Fight and defeat the US-Aquino regime and fulfill the requirements for the advance toward strategic stalemate
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
Introduction
In celebration of the 42nd founding anniversary of the New People's Army (NPA) on March 29, 2011, we the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines salute all the Red commanders and fighters. This is a time to honor our revolutionary martyrs and heroes, take stock of our strength and achievements and renew our resolve to advance the people's war to a new and higher stage.
Together with the entire Party and the entire Filipino people, we celebrate the accumulated victories of the NPA in the revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes. We congratulate and commend the NPA for defeating Oplan Bantay Laya and for scoring significant victories in the process.
We are well prepared and highly confident to confront and defeat one more US-designed plan to suppress the revolutionary forces of the people. This is Oplan Bayanihan, which is being unleashed by the new Aquino puppet regime of big compradors and landlords. It is dressed up and heavily made up in a vain attempt to make it look different from the much discredited Oplan Bantay Laya. But it is the same brutal continuation of its immediate predecessor and earlier antecedents from the time of Marcos.
Due to the persistence and increased rapacity of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, the broad masses of the Filipino people are suffering exploitation and oppression more than ever before and are ready to rise up against the Aquino regime and the entire ruling system. They are further outraged when the regime and its armed minions misrepresent revolutionary resistance as the cause of underdevelopment, poverty and other dire social conditions in the country.
1. Protracted crisis of the world capitalist system
There is no letup in the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system. The US and other imperialist powers dogmatically stick to the bankrupt policy of neoliberal globalization. Thus, the global economic crisis is protracted and is heading towards a worse stage. The entire capitalist world is actually in a state of depression and disorder.
The imperialist and puppet states continue to attack the rights of workers, press down wages and cut back on government social spending. They do so in order to provide more opportunities to the monopoly bourgeoisie for rapid capital accumulation and profit-making through tax cuts, state supply contracts, trade and investment liberalization, privatization of public assets, financial speculation and manipulation, deregulation and denationalization and plunder of underdeveloped economies.
The finance oligarchy and the rest of the monopoly bourgeoisie, who are responsible for unprecedented economic plunder in the last three decades and for the current grave crisis continue to amass superprofits by gobbling up public funds and passing the burden of the crisis on to the working people and the underdeveloped countries.
The public money doled to bail out the banks and key corporations has been used by these to show book profits and not to generate production and employment in order to counter the crisis and stimulate demand. Now confronted by huge public debt and deficits, the imperialist governments have adopted austerity measures at the expense of public sector employees, social services and the people in general who are obliged to pay higher taxes and service fees.
The crisis that used to be traced to the bursting of the housing bubble due to the abuse of household debt and the far greater abuse of corporate debt and derivatives in the financial markets has dramatically become the uncontrollable crises of imperialist and puppet states in the form of public deficits and public debt.
At the base of the financial crisis is the crisis of overproduction that besets the whole world and extends from raw materials, semimanufactures and basic industrial goods to high-tech electronic goods. The overconcentration and overcentralization of capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie have reached unprecedented levels while production stagnates and the livelihood of the workers and working people and the economies of the third world are devastated.
In the imperialist countries, the monopoly bourgeoisie are intensifying the exploitation and oppression of the people. Thus, the people are incited to resist and the working class is aroused to wage class struggle against the monopoly bourgeoisie. Outbursts of mass protests of the workers, the youth, women, immigrants and other people are occurring in North America, Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist formations are steadily developing.
The monopoly bourgeoisie is using chauvinism, racism, religious bigotry, fascism and warmongering to divide and manipulate the people and draw them away from recognizing the roots of the crisis in the iniquitous system of capitalism and imperialism. But the rising reactionary currents generated by the monopoly bourgeoisie outrage the people and drive them to wage resistance and build their organized strength.
While the imperialist countries are still united against the people and the underdeveloped countries, they are increasingly at odds with each other over grave economic, financial, trade, security and other problems. In one summit after another, the imperialist leaders have failed to solve these problems and to stabilize the world situation. The traditional imperialists have serious contradictions with such new entrants as China, Russia, India and Brazil to the circle of global players.
The sharpest contradictions between the imperialist powers and the broad masses of the people are most flagrant in the underdeveloped countries. Subjected to the worst forms of exploitation and oppression by the imperialists and their local puppets, the people have begun to rise up in entire countries and global regions. Mass movements are surging forward along an anti-imperialist and democratic line of march.
