Communist Party Of The Philippines Central Committee
March 28, 2023
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)
gives its firmest salute and extends its most militant revolutionary
greetings to the Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army as
we celebrate today the joyous occasion of the 54th anniversary of the
genuine army of the Filipino people. Let us exalt the achievements and
victories of the people’s army accumulated through more than five
decades of steadfastly waging revolutionary armed struggle across the
entire archipelago. Today, the Party and all revolutionary forces
reaffirm the commitment to fight and end the US imperialist rule and
attain genuine freedom and democracy.
On this occasion, let us pay tribute to the hundreds of heroes and
martyrs of the people’s army and extol them as models of patriotism and
wholehearted service to the people. The people’s war could not have
advanced and persevered without their individual and collective
contributions and ultimate sacrifice. Their names are etched in the
annals of the Filipino people’s revolution and will forever be
remembered.
The New People’s Army has incessantly waged more than five decades of
intense and relentless people’s war against US imperialism and its
oppressive client-state of big bourgeois compradors and big landlords.
This is testimony to the iron will and determination of the Filipino
people to do everything humanly possible to put an end to four centuries
of uninterrupted colonial subjugation and semicolonial domination that
has oppressed and exploited countless generations of toiling people in
the country, and which continue to condemn them to a permanent state of
crisis and hardship.
From its small beginnings, the NPA has become a nationwide force of
several thousand Red fighters. Although it remains small and weak
compared to the US-trained and -funded puppet Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP), its unbending loyalty and boundless ties to the broad
masses of peasants, workers and toiling people, combined with the
correct leadership of the Party guarantees its continuous growth and
ultimate victory.
The NPA is the most powerful weapon of the Party for waging the
people’s democratic revolution. It carries out protracted people’s war
along the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside.
By adapting to the particular conditions of the country, it has achieved
great successes in carrying out guerrilla warfare, building guerrilla
zones and base areas, and establishing Red political power covering vast
areas in the countryside. Day by day, the seeds of the future people’s
democratic government are sown in thousands of villages across the
country, existing side by side with and antithesis to the present
reactionary and fascist government.
The NPA faces heavier and greater tasks ahead. We need to surmount
and defeat the intensified campaigns of encirclement and armed
suppression being carried out by the US puppet army. We must continue to
accumulate strength by smashing the AFP part by part in order to bring
the people’s war from its current level to the next higher level. The
Party and NPA remain fully determined to carry forward the people’s war
to victory.
Given the objective conditions, there are clear prospects for a new
period of revolutionary surge in the Philippines. The Party’s cadres and
the Red fighters of the NPA are unwavering in their revolutionary
commitment and are certain to surmount all obstacles, frustrate the
enemy’s brutal campaigns of suppression and gain even further strength
in the coming years. The Communist Party of the Philippines is ever
determined to lead the New People’s Army to stir up and spread the
flames of guerrilla warfare by way of advancing the protracted people’s
war.
The Party continues to lead the people’s war
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) established the New
People’s Army in March 29, 1969 to accomplish the central task of the
people’s democratic revolution in the Philippines of smashing
reactionary state power, seizing political power from the US
imperialists and the subservient ruling classes of big bourgeois
compradors and big landlords and replacing it with the People’s
Democratic Government of the Philippines which is an alliance of
workers, peasants and all oppressed and exploited classes under the
leadership of the proletariat.
The people’s army has accumulated countless victories and
achievements over the past 54 years of waging revolutionary armed
struggle. It has gained invaluable experience and lessons in advancing
the protracted people’s war in a small archipelagic country whose
countryside is so vast in relation to the cities but fragmented into so
many islands. We must lay out the plans for carrying forward the armed
revolution to higher levels. In order to do so, we must assiduously
study and apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, reaffirm the basic principles
laid out by the Party for waging people’s war in the Philippines, and
draw and firmly grasp the lessons drawn from our victories, as well as
setbacks.
The NPA wages protracted people’s war following the strategic line of
encircling the cities from the countryside. Starting weak and small, it
is necessary for the NPA to wage widespread guerrilla warfare through a
relatively long period of time in order to accumulate strength and
build its armed forces across the country by defeating and destroying
the enemy’s armed forces piece by piece, until it is capable of moving
on the cities from its stable revolutionary bases in the countryside and
capturing state power nationwide. During the protracted period of
growth, the people’s war may go through three probable stages—the
strategic defensive, strategic stalemate and strategic offensive—through
which the revolutionary forces will undergo the probable course of
development from being inferior, to being equal and ultimately superior
to the enemy’s forces.
