CPP/NPA: Intensify the offensives to seize further initiative in advancing the people’s war

Propaganda statement posted to the CPP Website (Mar 29): Intensify the offensives to seize further initiative in advancing the people’s war

CPP Central Committee

 

Message of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines to the Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army

We, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, salute the Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army on the occasion of its 45th founding anniversary on March 29. We congratulate you for the victories that you, together with the Party and the people have accumulated for a long time and for those that you have won in the past year in the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war against the ruling system of big compradors and landlords servile to US imperialism.

You have won victories as the fruit of hard work, sacrifices and struggle. In this regard, we give our highest respects to our martyrs and heroes and to all comrades who have rendered long service to the people and the revolution. The exemplary revolutionary spirit and deeds of our departed and long-serving comrades inspire an endless flow of young people to join the New People’s Army and fight for the national and democratic rights and interests of the people.

You have excelled at propagating the general line of revolutionary struggle and at integrating the armed struggle with the agrarian revolution and building the mass base. You have successfully carried out the tasks of fighting the enemy and defending the people, carrying out politico-military training, doing propaganda and cultural work, helping the masses organize and mobilize themselves, looking after their needs, producing much of what you need and giving full play to the local organs of political power and the mass organizations. The NPA is truly a people’s army. It is deeply rooted among the peasant masses. It is humble, hardworking and victorious against all odds. It is a source of pride for the people to have their best sons and daughters serve as NPA Red fighters.

The broad masses of the people, especially the workers and peasants, cherish and support you. Thus, you have succeeded in carrying out a protracted people’s war. You have preserved, expanded and consolidated your strength against tremendous odds. The reactionaries and their hangers-on boast of their power and loot and try to taunt the revolutionaries for being still far from the Malacanang palace after 45 years of struggle. The scoundrels pretend not to be aware of the steady growth of the people’s democratic government in the countryside that is determined to eventually seize the cities on a nationwide scale.

The unprecedented worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and consequently that of the domestic semicolonial and semifeudal system are inflicting intolerable suffering on the people and are inciting them to wage revolution against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Under these crisis conditions, the ruling classes have increasing difficulties in ruling the old way. Aware of the people’s desire for revolutionary change, we do our best to advance from the current stage of strategic defensive to that of the strategic stalemate and aim for complete victory in the ultimate stage of the strategic offensive.

Global crisis, depression and turmoil

In the last half of the 1970s, US imperialism was clearly in a stage of strategic decline as it was afflicted by the problem of stagflation; and as it suffered an unprecedented resounding defeat in its war of aggression against Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. This fact was offset by the increasing exposure of the grave socio-economic crisis of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc countries, and in quick succession, by the Dengist counterrevolution in China. The full restoration of capitalism in the revisionist-ruled countries conjured the illusion of continuing strength and invincibility of monopoly capitalism, especially that of the US.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the US imposed the neoliberal economic policy on the entire world capitalist system. This policy dished out the lie that the US and global capitalism could overcome the phenomena of stagflation and inflation by simply manipulating the money supply and interest rates and providing more capital and profit opportunities to the monopoly bourgeoisie. This was achieved by pressing down the wage level, providing tax cuts to the corporations and wealthy, liberalizing investments and trade, privatizing public assets, deregulating all social and environmental protection and denationalizing the underdeveloped countries.

After a decade of neoliberalism, mostly under the two terms of Reagan, the US became the biggest debtor country of the world and undermined its manufacturing capability in most tradable goods by focusing on hightech military production and relying on China and other East Asian countries for the supply of cheap consumer manufactures. As a matter of course, structural adjustment programs and austerity measures devastated most underdeveloped countries. Already an integral part of the world capitalist system, China was struck hard by economic crisis and political turmoil in 1989 and so were the East European countries and the Soviet Union, which collapsed, amidst the frenzy of full blast capitalist restoration in the years 1989-91.

The US continued to appear strong and invincible, as sole superpower and supposed winner in the Cold War, while the former Soviet bloc countries went into rapid social and economic degradation and Japan got locked in a long period of stagnation after the bursting of its huge real estate bubble in 1990. Bush Sr. estimated in 1991 that he could make a new world order chiefly with superior military technology and launched the first war of aggression against Iraq. So did Clinton subsequently estimate that the US could do as it pleased by undertaking a campaign of aggression to obliterate Yugoslavia. He promoted the commercialization of information technology, the financial bubble related to it and the financialization of the entire economy.

Under the neoliberal regime, financial bubbles of various proportions were to arise and burst first in the underdeveloped countries and in the so-called emergent markets. The biggest among them was the Asian financial crisis of 1997 before the portentous bursting of the hightech bubble in the US itself in 2000. However, the latter event would lead Bush Jr. to dream up his “ownership society” and to engage in further monetary easing in 2001. He generated his own kind of financial bubble: the housing bubble that would eventually lead to the mortgage meltdown and financial collapse of 2008. He also conceived of military Keynesianism, as pump priming the economy through rapid increases of military spending for war production, overseas deployment of US military forces and wars of aggression.

Bush Jr. used the 9-11 incident to declare a permanent war of terror in order to create the legal infrastructure for state terrorism within the US and on a world scale and to wage wars of aggression, such as those against Afghanistan and eventually against Iraq. He was guided by the neoconservative scheme of Pax Americana in the 21st century, using a broad spectrum of capabilities (chief of which is the hightech military power) to subjugate or destroy any recalcitrant or challenging state and thus expand US hegemony and economic territory.

Bush Jr. had the despicable distinction of deploying a huge number of US aggressor troops and wasting trillions of dollars in simultaneous prolonged wars of aggression and trying in vain to solve the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression by bailing out the giant banks and selected corporations of the military-industrial complex. The crisis spread like an epidemic in the entire world capitalist system. To this day, it keeps on worsening. The measures adopted to solve it have served to prolong, aggravate and deepen it.

Obama rose to the US presidency on the promise of departing from the anti-democratic and aggressive policies and acts of Bush Jr. But he has been even more anti-democratic and aggressive than his predecessor despite his vain attempts at dissembling. He has stuck to the same neoliberal policy and has therefore failed to revive the real economy. He has resorted to quantitative easing (printing and releasing money at the rate of US$85 billion every month) in order to buoy up the financial markets but not the real economy; and to conjure the illusion of recovery from time to time.

