Achieve ever greater revolutionary victories in the new decade!
Message of the Negros Island Regional Party Committee on the occasion of the 51st anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines
The Negros Island Regional Party Committee joins all Party cadres and members, Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army (NPA), revolutionary forces and masses on the Island in the observance of the 51st anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
The past year saw the successful celebration in Negros of the historic golden year of the CPP even amid intensified fascist attacks. The year 2019 bore witness, in fact, to how armed revolution and the democratic mass movement were able to surmount the most barefaced tyranny and state terror unleashed thus far in Negros by the US-Duterte regime.
This year’s commemoration of the CPP’s founding is thus a fitting occasion to recognize the gallant and militant resistance of the exploited and the oppressed against worsening neoliberal impositions and Duterte’s brutal counterrevolutionary war. Let us remember and accord the highest honors to the revolutionary heroes and martyrs whose exemplary courage and self-sacrifice deeply inspire us to carry on the struggle for national and social liberation in the new decade.
The CPP remains dauntless and at the forefront of the current juncture of the people’s democratic revolution. By continuing to apply the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the concrete conditions of Philippine society and revolution, it is able to correctly grasp the present socio-political situation and creatively utilize the weapons of revolutionary armed struggle and national united front.
In leading the life-and-death struggle to frustrate the bloody military campaigns and dictatorial dreams of the US-Duterte regime, the Party accumulates victories, grows in knowledge and strength, and wins the confidence and support of an ever increasing number of people.
The Party in Negros directs the advance of the revolutionary movement in the Region closely in step with the nationwide advance of the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. It strives to objectively identify the problems in the forward movement of the revolutionary subjective forces in the Region and to promptly formulate and carry out solutions at every turn.
Amid worsening global capitalist crisis, the Party is determined to link arms with the entire people in confronting the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal local ruling system. The aggravating chronic socio-economic crisis in the Philippines is very much felt in Negros, where one-third of the population is still very much chained to the centuries-old hacienda system of the Island’s largely monocrop production of sugarcane and the sugar industry.
About 310,000 families of sugarcane farm workers and 18,000 families of sugar mill workers suffer from unjust wages, lack of benefits, contractualization, and slave-like working conditions. Landlords, especially those who control more than 100 hectares of sugarcane fields, use various forms of feudal and semifeudal exploitation that condemn generations of peasants and agricultural workers to extreme hunger and poverty.
The impending implementation of sugar liberalization moreover bodes even greater hardships for the basic masses of Negros, even as various other neoliberal policies such as the TRAIN law, rice liberalization, land conversion, destructive mining, and privatization of social services among others, continue to burden most of the Negrosanons.
Consequently, extreme crisis activates the Island’s proverbial social volcano. The growing resistance of the Negrosanons against exploitative and oppressive conditions worries the big bourgeois compradors who are well entrenched and invested in Negros like the Lopezes, Tans, Sys, Gokongweis, Pangilinans, and Cojuangcos as well as the Region’s big landed despots and hacienderos. The inclusion of the Negros provinces in the list of areas subject to Duterte’s fascist Memorandum Order 32 is prompted by the ruling class’ patent paranoia and greed.
After the massacre of nine farm workers in Sagay City in October 2018, the counterrevolutionary campaign in Negros became even more brutal and massive. MO 32 brought in additional fascist troops. Executive Order 70 (or National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict) rehashed the US counter-insurgency guide’s defective whole-of-nation approach and expanded the regime’s “anti-insurgency” program now dubbed as AFP-PNP Joint Campaign Plan “Kapanatagan” 2018-2022 to weaponize all state machinery. Currently there are 12 AFP and PNP units deployed in Negros of which the Philippine Army commands five maneuver battalions.
Peasants, workers, mass leaders, activists and Duterte critics have increasingly been subjected to extrajudicial killings (EJK), mass illegal arrests based on trumped-up charges and planted evidence, mass evacuations, extensive militarization, and other forms of human rights abuse. Of the 89 recorded victims of EJK in the island under the Duterte regime, at least 70 were peasants. Fifty-five EJK instances were claimed outright by state forces; 45 happened after MO 32 was declared. The number of political prisoners also alarmingly increased to 100 from five political detainees before Duterte took office in 2016. Negros, recently transformed into a laboratory for counterrevolutionary programs, also registered unprecedented mass instances of forced or fake surrender.
