CPP: CPP calls for broad mobilization and support for calamity rehabilitation efforts

From the CPP Website (Aug 21): CPP calls for broad mobilization and support for calamity rehabilitation efforts

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) sympathizes with the millions of people in the National Capital Region and in the Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon and Northern Luzon regions who have fallen victim to the recent spate of typhoons and torrential rains.

The homes, properties and livelihood of several hundred thousand people, especially workers and urban semiproletariat, peasants, poor fisherfolk and middle class families were ravaged or swept away by massive floods and landslides. Among the victims are tens of thousands of Party members, revolutionary masses and progressive activists in peasant and worker communities. They have also been among the first responders carrying out organized rescue, evacuation and relief operations.

All members and branches of the CPP, as well as all units of the New People’s Army (NPA) in affected areas have been instructed to organize and carry out relief and rehabilitation efforts to assist the masses whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed or despoiled in days of rain and floods. The CPP urges all its allies and friends to extend support to mass organizations carrying out operations directly in the affected areas.

It is within the prerogative of the leading committees of the CPP in the regions and commands of the NPA to determine the necessity of declaring temporary ceasefires in their respective areas. The CPP demands that the AFP cease Oplan Bayanihan suppression operations in order to allow local units of the NPA, local branches of the CPP and people’s organizations to carry out relief and rehabilitation efforts.

The victims of the massive floods must demand quick and decisive action from the reactionary Aquino regime to address their urgent need for economic and livelihood rehabilitation. They must likewise organize themselves and not allow politicos to reduce them to a mob of beggars seeking alms. They must demand the organized distribution of emergency food and supplies through mass organizations.

They must hold accountable the reactionary state, the present Aquino regime, as well as the past governments, for this widespread calamity. In the end, the massive flooding was caused not solely by the torrential rains, but by the grave destruction of the environment and the failure to set up the necessary infrastructure for handling the increased volume of water flowing downstream.

The floods and landslides of the past several days are painfully similar to the August 2012 floods, as well as the floods and mudslides in Southern Mindanao in December 2012, the 2011 Cagayan de Oro floods and the Ondoy floods of 2009. Calamities in the Philippines brought about by rains are becoming ever more frequent and vicious, not so much due to changes in the climate, but through the massive degradation of the environment and grossly inadequate public infrastructure.

Over the past several decades, mountains and forests across the Sierra Madre ranges have been denuded as a result of large-scale logging and mining operations. The rainwater that could no longer effectively be retained by mountains now tends to reach the lowlands more rapidly, resulting in the silting and rapid overflow of rivers and lakes.

Big real estate capitalists, in connivance with big bureaucrats and financed by foreign banks have engaged in the wanton construction of subdivisions, malls and condominiums in complete disregard of strategic urban planning. A number of these malls have been constructed above old waterways which ultimately are found by flood waters seeking a path out to the sea. They are driven only by the desire for quick profit and are completely unmindful of the gravely inadequate public infrastructure for handling the draining of water from upstream.

The widespread floods of the past several days should prompt the Filipino people to further intensify their demand to put an end to the Aquino regime’s push to attract more and more big capitalist investors to engage in mining in the Philippines and the clearing of large tracts of land for plantation operations.

It also pushes them to demand an immediate end to the pork barrel system in order to allocate more funds for the people’s urgent needs.

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20130821_cpp-calls-for-broad-mobilization-and-support-for-calamity-rehabilitation-efforts