The US is the home base of the neoliberal Washington Consensus and is the epicenter of the worsening crisis of global capitalism. It dictates to its imperialist allies and to its client states the continuance of the neoliberal economic policy and the use of public debt to ride out the crisis. Thus, the public debt crisis afflicts every imperialist state and every client state. Even the World Economic Forum has warned that fiscal crises triggered by ballooning debt levels in advanced countries posed the biggest threat to the global economy in 2014. The stubbornness of the US and other imperialist powers in sticking to neoliberalism is due to three reasons. First, it rakes in superprofits for the monopoly bourgeoisie. Second, the burden of crisis is always passed on to the working people. Third, the strength of the revolutionary mass movement is not yet sufficient to compel changes or system change.

Not in any of the imperialist countries is there any significant revolutionary force of the proletariat and people capable of challenging the ruling system. So far, there are only incipient and small revolutionary groups. The ultra-rightists, pretenders at being centrists and the reformists still dominate the stage under the watchful eyes of the monopoly bourgeoisie and its finance oligarchy. The economic and financial magnates and their political, media and academic agents are still succeeding at obfuscating the capitalist roots of the crisis by playing up chauvinism, racism, religious bias and warmongering to play down the class struggle of the proletariat and to scapegoat foreigners, people of color, migrant workers, Muslims and so on.

Even as no revolutionary force of the proletariat is yet waging class struggle to such an extent as to worry the ruling bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries, the imperialist powers are ever prepared to unleash their security forces and fascist gangs to suppress dissent. What is more worrisome to the imperialist powers is that the room for mutual accommodation among them has become significantly less after China and Russia joined the ranks of capitalist powers. The economic and financial crises have recurred more often; and have become worse and are driving them to struggle more vigorously for a redivision of the world.

In becoming fully capitalist, China and Russia have copied the neoliberal propensity of the US and Japan in expanding the money supply and easing credit and in effect trying to address financial bubbles by making new ones. In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, China has generated a credit bubble of unprecedented dimensions in the entire history of capitalism. It has outstripped the US by so many times in the use of credit to buoy up the stock and bond markets and the seemingly endless real estate speculation. Whereas the US has increased bank assets by US$2.1 trillion, China has increased its bank assets by US$15.4 trillion in the same period. Under the auspices of bureaucrat capitalism, these have been lent to crony capitalists and have become bad debts. In ten major industries, corporations have declared bankruptcies upon failure to pay the total outstanding debt service of US$1 trillion this year. Economic and finance analysts are now expecting a financial collapse in China within this year or next.

The US and the European Union have been most eager to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of Russia and China. They keep on trying to put the states on the borders of the Russian Federation under the sway of the US and the NATO and to spread their influence to the Russian heartland. They covet the energy and other mineral riches of Russia. But they have to move cautiously because Russia has continued to develop its modern weaponry. The US has been stubbornly pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement in order to encircle China and further pressure it to privatize its state-owned enterprises. It has carried out the pivot to East Asia to pressure and contain China by deploying in the region 50% of US military and air forces and 60% of US naval forces. It has no intention of provoking a war with China but is trying to further influence and support internal Chinese factors for the benefit of the US.

China and Russia have become sharply aware of the drive of the US to gain world hegemony with the help of NATO. Thus, they have formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. They are among the few countries that the US cannot bully with its possession of weapons of mass destruction because they have the same, especially nuclear weapons and delivery system. They have also formed BRICS as an economic bloc within and outside the Group of 20. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have among them a range of industrial capabilities, raw materials and markets wide enough to be independent of the US and other imperialist powers. Together they are the most formidable among countries disdained as emergent markets.

The peoples and nations in the general run of the underdeveloped countries are the most oppressed and exploited in the world. Thus, they are waging various forms of struggle, including mass protests, strikes and armed struggle. They are the most desirous of revolutionary change. In a significant number of countries, they have persevered in revolutionary struggles for national and social liberation, preserved their revolutionary forces and grown in strength despite the conjuncture of neoliberalism, revisionist betrayal and neocolonialism. The torch of armed revolution for national liberation and democracy has been held high by the peoples of Palestine, the Philippines, India, Turkey, Kurdistan, Peru, Colombia and elsewhere.

In countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, where the US and other imperialist powers have unleashed wars of aggression, the people have carried out fierce armed resistance against the aggressor and puppet forces. They continue to do so even when the imperialist powers make a show of withdrawing or reducing their aggressor forces after gaining control over the natural resources and the business contracts for reconstruction. Even where the armed resistance seem to have subsided, such as the Balkans and the Caucasus, the potential for their resurgence is ever present. The former revisionist-ruled countries are seething with mass discontent as the people suffer from impoverishment, deprivation and misery while the big bourgeois and high bureaucrats wallow in corruption and luxury in their capitalist paradise.

The bankruptcy of the neoliberal economic policy and the global depression have brought forth the most intolerable conditions of oppression and exploitation. The potential for revolutionary mass movements exists on an unprecedentedly wide scale, in entire continents. What is needed is a resolute and active revolutionary party of the proletariat to lead the armed revolution. The imperialist powers headed by the US have already exposed their fatal weaknesses in failing to solve the ever worsening economic and social crisis. It has become more exploitative and oppressive, unleashing wars of aggression, spending astronomical amounts for the military and increasingly preoccupied with struggles to redivide the world and grab economic territory.

Bankrupt and rotten ruling system

In the time of Marcos, before and during the fascist dictatorship, the US and other foreign investors made direct investments to draw superprofits from the exchange of raw material exports and manufactured imports. The World Bank provided and facilitated the foreign loans for building infrastructure and facilities for milling the raw materials produced by the Philippines. The pattern of foreign direct and indirect investments ensured that the character of the Philippine economy stayed underdeveloped, pre-industrial and semicolonial. Foreign monopoly capitalism, the local exploiting classes, bureaucratic corruption and the military buildup made sure that nothing would be left for the industrial development of the Philippines.

Under the US-dictated neoliberal economic policy, from Aquino the mother to Aquino the son, the same pattern of exchange of raw material exports and manufactured imports has persisted to tie down the economy to an agrarian and semifeudal status.
But more foreign loans have been made available to further promote and enlarge import-dependent consumption and generate a boom in private construction starting during the Ramos regime. Infrastructure building continued, financed by local and foreign public borrowing. Under the policy of trade liberalization, import-dependent consumption grew by leaps and bounds and even the local production of food staples was undermined. The foreign loans and remittances of overseas contract workers were also used to cover the trade deficits.

Under all the post-Marcos regimes, the underdevelopment of the Philippines has been aggravated and deepened despite the gloss provided by office and residential towers, hotels and shopping malls. No program of national industrialization has been undertaken even as foreign corporations and big compradors have put up sweatshops for fringe processing or semi-manufacturing to serve final assembly platforms abroad. In the wake of the slump in the processing of semiconductors for export, the latest nonindustrial activity being hyped are the business call centers, which are also vulnerable to the vagaries of the export market.

