NDFP National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Introduction
We, the Central Committee and the entirety of the Communist Party of the Philippines, salute the Red commanders and fighters of the New People´s Army (NPA) in celebrating its 47th anniversary. We commend the NPA for serving as the principal weapon of the Party and the Filipino people in carrying out the new-democratic revolution through protracted people´s war against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords, now represented chiefly by the Aquino ruling clique.
The NPA stands as the most glorious, durable and advanced revolutionary armed force in the entire history of the Filipino people. It grew in strength and prevailed in fierce opposition to a 14-year fascist dictatorship. And it has overcome all the military campaign plans unleashed against it by the pseudo democratic successors of the Marcos regime. It has totalled 47 years of continuous revolutionary struggle against the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.
We congratulate the NPA for the victories that it has accumulated since its founding day and for those it has won in defeating Oplan Bayanihan in recent years. We honor all Red commanders and fighters for their hard work and courageous combat against the enemy. We honor most highly the martyrs and heroes of the revolution.
We must sum up and analyze our experiences well in order to learn positive and negative lessons, plan how we can advance on the basis of our current strength and set forth the tasks and methods for unifying our fighting will and capabilities to achieve greater victories.
We are confident of winning greater victories in the forthcoming years. The crisis of the world capitalist system and that of the domestic semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system are worsening at an accelerated pace. The NPA has attained nationwide strength and has been so tempered in struggle that it can make bigger strides in the direction of the strategic stalemate.
Crisis of global capitalism worsens and plunges to a new level
The global economic and financial crisis that burst out in 2008 continues to generate global depression comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has persisted because of the relentless drive of the neoliberal policy regime to raise profits through wage cuts, mass layoffs, cutbacks on social benefits and services, trade and investment liberalization, privatization of public assets, deregulation of social and environmental restrictions and denationalization of underdeveloped economies.
The industrial capitalist countries have used the expansion of money supply and credit, and the austerity measures at the expense of the people to counter the crisis. But these have in fact further pushed down consumer demand and production, aggravated the crisis and have brought about a new sharp plunge. They have not promoted production and employment in the US and other imperialist countries. They have stimulated only the financial markets sporadically and stepped up war production by the military-industrial complex.
The China bubble of seemingly endless expansion of money supply and credit, especially for private and public construction, has begun to burst upon the exposure of mountains of unrepayable local government and corporate debts. The global economic growth rate is thus adversely affected. The public debt crisis of the European Union is worsening and cannot be assuaged by the expansion of money supply and credit. The US attempt to raise the value of the dollar by raising interest rates is enlarging the dollar-denominated debts of underdeveloped countries.
The worsening crisis of global capitalism has led to the stepping up of war production, state terrorism and militarization of the police, the increased deployment of US troops overseas and wars of aggression. Syria is now the center of tangled warfare between the US on the side of forces against the Assad government and Russia on the side of the Assad government.
The US is hellbent on devastating Syria as a way of bringing down the Assad government in the way that the Milosevic, Saddam and Khadaffi governments had been brought down in their respective countries. The conditional ceasefire worked out by the US and Russia will be used by the former to strengthen the so-called Free Syrian Army under the dubious pretext of combating Al Nushra and the Daesh. At the same time, Turkey persists in attacking the Syrian Kurds and collaborating with Daesh against the Kurdish people.
No end is in sight to the chain of wars that the US imperialists, Israeli Zionists and the NATO have brought about in the Middle East. They are determined to bring down the governments of Syria and Iran and allow Zionist Israel to suppress the Palestinian people. At the same time, sectarian and communal wars continue to flare up in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan and Mali.
Because of the series of wars of aggression and proxy wars unleashed by the US and NATO, especially in the Middle East and Africa, millions of refugees are flooding into Western Europe and other imperialist countries. Neofascists, chauvinists, racists and religious bigots are acting in the service of the big bourgeoisie to treat the refugees brutally and to scapegoat them as the cause of the worsening crisis of capitalism.
In the entire world, the US and other imperialist powers perpetrate the most severe forms of social and environmental plunder. The neoliberal economic policy and global warming are ruining the lives of billions of people and causing social conflicts, dislocation and migrations on a wide scale.
The US and the rest of the G7 countries continue to pressure Russia through economic sanctions and the NATO expansion to the borders of Russia and through neighboring anti-Russian regimes, especially Ukraine. The US is trying to foul up the relationship of Russia and energy-hungry Germany and the development of a Eurasian economic bloc. But the provocative acts of the US have only pushed Russia and China to strengthen their relations.
As if it had not already created enough troubles in so many regions and countries, the US continues to pursue the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific region in order to contain China. The latter is practically egging on the US to increase military forces in East Asia by making the outlandish nine-dash claims over the South China Sea. At the same time, it has put up the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank to finance its ambitious Silk Road and Belt project.