The US-Duterte regime is rotten to the core. The Negrosanons seethe with rage and, together with the entire Filipino people, aspire to get rid of Duterte’s fascist and tyrannical rule. The Party leadership in Negros recognizes the favorable conditions for the advance of the national democratic revolution. It responds by strengthening its ideological, political and organizational work and takes its place at the forefront of the revolutionary mass movement.
ACHIEVE REVOLUTIONARY VICTORIES AMID ESCALATING FASCIST ATTACKS!
The CPP is at the helm of the revolution in Negros. Equipped with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it continues to draw lessons from its rich revolutionary experience and raise these to revolutionary theory in order to effectively guide the further development of revolutionary practice. The CPP in Negros has successfully summed up its revolutionary experience from the early parts of the 1990s up to the recent years. Leading Party cadres have achieved a collective and concrete understanding of the ideological, political and organizational strengths and weaknesses of the proletarian revolutionary leadership in the Region in the last 25 years. The regional summing up serves as a very important weapon to effectively carry out the tasks of completing the requirements to bring the people’s war in Negros to a new and higher level in step with the national revolutionary advance.
The Party in Negros has likewise been successful in consolidating its efforts in social investigation and class analysis. Leading Party cadres have, by and large, gained both comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the worsening crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system of Philippine society in the regional context. This will serve as springboard to the various mass struggles and campaigns in the coming months.
We must endeavor to consolidate Party cadres and members through education along the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the political line of people’s democratic revolution thru protracted people’s war to ensure that they can perform the numerous tasks in the revolution. We were able to launch the three-level study course of the Party and developed instructors through trainings. We have made headways in the study of the Party Constitution and Program amended and ratified in the Party’s second congress. To assist in our efforts in mass education, different Party documents and PADEPA courses have also been translated to Hiligaynon and Bisaya.
Our achievements in ideological work is notable since we have successfully consolidated our ranks despite focused and sustained military operations in the Island. The Party is now ideologically stronger and in better condition to implement political work and lead the revolutionary movement.
In Negros, the NPA opened the year by punishing a mining company operating in Negros Oriental that destroyed farm lands and harmed the environment. Since then, under the absolute leadership of the Party, Red commanders and fighters from the five guerrilla fronts under the NPA Negros Island’s Apolinario Gatmaitan Command (AGC) have mounted 23 military actions against fascist troops and their paramilitary forces who have perpetrated massive human rights abuses especially those involved in Oplan Sauron 1 and 2. These NPA offensives seized 24 high-powered and low-powered firearms and caused at least 144 enemy casualties, 101 of which were killed-in-action.
The broad masses of the people are overjoyed with the tactical offensives of their genuine army and are further inspired to struggle against the regime’s de facto martial law. The AGC recorded a positive growth in the number of Red fighters. The increasing fascism and atrocities in the countryside have pushed the people to embrace the people’s war and demonstrated the justness of armed revolution. Duterte is himself the best recruiter of the NPA.
The resounding call of the masses for justice and their overwhelming support for the revolutionary movement have enhanced the fighting will of the Red commanders and fighters. On the other hand, political education and politico-military trainings launched this year have developed their knowledge and capabilities not only in fighting but also propaganda and agitation, mass organizing, production, medical care, and cultural work.
The Party ensures that revolutionary armed struggle is integrated with genuine land reform and the building of the mass base and organs of political power. It has paid attention to the outstanding problems of the masses in the rural areas and the worsening forms of exploitation and oppression they experience. Still, antifeudal struggles and other mass struggles of the peasants must be intensified to mobilize them in their millions.
The Party in Negros has attained victories and gained lessons in wielding the united front as a weapon of the armed revolution under the leadership of the working class while terror is propagated by the Duterte regime. It continues to build its own strength that is deeply rooted among the toiling masses. It has strengthened the basic alliance of workers and peasants, with the NPA itself as its organizational expression.
Now it is in a better position to build and expand the alliance of progressive forces of the toiling masses with the urban petty-bourgeoisie, the alliance of the patriotic forces that includes the national bourgeoisie and the broad united front including temporary, unreliable and unstable allies among factions of the ruling system in order to isolate, weaken and defeat the worst reactionary clique of the local ruling class of big compradors and landlords, at this time represented by the head bureaucrat capitalist Rodrigo Duterte, and their imperialist masters.