When it was founded in 1969, the NPA had an initial force of 60 Red
fighters and commanders with nine automatic rifles, 26 single-shot
rifles and handguns, and a mass base of around 80,000 in the first
district of Tarlac province. By waging widespread guerrilla warfare, the
flames of the people’s war spread throughout the country. It currently
has thousands of Red fighters armed with high-powered rifles, explosives
which it fabricates from readily available material, and other basic
weapons that combine with bolos, arrows, spears and all kinds of weapons
in the hands of the people that can be used for guerrilla operations.
It has a mass base running to several million people throughout the
country. So long as we adhere to correct strategy and tactics, we shall
continue to grow big and strong.
The NPA has fought indefatigably over the past 54 years. Although it
has grown by leaps and bounds, the balance of forces remains
overwhelmingly in favor of the enemy. During this stage of the people’s
war, it must continue to establish, expand and consolidate its guerrilla
fronts, build guerrilla platoons and companies, combined with even
greater numbers of people’s militia units and supported by tens of
thousands of village self-defense corps. The task is to wage extensive
and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and
deepening mass base.
The NPA has steadily advanced and surmounted every disadvantage and
setback at every historical juncture. It has frustrated the enemy’s
campaigns of encirclement and suppression one after another, from Oplan
Prophylaxis, Task Force Lawin (Tarlac), Oplan Saranay (Isabela) and
succeeding oplans (operation plans) of the AFP during fourteen years of
martial law under the Marcos dictatorship, namely, Oplan Katatagan and
its prototype, Oplan Cadena de Amor in Southern Tagalog; as well as
Oplan Lambat Bitag I and II and the notorious Oplan Thunderbolt in
Negros Island under the first Aquino regime; Oplan Lambat Bitag III and
IV under the Ramos regime; Oplan Gordian Knot and Oplan Makabayan under
the Estrada regime; Oplan Bantay Laya I and II under the Arroyo regime;
Oplan Bayanihan under the second Aquino regime; and Oplan Kapayapaan and
Oplan Kapanatagan from the Duterte regime to the present Marcos regime.
With every campaign, the enemy has invariably combined psywar,
intelligence and combat operations in order to destroy the mass base of
the people’s army and force its units into a purely military situation
where the enemy can take full advantage of its superiority in numbers,
weaponry and equipment. Then and now, the enemy has deployed a few
thousand fascist troops to concentrate and capture an area covering one
or several guerrilla fronts of the NPA at any given time. However, he
can only do so by leaving open wider areas where the NPA can shift,
carry out mass work, mount tactical offensives and create points of
initiatives in conducting political and military struggle.
The key has always been for NPA units to constantly expand and deepen
its links with the broad masses of peasants in order to have sufficient
berth for guerrilla maneuvers. With the active resistance of the
organized masses, and screening their guerrilla forces, we can foil the
enemy’s attempt to concentrate his forces on our small forces, render
him blind and deaf, and make him waste energy and resources by letting
him punch the air, thereby exhausting himself. The Party and the NPA
arouse, organize and mobilize the masses in the countryside to wage
anti-feudal and political struggles against fascism and imperialist
plunder, and build and train people’s militia in waging guerrilla
warfare of the people to hit the enemy on all sides and make it bleed
from a thousand cuts.
The preservation and nationwide growth of the NPA through more than
five decades of fighting clearly proves the correctness of the strategy
and tactics set forth by the Party for waging protracted people’s war in
the Philippines. We have taken into consideration the physical and
social terrain of the country, and how it is possible and necessary to
wage people’s war starting in the predominantly agrarian and backward
countryside where majority of the Filipino people are.
We saw the steady growth of the NPA during its nascent years. It
succeeded in defeating the first US-Marcos regime’s “nip in the bud”
campaigns by fiercely waging guerrilla warfare and persevering efforts
to carry out political and military mobilization of the people.
The Party has succeeded in forging a highly disciplined, motivated
and self-reliant people’s army. By building the NPA across the country,
first in the major islands, and later in other smaller islands, we have
overcome the initial disadvantage of fighting in a small archipelagic
country and turned it into our advantage. We have compelled the enemy to
divide its forces and spread it across different islands. We have
overcome the initial difficulty of having a small vulnerable force by
taking hold of key mountainous terrain along border areas covering
several provinces and later expanding to the populated rolling hills and
plains. In doing so, we have compelled the enemy to spread its forces
thin across the expansive countryside.