Russia and China maintain the BRICS as an economic bloc and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a security bloc. They are expressly for a multipolar world order against US hegemony. They challenge the US pipe dream of unipolar hegemony in the 21st century and remind the US of its growing strategic decline despite its aggressiveness. It has become very clear that the full conversion of Russia and China to capitalism has generated more crises and troubles for the world capitalist system.
The strategic decline of the US has accelerated due to its imperialist overextension, financialization, drastic fall in manufacturing and chronic mass unemployment, the thinning out of its middle class, deteriorated social services, spread of poverty and misallocation of resources to war production, overseas military bases and wars of aggression.
The crisis of the world capitalist system will continue to worsen and further drive the imperialist powers to engage in a bitter struggle for the redivision of the world. This interimperialist struggle generates favorable conditions for the resurgence of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples and nations.
Worsening crisis of the Philippine ruling system
By its very character as semifeudal and semicolonial, Philippine society is in chronic economic, social and political crisis. As a result of the US imposition of the neoliberal policy regime and security policy dictates, such chronic crisis has been aggravated and deepened and has made Philippine society ever more riven by sharpening contradictions among the reactionaries and ever more fertile for armed revolution.
The national sovereignty of the Filipino people has been brazenly further violated by the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) allowing the US military bases in the Philippines and requiring the puppet reactionary armed forces to serve as perimeter guards within their own premises.
The EDCA extends further the extraterritorial license of US military forces under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) to have rotational presence on Philippine territory and preposition all kinds of armaments, including weapons of mass destruction on Philippine soil. Under EDCA, the US has taken eight military bases in the Philippines, for a start. Combined with the VFA, the EDCA is an instrument for military intervention and further on for blatant aggression against the Filipino people and neighboring peoples.
Even before, the US has engaged in the most blatant form of military intervention. It has had a direct hand in designing and implementing strategic operational plans like Oplan Bayanihan based on the US Counterinsurgency Guide. The US military intervention extends to the participation of advisors, trainors and teams and the use of spy satellites surveillance drones in operations against the NPA and various armies of the Moro people.
There is no letup of attacks on Philippine economic sovereignty and the national patrimony under unequal economic and trade agreements and laws allowing 100 percent foreign ownership of mining, banking and trading enterprises. There is the relentless scheme to amend the 1987 GRP constitution in order to allow foreign corporations to own all other enterprises to the extent of 100 percent.
Since 2014, the reactionary government has allowed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) to lapse and has not made any move to dish out another bogus land reform program. The US-imposed neoliberal policy regime discourages the puppet state from adopting any policy that detracts from the supposed right of proprietors to hold on to their land and capital assets and sell them voluntarily through commercial transactions.
The callous and brutal position of the reactionary state is to give free rein to foreign and domestic corporations in acquiring vast areas of land for mining, plantations, real estate speculation and logging under the guise of correct forest management. Thus landgrabbing operations for the purpose of mineral extraction, plantations for export production and real estate development are widespread and rampant.
The US-Aquino regime boasts that it has been responsible for raising the Philippine GDP to the level of PhP 15 trillion, keeping the public debt of PhP 6.4 trillion as a small proportion of said GDP and effecting on paper an average of 6.2 percent annual growth rate since 2010, supposedly surpassing all previous regimes. The regime has increased the public debt by PhP 4.16 trillion in less than six years, surpassing all previous regimes since that of Marcos in propensity for incurring excessive debt for pork barrel corruption and anti-industrial spending.
The regime claims that the Philippines has become a “newly industrializing” country and will soon reach first world status. But when we look at the content of the GDP, we see no factors for the industrial development of the economy. A pre-industrial type of service sector accounts for 57 percent of the national output value; import-dependent industry for 15 percent and agriculture 32 percent.
All sectors are dependent on imported equipment and foreign debt and are consumption-oriented. In terms of spending or end use, household consumption accounts for 71.5 per cent and government for around 10.2 per cent. The small share of investment of 18.3 per cent involves business operations like call centers, mining, construction, semimanufacturing, food and beverages, trading, financing and the like.
The portfolio type of investments has come in an unusually big way for most of the years of the Aquino regime, accounting for more than 65 percent at the peak of the money flow in 2012 to 2014. But it has started to flow out since 2014, resulting in a BOP deficit of more than USD 3.0 billion. This kind of investment does not put up manufacturing plants but goes to the financial markets. It has helped create the illusion of a growing economy. As it flows out, the dismal realities of underdevelopment, high unemployment, soaring prices of basic goods and services, gross inequality, widespread poverty, budgetary and trade deficits and mounting debt burden become more exposed.
The reactionary government claims a low unemployment rate of around 6.5 percent and 20 per cent underemployed for 2015. This is a big lie. Most people considered employed are in fact unemployed, doing household chores or odd jobs for a few hours a week. The much touted high number of overseas contract workers estimated at more than 12 million is 20 percent of the total labor force of 60 million and actually exposes the inability of the Philippine economy to provide employment and accounts for a huge chunk of unemployment. Around 66 million people live in abject poverty and live on PhP 125 or even less per day.
