CPP/Ang Bayan: NPA takes big strides in Mindanao

From the English edition of Ang Bayan, the official news (propaganda) organ of the CPP (Apr 7): NPA takes big strides in Mindanao

Revolutionary armed struggle in Mindanao continuously made gains in 2012 and the first quarter of 2013 in accordance with the Party’s call to advance the people’s war towards the strategic stalemate.

NDF-Mindanao spokesperson Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos said it was but fitting for the revolutionary forces and the people to hail the New People’s Army (NPA) for its major gains throughout the island. They also saluted all revolutionary martyrs for offering their lives in the interest of the people.

The armed revolutionary movement effectively thwarted the brutal but desperate nine-year Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) of the US-Arroyo regime and the US-Aquino regime’s Oplan Bayanihan (OPB), now three years in the running. This, it achieved even if the revolutionary movement in Mindanao has become the main target of the reactionary state as a result of the significant weakening of the Moro people’s armed resistance.

NPA units now operate in more than 200 municipalities in Mindanao. Hundreds of barangays have been added to the more than 2,000 villages included in the NPA’s areas of operation in 2011. The mass base has grown rapidly, and is now in the hundreds of thousands.

Organs of revolutionary people’s government have been established, mostly at the village level, with some at the municipal level. Revolutionary land reform has been implemented in many areas, benefiting hundreds of thousands of people.

The antifascist and anti-imperialist mass movements in the cities and town centers is gaining greater momentum, along with a vigorous antifeudal movement in the countryside. Local Party branches are fast being established to provide solid leadership to the mass organizations, people’s militia and revolutionary people’s governments in many villages and communities in the countryside.

The NPA grew by more than 10% in Mindanao. This has resulted in the formation of several new companies and platoons capable of launching widespread and intensifying tactical offensives based on an ever deepening and expanding mass base. Thousands of members of the People’s Militia have been organized into platoons and squads in several barangays.

In the past year alone, more than 400 tactical offensives were launched in the island, and from January to March this year, more than a hundred tactical offensives in the form of annihilative, attritive and punitive actions were launched by the NPA in the five regions of Mindanao. The NPA was able to seize hundreds of high-powered rifles and wipe out the equivalent of more than a battalion of combined forces of the Philippine Army, Philippine National Police and CAFGU.

In the first quarter of 2013, the NPA reaped significant gains by attacking the environmentally destructive imperialist agribusinesses Del Monte and Dole-Philippines in Bukidnon.

On the part of the Communist Party which has absolute leadership over the NPA, its membership grew by more than 50%. The Party is firmly rooted among the basic masses of workers and peasants and even among the middle forces. The Party’s ideological foundation is much stronger now compared to when it was first established in Mindanao. It is now thoroughly implementing the three-tier Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) course.

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/publications/ang_bayan/20130407/npa-takes-big-strides-in-mindanao