Ensconced with the support of the population of national minorities
and poor settlers, the NPA has effectively utilized to its advantage the
mountainous terrains with deep forest cover and mountain ranges as
physical base for training, consolidation, planning and springboard for
carrying out propaganda, organizing and mobilization in the more
populated areas in foothills, plains, riverside communities, coastal
areas and town centers in bordering provinces.
Through the policy of centralized leadership and decentralized
operations, the Party and NPA have produced regional, sub-regional and
front cadres and commanders of high quality. They are fully capable of
leading revolutionary forces under their scope, and sustain operations
even if the enemy chooses to concentrate on their areas.
The NPA has preserved and grown its forces. From armed propaganda
teams, squads and small guerrilla units, it has built platoons and
companies, and established up to 128 guerrilla fronts across the entire
country. The NPA has been able to effectively command and coordinate its
guerrilla units up to the regional level, and has mounted coordinated
campaigns against the enemy at the national level.
While the NPA expanded and grew rapidly in the 1980s, some renegades
undermined the basic principles and analysis of the Party, including the
basic strategy and tactics of people’s war. They perverted the analysis
of semi-colonial and semi-feudal system in the Philippines, claiming
that the Philippines had become more urbanized than rural uncritically
using government statistics. They promoted the myth that the Philippines
had become capitalist under Marcos through his the so-called “11
industrial projects,” obscuring the fact that the economy remained
largely agrarian, backward and pre-industrial. These laid the basis for
setting aside the basic principles of people’s war, and pushing the line
of “urban insurrectionism” supported and combined with the premature
regularization of the NPA and mounting unsustainable offensives in a
military adventurist push in 1983-1984 and 1987-1988.
Up to 36 companies and two battalions of full-time fighting units of
the NPA were formed first in Mindanao, and later nationwide, which
caused the drastic reduction in the number of units devoted to mass
work, and contraction of the mass base and areas covered by guerrilla
fronts. The comprehensive tasks of platoons and squads of the NPA, local
militia units and mass organizations were undermined, as they were
reduced to function as service units of over-concentrated NPA companies.
The mass base became narrow and shallow. The NPA companies won dramatic
but mostly pyrrhic military victories, ultimately proving temporary.
They overpowered enemy hard targets at high costs. These victories would
soon lose their luster as the NPA played into the hands of the enemy,
who soon after, deployed far larger forces against concentrated NPA
units, which had become vulnerable due to the reduction of the mass
base. The enemy pushed the concentrated NPA companies to positions of
isolation and passivity, and unleashed a campaign of brutal suppression
against the mass base, the local Party branches and mass organizations.
The Party, the NPA and other revolutionary forces suffered
unprecedented setbacks as a result of military adventurism combined with
urban insurrectionism. This was made worse by hysteria created by
campaigns to root out enemy “deep penetration agents” who supposedly
crept en masse into the ranks of the Party, the NPA and the
revolutionary mass organizations, and to which military losses were
erroneously attributed to. These include the disastrous Kampanyang Ahos
in Mindanao and similarly disastrous campaigns in other regions, in
which hundreds of Party cadres, Red fighters and activists were tortured
and murdered by the militarist renegades based on flimsy grounds and
without judicious process of evaluation of evidence and fair trial. As a
result of these unprecedented losses, the revolution was set back to
the 1984 level.
The Second Great Rectification Movement (1992-1998) was launched by
the 10th plenum of the Central Committee to rectify the errors of
military adventurism and urban insurrectionism and reaffirm the Party’s
basic principles, its correct analysis of the semi-colonial and
semi-feudal character of Philippine society, its program for a people’s
democratic revolution through protracted people’s war and its
anti-revisionist stand. It raised the theoretical knowledge and grasp of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism through a study movement and campaign to sum-up
experiences and clarify the comprehensive revolutionary tasks.
Brilliant victories were achieved in the ideological, political and
organizational fields which allowed the Party and all revolutionary
forces to strengthen steadily, solidly and in all-rounded way.
The Party set the line of waging extensive and intensive guerrilla
warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. The
NPA redeployed its units to put stress on mass work and recovery of lost
territory, boldly expand and consolidate its mass base.
Strengthened by the rectification movement, the guerrilla fronts of
the NPA surmounted the counterinsurgency campaign under the Ramos regime
marked by intense psywar and offensive military operations, as well as
the nearly ten years of brutal suppression under the Arroyo regime. The
revolutionary forces could gain strength even in areas where the enemy
mounted offensives. Where the mass base was expanded and deepened, the
enemy could not concentrate its forces in one area without leaving wider
areas clear for NPA units to shift, to conduct political agitation,
organizing and mobilization of the masses and to further strengthen
themselves.
