Reestablishment of the CPP and its Program
While the national democratic mass movement was growing rapidly, a debate arose within the underground merger party about the history, status and direction of the revolutionary movement and about issues in the ideological debate between the Marxist-Leninists and the modern revisionists in the international communist movement. We who stood as proletarian revolutionaries called for the rectification of previous major opportunist errors, declared that the growing mass movement was a preparation for the new democratic revolution through people’s war and aligned ourselves with the Marxist-Leninists in the international communist movement.
We separated from the merger party in 1967 and carried out a rectification movement in order to prepare the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. We adopted this revolutionary theory of the proletariat because it sheds light on the new democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution and on combating modern revisionism and continuing the revolution until the threshold of communism is reached.
We applied the theory on the history and circumstances of the Philippines. We recognized the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society and the need for waging the new democratic revolution through the strategic line of protracted people´s war. This line involves encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating armed strength here until the time comes to seize the cities. It means that the proletariat relies mainly on the peasantry and carries out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution.
We were determined to build the Party as the advanced detachment of the working class; the New People´s Army as the instrument for waging revolutionary struggle in combination with land reform and mass-base building; and the united front for mobilizing the toiling masses and the middle social strata and for taking advantage of the splits among the reactionaries in order to isolate and defeat the enemy, which may be the worst reactionary force at a given time or a foreign aggressor.
We reestablished the CPP on December 26, 1968 through a congress that ratified the Constitution and the Program for a People´s Democratic Revolution and elected the Central Committee, which in turn elected me as the Chairman. We started with only about 80 full members and candidate members of the Party. But we were already leading thousands of members of trade unions and organizations of youth, urban poor and peasants. With a revolutionary theory and a democratic political program, we were confident of growing in strength through revolutionary struggle.
The aims and purposes of the national liberation movement in the Philippines are best expressed by the CPP´s Program for a People´s Democratic Revolution. This calls for the unity of the Filipino people to complete the struggle for national independence and democracy, overthrow the big comprador-landlord state, end the unequal treaties and agreements with the US and establish a people´s democratic state based mainly on the worker-peasant alliance. It also called for economic and social development through genuine land reform and national industrialization; for a national, scientific and democratic system of culture and education; and for an independent foreign policy that promotes international solidarity, peace and development.