There has been no genuine land reform program. The so-called Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is a fraud. The first Aquino regime earlier stipulated in the 1987 constitution that the sale of land by the landlord must be voluntary and that there must be just compensation which means that the current fair market value of the land must be followed. The CARP has been used to perpetuate large concentrations of lands in the hands of the landlord class. Landlords have used bureaucrats to overprice the land in token cases of land distribution and to change the classification of the land in order to exempt the land from land reform.

In the wake of the global and financial crisis which began in 2008, the Philippine reactionary government has been confronted with grave problems, such as the drastic fall in the export of semiconductors, the closure of various types of reassembly and semi-manufacturing plants, the rise of unemployment, the stagnation of the economy, tax evasion, smuggling and the undermining of the tax revenue base. It is trying to grab all kinds of straws in order to save itself from drowning. It is selling more bonds more frequently, taking more foreign debt and attracting the inflow of hot money or portfolio investments.

So long as the US is engaged in quantitative easing (printing money), such hot money is available from the US banks for the stock and bond markets and for real estate speculation in the Philippines. But the US has already announced the tapering of quantitative easing and has already induced the hot money to flow back to the US. If the credit bubble in China will burst soon, as expected, the Philippine-based Chinese taipans in private construction and consumerist marketing will be in serious trouble because they take loans from China directly or indirectly through banks in Hong Kong and Singapore.


The neoliberal economic policy has extremely favored the multinational firms, the export-import elite and the magnates in private construction, tourist facilities and shopping malls. The conspicuous wealth of a few in the Forbes list exceeds the meager possessions of the majority of the people. Joblessness, homelessness, landlessness, soaring prices of basic commodities, lack of social services and criminality are rampant. All these spell intolerable poverty and misery. Thus, social unrest is widespread. The landless tillers are outraged that they are forced off their home and land by the landgrabbers with the help of the military and police. And when they come to live in urban areas, they are brutally subjected to eviction and demolition of their flimsy shelters.

The economy has been sucked dry by rapid superprofit-taking by the multinational firms and their big comprador agents, the mounting debt service, the conspicuous consumption by the exploiting classes, unbridled bureaucratic corruption and ever-rising military expenditures. The depressed economic conditions have limited in a big way the base for tax collection. The privatization of state assets has gone so far that the reactionary government has become much weakened by the loss of major sources of income. Falling short of its tax collection targets, the Aquino regime continues to fleece the working class with additional burdens, while giving exemptions to its cronies and big foreign companies. The reactionary Aquino regime is currently in a state of self-debilitation.

To become president of the reactionary government, despite his slothful record in Congress, Aquino reconciled himself with his uncle, the Marcos crony Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, in order to benefit from the latter’s discreet control of the automated electoral system and from a huge financial campaign contribution. Aquino’s US handlers hyped him among the biggest campaign financiers and the media lords as the man who could govern well and defeat the communists by presenting an image of being clean and able to deliver services. Thus, in the first three years of his regime, it seemed as if there would be no end to the myth of his “popularity” drummed up by the mass media and poll survey firms under the baton of the yellow media. It was even made to appear that there was no significant opposition to his regime.

But ultimately, the worsening socio-economic crisis has breached the seeming homogeneity of the ruling classes and their political agents. In the second half of Aquino’s term, his corruption together with his cronies and relatives has been exposed in the disposition of pork barrel, cutting into contracts of foreign and local companies, tax evasion by his campaign financiers and smuggling as monitored by no less than the IMF Direction of Trade. Being Aquino’s biggest benefactor, Danding Cojuangco has raked in gargantuan returns. His conglomerate has taken control of more than 60% of the biggest contracts under Aquino’s Public-Private Partnership program. Aquino’s political rivals and even his allies are still intimidated by the way he has wielded the power of the presidency.

But some of them will soon cease their fear and trembling as the mass movement of the patriotic and progressive forces gathers momentum in calling for Aquino’s ouster or resignation. They stand on solid grounds in rallying the people against the landlord Aquino, his cacique-style of political patronage and corruption and his betrayal of public trust. The broad masses of the people themselves must be aroused, organized and mobilized to expose and condemn the puppetry, corruption, brutality and mendacity of the Aquino regime.

It is in the nature of neoliberal economics and politics that large amounts of money and credit can always be deployed for overriding the contradictions of the greedy in government and business. At the moment, the contradictions that have surfaced over the exposure of pork barrel corruption are being allayed and overcome by legal and political maneuvers, including the arrangement of a consensus by the US and by the chambers of commerce for the amendment of the 1987 constitution to allow limitless foreign ownership of businesses and land.

The Aquino regime’s corruption, incompetence and lack of concern for the people have been exposed nationally and internationally in connection with the need to provide immediate relief and long-term rehabilitation and reconstruction for the 15 million people in the Visayas where supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan) killed and injured tens of thousands of people and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of millions. This was a repeat of the widespread disasters resulting from Aquino’s monumental failures in confronting the floods and landslides during typhoon Pablo, Sendong and other storms. It has been exposed that the highest bureaucrats and military officers have been misappropriated billions of pesos of public funds annually appropriated as well as previous foreign assistance for disaster relief and rehabilitation. The people of the Visayas therefore despise the Aquino regime. In contrast, they have been highly appreciative of patriotic and progressive forces that have been helpful despite their meager material resources. The revolutionary forces as well have exerted all-out efforts at disaster preparedness and response and in mobilizing the peasant masses for rehabilitation and mass struggles.

The US and Aquino regime have failed to accomplish their avowed objective of destroying or reducing the armed revolutionary movement to inconsequentiality. The triad operations of psywar, intelligence gathering and combat operations have been futile. The scheme to buy off entire communities, relatives and friends of suspected Party cadres and Red fights with cash dole outs have utterly failed and has served only to generate corruption among the bureaucrats and military officers. Even in the most militarized areas, the enemy has failed to deter the people from organizing and rising up against military abuses and against destructive mining operations and to demand land and justice.

Notwithstanding the dismal failure of Oplan Bayanihan, the Aquino regime is hellbent on leaving a legacy of killing the peace negotiations. The determination of the regime to kill the peace negotiations has long been exposed by the attacks of its negotiators on The Hague Joint Declaration as a document of “perpetual division” and the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees as “inoperative.” The Aquino regime made a complete mockery of outstanding agreements in carrying out the recent arrest of NDFP consultants Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria. It insists on detaining Austria whose identity as a consultant has been previously counter-verified by the previous GPH representative. Under Aquino, the GPH is more busy hunting down and arresting NDFP peace consultants rather than exerting efforts to uphold previous agreements and forge new ones to address the outstanding socio-economic issues which are at the root of the civil war.