Overall, the NPA advanced solidly from 2005 to 2016. In 2009, the
Central Committee issued a call to intensify tactical offensives, with
the aim of completing the requirements of the middle phase of the
strategic defensive and moving to the advanced phase and onto the
threshold of the strategic stalemate. The Party held the view that the
NPA had the critical mass to accelerate its growth.
The declared aim of the Aquino regime’s Oplan Bayanihan (2010-2016)
of crushing the NPA, was frustrated by the NPA, which generally
maintained its forces and achieved marked advance in some regions,
particularly in Mindanao. At the same time, the people’s army had to
contend with the problem of over-dispersal of squads or teams in the
rush to cover a wide area with a small force. There also arose the
opposite problem of self-constriction in which NPA units imposed limits
on their areas of operations leading to problems of loss of initiative
and military conservatism. There was also grave imbalance where there
was rapid growth and advance in some parts, while other parts stagnated
and suffered losses.
In 2017, the US directed the AFP to mount sustained campaigns of
encirclement and suppression (so-called focused military operations)
against NPA units across the country. Prodded by the Trump government in
October, then president Rodrigo Duterte declared the CPP and the NPA as
“terrorists” in order to allow the US government to funnel largely
un-audited funds to the AFP through the Operation Pacific
Eagle-Philippines under the US State Department’s “overseas contingency
operations.” The AFP has since accelerated its “modernization program”
prioritizing the purchase of attack helicopters, drones, jet fighters,
bombs, howitzers, machine guns, automatic rifles and other weapons for
counter-guerrilla operations.
At the cost of onerous annual military expenditures, the AFP also
further increased the number of its battalions by ten (around 4-5
thousand troops) bringing to 150 the total number of military and police
battalions arrayed against the NPA. The AFP’s objective (since Oplan
Bayanihan) is to deploy at least one battalion for every NPA guerrilla
front in order to saturate the villages suspected of giving the NPA
political and material support. (It even has expanded its operations to
cover the cities and town centers where workers unions, community
associations and university organizations have become targets of
political suppression.) Still, even with such large numbers, combat
troops of the AFP cannot cover the entire breadth of the area where
guerrilla units of the NPA can carry out guerrilla maneuvers, and take
the initiative to expand mass work and stage tactical offensives. Enemy
troops who occupy these villages have been targets of tactical
offensives by NPA platoons and local militia units.
The enemy’s sustained military offensives since 2018 first targeted
the regions of Southern Mindanao, Northeast Mindanao, North Central
Mindanao (during which the entire Mindanao was placed under martial
law), and Bicol, Eastern Visayas and Negros (regions placed under
military rule by virtue of Memorandum Order 32). The AFP has unleashed
the worst forms of fascist monstrosities against the peasant masses,
including grave threats and intimidation, illegal arrests, tortures,
rape, wanton destruction of properties, abductions and enforced
disappearances, extra-judicial killings, massacres and coordinated mass
murders. Under its so-called “surrender” drive, people are accused and
adjudged by the military of supporting the NPA without going through any
judicial process. Entire communities are placed under hamlet and
subjected to state terrorism. Fascist troops of the AFP turn community
halls, clinics, sport facilities and other civilian facilities into
their barracks; impose curfews, food and economic blockades and other
restrictions causing grave hardships on the people; and carry out
artillery and aerial bombing near population centers, farms and forests.
The AFP’s five year campaigns of encirclement and suppression have
largely failed to attain its declared objective of crushing the NPA. In
some regions, the NPA was able to sustain or increase the number of Red
fighters, and continue to carry out tactical offensives against the
enemy’s fascist troops. Some regions or guerrilla fronts suffered from
losses or significant setbacks primarily due to internal weaknesses and
shortcomings.
The Party leadership has issued the call to sum-up experiences of the
past five and 25 years in order to draw important lessons in carrying
forward the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s
war. Cadres of the Party and NPA Red fighters are earnestly studying
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, basic documents of the Party including Our
Urgent Tasks, Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War, Rectify
Errors and Rebuild the Party, Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify
Errors and others, in order to identify the ideological, political and
organizational root causes of some problems in a number of regions.
Over the past 54 years, the enemy has mounted one campaign of
encirclement and suppression after another marked by the same pattern of
attacks against the mass base (“clear-hold-consolidate”) in order to
isolate and force the units of the people’s army into a purely military
situation. The scale, tempo and tactics of these campaigns changes over
time but the basic pattern remains.