The current widespread mass uprisings and armed revolutions in South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East are harbingers of more to come. They are bound to create the conditions for the rise of proletarian revolutionary parties and anti-imperialist and democratic mass movements.
In the particular case of Libya, the social turmoil has turned into a civil war between the Gadaffi regime and the opposition raising the old monarchist flag. The imperialist powers headed by the US have launched a war of aggression against the national sovereignty of Libya and the Libyan people under the pretext of humanitarian intervention to save civilians. The US pretends to yield chieftainship to the NATO that it in fact directs and controls.
The latest of the wars of aggression instigated by the US, UK and France has laid bare the contradictions among the imperialist powers. Germany and Russia, together with China, India, Brazil and other less developed countries are critical of the war and refuse to join it. The states of the Arab League are divided over the issue, while those of the African Union oppose the war of aggression.
Maoist parties are growing in strength and advancing in India, the Philippines and other countries and are taking the lead in advocating and waging people's war. They are in alliance with other revolutionary parties and mass formations in various countries and on a global scale.
As it protracts, worsens and deepens, the crisis of the world capitalist system poses the danger of more imperialist wars of aggression. At the same time, it favors the rise of revolutionary movements throughout the world in both developed and the underdeveloped countries.
Even before the imperialist powers can stem or alleviate the crisis that dramatically occurred in 2008, well substantiated and well reasoned estimates point to its new and worse stage occurring in 2016. Within this time frame, the Aquino regime and the entire ruling system face a dismal future as they remain servile to the policies dictated by the imperialist powers headed by the US.
2. Further rotting of the domestic ruling system
Under the weight of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and due to its backward character and chronic crisis, the Philippine ruling system of the big comprador bourgeoisie and landlord class is becoming ever more rotten and more exploitative and oppressive. It is hated by the broad masses of the people.
The Aquino regime is bound hand and foot to the US policy of neoliberal globalization. Its so-called Philippine Development Plan hews closely to this policy and serves to further violate the political and economic sovereignty of the people and auction off our natural resources and the rest of the national patrimony in order to let the foreign banks and firms and the big compradors and landlords like the Aquino and Cojuangco families rake in profits.
The Philippine economy continues to be ravaged by the neoliberal policy of denationalization, trade and investment liberalization, privatization of public assets and deregulation. It is being made ever more dependent on the export of cheap raw materials and cheap labor, on low value-added processing for reexport on call-center employment and rising levels of foreign and local public debt.
No cap whatsoever is effectively restraining public borrowing from abroad and from local sources. At the same time, the Aquino regime has an entire program of raising taxes and fees on social services. It has adopted a policy of austerity. It has allowed the prices of oil, food and other basic commodities to soar. The people are already fed up with the regime in such a short time because of their growing poverty and hardship, the failure of the regime to offer solutions to their basic problems and its obsession with gimmickry and triviality. They are endlessly insulted by claims that the popularity of the regime rises on the basis of manipulated poll ratings even as the prices of basic commodities are rising.
The Aquino regime is shamelessly following the US global war of terror and the US Counterinsurgency Guide in coming out with its own new internal security plan aimed at deceiving the people and destroying the revolutionary movement. The new campaign plan of military suppression is a viciously violent wolf masquerading as an amiable sheep. It is essentially a continuation of Oplan Bantay Laya as a futile antipeople attempt to defeat the armed revolutionary movement through brutal human rights violations perpetrated with impunity.
The regime makes false promises to the people to engage in good governance, deliver social services, engage in economic development and undertake security reforms. The military is assured of priority funding, despite the rampant corruption of military officers and the far more urgent need for economic development and social services.
The military is under orders to mouth demagogic slogans to dress up its antipeople, antinational and antidemocratic character and objectives as "whole of nation approach" or "people-centered" strategy and its military operations as "winning the peace", "peace and development" efforts and "respect for human rights".
But in fact, the military openly declares that it is still focused on its triad operations (synchronized combat, intelligence and civil-military operations) in order to defeat threats to the security of the reactionary state. The non-combat operations serve mainly to strengthen the intelligence network and intensify combat operations.