The Aquino regime continues to commit gross violations of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) in the course of its Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression. There are at least 170 cases of extrajudicial killings against activists and critics since the Aquino regime. More than 400 political prisoners continue to languish in various jails and police and military detention centers. Daily, AFP personnel commit innumerable rights abuses against the civilian population as they carry out aerial bombings and firing howitzer cannons targeting civilian communities to terrorize the people. Combat troops of the AFP use schools, day care centers, baranggay offices and other public structures as temporary barracks endangering the people and disrupting local production and commerce.

Aquino further violates the CARHRIHL and insults the victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime by appointing a retired general of the Philippine National Police and no one as representative of the victims of human rights violations to the Human Rights Victims Claims Board, which is supposed to process, evaluate and approve claims. The obvious intention of Aquino is to prevent a large number of victims from getting compensation. The Aquino regime has also continued the practice of Arroyo of arresting and detaining suspected political offenders on trumped-up charges of common crimes.

Before the Aquino regime ends, there is still time for the GPH and NDFP to negotiate and finalize the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms. But the GPH negotiating panel has condemned national industrialization and land reform as “ideologically charged concepts.” These are in fact politico-economic concepts acceptable even to the patriotic bourgeoisie in the history of national economic development. There is also time to negotiate and formulate a Joint Agreement on Truce and Cooperation. But there is never enough time for this if the Aquino regime’s obsession is to trick the NDFP into pacification and capitulation with the muddled notion of “indefinite, separate and simultaneous ceasefires.”

We hope that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) succeeds in getting the best possible comprehensive peace agreement with the GPH without giving up the Moro people’s right to national self-determination and ancestral domain. We reiterate our previous advice to our MILF ally to be ever-vigilant against a cunning enemy who is after the capitulation, pacification and splitting of revolutionary forces. There is a short period of time left for the Aquino regime to push the Bangsanmoro Basic Law through Congress and to fulfill all its other promises. Contrarians are expected to raise constitutional issues in both chambers of Congress and ultimately before the Supreme Court. In order to succeed in upholding the interests of the Moro people, the MILF would have to be extra vigilant and guard against the machinations of the GPH to discredit the MILF and divide the Moro people.

To continue having a military foothold in the Philippines despite the termination of the US-Military Bases Agreement, the US has always maintained the US-RP Mutual Defense Pact as a license for military intervention and violation of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It has also kept the US-RP Military Assistance Agreement as a way of controlling and using the puppet armed forces. Since the termination of the bases agreement in 1991, the US and its Filipino puppets have always maneuvered to circumvent it. They have devised the Mutual Logistics and Support Agreement to allow US military forces to land in the Philippines and eventually the Visiting Forces Agreement to give the US military forces wider latitude for the US military forces to base its troops in the Philippines for indefinite periods of time.

Now, the US imperialists and traitors in the Aquino regime are rushing the final draft of the Agreement for Enhanced Defense Cooperation in order to have its signed or presented during the visit of US President Barrack Obama to Manila on April 29.
The prospective agreement allows the US military forces to establish military bases by carving out exclusive enclaves within camps of the puppet armed forces, similar to the headquarters of the US Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF)-Philippines. But the puppet armed forces are prohibited from knowing what are the US military equipment and activities in the enclave. The circumvention and violation of the provision in the 1987 constitution prohibiting foreign military bases, troops, facilities and weapons of mass destruction are being done incrementally.

The puppet regime is spending P1 billion to upgrade facilities in Ulugan Bay and Oyster Bay in Palawan to accommodate the increased traffic of US warships, planes and combat troops. It is also set to upgrade other AFP camps and reservations in Palawan and Rizal in order to accommodate US military bases.

The initial reason of the US for deploying its military forces in the Philippines is to conduct joint military exercises and inter-operability training with Philippine armed forces. Thus, it began to maintain the rotational presence of US military forces, in fact, as forward deployed forces. It increased the number of reasons for the US military forces to operate in the Philippines, including humanitarian assistance, civic action, medical missions and disaster response.

Consequent to 9-11, Bush declared the Philippines as the second front in the so-called global war on terror. Still further, the US justified the rotational presence of its military troops claiming to keep the China Sea open for international navigation and commerce. Since then, the US and its Filipino puppets have stirred up disputes between China and the Philippines over the islets, reefs and shoals within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. Finally, the US proclaimed the pivot to East Asia, involving the deployment of around 50% of its ground and air forces and 60% of its naval forces in the region.

In relation to what it considers as the growing military power of China, the US is now wasting its resources in redeploying its forces in East Asia and posturing that it can intimidate and contain China. The US is merely posturing against China in order to justify its effort to entrench itself in the Philippines militarily and maintain a balance of forces to keep going the US-Sino economic cooperation at the expense of the people in Southeast Asia. At any rate, elsewhere in the world, political turmoil, civil wars and regional wars can arise to keep the US from over-concentrating forces in a region like East Asia where China is avoiding any violent confrontation, especially with the US.

The US is reprehensible for using such disputes to entrench itself militarily in the Philippines and violate Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity. The US and its puppets should also be stopped from spreading the notion that the Philippines can be nothing more than a passive object of interest between the US and China. In all circumstances, the Filipino people must assert their national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity. They must aim to industrialize the Philippines in order to build a strong economy, avail of diplomacy for peace and development and produce the conventional and modern weapons for their own defense. They should not allow any foreign power to use any excuse for violating their sovereignty and the integrity of their territory.

NPA status and plan of strategic advance

The correctness of the general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war is well proven by the growth in strength and advance of the revolutionary forces of the people since 45 years ago. The revolutionary forces have overcome and scored victories against the most violent forms of reaction, including 14 years of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the most malicious combinations of violence and deception unleashed by the successive post-Marcos pseudo-democratic regimes. US imperialism and its puppets have launched all kinds of national campaigns of military suppression, except a war of aggression by the US, and have failed to achieve their objectives.

The Filipino people and their revolutionary forces have persevered and gained strength despite certain unfavorable conditions in the world situation in the last three decades or so. The major adverse conditions include the revisionist betrayal of socialism catching up with China, the consequent defeat of the proletarian cultural revolution and socialism in 1976, the debilitation of the struggle against neocolonialism in the underdeveloped countries, the full restoration of capitalism in the biggest revisionist-ruled countries, the victory of the imperialist alliance headed by the US in the Cold War, the neoliberal economic offensive and its attendant anti-communist and conservative ideological offensive and the accelerated wars of aggression instigated by the US since the beginning of the 1990s supposedly to build a new world order and a Pax Americana for the 21st century.

