all-out war of the US-Marcos regime, (which has been without letup in Eastern Visayas since Memorandum Order 32 in 2018), and also intensifying all forms of struggle to carry forward the national democratic revolution in the midst of the violent convulsion of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system.

The worsening crisis engenders favorable conditions for the renewed strength of the revolutionary movement. Inspired by the lessons and exemplary lives of our martyrs, younger revolutionaries have now taken up the cudgels of leadership. Though our comrades have passed, to illustrate with an allegory of forests, felled trees have paved the way for warm sunlight to shine on younger seedlings. The people’s war can only grow stronger from here.

Long live the Imelda 6! Long live the martyrs of the Philippine revolution!

Broaden and deepen the rectification movement! Strengthen the Party and lead the people to oust the US-Marcos regime!