They are used to deceive the people, slander the revolutionary forces, mobilize the government agencies and nongovernmental organizations for the counterrevolutionary war and cosmetize the appearance of the military in order to facilitate combat operations against the revolutionary forces and the people. As in the case of the killing of botanist Leonardo Co, the AFP endlessly dishes out disinformation and outright lies in order to cover up its fascist crimes and human rights violations.
Local officials and government agencies and NGOs aligned with the regime are also assured of US and other foreign funding and local budgetary appropriations in order to deliver doleouts and palliatives with the devious aim of inveigling the people and communities in the guerrilla fronts into turning against the NPA and force them into providing intelligence for precise strike operations by the AFP against the NPA.
Cynically, the Aquino regime believes that it can continue to rule by carrying out US-dictated policies, avoiding to offer any real solution to the basic economic, social and political problems and engaging in mere gimmickry and psywar. The regime pretends to be unaware that the people have a growing contempt for its failure to fulfill its promises to hold the Arroyo regime accountable for corruption and human rights violations and to end poverty by eliminating corruption.
The basic contradictions in Philippine society continue to sharpen and flare up. The broad toiling masses of workers and peasants as well as the middle social strata are increasingly revolted by the escalating exploitation and oppression inflicted on them by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
As the broad masses of the people are restive, the contradictions among the reactionaries are bursting out recurrently in violent ways. The various competing political factions of the ruling classes have private armed groups and their own political and criminal cliques within the reactionary military, police and paramilitary forces.
The people and the rivals of those in power increasingly see the Aquino regime as excessively servile to foreign interests, incompetent and corrupt and prone to the use of violence despite its own self-serving claims to the contrary.
3. Possibilities from the crisis conditions
The crisis conditions are favorable for advancing the people's war from the stage of strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate. The Party is correct in setting the line of march for the revolutionary movement in the medium term.
It is the duty of the NPA to wage the people's war and advance from stage to stage in order to realize the people's aspirations for national liberation and democracy. The armed counterrevolution must be frustrated and defeated in its plan to destroy or reduce to inconsequentiality the armed revolution and thus leave no way for the people to achieve national and social liberation.
Oplan Bayanihan is the same creature as Oplan Bantay Laya, wearing the signature lipstick of "internal peace and security plan". It advertises itself with the slogan of "winning the peace" and misrepresents its brutal military campaign of suppression as "peace and development" outreach operations in order to camouflage the escalation of the triad operations of synchronized combat, intelligence and civil-military operations. In pursuit of the US Counterinsurgency Guide 2009, the Aquino regime can pay lip service to peace and reconciliation and use peace negotiations as a mere disposable tactic or ploy.
But why resume the formal meetings of the peace negotiations between the reactionary government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines at this time? The peace negotiations are a means for the people and the revolutionary forces to proclaim the program of the new-democratic revolution and challenge those in the reactionary government to agree to address the roots of the civil war with basic social, economic and political reforms in order to lay the basis for a just and lasting peace.
Under pressure by the crisis of the ruling system and the growing strength of the armed revolutionary movement, the Aquino regime is being reminded of the option to come to a peace agreement with the revolutionary movement or persist in using the peace negotiations as a futile attempt to deceive and undermine the fighting will of the people and the revolutionary forces and to dream of their capitulation or destruction.
The enemy's use of the peace negotiations to deceive the people is preempted by the declaration of the revolutionary forces that the line for a just and lasting peace is no different from the line of people's revolutionary armed struggle for national liberation and democracy. The NDFP has frustrated every attempt of the reactionary government to frontload the end of hostilities in the peace negotiations or to engage the NDFP in ceasefires that obscure and lay aside the need to address the roots of the armed conflict through basic reforms.
The revolutionary movement is exerting extra efforts to accelerate the progress of the peace negotiations and has even gone so far as to offer an immediate alliance and truce on the basis of a concise declaration to assert national independence, expand democracy, develop the economy through land reform and national industrialization and undertake international relations for the purpose of peace and development.
The Aquino regime cannot take comfort from the notion that the revolutionary movement cannot yet overthrow the ruling system in the next five years or from any scheme for the counterrevolutionary armed forces to destroy the revolutionary movement, render it inconsequential or make it capitulate.