However, the highest bureaucrats and military officers of every reactionary regime in the Philippines unwittingly give the highest accolade to their revolutionary adversaries by saying that the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army and, by consequence, the entire people in the armed revolutionary movement, constitute the biggest threat to the reactionary state. But to comfort themselves, the counterrevolutionaries also give the big lie that they have reduced the armed strength of the NPA from 25,000 high-powered rifles in the mid-1980s to a few thousands and they are now out to either destroy the NPA or reduce it further to the inconsequential or irrelevant. Elements in the media aligned with or in the payroll of the military psywar organization never mention the fact that in 1985, the NPA had only 5,600 high-powered rifles as per assessment by the plenum of the CPP Central Committee.

The best way to appreciate the victories and accumulated strength of the armed revolution is to know how these have been achieved under the leadership of the Party through the revolutionary forces and the people’s hard work, sacrifice and fierce struggle against tremendous odds. The membership of the Party is now at 150,000 and their units and leading organs cover nearly all provinces of the country.

The New People’s Army has thousands of Red fighters with high-powered rifles mostly captured from the enemy. It has surpassed its previous peak in 1985 and is now about 10,000 HPRs. The prevailing socio-economic conditions and lack of political rights are ever favorable for the rapid expansion of the NPA. In a medium-sized region, the NPA was able to enlist no less than 800 new Red fighters in 2013 as a result of an active campaign of recruitment. In Far South Mindanao, one of the relatively smaller regions, NPA platoons expanded by 120%.

The NPA currently operates in more than 110 guerrilla fronts, covering significant portions of 71 provinces. It is augmented by tens of thousands of people’s militia doing police and internal security work in localities and hundreds of thousands in the self-defense units of the mass organizations. There are mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural activists whose members run into millions. These support the local organs of political power which attend to various functions: administration, mass organizing, public education, land reform and production, health care, defense, arbitration, sports and cultural affairs.

There is a clear baseline of strength and experience from which to make further advances at the national, regional, provincial and lower levels. We are confident of moving forward in realizing the plan to advance from the stage of strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate in the people’s war.

The drive to carry out the plan is right on time. The crisis of the ruling system is worsening. This fact will become conspicuous as the portfolio investments from abroad will flow back to their sources and export orders will suffer a further fall as China begins a major correction of credit abuse or suffer a financial crash. The revolutionary forces must be ever ready to take advantage of the bursting of the economic bubble that has a high probability of occurring within the remaining years of the Aquino regime. This will likely be accompanied by a sharp increase in credit interest rates, a sudden halt in private construction projects, mass closures of finance-related business processing outsourcing companies and mass return of migrant workers.

The key political prerequisite is to increase the Party membership to 250,000. The increase of Party cadres and members would allow the Party to exercise its leadership in the growing number of units of the people’s army, mass organizations and the local organs of political power and in various types of revolutionary functions. The Party is responsible for ensuring that the general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war is followed, taking up the issues and solving the problems in a timely way, taking the necessary initiatives to advance the revolution, coordinating the struggles in the rural and urban areas and determining the direction of the struggle.

The existing stock of Party cadres and members should be activated and reinvigorated in connection with the plan of strategic advance. The existing Party cadres and units must recruit candidate members from the ranks of the Red fighters and the activists in the mass movement in the urban and rural areas. It is the responsibility of Party cadres and units to make sure that within the period of candidature stipulated by the Party Constitution, the candidate members become full members as a consequence of their performance of basic duties of Party membership and completion of the basic Party course in a few sessions, augmented and reinforced by reading assignments and further discussions.

Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army carries out the revolutionary armed struggle in coordination with the agrarian revolution and building the mass base. Leading Party committees must exercise both strategic and tactical leadership over the NPA and the revolutionary mass movement in order to ensure that the people’s war advances relatively even at the national, inter-regional and regional levels by coordinating various aspects and areas of work, quickly resolving the outstanding issues that impede advances and ensuring that the stronger parts help the weaker parts. Operational commands of the NPA must be built and strengthened from the national to the front levels in order to raise its politico-military capabilities, including coordination of tactical offensives.

The revolutionary armed struggle is necessary for seizing arms from the enemy, building the people’s army and destroying the power of the reactionary state, the local tyrants and other bad elements. The peasant masses are an inexhaustible wellspring of Red fighters, political and material support but only if the agrarian revolution is carried out. The mass base must be continuously expanded and consolidated through the building of mass organizations of various types and the local organs of political power. The objective of the people’s war is to enable the people’s democratic government to advance wave upon wave until it can displace and completely destroy the reactionary state.

The main form of struggle is armed struggle. It answers the central question of the revolution, which is the seizure of political power. The strategic line of protracted people’s war, encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating strength until conditions are ripe for the nationwide seizure of political power in the cities, has allowed the people’s army and other revolutionary forces to grow from small to big and from weak to strong and to withstand and frustrate all reactionary campaigns of military suppression.

The NPA upholds the strategic line of avoiding or frustrating a war of quick decision or putting at risk the main or total strength of an entire regional force of the NPA in a single decisive engagement without certainty of victory. This has allowed the NPA to build further its strength by launching only those tactical offensives it is sure of winning and by carrying out those political, economic, social and cultural tasks as to turn the backward villages into bastions of the revolution.

The present stage of the people’s war is still the strategic defensive even as the goal of the strategic plan of advance is to reach the threshold of the strategic stalemate in a few years. The line for tactical offensives within the strategic defensive is still extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever-widening and deepening mass base. By winning tactical offensives against the soft and weak points of the enemy forces, the NPA can increase the capability, size, equipment, technique and effectiveness of its combat units.

We shall be able to deploy more guerrilla units and cover wider ground as we seize more arms from the enemy. Winning the battles of annihilation in the form of ambushes, raids and arrest operations is the principal way of building the armed strength of the NPA. The NPA and the people’s militias manufacture and make use of command-detonated explosives in combination with ambushes and raids in accordance with the rules of war. So is the use of any incendiary to destroy the camps, vehicles, fuel depots and other supply points of the enemy. The victories in battles of annihilation, leniency towards prisoners of war, suitable propaganda and political work within the ranks of the enemy troops (especially among the armed paramilitary conscripted among the peasant masses as well as foot soldiers) will help to make successful the efforts at disintegrating the enemy forces.