The social and economic crisis is becoming acute and is causing increasing social protests, political turmoil and armed revolutionary resistance. But in the current presidential election contest staged by the ruling system, no major presidential candidate, party or coalition (except the Makabayan coalition of progressive party list groups) offers a comprehensive political program advocating and promoting national independence, people´s democracy, economic development through land reform and national industrialization, social justice, patriotic and progressive culture, free public education and international solidarity for peace and development against imperialism and reaction.
The electoral process is controlled by foreign monopoly, big comprador and landlord interests. In the main it excludes by means of state power, finance and propaganda the representatives of the workers and peasants. Thus, the 2016 elections cannot be expected to serve as an instrument for any significant social change. The worst part of these elections is the high probability or even certainty that the results will be predetermined by the control of the Smartmatic automated electoral system, by the US-Aquino regime and the US CIA. The ruling party, the Liberal Party, is thus confident of the victory of Mar Roxas as the incoming president and the continuer of neoliberal policy and counterrevolution.
Expectation is widespread that there will be economic, social and political turmoil in the months and years after the 2016 elections. The worsening social crisis will combine with the outrage over the fraudulent election of a president and the continuance of oppressive and exploitative policies of the discredited US-Aquino regime. The political crisis will involve not only the street protests of the broad masses of the people but also the simultaneous acts of armed resistance of the NPA and the armies of the Bangsamoro.
An extension of the US-Aquino regime through a Mar Roxas regime is not auspicious for the resumption of peace negotiations between the NDFP and the reactionary government. At any rate, the rapidly worsening crisis will press whichever is the new regime to consider the peace negotiations as a way to cope with the crisis and the upsurge of armed revolution throughout the archipelago. The worst that can happen to the ruling system is that the NPA and the armies of the Bangsamoro wage offensives simultaneously.
The NDFP has consistently stood for truce and alliance against the evil forces of foreign and feudal domination, even while comprehensive agreements on basic social, economic and political reforms are still being worked out for a just and lasting peace. Without these comprehensive agreements, the Filipino people requires the NPA to stay fully armed, ever vigilant and ready to fight the hostile forces of national betrayal and counterrevolution.
The People´s Army and Fighting Tasks
Since last year, the New People´s Army has dealt heavy blows on the enemy forces in Mindanao, Visayas and Luzon. These have exposed the big lies of the regime that that the NPA has dwindled to a few thousands from a false peak of 25,000 in 1985-86. In fact the NPA strength then was only 5,600. Today, the NPA has grown much bigger with better trained and armed Red fighters than ever before . It is augmented by the people´s militia with members in the tens of thousands and the self-defense units of the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women and youth with members in hundreds of thousands.
The NPA units operate in several scores of guerrilla fronts under regional and subregional commands covering substantial areas of more than 71 provinces in hundreds of municipalities and thousands of barangays. They enjoy the active support of millions of the people in mass organizations and under the governance of the revolutionary organs of democratic political power. They can move freely in 80 percent of Philippine territory while the enemy armed forces can occupy or control only ten percent at any given time.
The Party leads the NPA as the principal instrument of the proletariat and the people in waging the people´s democratic revolution through protracted people´s war. It wields the people’s army in combination with the revolutionary united front. It integrates the revolutionary armed struggle with genuine land reform and building the mass base.
The US-Aquino regime has utterly failed to defeat or reduce the NPA to inconsequence, with the use of Oplan Bayanihan and its component programs such as PAMANA and conditional cash transfer. The prolonged ceasefire with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has allowed the regime to deploy more troops against the NPA. However, it has not only failed to prevent the growth of the NPA but has also created even more opportunities for the NPA units to launch tactical offensives against the enemy.
The NPA has grown stronger by intensifying its tactical offensives. It has won victories by waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. From month to month and from year to year, the Red commanders and fighters are conscious of advancing towards a nationwide development of the strategic defensive towards the strategic stalemate.
With Oplan Bayanihan, the US-Aquino regime hoped in vain to concentrate its attack forces on eastern Mindanao and a few other priority targets in Luzon and the Visayas. It held and worked on the pipedream that by destroying the NPA in these areas, it would achieve a final strategic victory over the NPA nationwide before Aquino’s term ends in 2016. However, when the enemy forces concentrate on the NPA in any area, the Red commanders and fighters engage them in counter-encirclements and counter offensives. Elsewhere other NPA units seize the initiative to take the offensive against military, police, paramilitary units and security agencies of hostile enterprises.
The NPA has learned through politico-military training and actual fighting how to render ineffective the superiority of the enemy in equipment and number of personnel. It gets accurate information on the deployment of enemy armed personnel, determines their weakest points and launches only offensives that it is sure of winning. The NPA can at will concentrate superior strength on an enemy weak point in order to annihilate it. In many areas where the NPA operates, no enemy column can advance in a guerrilla front or zone without the prospect of command-detonated land mines, sniping and a fulsome ambush by NPA units.