The revolutionary mass movement is capable of removing the Aquino ruling clique from power in the same manner that the Marcos and Estrada ruling cliques were removed and the Arroyo ruling clique was almost removed. Some errors in the conduct of the mass movement allowed the regime to maneuver and survive through sheer brutality and terrorism. Lessons must be learned from the failure to overthrow the Arroyo ruling clique despite its extreme isolation and unpopularity. Errors must be reviewed and rectified so that the revolutionary mass movement can realize the full potential of the favorable objective situation.
The crisis conditions, the growing strength of the revolutionary movement, the rapid rate at which the Aquino regime is being exposed as antipeople, antinational, anti-democratic, corrupt and brutal are such that the revolutionary forces can build a broad united front and generate a mass movement to isolate and remove the Aquino ruling clique from power in a relatively short period of time.
The rising prices of oil, food and other basic commodities are a signal for a brewing political storm that in other countries and regions of the world is already raging. The combustible issues of corruption are bound to catch up with Aquino despite the propaganda that he is personally clean.
The people are taking him to task not only for failing to prosecute and imprison the Arroyos for corruption and gross human rights violations but more so for condoning the economic crimes of Eduardo Cojuangco and Lucio Tan and favoring them and other big donors to the Aquino electoral campaign fund in 2010. It is only a matter of time that the backroom operations of Aquino's close kin and friends are exposed. The return of the "Kamag-anak Inc." and the rise of the so-called "Kaklase at Kaibigan Inc." are giving rise to growing cynicism over Aquino's anticorruption slogans.
The Aquino family and its sycophants have long boasted that they were mainly or solely responsible for the overthrow of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and that the revolutionary movement did not have any role in it. They are blinded by their accumulation of spoils in the persistent ruling system and fail to see that the revolutionary mass movement has played a major role in the overthrow of reactionary ruling cliques and has accumulated strength from such exercises of people's power.
It is a matter of justice long overdue that the revolutionary movement uses its growing strength to dispel once and for all the lie that the revolutionary movement had nothing to do with ending the Marcos dictatorship and that only those like the Aquino family and their hangers-on who can collect the spoils of bourgeois power are the victors in the protracted struggle between revolution and counterrevolution.
In one regime after another, renegades from the revolutionary movement have served as special agents of anticommunism and reaction and have been rewarded with positions in the reactionary government. The people and the revolutionary forces would find satisfaction if the renegades hanging on to the Aquino regime would lose their jobs and the Aquino family loses the pretense at having the right of patent over the power of the people in one more exercise of this in a magnitude and manner comparable to that which brought down Marcos and Estrada.
4. Political requirements for the advance of the people's war
The negotiating panels of the entity that now calls itself the Government of the Philippines (GPH formerly GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines have been able to resume formal meetings because the former has lifted its illegitimate "suspension" of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and has declared that the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines are not terrorist organizations.
But we should have no illusion that a peace agreement would soon be reached by the NDFP with the reactionary government despite the optimistic time frame expressed in the Oslo Joint Statement of February 21, 2011. The GPH has already made thinly veiled threats that if the NDFP refuses to capitulate before the end of the first three years of the Aquino administration, then the GPH would terminate the peace negotiations. At the same time, the GPH and its pseudo-progressive hangers-on calculate that by then, the campaign of military suppression under Oplan Bayanihan shall have succeeded and made peace negotiations unnecessary.
The public should know that the GPH during the first round of formal talks attacked The Hague Joint Declaration as a document of perpetual division and qualified its affirmation of existing agreements with a claim to sole governmental authority in the Philippines and with an implied demand for the capitulation of the NDFP to the GPH. The GPH also brazenly withdrew the agreed upon June date of the second round of formal talks when it failed to get a ceasefire from the NDFP side for the duration of these talks.
At any time, the GRP can scuttle the peace negotiations in any of several ways: simply demanding the capitulation of the NDFP, refusing to release the JASIG-protected persons and the 350 political prisoners, opposing basic social and economic reforms, blocking the necessary political and constitutional reforms and the like. In the absence of a peace agreement, the broad masses of the people and the revolutionary forces must resolutely advance the people's war for national liberation and democracy from the stage of the strategic defensive to that of the strategic stalemate.
