Communists: People’s war is set to press forward under the Duterte regime

From Update.Ph (May 17): Communists: People’s war is set to press forward under the Duterte regime  

Amid soon-to-be seated president Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncements that he will go back to the negotiating table with the communist rebels and his readiness to give them top positions in his administration, the central committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said, May 15, that the New People’s Army will continue the armed resistance and front organizations’ democratic protests.

“While engaging the Duterte regime in peace negotiations and possible alliance in order to advance the national and democratic aspirations of the Filipino people, the revolutionary forces will continue to relentlessly advance the people’s armed resistance and democratic mass struggles,” the CPP central committee said in a press release.

“While open to cooperation and alliance, they must relentlessly criticize and oppose any and all anti-people and pro-imperialist policy and measure. There will be no honeymoon with the Duterte regime,” the CPP added.

It added that while displaying progressive character, Duterte is mainly a part of the ruling class political elite.

“For the past four decades, he has served the system as a bureaucrat and implemented its laws and policies. He has worked with foreign and local big capitalists, plantation owners and big landlords who expect returns under his regime. The masses of workers, peasants and farm workers in Davao City have long-suffered from the oppressive and exploitative conditions in the big plantations and export-oriented contract-growing businesses,” the CPP added.

The communists central committee also said “Duterte has yet to declare a clear deviation from the dominant neoliberal economic thinking which has brought about grave hardships to the Filipino people for more than three decades.”

“Duterte’s mettle is about to be tested. Will he walk his talk and take on the opportunity to stand up against US imperialism? Or will his bombast end up as empty rhetoric?” the CCP stated.

“Duterte must heed the people’s mounting clamor for land, jobs, wage increses, free education, public health and housing, reduction in the price of commodities, defense of Philippine sovereignty against US intervention, defense of national patrimony and economic progress and modernization, an end to corruption and crime in the bureaucracy, military and police,” CPP central committee said.

“If he fails or refuses to heed the people’s clamor, he is bound to end up a mere historical anomaly and suffer the same fate as the Estrada regime,” it added.

“The New People’s Army must continue to carry out the tasks set forth by the CPP Central Committee to intensify the people’s war by launching more frequent tactical offensives and seizing more arms from the enemy,” the CPP said.

The communist party said “only a people’s democratic revolution can decisively and thoroughly end imperialist and local big bourgeois comprador and landlord rule by overthrowing its armed state.”

“By intensifying their struggles, the Filipino people are bound to attain more and more victories in the years to come. The people’s war is set to press forward under the Duterte regime,” the CPP said.

http://www.update.ph/2016/05/communists-peoples-war-is-set-to-press-forward-under-the-duterte-regime/5754