The NPA will be in a better position to deploy more combat units and wage battles of annihilation with shorter rest periods if the local Party branches, mass organizations, organs of political power and people’s militia can take over the non-combat responsibilities and work load of the NPA, giving more time for NPA units to engage in politico-military training and tactical offensives. People’s militia units are increasingly becoming more capable in carrying out both annihilitative and attritive tactical offensives against the enemy forces. This gives the NPA commands at various levels can rotate the NPA units in undertaking politico-military training, mass work, production and combat.

It is well within the capabilities of the NPA to increase its armed strength to 25,000 soon. The NPA can do so by carrying out more frequent big and small tactical offensives against military detachments, checkpoints, police stations, private security agencies, private armies and criminal gangs with a clear aim and plan to seize more and more weapons. At the same time, friendly allies can be persuaded to donate arms to the NPA. More than one million firearms are supposed to be in the hands of private individuals. We find out who they are, and persuade those willing to donate or sell their weapons and subject to raids or arrest operations those who are hostile or make use of their weapons against the people.

Since the start of 2014, the AFP has been rapidly deploying more forces in Mindanao, especially in the advanced regions and subregions which are blazing a trail in tactical offensives, agrarian struggle and mass base building. More than 60% of the combat troops of the AFP are now deployed in Mindanao in line with the objective of deploying a minimum of one battalion for every front.

The revolutionary forces in Southern Mindanao are being subjected to intense military operations by the combined forces of the 10th, 6th and 4th Army divisions. Elite combat forces such as two Scout Ranger battalion have been deployed in Northeast Mindanao, a Special Forces battalion in Northcentral Mindanao and forces of the 68th and 4th Special Forces battalion in the boundary areas of Bukidnon. The vain hope is to overwhelm the local NPA units and taking away the initiative.

The AFP redirects and redeploys its elite combat troops in mountainous boundary territories but is compelled to leave the lowland communities, main centers and much of the towns vacant. Meanwhile, it deploys other troops in the community centers in areas covered by the operations of so-called special operation teams.

The enemy still does not have the capacity to occupy and control thoroughly more than 10% of the total area of the guerrilla fronts for extended periods of six months to one year, without leaving the overwhelming majority of guerrilla fronts and many other populated areas unrepressed and free from occupation by the enemy. Even in the guerrilla fronts which the enemy forces choose to concentrate on, there are wide gaps between their perimeter vantage points or sentries and between their special operational teams.

It is therefore possible for the NPA units to maneuver and counter-encircle enemy units within the guerrilla front. It is also possible for NPA forces in a nearby guerrilla front or in an adjacent region to engage in counter-encirclement and decide what exterior line operations they can launch against the enemy. In farther guerrilla fronts, which are not yet targeted for concentrated enemy attacks, the NPA can take initiative there to take advantage of the absence of enemy military forces. On varied scales, we must keep the enemy befuddled and prone to commit mistakes as we continue to take and hold the initiative and skillfully use the guerrilla tactics of shifting, dispersal and concentration to properly combine and strike the correct balance between work in the guerrilla bases and guerrilla zones and in the mountainous areas and lowlands.

The revolutionary forces in Mindanao are demonstrating their capability at confronting the increased deployment of enemy troops by coordinating tactical offensives at the subregional, regional and inter-regional levels while avoiding a decisive engagement.
The focus of troop deployment in Mindanao regions can only be carried out with a concomitant reduction of troops in other regions. The national operations command and corresponding operations commands of the NPA in the Luzon and Visayas regions can take advantage of the reduced troop deployment or inability of the AFP to increase troops in their areas by quickly planning and launching tactical offensives against the weaker units of the enemy. In doing so, they not only gain strength for their own units but also help in reducing the pressure on our forces in Mindanao enabling them to further advance.

The enemy is fond of spreading the propaganda that the NPA is already being decimated or is already being reduced to inconsequentiality by fake mass surrenders, military defeats or the capture of high-ranking leaders. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The best way to discredit such lies of the enemy is for the Party and the NPA commands concerned to deliver blows to the enemy, especially those units which are notorious for abuses. As a matter of course, successful tactical offensives are like powerful manifestos. There are also offensives that are head blows on the enemy and can expose dramatically the weakness and vulnerability of the enemy at the most unexpected points. It is possible to launch an annihilative battle or a series of offensives that will result in a substantial enlargement of the cache of NPA weapons and war materiel and big military and political gains such as raiding big military, police or private armories, wiping out not only a score but hundreds of enemy troops, destroying a large fuel depot, parked military vehicles or aircrafts or arresting military officials indicted for crimes against the people.

In the foreseeable future, we can increase the number of guerrilla fronts to 200 and have a guerrilla front in every rural congressional district of the enemy. The current strength of the NPA need not be divided and spread thinly to cover 200 guerrilla fronts. The expansion of the NPA forces can proceed from where they currently are. But the ground can be laid for establishing new guerrilla fronts by Party cadres and members and mass organizations. The preparation of the guerrilla front can be done until such time that the seed units of the NPA can be deployed from a nearby guerrilla front in the same or adjacent region or province. The NPA is well experienced in this regard. It also has plenty of experience in deploying competent and experienced Party cadres and Red fighters in order to augment the strength of a weaker guerrilla front or help a guerrilla front recover from prolonged enemy concentration or due to mistakes of our cadres or both.

To prepare the establishment of a new guerrilla front, the Party cadres and mass organizations concerned must conduct social investigation, chiefly to learn from the peasants what are their agrarian and related problems and how the peasant association and other forms of organization can push forward a genuine land reform program. Subsequently, the NPA can deploy its seed units in the prospective guerrilla front. For the NPA to become deeply rooted in a guerrilla front, it must engage in agrarian revolution, be it the minimum program for a start or the maximum in the long run. Aside from land reform, it must engage in all kinds of campaigns to bring social benefits to the people, such as literacy and information, raising production, health care, disaster preparation, relief and rehabilitation, cultural activities and so on.

Carrying out the minimum land reform program demonstrates immediately how the revolution benefits the landless tillers substantially. It includes rent reduction, elimination of usury, fair wages to farm workers, fair farmgate prices and promotion of agricultural production and sideline occupations though rudimentary forms of cooperation.

The maximum land reform program includes the confiscation of land from the landlords and restitution of the land from the land grabbers and free and equable distribution of land to the tillers, taking into the account the size and quality of the land. Confiscation and restitution of the land are simply a matter of stopping to pay rent and other tributes to the landlord and telling off his running dogs to stop serving him or leave the area. But the revolutionary forces and people must be ready to defend the program and the cadres and peasants must be ready to make it succeed through competent administration and cooperative efforts.