The CPP is ideologically, politically and organizationally prepared and capable of leading the new-democratic revolution and advancing the people's war from the current stage to a new and higher stage. In the process, the Party, the NPA, the NDFP and all other revolutionary forces of the people will grow in strength and gain the capability to perform greater tasks and achieve greater victories.
In ideological building, the Party must ensure that all current full members briefly review the Party Constitution and Program and the content of the basic Party course and proceed quickly to accelerate the basic education of the candidate-members in connection with fulfilling the tasks for advancing the people's war in the next five years.
Prolonged studies at any level or promises of higher levels of education in the name of consolidation and further consolidation should not be used to delay the promotion of Party candidate-members to full Party members. We must avail of simplified study materials and procedures developed by our educators and propagandists, with the use of illustrations in print and other audio-visual aids. The study of entire Party courses can now be facilitated with audio-visual aids.
We must be sensitive to the desire of candidate-members to attain full membership as a recognition and measure of their worthiness as proletarian revolutionaries. We must boldly accelerate the recruitment of Party candidate-members from the ranks of the advanced mass activists, without letting in a single undesirable.
The Party cadres at the branch level and in the Party groups within the mass organizations must make sure that the candidate-members are promoted to full membership within the period of candidature stipulated by the Party Constitution for various class categories; i.e., six months for those of worker or peasant origin and one year for those of petty bourgeois origin.
We need to increase our Party membership from the current tens of thousands to at least 250,000 in the next five years or so at the annual average of one Party member recruiting another to become a Party member. Party organs and units at all levels, from the branch to the Central Committee must assess the Party membership and plan how the current Party members within their respective scopes can be increased.
We can aim to fulfill this target in the plan only if we vigorously and successfully develop the mass movement in the urban and rural areas. Only through the development of the mass movement can we have a large base for recruiting Party members for various types of revolutionary work as well as for service as Red fighters of the NPA.
We must be able to deploy more Party members from the ranks of workers and the educated youth for service in the people's army and for mass work and building Party branches, mass organizations and organs of political power in the countryside. We must systematically send urban-based Party candidate-members and mass activists to do social investigation and mass work in the countryside and become Red fighters of the people's army.
In political building, the Party must propagate the new-democratic revolution and generate the mass movement by arousing, organizing and mobilizing the toiling masses of workers and peasants and all other patriotic and progressive strata and sectors in both urban and rural areas.
The urban-based mass movement must grow in strength and advance in order to raise the burning issues affecting the lives of the people, to enlighten and militate the people and press hard against the ruling clique and the entire ruling system. There is no dearth of outstanding issues that should be addressed by the mass movement. The incessant increases in oil prices, the rising costs of living, widespread unemployment, landlessness and homelessness, rural poverty, hunger, the spread of disease and the rapid deterioration of social services all infuriate the people and rouse them to political action.
The crucial task for the mass movement is to put forward critical analysis and lay out the correct line of struggle against the ruling reactionary clique and system and mobilize its forces to reach out to the masses in their millions through effective organizing and propaganda work in order to rally the people to fight for their national and democratic aspirations.
The patriotic and progressive mass organizations must be enlarged and militated. They must transform the people's hatred of the ruling system into organized revolutionary strength and avail of, and test, the current regime's pretenses at respecting democratic rights. The mass struggles in the urban areas are still legal and defensive and the objective is to enlarge the mass actions rather than go into small and isolated provocative actions.
But there must be an increasing measure of militancy. We have an abundant wealth of experience of militating and mobilizing the masses as we did in the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and in the process of overthrowing the Marcos dictatorship in the period of 1983-86 and the Estrada regime in the period of 1999 to 2001. Should the Aquino regime resort to attacking and suppressing mass protest actions, the people would rise up on a wide scale as already seen in our history and in various countries and continents today. In our historical experience, the attacks of the Marcos regime and subsequent regimes have only served to inflame and militate the masses. We observe in protest actions abroad that whenever these are attacked by the military or police, the mass protests spread and intensify until the regime is toppled.
A strong mass movement is needed in the urban areas in order to isolate and weaken the urban-based ruling clique and prevent it from being able to deploy more military and police forces against the armed revolutionary movement of the people in the countryside.
Without a strong urban-based legal democratic mass movement, the enemy can at will deploy more military forces against the people and the revolutionary forces in the guerrilla fronts. The Arroyo regime was overconfident in deploying more military forces in the countryside because the urban-based mass movement slackened and became smaller and the anti-Arroyo movement within the military was suppressed.