The NPA has gained strength by seizing weapons from the enemy forces through ambushes on enemy columns, raids on weak enemy points and armories, and arrest operations. Upon the increase of weapons in its hands the NPA creates more fighting units, gives them politico-military training and fields them in offensive operations and mass work.
The NPA´s main task is to fight and defeat the enemy. But it also carries out several other important tasks, such as propaganda and agitation, mass organizing and mass campaigns for land reform, production, health promotion, cultural work, mass training for self-defense and settlement of disputes among the people.
However, to gain more time for combat with short rest periods, the NPA units as soon as possible pass on the tasks of civil administration and mass work to the organs of political power and the mass organizations. They are rotated for definite periods of full-time combat, politico-military training, mass work and production.
While on combat duty, an NPA unit has short rest periods between battles. The period when a unit is not on combat duty is for gaining mass support and collecting useful information about the enemy from the mass base and from intelligence operatives of the people´s army. Even as we have described in the foregoing our achievements and constant duties and objectives, we must be aware of errors and shortcomings that must also be encompassed by summings-up and evaluations at the national, regional, subregional and front levels of command. We must understand the reasons for and circumstances of uneven development of the people’s war, including the victories, failures and stagnation, nonfulfilment of long-set objectives for advancing the people’s war in the direction of the strategic stalemate.
Some Party organs and army commands at regional, subregional and front levels have failed to carry out summings up and evaluations and to conduct significant offensive against the enemy. They do not pose the problems correctly and are thus unable to solve them. Worse, they do not make timely reports and recommendations for higher organs to help. Higher organs also do not or cannot give timely directives and assistance.
Where stagnation and decline of the forces and forms of struggle occur, certain leading cadres commit such weaknesses as conservatism, complacency and self-satisfaction with the same stagnant level of knowledge and circumstances. They let things drift from year to year; or they overstate the effectiveness and consequences of enemy actions, without considering how to advance the work, strengthen the forces and launch tactical offensives for seizing arms from the enemy. The squads and half squads of the people’s army are constantly dispersed without a definite center of gravity for tactical offensives and seem or try to perform functions that revolutionary organs of political power, mass organizations, people’s militia and self-defense units ought to perform. In the worst cases, the squads and half squads of the people’s army become roving rebel bands.
At the national, regional, subregional, provincial, district and section levels, the Party is the coordinator of all revolutionary forces and various forms of struggle. It is the Party at the appropriate level that provides the NPA and rural areas the cadres and mass activists from the ranks of urban based workers and educated youth.
The Party is at the head and at the core of the NPA. Within the NPA, the Party branch is based in the platoon and the Party group in the squad. A Party committee leads the NPA units from the level of the company upwards. The Party at the head and core of the NPA ensures that the Red commanders and fighters become Party members in due course and get political education on a daily basis beyond the period of politico-military training in order to ensure that they have high revolutionary morale and they understand the revolutionary line concerning current events.
Under the leadership of the Party, the NPA must carry out the following fighting tasks.
1. Uphold the Filipino people’s national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity.
The NPA must uphold and defend Filipino people’s national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity, which are now being violated by the US and other imperialist powers. These powers must not be allowed to divide Philippine territory among themselves in the process of collaboration and contention.
The US has long benefited from its successful aggression against the Philippine revolution since 1899, turning the Philippines into a colony and subsequently a semicolony from 1946 onward. It continues to dominate the Philippines through unequal treaties, agreements and arrangements with the state of the local reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords.
The US controls the reactionary armed forces and engages in military intervention through the US-RP military assistance agreement, mutual logistical support agreement and the visiting forces agreement (FVA), despite the lapse of the US-RP military bases agreement in 1991.
Under various pretexts, especially the so-called war on terror, the US has maintained increasing military presence in the Philippines. The latest pretext of defending the Philippines from China within the context of the strategic pivot to East Asia has allowed the US to acquire military bases and forward locations using the puppet reactionary armed forces as perimeter guards and mercenaries under the EDCA.
The NPA must give special attention to these military bases and forward locations wherever these are established. It must conduct mass work to isolate them immediately and to discover the ways by which these can be disabled and destroyed.
China is unlawfully claiming more than 80 percent of the Philippine exclusive economic zone and 100 percent of extended West Philippine sea continental shelf. It has began to encroach on areas belonging to the Philippines by conducting reclamations and other hostile actions. The NPA must pay attention to these growing transgression or threats to the people´s national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity from capitalist China.
2. Disable and dismantle enterprises that violate economic sovereignty and national patrimony.
The Philippine puppet government connives with the US, China, Japan and other foreign powers in the violation of the economic sovereignty and national patrimony of the Filipino people. Operations must be conducted to disable and dismantle foreign-owned and controlled enterprises that violate economic sovereignty and national patrimony, grab the land and the forest, mineral and marine resources, prevent land reform and national industrialization, poison the soil and the streams and damage food production for the people and the environment.