In the guise of “counter-insurgency,” the fascist regime is targeting the legal democratic movement. It has inflicted extrajudicial killings, political killings, massive arrests based on trumped-up charges and planted evidences, devastation of homes and livelihood, and red-tagging of patriotic and progressive forces. It wants to suppress the open mass movement to disable the ranks of workers, semi-proletarians and urban petty bourgeoisie from launching mass campaigns in the urban areas and building up their independent strength. It is actually a recognition of the advancing people’s war in the island and the surging mass movement as well.
Here in Negros, the patriotic and progressive forces have been at the forefront of people’s political and economic struggles. While championing people’s issues, the urban mass movement must develop open and legal means of propaganda, organizing and mobilization. But it cannot sustain against a pseudo-democratic and fascist regime without building a deep, resilient and expansive underground core. Patriotic and progressive forces must develop further multi-sectoral, sectoral and issue-based alliances to broaden its ranks. The broadest anti-fascist united front is necessary to resist the tyranny and terrorism of the US-Duterte regime. The favorable basis to unite all democratic forces and sectors especially church people, journalists, cultural workers, the academe, business and other middle forces to defend the people’s legal democratic rights and resist Duterte’s de facto martial law grows each day.
The CPP in Negros continue to expand its membership and raise the capability, potential, talents and skills of its cadres for them to be able to mobilize the masses in great numbers and bring out the creativity and initiative of the people for the national democratic revolution. The field for recruitment is the mass movement and Party members and cadres are further developed through waging revolutionary struggles. They are constantly reminded of applying the principle of mass line in their style of work and methods of leadership.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE NATIONWIDE ADVANCE OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION THRU PROTRACTED PEOPLE’S WAR!
The CPP in Negros is determined to heighten revolutionary struggle to new and higher levels until victory is achieved. The years of revolutionary experience in the Island have strengthened and raised the revolutionary consciousness and militance of Party cadres and members.
With our resolve to advance, guerrilla warfare will intensify and the antifeudal, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist mass movement in the island will achieve greater feats. The inevitable explosion of the social volcano of Negros is before us. For this to happen, the revolutionaries of Negros must have a steadfast proletarian revolutionary stand in ideological, political and organizational building. We must be prepared for the arduous struggles and sacrifices ahead. Party cadres and members must also be good at learning.
The revolutionary mass movement and the people’s army are deep sources for Party recruitment. The Party must put emphasis on recruiting advanced mass activists from the working class, peasantry and urban petty-bourgeoisie. While we should be daring in expanding the Party, we must not let a single undesirable within our ranks. Also, we need to resolve the backlog of advanced mass activists not yet recruited to the Party and candidate-members not yet raised to full membership.
To fulfill the requirements of advancing the level of the people’s war in the region, the development of cadres must be given attention. We must ensure that we have the mass strength and various types of cadre capabilities for the different tasks in the revolution. Party cadres and members are tempered and remoulded through revolutionary education, hard work and arduous struggle both in rural and urban areas.
The Party must systematically deploy urban-based mass activists to the countryside especially the workers and educated youth for them to learn from the peasant masses, render service to peasant communities and in time join the people’s army. With regard to Party cadres and members who cannot anymore effectively function in the urban areas due to security risks, they are welcome in NPA units and guerrilla zones not only to seek sanctuary but also for them to contribute in the various responsibilities in waging revolution.
In the urban and rural areas, it is necessary to tirelessly expand and deepen the Party underground. Party cadres and members must implement strict underground rules and methods. This is an absolute necessity if we are to persevere and advance revolutionary work and struggle in the face of fascism, tyranny and de facto martial law.
The Negrosanons have reaped broad support from fellow Filipinos and also received international attention this year because of their determination to stand against and fight the de facto martial law in Negros. The fighting masses in Negros give inspiration to the people of Negros and the rest of the country as well. The Negrosanons in the same way derive inspiration from the revolutionary and mass struggles in other regions and work tirelessly with the entire exploited and oppressed people in the country for national and social liberation.
Continue to fight the fascism and tyranny of the US-Duterte regime!
Advance the people’s war to attain genuine democracy, national liberation and a just and lasting peace!