In any future alliance of the legal democratic forces and the disgruntled officers and members of the reactionary armed forces and police, the rallying cry should be for the latter forces within the reactionary government to respect the democratic right of free expression and democracy and allow the growth of the mass protests before they issue the declaration of withdrawal of support from the ruling clique.
The New People's Army is the main organization of the Party for arousing, organizing and mobilizing the people wherever it operates in the countryside. Its units can effectively engage in mass work and initiate the formation of organs of political power, mass organizations, militia in localities and self-defense units in mass organizations. But responsibilities for mass organizing must be continually passed on to the local Party branches and the mass organizations in order to allow the units of the people's army increasingly to have definite periods of politico-military training and combat duty.
The line for the people's army is to engage in intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base. Every NPA unit must have definite periods of combat duty, mass work and production. When on combat duty, the NPA unit must create or discover opportunities for wiping out enemy units. The NPA must relentlessly carry out tactical offensives in order to seize weapons and increase the thousands of Red fighters into many thousands more and cover all the rural congressional districts within the next five years.
The revolutionary armed struggle must be integrated with the agrarian revolution and the building of revolutionary bases. The peasant masses join and support the people's war only if their democratic demand for land is served by land reform, from the minimum to the maximum program. The people can see more clearly that they are winning in the revolution upon the establishment of democratic organs of political power from the level of the barrio organizing committee to the revolutionary barrio committee.
At every given time in the struggle, the Party, the NPA and the NDFP have a definite amount of strength. But through united front work, they can augment, amplify and maximize such strength directly or indirectly through allied forces. In developing the united front, the Party must seek common grounds for cooperation, taking into account the legitimate rights and interests of the forces in the alliance. But it must maintain independence and initiative and be vigilant against attempts of reactionaries in the alliance to hijack or lead astray the mass movement from the revolutionary road.
We must strengthen the unity of the toiling masses of workers and peasants in the basic alliance. We must link the basic alliance of the toiling masses with the urban petty bourgeoisie to build the alliance of progressive forces. Further on, we must link the progressive forces with the national bourgeoisie in order to build the patriotic alliance.
Still further, we are ever ready to form temporary and unstable alliances with sections of the reactionary classes in order to isolate and destroy the power of the most reactionary force. In this regard, we avail of the contradictions among the political and military factions of the ruling system. In forging and maintaining alliances with reactionary forces, the Party must be most conscious of the need for maintaining independence and initiative and sharpening revolutionary vigilance and prudence.
We have long respected and supported the right of the Moro people to self-determination. Their revolutionary struggle benefits ours and ours benefits theirs. We must maintain our alliance with them for our mutual benefit against US imperialism and the reactionary Manila government. The US and the local reactionaries must be frustrated in their scheme to derail or destroy either the NDFP or the MILF in order to turn the full force of the reactionary armed forces against either of the them. We are confident that the NDFP-MILF alliance will hold because their common enemy cannot meet the just demands of the Filipino people and the Moro people.
5. The strategy and tactics of people's war
The New People's Army must be resolute and fierce in strengthening itself and striving to defeat Oplan Bayanihan in the same revolutionary spirit that it strengthened itself and defeated the 14-year Marcos fascist dictatorship and all succeeding internal security plans of the reactionary successors of Marcos. The NPA must raise higher its revolutionary consciousness and fighting capability and intensify its tactical offensives in order to advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate within one or two five-year plans.
The NPA must firmly and vigorously pursue the strategic line of protracted people's war. This involves encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating sufficient armed strength here over a protracted period of time until it gains the capability to launch the strategic offensive against the enemy holdouts in the cities and seize political power on a nationwide scale.
The strategic line avails of the social and physical terrain favorable for building a people's army in stages over a long period of time. The social terrain involves the class content of the line, availing of the participation of the peasant majority of the people in the revolution and fulfilling their democratic demand for land. The physical terrain refers to the wide space for growth, deployment and maneuver of the people's army.
At the current stage of the strategic defensive for the people's army, the enemy forces are on strategic offensive because they are superior to the people's army in a proportion of ten to one in terms of number of troops, military equipment and training. But at the tactical level, the people's army can have the superiority of ten to one against the enemy forces by enjoying the support of the people and by being able to use the element of surprise against specific enemy units at a particular place and time.