The prime targets for NPA operations are the logging, mining and plantation operations of foreign-owned and controlled companies. These can be disabled and dismantled through actions against equipment, energy supply, company security guards and government-provided armed detachments. Company officials are also subject to arrest and detention for investigation and further action.
Punitive actions taken by the NPA against the unwelcome and hostile enterprises can be a way of dividing the armed personnel of the state and forcing them to guard duty in weak positions, exposing them as mere puppets and mercenaries of foreign companies and discouraging the violations of economic sovereignty and national patrimony through further amendments of the constitution of the reactionary state.
The NPA must serve the Filipino people in combating these violations. It must act as the reliable armed force on the ground for discouraging, disabling and dismantling those enterprises that violate the economic sovereignty and national patrimony.
The NPA must also carry out punitive actions against the big compradors, landlords and bureaucrats who engage in the wanton destruction and sellout of the country’s national patrimony to foreign monopolies, cause the displacement, exploitation and deprivation of livelihood of peasants, settlers and national minorities.
3. Defend democracy and take actions against human rights violators.
The NPA must uphold, defend and promote democracy and human rights. It must respect all basic freedoms and fundamental rights, especially the freedom of thought and belief, the freedom of expression and assembly, the right of the people to self-organization and the right to due process.
Conversely, the NPA must take action against violators of human rights and international humanitarian law, especially those who commit murder, torture, abduction and illegal detention, the forced eviction and evacuation of communities through massacres, arson and other forms of mass intimidation, and various forms of extreme oppression and exploitation of the workers, peasants, women, national minorities and social activists.
The NPA must give battle to the worst violators of human rights, who are armed and dangerous, whether they be enemy personnel in uniform or in mufti. Suspected violators of human rights and international humanitarian law who claim to be civilians and innocent of charges may surrender themselves for investigation and may in advance assign a representative to plead their case.
Whenever possible, NPA forces and units must arrest suspected violators of human rights and international humanitarian law for investigation and if evidence warrants for prosecution, trial and judgement by the people´s courts and in accordance with due process and international norms. Those proven guilty must be punished according to the measure of their culpability and those proven innocent released immediately with due courtesy and assistance.
4. Carry out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution.
The NPA must persevere in carrying out the minimum and maximum phases of the revolutionary land reform program or agrarian revolution in accordance with the given circumstances regarding the strength of the revolutionary movement and the contrary forces.
Land reform is the main content of the democratic revolution. It must liberate the peasant majority of the people economically, socially, politically and culturally. It is the way to win the firm and militant support of the peasantry for the people´s democratic revolution through protracted war. It is to the advantage of the revolution that the reactionaries in power are so intoxicated and obsessed with the neoliberal economic policy that they no longer take any pretense at land reform and flagrantly render the landless tillers incapable of fully paying the market price of the land.
The policy of the enemy is to allow the old and new types of landlords and the export-oriented enterprises in mineral extraction, agriculture and logging to grab the land. The NPA must carry out revolutionary land reform more resolutely than ever before. It must dismantle enterprises that grab lands and make these available for restitution, occupation and development by the peasant masses.
In principle, all lands belong to the Filipino nation and is subject to nationalization as the first decree upon nationwide seizure of political power. But nonfeudal use of land by legitimate holders must be respected and the free distribution of land titles to the landless tillers must be given due course in the implementation of land reform preparatory to the advance of agricultural cooperation in stages.
5. Integrate the armed struggle with agrarian revolution and persevere in guerrilla warfare.
The NPA must carry out the armed struggle integrally with the agrarian revolution and building the mass base. The mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth , children and cultural activists must flourish. They must serve as the strong foundation of the revolutionary organs of democratic power. These must be organized up to the municipal level wherever feasible.
It must persevere in waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. Mass work should not be the excuse for avoiding combat but should be a favorable factor for seizing the initiative in launching offensives against the enemy and for forestalling passivity and preventing purely defensive actions. Guerrilla warfare must bring about the maturation of the strategic defensive, the initial development of regular mobile warfare and the start of the the strategic stalemate.
The objective is to increase and expand the existing guerrilla fronts and bring them to a higher level of organization under the direction of the national, regional and subregional commands. Elements of regular mobile warfare should arise as increasing number of NPA platoons and companies arise for combat on the scale of one, two or three companies. And the total number of NPA fulltime fighters should approach 25,000.
The NPA must intensify tactical offensives in order to seize more arms from the enemy. Always in preparation for increasing NPA fighting units, the people´s militia and other self-defense units of the mass organizations must be oriented towards becoming fulltime fighters for the NPA although the enlistment of young people is prioritized. Periodically and as often as necessary, politico-military training must be undertaken to prepare young people to join the ranks of the fulltime Red fighters.