On the other hand, the New People’s Army has repeatedly demonstrated
its capability to frustrate the enemy’s military campaigns and emerge
stronger through the application of guerrilla warfare tactics of
dispersal, shifting and concentration. To elude the enemy’s
encirclement, the main body of an NPA unit can retreat, deploy teams to
snipe or lay an ambush against attacking enemy columns, and shift to
expand its areas of mass work. While the enemy encamps and occupies an
area, NPA and local militia units study the deployment and pattern of
operations of the enemy’s operating units to identify its weak points
(supply lines, perimeter guards, patrol units) against which it can
stage tactical offensives. People’s militia units, on their own or in
combination with NPA units carry out widespread guerrilla operations in
the enemy’s rear or punitive actions by partisan and special operations
units against enemy installations, units or personnel. At the same time,
the NPA’s command at the regional or subregional level can coordinate
NPA units in other guerrilla fronts to mount timely tactical offensives
to help the guerrilla fronts under siege, and to strengthen themselves.
In summing-up our experiences, particularly during the last five
years, we must be guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the universal
principles of guerrilla warfare, as well as the strategy, tactics and
specific lessons which we have drawn and summed-up from our own
experience over the past five decades of waging protracted people’s war.
We must identify and overcome our weaknesses, shortcomings and errors
which have limited our capability in waging extensive and intensive
guerrilla warfare during the past several years; impeded our efforts in
combining armed struggle, agrarian revolution and mass base building; as
well as hindered the push to raise the level of the revolutionary mass
movement both in the cities and countryside.
In particular, we must comprehensively address and root out the
following clearly observable problems within the scope of waging
revolutionary armed struggle: (a) self-constriction of some NPA units,
(b) mountain stronghold mentality and roving rebel band tendency in
others, (c) inability of some guerrilla fronts to expand to the more
populous foothills, plains, riverside and coastal communities, (d) low
rate of annihilative or basic tactical offensives, (e) reduction in the
number of firearms seized from the enemy, (f) slow pace in the expansion
and consolidation of the mass base, (g) lack of updated research and
social investigation into the problems affecting the greatest number of
people in our areas, (h) low level of propaganda and agitation work, as
well as in organizing and mobilizing the broad masses of peasants in
anti-feudal and antifascist struggles, (i) lack of spread of guerrilla
warfare especially in the enemy’s rear areas, and the inability to
activate and unleash the initiative of militia units and self-defense
corps in guerrilla warfare, (j) confining the strength and scope of the
Party’s work of organizing and mobilizing the people to the given
strength of the NPA, and other problems.
The Party and all revolutionary forces are determined to address,
resolve and overcome these problems in order to effectively lead the
Filipino people in great numbers in their economic and political
struggles under the US-Marcos fascist regime, strengthen the
revolutionary mass movement in the cities and countryside, carry forward
the protracted people’s war through extensive and intensive guerrilla
warfare on an ever widening and deepening mass base, and advance the
people’s democratic revolution to attain the people’s aspiration for
genuine national freedom and democracy.
Stir up and spread the flames of protracted people’s war
The Party is determined to lead the New People’s Army and the broad
masses of the Filipino people to stir and spread the flames of
protracted people’s war and guerrilla warfare.
The Party must continue to consolidate itself ideologically,
politically and organizationally and strengthen its absolute leadership
of the NPA. It must complete the summing-up of experiences of the past
five and 25 years within the year. Party cadres and NPA commanders must
intensively study or review the basic documents of the Party, the
documents of the SGRM, the classic Marxist-Leninist-Maoist writings, the
experiences of carrying out people’s war and guerrilla warfare in China
and Vietnam.
We must plan to comprehensively expand and strengthen our guerrilla
fronts to cover the entire breadth and depth of the physical and social
terrain, combining the forested mountains and mountain ranges,
foothills, plains, riverside and coastal communities, and town centers.
Wherever the NPA operates, it must implement the Party’s land reform
program in order to unite the broad masses of peasants, along the line
of the anti-feudal united front. The minimum program for reduction of
land rent and interest rates on loans, raising farm-wages, increasing
production and promoting sideline occupation to raise income, pooling
labor and land for collective farming, and so on, must be carried out.
The advanced elements among the peasants who have been militated in land
reform struggles can be recruited into the NPA or its militia units to
carry out guerrilla warfare and other military tasks.