The NPA must carry out a war of fluid movement and must avoid decisive engagements which put at risk the existence of any platoon or company. It must wage only those battles that it is sure of winning. When at risk of losing in a decisive engagement, it must always be ready to trade space for time.
It must exercise flexibility in the use of tactics of concentration, dispersal and shifting. It concentrates strength superior to that of a target enemy unit for attack. It disperses to deprive the enemy of any visible target or when it conducts mass work among the people. It shifts position when it evades the attack of a superior enemy force and maneuvers to gain time or an advantageous position.
The existing 110 guerrilla fronts must continuously be developed so that all or most of them become company-size fronts and give rise to new guerrilla fronts. They must increase to at least 180 guerrilla fronts in the next five years. The Party leadership and the NPA command of a guerrilla front can take the initiative of deploying armed propaganda teams, squads or platoons to create a new guerrilla front. Adjacent guerrilla fronts must be able to help each other. A relatively stonger guerrilla front must be able to extend the support needed by a weak guerrilla front. In the same manner, relatively stronger regional commands must be able to extend the support needed by the weaker regional commands.
Guerrilla fronts adjacent to each other are clustered to form a wider war theater that enables a wider scope of command, coordination, mutual support and maneuver. This should provide more and better options for offensive and defensive purposes, further speed up the growth of guerrilla warfare and enhance the building of the complete structure of force of the NPA from the regional force down to local guerillas and the people's militia.
The Party must direct the formation of various levels of command in order to make effective deployment of NPA units for various objectives on varied scales. Such objectives include combat, mass work, production and tax collection. Any level of command must have its own force adequate for security and combat and must have enough personnel and resources to perform its duties.
The NPA has already accumulated a critical mass for bold intensification of guerrilla warfare and advance toward a higher stage in the people's war. The people's army must relentlessly launch tactical offensives in order to seize weapons for creating new units, to increasingly change the balance of forces and to move from the stage of strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate. It must aim to accumulate 25,000 rifles in order to develop into the stage of the strategic stalemate.
Every level of command and every unit of the NPA must be conscious of its current armed strength, estimate and plan or target how many more weapons can be seized within a certain period and how to carry out the tactical offensives to seize weapons. The people's army must always be alert to opportunities for tactical offensives aimed at seizing weapons.
The whole array of the structure of force of the NPA which should include regional forces, local forces, people's militia and urban partisans must continue to wage intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base in order to seize firearms and develop the capability of platoons and companies to wipe out enemy units. The main form of tactical offensives must be annihilative, the objective being to wipe out enemy units in order to seize weapons and demoralize the enemy forces.
But certain other tactical offensives must be undertaken to inflict attrition and wear down the enemy forces. These include partisan warfare in urban areas, sparrow warfare, sniping operations, land mine warfare, interdiction of the fuel and supply lines of the enemy and destruction of military vehicles, depots and other fixed installations that are being used against the people's army.
The NPA must deliver effective blows to the head and body of the enemy whenever possible. The enemy must be made to bleed every day from as many wounds inflicted as possible on a nationwide scale. Ultimately, it can be made to weaken and collapse.
The extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare will yield additional weapons and additional fighting units, improve the tactics and technique of the people's army and raise higher command effectiveness at every level in terms of formations and territorial scope. It will produce the elements of regular mobile warfare, especially when the NPA companies begin to cohere or increasingly coordinate in carrying out tactical offensives. The new and higher level of warfare will be attained on the basis of the victories of guerrilla warfare.
Our policy is to be fierce in battle but to be lenient towards enemy personnel who surrender or lose the capacity to fight due to injuries and who become our captives. We must maintain this policy to serve the long-term objective of encouraging enemy personnel and units to take the revolutionary side of the people or at least cease fighting against the people's army.
The revolutionary armed struggle is facilitated when the reactionary armed forces, police and paramilitary forces tend to disintegrate. Special units of the Party as well as close friends and relatives who are on the revolutionary side must encourage the officers and rank-and-file personnel of the reactionary armed forces to take a patriotic and progressive position on issues and to act in the national and democratic interests of the Filipino people.