In carrying out the minimum and maximum programs for land reform, rural mass campaigns and struggles must be carried out time and again in order to raise the collective determination of the peasant masses, expand and upgrade their hard-earned victories and ensure that the militant poor peasant class and farm workers remain at the helm of peasant associations and Party branches in the localities.

There can be peasant mass campaigns coordinated at the regional, inter-regional or national levels that seek to unite and mobilize the biggest number of peasants on the basis of common outstanding issues including the extremely low farmgate prices of copra and palay, the widespread usurious practices of so-called microfinancing institutions, lowering irrigation fees, steep prices of seedlings and farm inputs, the entry of GMOs which destroy the environment and threaten public health and others.
To make more land available for the land reform program, the NPA must help the peasant masses secure the idle tillable lands for themselves and keep out the land grabbers, take over excess lands under pasture lease from the reactionary state and dismantle export-oriented plantations owned by foreign corporations and by comprador-landlords and large areas of land designated for upscale resort and tourism development.

The people and the people’s army must take all measures to dismantle mining enterprises and logging for export. The peasant masses and the minority peoples must wage mass struggles to assert control of the land grabbed by the big plantations, logging and mining companies. The people’s army must continue to impose sanctions on these for having ravaged and ruined the environment, damaged agriculture by causing soil erosion and poisoning the rivers and streams and have taken out the country’s nonrenewable resources, forever depriving the country of such resources for well-paced and wise utilization for industrial development in the future.

In the areas of expansion, the units of the NPA must establish the barrio organizing committee after quick but sufficient social investigation in order to assure them of immediate support. But such provisional organs of political power can have a good basis for being organized if progressive mass organizations have been priorly organized and recently expanded from nearby areas. Thus, the process of selecting and appointing the officers of the barrio organizing committee is facilitated. The higher formation of the barrio revolutionary committee is based on the formation of the mass organizations of workers, if any, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural activists in the barrio. The representatives of these mass organizations or the people of the entire barrio (if security permits) elect the barrio revolutionary committee. The local Party branch also draws its membership from the mass organizations.

A guerrilla front consists of guerrilla bases and guerrilla zones. The guerrilla bases are the most consolidated part of the guerrilla front, while the guerrilla zones are the less consolidated part. The higher level of consolidation in the guerrilla base is manifested by the existence of the revolutionary committees at the barrio and inter-barrio (municipal) levels and the local Party sections and branches, the full development of the mass organizations, the success of the land reform campaign and other campaigns and the confidence of the appropriately-sized unit of the people’s army to base itself in the barrio or in a cluster of barrios.

The lower level of consolidation of the guerrilla zone is manifested by the existence of the barrio organizing committee, the absence of the local Party branch, the beginnings of mass organizing and mass campaigns and the relatively free entry and exit of both the revolutionary and enemy forces. The guerrilla zone does not remain so forever, it is in the process of becoming a guerrilla base. As a matter of course, relatively stable base areas can arise from among two or more adjoining guerrilla fronts that have become so consolidated.

The building of guerrilla base areas is a necessary part of carrying out the protracted people’s war. Without it, the revolution cannot advance. It is the responsibility of the leading Party committees and NPA commands at the regional, subregional and front levels to identify the areas where revolutionary base areas are best to be built on the basis of physical, social and political terrain as well as the history of the people’s revolutionary struggle in the areas. There should be a corresponding deployment of NPA units to reflect the priorities for building these guerrilla base areas and its interplay with the guerilla zones.

It is of utmost importance to increase the number of guerrilla fronts and let the local Party branches, the organs of political power, mass organizations, the people’s militia and the self-defense units perform tasks and campaigns for the benefit of the people. Thus, the NPA can assign units to perform combat duties and wage offensives with short rest periods. Units that concentrate on combat duties for a certain period may also be rotated into noncombat tasks, including politico-military training, mass work, production and cultural work. Thus, they maintain their close links with the people.

In the rural and urban areas, the broad masses of the people must always be aroused, organized and mobilized. For this purpose, we must understand and appreciate the united front as a revolutionary weapon complementing the armed struggle. It is the way to strengthen the basic forces of the revolution above all and at the same time attract the middle or intermediate forces and even take advantage of the splits among the reactionaries in order to isolate, discredit, weaken and destroy the power of the enemy. It is the quickest way to reach and influence the people in their millions, including those not yet organized and still influenced by non-revolutionary forces.

The antifeudal united front requires the Party and the working class to rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, to win over the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the splits among the enlightened and evil gentry in order to isolate and destroy the power of the evil gentry, the big and despotic landlords, who have their own private armed guards and have easy access to the reactionary armed forces and police whom they control and use by virtue of political power. The landlord-based political dynasties are much hated. The broad masses of the people are joyous whenever they see that the NPA is dismantling the vast estates of these dynasties, seizing the arms of their private and state-provided guards and ambushing the tyrants while on the road.

The antifeudal united front is of decisive importance in the revolution because it serves the agrarian revolution and the satisfaction of the peasant demand for land, which is the main content of the democratic revolution. But it is within the framework of the anti-imperialist and antifeudal united front by which the Party and the working class rely mainly on the basic worker-peasant alliance, win over the urban petty bourgeoisie, further win over the national bourgeoisie and take advantage of the splits among the reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the enemy, be this the most reactionary force or a foreign aggressor. Fighting the enemy at every given time through the national united front is arousing and mobilizing the broad masses of the people against the current enemy and taking the direction of overthrowing the entire ruling system of the big compradors and landlords.
It is fine that the legal and urban-based patriotic and progressive forces are determined to arouse, organize and mobilize the broad masses of the people against the US-directed Aquino regime. It is necessary to employ a broad united front for the purpose.
It has been proven twice in recent history that the president of the reactionary government can be overthrown. The strength of the mass movement may not yet be sufficient to overthrow the entire ruling system but it has succeeded at overthrowing the Marcos fascist regime and the corrupt Estrada regime. It almost succeeded at overthrowing the Arroyo regime.

The democratic mass movement must deliberately plan out a comprehensive, widespread and intensive campaign to oust the Aquino regime over the next two years before the presidential elections of 2016. They must vigorously expose and confront the puppetry, brutality, mendacity and corruption of the ruling regime. There should be an all-out effort to reach out to millions of people by carrying out widespread propaganda and education work.

There should be a crescendo of mass demonstrations by the broad masses of workers, students, semiproletariat and rank-and-file employees. Mass demonstrations at the campus or inter-campus levels, inter-community and inter-municipal levels and so on must be carried out in order to allow the people to voice out their protests against the Aquino regime and assert their demands for wages increases, lower prices, free education, free health service and other national and democratic demands. The victims of the Aquino regime’s criminal neglect in the areas devastated by the recent supertyphoons and other calamities must rise in their numbers. The strength of the widespread anti-Aquino protests can eventually be mustered to generate larger coordinated mass demonstrations.

