By CPP Information Bureau
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today dismissed "as a big joke" the declaration yesterday by newly installed Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Ricardo David that the military can put an end to the revolutionary armed struggle within three years.
The CPP said "General David's statement is hilarious, coming in the wake of the AFP's failure to meet its previous deadline of reducing the New People's Army (NPA) to insignificance by the end of Arroyo's term last June 30. General David even contradicts the new Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin's statement a day earlier that Aquino's administration "would not make the same mistake committed by its predecessor by imposing impossible deadlines for counter-insurgency efforts versus the ongoing people's war."
"Like the June 2010 deadline set by previous regime, the AFP chief of staff's statement which now sets another three years to defeat the revolutionary armed struggle is another pipedream. From as early as the Marcos fascist dictatorship, defense secretaries, AFP chiefs and other top officials of the fascist military have all kept repeating similar declarations only to have these blow up in their faces," said the CPP.
The CPP said further that General David and Secretary Gazmin and the newly installed Aquino regime must resolve among themselves their approach to the ongoing revolutionary war raging in the country, especially after the Aquino regime has reciprocated the National Democratic Front of the Pilippines (NDFP)'s statements that it is open to the resumption of peace talks. Secretary Gazmin said that "We sit down and talk… the more you kill, the more enemies you create."
"In the last nine and a half years, the AFP carried out an all-out military campaign of suppresssion under the Arroyo regime's Oplan Bantay Laya. Not only has the AFP failed in its declared objective, it has further incited the people to take up arms as the military's fascist onslaught left a long bloody trail of killings, abductions, torture, mass terrorism and other violations of human rights and international humanitarian law," said the CPP.
The CPP raised concerns that General David's declaration will bring about a further spread and intensification of human rights abuses by the fascist armed forces. "By setting another three-year deadline, the AFP is bound to become more desperate and resort to intensifying brutalities against communities its fascist military regards as supportive of the NPA."
The CPP also chided the Aquino government's plan to increase the number of soldiers and police, as declared in the inaugural speech of Benigno Aquino last June 30. "Without first resolving outstanding cases of human rights abuses and atrocities perpetrated by the AFP, increasing their number can only be interpreted as a pat on the military's back and lead to more widespread violations of human rights." The CPP noted that Aquino made no similar declaration with regard the number of teachers.
"By waging guerrilla warfare with revolutionary devotion and wide-and-deep people's support, the NPA and the revolutionary forces in the countryside continue to reap victory after victory in launching tactical offensives, building the people's organized strength, advancing their agrarian and other struggles, setting up local organs of people's democratic government and expanding to more areas," added the CPP. "In the past nine years, the NPA has recruited thousands and seized thousands of weapons from the AFP, its paramilitary groups and warlord armies."
The CPP, in its current program, has called on the NPA to fully develop guerrilla warfare in order to bring the people's war from its current stage of strategic defensive to the stage of strategic stalemate in the next five years.