We must follow strictly the directives of the Party and the NPA on the proper use of electronic equipment for communications and storage of information. These are very efficient for our positive purposes but when not properly used or handled, these are likewise very efficient in revealing to the enemy any location, identification, status and plan of current and accumulated tactical and strategic information that the enemy can exploit against the revolutionary forces. We have incurred losses of personnel and resources due to mishandling of electronic and digital equipment. And we must continuously study and apply their proper handling and use to enhance our advantage.
The NPA must further integrate revolutionary armed struggle with agrarian revolution and building revolutionary bases. The minimum land reform program must be brought to a new and higher stage. Whenever possible, the maximum land reform program must be carried out, especially in extensive areas from where the people's army has disabled and driven away the despotic gentry and the big landgrabbers. Peasant associations can plan out and coordinate antifeudal mass campaigns and struggles from the municipal to the inter-district levels in order to mobilize tens of thousands of peasant masses.
In guerrilla fronts, certain alliances can be formed by which local reactionary government units can be used to prevent or counter the worst enemy military operations. But the guerrilla fronts can increase to such a great number that they can cover all or most of the rural congressional districts, reduce or eliminate the power of reactionary local governments, and cohere to form relatively stable base areas.
The relatively stable base areas can be developed only if the reactionary organs of political power are dismantled and replaced by the revolutionary organs of political power. In order to displace the political power of the reactionaries and build the revolutionary organs of political power, the people's army and the revolutionary mass movement must exert all efforts to drive away and punish the local despots and bad elements that oppress the people, giving the chance to reform to those who have not incurred blood debts from the people and who submit themselves to the laws of the revolutionary government.
The enemy has recently been developing long line intelligence work among the specialized intelligence agencies and has always tried to establish and develop intelligence networks of various types in localities, in certain institutions, nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and mass organizations. We must be alert to the existence and operations of these networks, which can now use the cellphone and other high-tech means of communicating with their handlers or supervisors. We must exert all efforts to dismantle these enemy intelligence networks.
Our best weapon is to develop the consciousness and capability of all revolutionary forces and the people to detect such network and specific agents. The people's army, the militia and the self-defense units of the mass organizations must actively surveil unreliable or suspected elements and conduct their own intelligence work. Their findings must be submitted to responsible higher authorities for proper evaluation, further investigation and confirmation prior to taking appropriate action respectful of due process and other democratic rights.
The people's army must dispatch units to arrest for prosecution the plunderers, violators of human rights, local tyrants, the most antisocial criminal elements and enemy informers. Such units must be prepared to give battle to targets of arrest who are armed and dangerous or who head criminal armed groups. The local tyrants and the worst of exploiters include the evil landed gentry, the local warlords and those who grab the land, destroy the environment and rob the people of their natural resources.
We must adhere to the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in going after the violators. The main criminals, accomplices and beneficiaries involved in gross and systematic human rights violations and in plunder must not be allowed to thrive on the fruits of their crimes. Their ill-gotten wealth must be turned over to the people's government and to the victims. They are subject to prosecution by the people's court and upon verdict of guilt to punitive actions by the people's army.
The most effective way for the people to stop the reactionary government from delivering the land and mineral resources to foreign corporations is to build an effective mass movement against them and to allow the people's army to disable and destroy the equipment and other facilities of the antinational and antipeople corporations and their local agents.
The Party, NPA, the mass organizations and the people's government must be sustained by contributions from those who benefit from land reform and wage increases. Production must be undertaken in various ways for the benefit of the people's army and their families and the Red fighters. It is the duty of the people's government to collect taxes and fees and to impose fines for the purpose of funding social services, administrative operations and defense. The NPA serves as the tax enforcement agency of the people's government.
The NPA must be acutely conscious of escalating US military intervention under the policy of the US global war of terror, the US-RP Mutual Defense Agreement, Visiting Forces Agreement, the US Counterinsurgency Guide and various pretexts, including joint military exercises, humanitarian missions, civic action and the like. US troops are active in military campaigns of suppression as advisors, trainors and intelligence support.
As the NPA grows in strength, we can expect the US to engage in open aggression against the people. The Filipino people and the revolutionary forces must therefore seek the solidarity and support of the peoples of the world against current and prospective military operations of the US in violation of the national sovereignty of the Filipino people and the territorial integrity of the Philippines.