The Party must continuously strengthen its organization in the New
People’s Army in order to put revolutionary politics in command at all
times. We must raise the theoretical knowledge and ideological and
political consciousness of Party cadres and NPA commanders and Red
fighters. We must further raise their spirit of wholeheartedly serving
the people, and of trusting and relying on the masses. We must heighten
the fighting will of all NPA commanders and Red fighters and their
determination to exert all efforts to advance the revolutionary cause.
We must ensure the correct deployment of NPA forces to put stress on
steady wave upon wave expansion and consolidation of the mass base.
Guerrilla companies and platoons must have a clear time-bound plan for
expansion, recovery and consolidation.
We must avoid large concentration of troops for extended periods and
correct the tendency to keep platoons absolutely concentrated at all
times, which constrains their mobility, limit their reach and
initiatives, reduce them to passivity in the face of intense focused
military operations and thereby make them vulnerable to early enemy
detection and pinpoint ground and air strikes. On the other hand, we
must also correct the tendency of over-dispersing and overstretching
squads and teams in the wish to cover more ground for recovery and
expansion. Without firm control and proper direction from their mother
units, and in the face of unfavorable situations, especially when
confronted by superior enemy forces, they easily lose their initiative
and become passive.
Company and platoon commanders, and Party cadres should master the
art of proper employment and deployment of troops. To maintain
flexibility and initiative, it is desirable to have regular platoons in
relative concentration and dispersal, and avoiding absolute
concentration and overdispersal. Our platoon guerrilla forces must be
properly divided and deployed, avoiding absolute equal distribution of
military and political strength. A main body should be formed to act as
military and political center of gravity, which is in relative
concentration (where teams can be dispersed in short radius and
concentrated at short notice) while the rest of the squads and teams are
in relative dispersal (in relatively longer radius) to carry out mass
work and expansion work within a designated area. The entire platoon
must have one plan with all its parts serving one main direction and
objective. These principles and methods are also applicable in guerrilla
companies.
We must ensure that the NPA constantly maintains military initiative
by combining various kinds of guerrilla formations and operations. NPA
companies and platoons can dispatch squads and teams to conduct
small-scale guerrilla actions in coordination with local militia and
self-defense units. It can task partisan and special units to conduct
punitive and sabotage operations in the enemy’s rear. Relatively
concentrated regional and sub-regional guerrilla units should mount
annihilative tactical offensives against soft targets or weak points of
the enemy to punctuate widespread guerrilla actions by mass work units,
militias and self-defense forces.
At all levels of command, the NPA must plan to mount small and big
annihilative tactical offensives making sure to confiscate the enemy’s
weapons, combined with widespread attritive and punitive military
actions. Through the annihilation of enemy forces and seizing its
weapons can the NPA steadily grow and gain strength.
Local Party branches, in cooperation with the front guerrilla units
of the NPA, must organize or strengthen and activate militia units of
the people’s army, as well as village self-defense corps of the local
revolutionary mass organizations, in order to carry out widespread
guerrilla warfare of the people. These must take the initiative at
employing all available weapons to hit the enemy from all sides, while
coordinating efforts with local militia units in adjacent villages and
with local guerrilla units of the NPA. They serve as the broad base of
the basic front guerrilla platoons of the NPA.
While the Party leads the NPA, it must also be keen that the scope of
its leadership is much broader, as it also leads and strengthens the
revolutionary mass movement in the cities and countryside, the united
front and other fields of revolutionary struggle. The comprehensive
leadership of the Party is not limited by the NPA nor confined by its
strength. The Party builds the NPA, and where it cannot yet establish or
deploy the people’s army, the Party establishes its territorial
committees at the provincial, district, cities and town, and establishes
various types of organization to arouse, organize and mobilize the
people.
The Party must strengthen the revolutionary mass movement in the
countryside and lead the broad peasant masses in waging widespread
anti-feudal and antifascist struggles. Leading committees of the Party
at the front and regional levels must build the necessary machinery and
train cadres and activists to carry out mass organizing and
mobilization. Basic revolutionary mass organizations of peasants, women,
youth, cultural workers and children must be built or reestablished.
Local Party branches must be established or revitalized to lead the
comprehensive work of propaganda, organizing and mobilizing the people.
The organs of political power or the village revolutionary committees
must be established on the foundations of the organized strength of the
masses, the Party and the people’s army.
We must conduct research and social investigation to identify the key
manifestations of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation of the people and
the urgent issues that cause the worst hardships on the majority of the
people. We must carry out propaganda and agitation to raise the
people’s political consciousness and militance, launch mass campaigns to
unite the biggest number of people.