They must militate the people to carry out direct political action as a legitimate means of regime change as against simply waiting for the next presidential elections which is bound to be controlled once more by the ruling Aquino faction. Doing so serves to strengthen the revolutionary mass movement in the long-term struggle to overthrow the entire ruling system.

US imperialism keeps on escalating its military intervention in the Philippines under the pretext of waging war on terrorism and containing China. As the people’s war advances to the stage of the strategic stalemate, the US will further escalate its military intervention and threaten to unleash a war of aggression against the Filipino people. However, the US and other imperialist powers have created so many armed conflicts abroad; and the crisis of global capitalism is generating armed resistance on a global scale. The armed revolutions elsewhere in the world will reduce the ability of the US to win a war of aggression in the Philippines.

Fighting Tasks

Let us state concisely the fighting tasks that must be carried out by the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, the mass organizations, the organs of political power and the broad masses of the people.

1

Unite the Filipino people along the general line of people’s democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes!

Under the leadership of the working class and its Party, the Filipino people must unite along the general line of their new democratic revolution against US imperialism and local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. They must be aroused, organized and mobilized to take up all major immediate and long-term issues and to wage all forms of revolutionary struggle in order to achieve complete national liberation and democracy.

2

Strive to oust the US-directed Aquino regime to punish it for its crimes against the people and strengthen the revolutionary movement!

The democratic mass movement must strive to oust the US-Aquino regime. At the same time, the NPA must intensify the tactical offensives to show support to the people and patriotic forces rising up in the noble endeavor to oust the regime. The people must exert all-out effort to oust the regime within the relatively short period of two years and prevent it from perpetuating itself in power through the elections. The mass movement must further strengthen itself for future struggles against the ruling system. The revolutionary mass movement gains from the struggle to oust the Aquino by enjoining the most advanced activists to join the Party and serve in the New People’s Army or carry out other revolutionary duties.

3

Stay firm on the strategic line of protracted people’s war, encircling the cities from the countryside!

Armed struggle is the principal form of revolutionary struggle to overthrow the ruling system of big compradors and landlords who are servile to US imperialism. We must continue to adhere to the strategic line of protracted people’s war. It corresponds to the character and chronic crisis of the ruling system of big compradors and landlords. It has allowed the New People’s Army and all other revolutionary forces to preserve themselves, grow in stages and advance against tremendous odds.

4

Realize the current strategic plan to advance from strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate!

We must stay the course in realizing the strategic plan to advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate. We have the Party nationwide and deeply rooted among the toiling masses and the battle-tested, courageous and trained Red commanders and fighters to carry out the plan. They enjoy the support of the mass organizations and organs of political power. The New People’s Army must continue to strive to seize and hold the initiative against the enemy armed forces. The Party must ensure that the advanced guerrilla fronts, subregions and regions help to expand or strengthen the revolutionary forces in other fronts, subregions or regions.

5

Further develop guerrilla warfare and intensify the tactical offensives!

We must continue to wage and develop intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever-expanding and ever-deepening mass base. We must continue to combat conservatism, seize and hold initiative by maintaining an offensive mode. The NPA and all revolutionary forces must continue to avail all opportunities to thwart the enemy. We expand and consolidate our strength wave upon wave. NPA commands and people’s militias must be able to carry out small-team to company-size tactical offensives that aim to seize the enemy’s firearms and weapons cache. At the same time, we undertake certain commando operations that serve as striking manifestations of our growing strength. We shall be able to deploy larger guerrilla units as we seize more arms from the enemy. The possibility of regular mobile warfare depends on the success of our guerrilla warfare.

6

Carry out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution!

We must carry out the appropriate and necessary land reform program in various areas. The ultimate aim is to accomplish the agrarian revolution as main content of the democratic revolution. We must dismantle the large landed estates, the landgrabbing plantations and pasture leases to make more land available for land reform. We must destroy the logging enterprises and plantation and mining operation for export because they cause soil erosion, floods and poisoning of the streams. These harm agriculture, fishing and other forms of livelihood of the people.

7

Expand and consolidate the mass base and increase the guerrilla fronts!

We must expand and consolidate the mass base. We must increase the guerrilla fronts wave upon wave or by employing teams to prepare guerrilla zones. We must build the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural activists. We must build the local organs of political power from the barrio level up. We must also build the people’s militia as police of the barrio and the self-defense units of mass organizations. The barrio and inter-barrio revolutionary committees must be able to carry out more and more state functions within the context of waging guerrilla warfare against the enemy. The units of the people’s army can carry out more tactical offensives if the local Party branch, the organs of political power and the mass organizations perform the non-combat tasks. Cognizant of the existence of dual political power as well as the archipelagic war terrain, the people and revolutionary forces in the guerrilla base areas must master the art of combining legal and illegal forms of struggle in order to defend the mass organizations and the organs of political power, their economic gains as well as victories in the social, cultural and other fields.

8

Prepare against further US military intervention and aggression.

We must condemn and oppose the escalation of US military intervention. We must prepare the people and our forces against the possibility of a US war of aggression as the people’s war advances. We must promote a national united front against imperialism and intensify our struggle against the puppets and traitors who are hellbent on selling away the national patrimony, allowing foreign capitalists to own businesses and land without limits, allowing the US military to reestablish its foreign military bases supported with AFP funds and deploying its troops and facilities within the country which violate national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

9

Seek international support for the Philippine revolution through the overseas Filipinos!

We must stand in solidarity with, and actively support, our compatriots who are compelled by the dire situation to leave their country and families in order to work abroad. We must help them fight for their rights abroad because they suffer exploitation, discrimination and oppression. They comprise more than 10% of the Philippine population and are in more than 100 countries. We must arouse, organize and mobilize them abroad and their families in the Philippines to participate in the revolutionary mass movement.

10

Contribute to the struggle of the proletariat and people against imperialism, for democracy and the resurgence of the socialist cause!

The Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and various mass organizations must contribute what they can in order to reinvigorate and further strengthen the anti-imperialist and democratic movement as well as the communist movement in the world. They must maintain and further develop the relations of solidarity that they have established. The Party and the Philippine proletariat have the special duty of upholding and developing proletarian internationalism in cooperation with the international communist movement.

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20140329_intensify-the-offensives-to-seize-further-initiative-in-advancing-the-people-s-war