There must be definite plans and clear guidelines for seizing weapons, dismantling antipeople enterprises and carrying out campaigns and operations on a wide scale and with flexibility on the basis of existing strength and capability. Well-planned offensives must be carried out to seize armories of enemy forces.
The following weak points of the enemy must be subjected to offensive operations:
5.1 small AFP detachments that are inferior relative to NPA strength that can be concentrated for surprise attacks;
5.2 municipal police stations and detachments of PNP mobile brigades;
5.3 paramilitary units in localities;
5.4 Security personnel of mining, plantation and logging enterprises;
5.5 criminal syndicates engaged in drugs, robbery, kidnap-for-ransom and the like;
5.6 private entities that refuse to donate, surrrender or sell their weapons to the NPA.
6. Develop coordinated or synchronized offensives at the national and regional levels of command.
Under the direction of the Party Central Committee, and in particular its Central Military Commission, nationally and regionally coordinated or synchronized offensives must be developed. The national guidelines for this purpose must be drawn. Periodically, plans must be adopted and implemented at the national, regional, subregional and front command levels, with full consideration of the capabilities of the NPA forces and those of the enemy in the target areas.
Guidelines and plans must define the targets and allow flexibility and maintain the initiative within the war of fluid movement. The NPA must concentrate forces for offensives against the weakest enemy points and wage only battles that can be won. All major tactics of concentration, dispersal and shifting should be availed of according to need and circumstances. At present, the platoon is the basic formation of the NPA. The basic deployment of an NPA company in a guerrilla front should be a platoon as the center of gravity at the guerrilla base and platoons principally doing mass work in relatively dispersed squads in a wider range of guerrilla zones.
On many occasions, NPA forces have demonstrated that they can take offensive action against one enemy point and are prepared to use landmines to blow up and ambush the reinforcing enemy military or police forces. This tactic can be repeatedly used to attack and lure in enemy forces to their grave. One more tactic is to attack one enemy point but to concentrate attack on another enemy weak point that has no prospect of being immediately reinforced.
When the enemy tries to take the initiative of launching concentrated attacks on any guerrilla front or region, the NPA forces in the targeted area must avail of the classic rudimentary guerrilla tactics as well as the more advanced guerrilla tactics already developed by the NPA. The NPA can engage in tactics of counter-encirclements and counteroffensives, especially after the enemy discloses its deployment, capabilities and weak points.
Every NPA command and unit under concentrated enemy attack should always maintain a high offensive spirit and take advantage of the fact that the enemy has been lured into a terrain advantageous to our guerrilla forces. Thus the enemy forces become the transport and supply officers of the NPA by delivering their bodies and equipment to the NPA.
But there is a wider equation, the NPA commands and units that are not under concentrated enemy attack or are under less enemy pressure must intensify their offensives in order to relieve the comrades under concentrated enemy attack in certain areas and take advantage of the diminished enemy strength in their areas.
The current reactionary elections in the country is a good opportunity for the NPA to launch tactical offensives to underscore the armed revolution as the only way to eliminate the evils of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and achieve genuine national independence and democracy.
7. Contribute to the development of a national, scientific and mass culture.
The NPA commanders and fighters must be conscious of contributing to the development of a national revolutionary culture. Their revolutionary feats of combat and mass work for the Filipino nation and the people are ever treasured and cherished. The propagandists and cultural workers must continue to celebrate the Red commanders and fighters as heroes of the Philippine revolution alongside the workers and peasants.
There is no Filipino nation to speak of if it were not for the revolutionaries who rose up against Spanish colonialism and then against US imperialism. The Red commanders and fighters of the NPA belong to the tradition and raise the level of this tradition to fighting for a new democratic revolution in preparation for the socialist revolution.
The guerrilla bases in the vast countryside under the organs of political power serve as revolutionary cultural bastions for developing a national, scientific and mass culture. The NPA under the leadership of the Party must arduously combat the bourgeois neoliberal cultural onslaughts while discarding the backward feudal culture in the countryside.
Under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the class leadership of the proletariat, the NPA is bound by the scientific spirit to muster the necessary strength to win the revolution and to build a society that avails of science and technology to defend the country, further empower the Filipino people, develop the economy and foster solidarity of the people with other peoples of the world.
8. Defend the right of national minorities to self-determination, ancestral domain and cultural identity.
The NPA must defend the right of national minorities to self-determination, ancestral domain and cultural identity. The national minorities have welcomed and joined the revolutionary forces, especially the NPA, to be able to fight ever more effectively for their right to self-determination and ancestral domain against various schemes to take away their land and means of livelihood, extract nonrenewable mineral ores, cut the forests and make plantations for export crops.
The strength of the NPA and the entire revolutionary movement is deepgoing because of the active participation and support of the national minorities. The national minorities have a long history of struggle against foreign invaders. Their warriors who have joined the NPA are among the best Red commanders and fighters.