We must launch mass struggles to mobilize the peasant masses in their
numbers to demand reduction of land rent and interest on loans against
despotic landlords, land grabbers and usurers. We must rouse the peasant
masses, minority people and fisher folk to fight rampant neo-liberal
dispossession of their livelihood by real estate companies, plantation,
mining companies, infrastructure, as well as land reclamation projects.
We must rouse the broad masses to fight the brutal tactics of state
terrorism, and expose the clear link between fascist suppression with
the anti-people neo-liberal economic policies and programs being carried
out by the Marcos regime.
We must strengthen the Party’s leadership of the revolutionary mass
movement in the cities and town centers and carry forward the masses’
economic and political struggles, linking their daily struggles to the
antifascist and anti-imperialist struggles of the people, building the
revolutionary underground movement and establishing large numbers of
Party branches. We must continue to generate widespread political and
material support for the armed struggle. The Party must effectively
recruit and train workers and intellectuals whom it can deploy to the
countryside to carry out work in the revolutionary peasant movement or
in the people’s army.
Conditions are becoming more fertile for people’s war
The rapidly worsening global capitalist crisis and the moribund state
of the ruling semi-colonial and semi-feudal system underscore the
necessity of carrying forward the national democratic revolution. The
broad masses of the Filipino people are suffering from increasingly
intolerable forms of oppression and exploitation. With the leadership
and guidance of the Communist Party of the Philippines, they are ever
determined to wage resistance in order to free the country from clutches
of US imperialism and the subservient ruling classes, and attain
genuine national freedom and democracy.
The message of the Central Committee last December 26, 2022 outlined
the main contours of the international situation marked by intensifying
class contradictions and inter-imperialist conflicts arising from the
deepening and worsening crisis of the global capitalist system. The
global capitalist system remains mired in crisis marked by
overproduction, falling rates of profits and a burgeoning financial
crisis. Leading capitalist countries, including the US, are sliding into
recession which would prolong the already protracted period of economic
stagnation and cause greater suffering on the broad masses of toiling
people around the world.
There are rising fears of an international financial collapse similar
to 2008 after recent successive bank failures and collapse of
Switzerland’s Credit Suisse Bank and at least three American banks
(Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, Silvergate Capital Corp) earlier
this month, which will cost at least $294 billion in bailout packages,
including the $119 billion funds made available by the Swiss government
for the UBS bank to acquire Credit Suisse. The collapse of these banks
follow a 42-year high 4.5% increase in interest rates after eight rounds
of adjustments by the US Federal Reserve since March 2022 amid high
inflation. Up to 85% of central banks followed the lead of the US in
raising interest rates which have further dampened investments and
production.
Global economic growth is anticipated to further slow down to 1.9%
from an estimated 3% last year. The US economy is expected to further
stagnate in 2023 with a mere 0.4% growth from an equally slow 1.8% last
year. The United Kingdom slid into recession in 2022, and is set to
contract further by 0.8% this year. The European Union is expected to
grow by only 0.2% from 3.3%; China growth slowed down to 3% last year,
and is expected to grow by only 4.8% (from earlier projections of 6% to
6.5%); while Japan is set to grow by a mere 1.5% from an equally dismal
1.6% last year.
Wealth is highly concentrated in the hands of a few monopoly
capitalists. In the US, capitalist wealth is highly concentrated, in
which 81% of total sales and 97% of business assets are in the hands of
the top 1% of corporations; and further concentrated in the top 0.1%,
which alone account for 60% of total sales, and 88% of business assets.
The same wealth concentration occurs in the UK and European Union,
Japan, China and other capitalist centers.
The proletariat and people in capitalist countries are suffering from
joblessness, high prices of fuel, food and other basic commodities, low
wages and worsening economic conditions. The rapid deterioration in
social conditions has spurred a rising wave of workers’ protests in the
US, UK, France, Germany, China and scores of other countries. Organized
and spontaneous workers’ strikes are breaking out against low wages amid
high prices, acute unemployment, as well as against oppressive working
conditions, reduction in pension, raising the retirement age,
suppression of rights, and other issues.
Monopoly capitalist countries have resorted to increasingly
protectionist measures to shield their economies from competition, at
the same time, seek to expand the scope of their markets, sources of raw
materials and fields of investment. The US, in particular, is
aggressively imposing its “rules based order” in its push to counter the
economic expansion of China, leading inevitably to trade and investment
wars, and ultimately, limited and large-scale wars to redivide the
world.
