PRWC: Joint statement of the LCC and the Abraham Bannawagan Front on the NPA ambush at Bagumbayan, Tabuk, Kalinga

Posted to the PRWC Blog site (May 10): Joint statement of the LCC and the Abraham Bannawagan Front on the NPA ambush at Bagumbayan, Tabuk, Kalinga

Ka Tipon Gil-ayab, Lejo Cawilan Command, NPA-Kalinga
Ka Raya N.M. Dulag, Abraham Bannawagan Front
May 10, 2013

The LCC, which is the NPA operational command in the whole province, and the Abraham Bannawagan Front express their joyful acknowledgement to the front commanders and red fighters in launching the tactical offensive against enemy troops, riding in a lone army vehicle at Sitio Patiking, Bagumbayan, Tabuk at 9:40am, on May 9, 2013. Two (2) troopers were killed and six (6) others  were wounded; and the NPA unit seized 1 M16 rifle and other logistics. The successful ambush was due to the active support and participation of the ever deepening and expanding mass base in the people’s war.

In his smear propaganda, Col. Roger Salvador, the Commanding Officer of the 501st Infantry Brigade whose HQ is based at Calanan, Tabuk, has the courage to call the NPA as “the enemy of democracy, a contempt of democracy”.  This kind of smear propaganda by the real enemies of the Filipino people is calculated to hide the fact that for so long democracy in the entire country is not “of, from and by the people” but a bourgeois kind that is under the sole control of the big landlords and the big compradors, who have become and are themselves the big bureaucrat capitalists inside the present reactionary US-Aquino regime, which is actually dictated by US imperialism for so long, in order to maintain the Philippines as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.

The anti-Filipino AFP smear propagandists added that the NPA staged the ambush “to disrupt the on-going preparations” for the coming election day by firing at the AFP soldiers who were sent to escort the distribution of PCOS machines to the municipalities of Kalinga and “to extort millions of pesos from candidates”.  Again this is a deliberate lie to conceal the fact that the reactionary forces of the AFP-PNP-CAFGU are harassing civilians to spread the needed terror among the masses in order for them not to vote for the progressive candidates and party lists on election day.  For the past months, platoons of AFP-PNP-CAFGU units have been going to the barangays throughout the province in order to escort the diehard anti-people candidates and their campaigners in their vote-buying activities and to ascertain that these same anti-people candidates would remain in power under the present landlord-comprador controlled political system.  But whatever smear propaganda the AFP and the present US-Aquino regime is disseminating, the fact remains that the revolutionary people’s government in Kalinga and in other provinces throughout the country has the inherent right to demand revolutionary and access taxes from powerful, rich and anti-people politicians, the landlord-comprador owners of big businesses, as well as from the multi-national firms.

In this connection, we admonish  the  LUBUAGAN  TRIBE to stop accusing the NANENG TRIBE and the masses of Barangay Bagumbayan for the ambush launched by the NPA last May 8.  That ambush was done as part of the NPA tactical offensives in the context of the PEOPLE’S WAR, NOT TRIBAL WAR.  Therefore, no tribe or member of any tribe has the right to make use of the bodong and its pagta to recriminate other tribes or members of another tribe.  All tribes must realize that the people’s enemies – the ruling classes in the country and their fascist forces in the reactionary AFP-PNP-CAFGU – are still using the divide-and-rule tactics in their counter-insurgency operations under OPlan Bayanihan in order to create disunities among the tribes and to let the tribes fight one another.  Their main purpose is, of course, to continue national oppression and the exploitation of the rich ancestral lands of all the tribes.  All tribes must,  therefore, unite to fight their common enemy!

After election, the crisis of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial system will again continue as usual.  The rights of the national minorities to self-determination and to their ancestral land and its rich natural resources will continue to be trampled upon by the ruling classes under the leadership of the US-Aquino regime, the present puppet of US imperialism.  And under the public-private partnership program of the present regime, the landlord-comprador and multi-national corporations will again continue their “development” aggression projects in the form of mining, hydro-dam and geothermal plant constructions in Kalinga and in other provinces of the Cordillera.

Surely these anti-people projects will further worsen the vicious oppression and exploitation of the national minorities and tribal communities.  And there is no other genuine and right path to stop this intensifying oppression and exploitation but to pursue the national-democratic revolution through people’s war, continue the work of agrarian revolution, and expand and consolidate further the people’s revolutionary government.  The LCC and the ABF, therefore, urge the youth from the various tribes to join the NPA and all NPA units must continue to organize and consolidate the people’s militia in the barangays.  This we must do in order to launch more tactical offensives in the form of annihilative and attritive actions and for the people’s war to advance towards the strategic stalemate nation-wide.
http://theprwcblogs.blogspot.com/2013/05/joint-statement-of-lcc-and-abraham.html