The Moro people have several armies against the oppressive Manila-based government. The MILF has a formal and working alliance with the NDFP. The MNLF also has a long-running objective and informal alliance with the NDFP. The BIFF is a welcome ally against the common enemy. Any oppressive regime in Manila can shake and fall if the armies of the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro agree to coordinate or synchronize their offensives.
9. Gain the support of overseas Filipinos for the NPA and the people´s war.
By waging a protracted people´s war to achieve national liberation and democracy, the NPA gains the support of the Filipino people, including compatriots who have gone abroad to obtain work. But definite efforts must be exerted to gain the support of overseas Filipinos for the people’s army and the people’s war. It is relatively easy to obtain this support because overseas Filipinos come from various parts of the country where the armed revolutionary movement is growing.
10. Support the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle of the people of the world and seek their support for the Philippine revolution.
The Filipino people and the NPA wage the people´s war as an internationalist duty in support of the struggle of the people of the world against imperialism and reaction. They are today in the forefront of the anti-imperialist and democratic struggle. They are waging just revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation. A number of revolutionary organizations and similarly oppressed and exploited peoples from other countries have endeavored to learn from the NPA’s experience and practice, especially in its resilience and self-reliance in waging people’s war. For this reason, the people of the world are willing to extend support to the Filipino people and the New People´s Army.
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20160329_aim-to-win-greater-victories-in-people-s-war-message-of-the-central-committee-in-celebration-of-the-47th-founding-anniversary-of-the-npa
We, the Central Committee and the entirety of the Communist Party of the Philippines, salute the Red commanders and fighters of the New People´s Army (NPA) in celebrating its 47th anniversary. We commend the NPA for serving as the principal weapon of the Party and the Filipino people in carrying out the new-democratic revolution through protracted people´s war against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords, now represented chiefly by the Aquino ruling clique.
The NPA stands as the most glorious, durable and advanced revolutionary armed force in the entire history of the Filipino people. It grew in strength and prevailed in fierce opposition to a 14-year fascist dictatorship. And it has overcome all the military campaign plans unleashed against it by the pseudo democratic successors of the Marcos regime. It has totalled 47 years of continuous revolutionary struggle against the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.
We congratulate the NPA for the victories that it has accumulated since its founding day and for those it has won in defeating Oplan Bayanihan in recent years. We honor all Red commanders and fighters for their hard work and courageous combat against the enemy. We honor most highly the martyrs and heroes of the revolution.
We must sum up and analyze our experiences well in order to learn positive and negative lessons, plan how we can advance on the basis of our current strength and set forth the tasks and methods for unifying our fighting will and capabilities to achieve greater victories.
We are confident of winning greater victories in the forthcoming years. The crisis of the world capitalist system and that of the domestic semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system are worsening at an accelerated pace. The NPA has attained nationwide strength and has been so tempered in struggle that it can make bigger strides in the direction of the strategic stalemate.
Crisis of global capitalism worsens and plunges to a new level
The global economic and financial crisis that burst out in 2008 continues to generate global depression comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has persisted because of the relentless drive of the neoliberal policy regime to raise profits through wage cuts, mass layoffs, cutbacks on social benefits and services, trade and investment liberalization, privatization of public assets, deregulation of social and environmental restrictions and denationalization of underdeveloped economies.
The industrial capitalist countries have used the expansion of money supply and credit, and the austerity measures at the expense of the people to counter the crisis. But these have in fact further pushed down consumer demand and production, aggravated the crisis and have brought about a new sharp plunge. They have not promoted production and employment in the US and other imperialist countries. They have stimulated only the financial markets sporadically and stepped up war production by the military-industrial complex.
The China bubble of seemingly endless expansion of money supply and credit, especially for private and public construction, has begun to burst upon the exposure of mountains of unrepayable local government and corporate debts. The global economic growth rate is thus adversely affected. The public debt crisis of the European Union is worsening and cannot be assuaged by the expansion of money supply and credit. The US attempt to raise the value of the dollar by raising interest rates is enlarging the dollar-denominated debts of underdeveloped countries.
The worsening crisis of global capitalism has led to the stepping up of war production, state terrorism and militarization of the police, the increased deployment of US troops overseas and wars of aggression. Syria is now the center of tangled warfare between the US on the side of forces against the Assad government and Russia on the side of the Assad government.
The US is hellbent on devastating Syria as a way of bringing down the Assad government in the way that the Milosevic, Saddam and Khadaffi governments had been brought down in their respective countries. The conditional ceasefire worked out by the US and Russia will be used by the former to strengthen the so-called Free Syrian Army under the dubious pretext of combating Al Nushra and the Daesh. At the same time, Turkey persists in attacking the Syrian Kurds and collaborating with Daesh against the Kurdish people.
No end is in sight to the chain of wars that the US imperialists, Israeli Zionists and the NATO have brought about in the Middle East. They are determined to bring down the governments of Syria and Iran and allow Zionist Israel to suppress the Palestinian people. At the same time, sectarian and communal wars continue to flare up in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan and Mali.
