The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) issues this quick response to the fourth State of the Nation Address of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The CPP firmly refutes Marcos’ false claims that “there are no more guerrilla groups.” He is fooling only himself with this farcical claims. Units of the New People’s Army (NPA) continue to persevere and enjoy the deep and wide support of the people in the countryside.
Marcos’ claims are directly contradicted by his own actions. Despite repeated announcements that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will now focus on “external defense,” majority of its combat battalions remain deployed against the guerrilla fronts of the NPA across the country.
This grand declaration of having crushed the people’s armed resistance will explode in Marcos’ face. Like all previous regimes who declared they will crush the NPA, Marcos and his armed forces are bound to fail. History will prove Marcos utterly wrong.
Marcos bragged how a handful of traitors to the people’s revolutionary cause are now working hand-in-hand with the Marcos fascist regime. It is fine that they have shown their true class colors, and have now exposed themselves as instruments of the fascist regime.
In the face of the AFP’s all-out brutal attacks since 2017, guerrilla units of the NPA have been reorganized and redeployed to deepen and widen its roots among the people. A new generation of young Red fighters continues to slowly rise among workers, peasants and petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
With firm determination, Red fighters of the NPA will bring the armed revolution forward. They are guided and inspired by the Party. They are imbued with an indefatigable spirit to fight and defeat the enemy, however monstrous and oppressive.
Marcos and his militarist advisers wrongly insist that with US military support, superior lethal force will end the people’s armed resistance.
However, despite all the lethal firepower provided by the US—jet fighters, 500-pound bombs, drones, attack helicopters, howitzers, artillery, modern rifles and combat gear, and the brutal fascist policies in both the cities and countryside—Marcos (like Duterte before him) has failed and will fail to stop the steady regrowth and expansion of the NPA who remain deeply rooted among the people.
Marcos’ claims that “there are no more guerrilla groups” is a virtual declaration ending prospects of peace negotiation with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). He and National Task Force (NTF)-Elcac officials stubbornly refuse to recognize and address the roots of the armed conflict. Under the so-called National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD), Marcos only aims to promote “local peace talks” that is a euphemism for the military’s suppression drive against peasant communities.
Corruption under Marcos continues to reach unprecedented levels, as the biggest bureaucrat capitalists and bourgeois compradors amass wealth through government contracts and infrastructure projects. With court cases against their illegal wealth dismissed since assuming power, the Marcoses have recovered hundreds of billions of pesos of money and property accumulated during the Marcos dictatorship.
The regime’s neoliberal policies allow foreign big capitalists to expand their capital by exploiting cheap labor of Filipino workers and plunder the country’s resources with impunity. He has pulled the country further back to colonial economic ties with the US with his lopsided trade deal with Trump. He has caused price increases in oil and other basic commodities.
Even worse, the puppet Marcos regime has allowed the country to be used by the US military as its outpost for its power projection, endless military exercises and war provocation in the Asia-Pacific region. With his blind subservience, the country is being dragged by the US imperialists into its wars of aggression in the region.
The lies and illusions woven by Marcos during his state of the nation cannot obscure the basic fact that the majority of Filipinos remain mired in poverty, and suffer from landlessness and land grabbing, joblessness, very low wages, rising cost of living, homelessness, deteriorating public services and other social ills.
Under Marcos, the three basic problems of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism continue to grow worse and more oppressive. The puppet, fascist and corrupt Marcos regime continues to make the grounds for armed resistance more fertile.