The US and NATO continues to pour billions of dollars worth of arms
with the aim of prolonging the now year-long war in Ukraine, in order to
weaken Russia, and take complete control over the markets, and sources
of mineral, natural gas and other resources in the Central European
region. The imperialist US is now repeating the same pattern of
mobilizing its military subalterns or so-called “allies” to provoke
China over the issue of China’s sovereignty in Taiwan and setting aside
the long-standing One China Policy, in the same way that it provoked
Russia by reneging on its security guarantee commitment to the defunct
Soviet Union under the 1991 Minsk Agreement that the NATO will expand
“not one inch eastward.”
Majority of countries that are backward and dependent on foreign
capital and trade are pressed down by weak demand for semi-processed
commodities, specifically from China, especially amid overproduction of
semiconductor and electronics. These countries are pushing down workers
wages in a race to the bottom to draw in scarce investments. While the
imperialist themselves implement protectionist measures, neo-liberal
policies are being forced on backward economies to further open up their
economies and allow foreign capitalists to plunder their resources and
destroy the environment. Widespread economic dislocation and
dispossession of people are inciting people’s protests to defend their
lives and livelihood.
The economic and political crisis of the Philippine ruling system
continues to worsen under the second US-Marcos regime. The puppet regime
is aggressively pushing to impose more neo-liberal measures that
subject the toiling people to even worse forms of oppression and
exploitation. The masses of workers, peasants, fisher folk, minority
people, and other toiling sectors are being economically dispossessed
and dislocated as their livelihood—from passenger jeepneys, to the
Manila Bay and other fishing waters, agricultural and ancestral land and
so on—are taken away by the imperialists and big bourgeois compradors
partners.
The Marcos ruling regime is currently railroading efforts to amend
the 1987 constitution, either by electing a constitutional convention or
convening congress as a constituent assembly. It aims to enshrine the
neo-liberal economic measures and do away with certain provisions of the
Philippine constitution which nominally protect the local economy. In
addition to these neo-liberal aims, the Marcos-Duterte clique also aims
to further dominate and monopolize political power by removing such
provisions in the 1987 constitution that limit the powers for declaring
martial law, prohibit the incumbent president to run for another term,
ban nuclear weapons, prohibit foreign military troops and bases among
others. In doing so, the ruling Marcos clique is inviting condemnation
by the broad patriotic and democratic forces of the Filipino people.
The US imperialist government continues to incite neo-colonial state
terrorism by arming and employing its puppet troops in unleashing
increasingly brutal tactics to suppress the people’s patriotic and
revolutionary resistance. Since 2021, it has provided more than $2
billion in arms sales and security assistance to the AFP that include
attack helicopters, military drones, jet fighters, bombs and missiles.
The US government itself is directly responsible for the widespread
campaign of terrorism and fascist monstrosities being perpetrated by the
Marcos regime and its armed agents against the Filipino people.
Furthermore, in collusion with the Marcos regime, the US is actively
pushing its plan to construct four or more military bases and facilities
in the Philippines, as part of its war theater preparations against
China. The strategic aim of the US imperialists is to perpetuate the
country’s backward, pre-industrial and agrarian status and reinforce its
domination and control of the country.
Now more than ever, the Filipino people aspire to put an end to
imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, attain freedom from US
control and domination, and carry out land reform and national
industrialization. These are the key steps to turn their lives around
and enable them to enjoy the wealth of the Philippines heretofore
monopolized and plundered by US imperialism and the traitorous ruling
classes of bourgeois compradors and big landlords.
The global capitalist crisis and the moribund state of the
semicolonial and semifeudal system are generating fertile ground for
waging people’s democratic revolution. The rapidly deteriorating
conditions in the country, especially in the countryside, are rousing
the broad peasant masses and the rest of the Filipino people, to carry
forward revolutionary armed resistance. All Red fighters of the New
People’s Army and cadres of the Communist Party of the Philippines are
dedicated to wholeheartedly serve the Filipino people. They are
determined as ever to stir up and spread the flames of guerrilla warfare
and carry forward the protracted people’s war.
The achievements and victories that the Filipino people are certain
to gain in the coming period of revolutionary surge form part of the
great resurgence of the international proletariat and people. Big and
small, these revolutionary ripples are bound to create a big wave that
will pound on imperialism, fascism and all reaction in all parts of the
world.
Fight intensified imperialist oppression against the Filipino people!
Resolutely advance the people’s war for genuine freedom and democracy!
Stir up and spread the flames of the people’s war!
Long live the New People’s Army!
Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!
Long live the Filipino proletariat and people!
COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST)
