Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
September 23, 2022
The decision by the Manila Regional Trial Court promulgated last September 21 dismissed the “terrorist proscription” case against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and New People’s Army (NPA). The Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP), through its Department of Justice, failed to prove their accusation of terrorism against the CPP and NPA. In its 135-page decision, the court said the CPP and NPA should be more properly categorized as rebels, or we may add, rebels with a cause—the national democratic cause.
The CPP, representing the working class, and the NPA, a peasant-based army, represent the most numerous, and most oppressed and exploited classes in the Philippines. Those who insist on sticking the terrorist label on the CPP and NPA are those who seek to obscure or oppose their revolutionary political ideals.
We must thoroughly expose these terrorist branders for what they really are: fascists and warmongers, and defenders of the oppressive, exploitative, rotten and corrupt status quo. They are imperialist agents and lackeys of the ruling classes. They make noise about “terrorism” to drown the patriotic and democratic clamor of the Filipino people, which are reflected in the constitution and program of action of the CPP.
They resort to terrorist-branding because they oppose the demand for genuine land reform and national industrialization. They oppose the demand to raise workers’ wages as these go against the policy of attracting foreign investments. They favor privatization and allowing profit-hungry capitalists run the country’s hospitals, schools, water service, electricity, telecommunications, even roads and bridges and other public infrastructure.
They are against substantially increasing the budget to provide free education and public health service and, instead, want more and more money for wasteful and grandiose infrastructure projects where bureaucrats, like many of them, make a lot of money. They are subservient to the neoliberal policy dictates of the IMF and World Bank, including import liberalization which has resulted in flooding the country with imported commodities to the detriment of local manufacturers and agricultural producers.
They oppose the long-standing demand for abrogating all unequal military treaties with the US and continue to push for more US military aid—jetfighters, helicopter gunships, bombs, howitzers, guns and bullets—to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Neither do they defend the country’s territorial land and seas against foreign occupying troops, whether Chinese or American. Many of the terrorist branders in the Philippines are pro-US zealots.
Terrorist branders are militarists who want to place the country under the rule and rigidities of the military and police. They want people to surrender all their rights—from their right to free expression and their right to organize, to their right to anonymity and privacy. They want more and more money to go to the military and police and to establish a surveillance state. To them, this is the ideal condition for “peace and order” to prevail.
They are against peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). They do not want the basic socioeconomic problems laid out on the table and addressed in favor of the working class and peasants. In 2017, the tyrant Duterte, on the prodding of the US, declared the CPP and NPA as terrorists to end peace negotiations, just as the peace panels were set to sign an agreement concerning land reform and other important economic policy reforms–the meat of peace negotiations. Duterte subsequently unleashed a campaign of murder killing at least 15 peace consultants of the NDFP since.
The decision of the Manila RTC upturns the very pretext of the anti-people and brutal counterinsurgency war being waged by the AFP. It exposes the AFP’s “war against terror” as a big sham. It bares the fact that the AFP’s counterinsurgency war is nothing but a war of suppression and pacification, a war to suppress the different forms of people’s resistance to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
The CPP and NPA unite with all patriots and democrats in the Philippines who wish to attain the people’s aspiration for genuine national freedom and democracy. Not all patriots and democrats may agree with the necessity of armed struggle, or are not yet ready to participate in the armed resistance, but there can be no denying the historical fact that the armed struggle being waged by the NPA was one of the most important weapons of the Filipino people in their resistance to the US-Marcos dictatorship and 14-year martial law; and that today, armed struggle remains a just and necessary form of resistance in the face of state terrorism and military rule, especially in the countryside.
The NPA continues to serve as the key weapon of the broad masses, especially of peasants, to defend their rights and lives against the abuses and brutalities of the fascist monsters of the AFP. Indeed, to tens of thousands of Filipinos, joining the NPA is the only recourse to defend themselves, their livelihood, the environment and their natural wealth.
In waging armed struggle, the NPA is governed by the highest standards of protecting the rights and well-being of civilians. It follows a strict code of discipline, and abides by guidelines of international humanitarian law. This is a basic principle of the NPA which stems from the fact that Red fighters of the NPA come from the people themselves. The NPA cannot grow without the support of the people. The NPA is subject to criticism by the masses and observes humble self-criticism before them. This allows the NPA and people to unite firmly and grow in strength.
The Filipino people are facing worsening conditions under the moribund semicolonial and semifeudal system. They are suffering from the anti-people and anti-poor policies of the Marcos II regime which is bent on securing and expanding the Marcos wealth and perpetuating its political dynasty. Marcos Jr is the epitome of the ruling class elite who have zero empathy to the suffering of the toiling people.
Confronted with worsening the crisis, we urge the Filipino people, especially workers and peasants, as well as youth and students, teachers, people in the academe, lawyers, journalists and reporters, doctors, nurses and other professionals, to wage revolutionary struggle to defend their rights and fight for their aspirations.
We urge everyone to get organized, take part in the national democratic struggle and join the various underground organizations allied with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. We urge every physically and mentally able person to join the New People’s Army and call on all Filipinos to support the NPA as it wages a just armed revolution for national and social liberation.