Because of the series of wars of aggression and proxy wars unleashed by the US and NATO, especially in the Middle East and Africa, millions of refugees are flooding into Western Europe and other imperialist countries. Neofascists, chauvinists, racists and religious bigots are acting in the service of the big bourgeoisie to treat the refugees brutally and to scapegoat them as the cause of the worsening crisis of capitalism.
In the entire world, the US and other imperialist powers perpetrate the most severe forms of social and environmental plunder. The neoliberal economic policy and global warming are ruining the lives of billions of people and causing social conflicts, dislocation and migrations on a wide scale.
The US and the rest of the G7 countries continue to pressure Russia through economic sanctions and the NATO expansion to the borders of Russia and through neighboring anti-Russian regimes, especially Ukraine. The US is trying to foul up the relationship of Russia and energy-hungry Germany and the development of a Eurasian economic bloc. But the provocative acts of the US have only pushed Russia and China to strengthen their relations.
As if it had not already created enough troubles in so many regions and countries, the US continues to pursue the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific region in order to contain China. The latter is practically egging on the US to increase military forces in East Asia by making the outlandish nine-dash claims over the South China Sea. At the same time, it has put up the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank to finance its ambitious Silk Road and Belt project.
Russia and China maintain the BRICS as an economic bloc and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a security bloc. They are expressly for a multipolar world order against US hegemony. They challenge the US pipe dream of unipolar hegemony in the 21st century and remind the US of its growing strategic decline despite its aggressiveness. It has become very clear that the full conversion of Russia and China to capitalism has generated more crises and troubles for the world capitalist system.
The strategic decline of the US has accelerated due to its imperialist overextension, financialization, drastic fall in manufacturing and chronic mass unemployment, the thinning out of its middle class, deteriorated social services, spread of poverty and misallocation of resources to war production, overseas military bases and wars of aggression.
The crisis of the world capitalist system will continue to worsen and further drive the imperialist powers to engage in a bitter struggle for the redivision of the world. This interimperialist struggle generates favorable conditions for the resurgence of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples and nations.
Worsening crisis of the Philippine ruling system
By its very character as semifeudal and semicolonial, Philippine society is in chronic economic, social and political crisis. As a result of the US imposition of the neoliberal policy regime and security policy dictates, such chronic crisis has been aggravated and deepened and has made Philippine society ever more riven by sharpening contradictions among the reactionaries and ever more fertile for armed revolution.
The national sovereignty of the Filipino people has been brazenly further violated by the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) allowing the US military bases in the Philippines and requiring the puppet reactionary armed forces to serve as perimeter guards within their own premises.
The EDCA extends further the extraterritorial license of US military forces under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) to have rotational presence on Philippine territory and preposition all kinds of armaments, including weapons of mass destruction on Philippine soil. Under EDCA, the US has taken eight military bases in the Philippines, for a start. Combined with the VFA, the EDCA is an instrument for military intervention and further on for blatant aggression against the Filipino people and neighboring peoples.
Even before, the US has engaged in the most blatant form of military intervention. It has had a direct hand in designing and implementing strategic operational plans like Oplan Bayanihan based on the US Counterinsurgency Guide. The US military intervention extends to the participation of advisors, trainors and teams and the use of spy satellites surveillance drones in operations against the NPA and various armies of the Moro people.
There is no letup of attacks on Philippine economic sovereignty and the national patrimony under unequal economic and trade agreements and laws allowing 100 percent foreign ownership of mining, banking and trading enterprises. There is the relentless scheme to amend the 1987 GRP constitution in order to allow foreign corporations to own all other enterprises to the extent of 100 percent.
Since 2014, the reactionary government has allowed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) to lapse and has not made any move to dish out another bogus land reform program. The US-imposed neoliberal policy regime discourages the puppet state from adopting any policy that detracts from the supposed right of proprietors to hold on to their land and capital assets and sell them voluntarily through commercial transactions.
The callous and brutal position of the reactionary state is to give free rein to foreign and domestic corporations in acquiring vast areas of land for mining, plantations, real estate speculation and logging under the guise of correct forest management. Thus landgrabbing operations for the purpose of mineral extraction, plantations for export production and real estate development are widespread and rampant.
The US-Aquino regime boasts that it has been responsible for raising the Philippine GDP to the level of PhP 15 trillion, keeping the public debt of PhP 6.4 trillion as a small proportion of said GDP and effecting on paper an average of 6.2 percent annual growth rate since 2010, supposedly surpassing all previous regimes. The regime has increased the public debt by PhP 4.16 trillion in less than six years, surpassing all previous regimes since that of Marcos in propensity for incurring excessive debt for pork barrel corruption and anti-industrial spending.
The regime claims that the Philippines has become a “newly industrializing” country and will soon reach first world status. But when we look at the content of the GDP, we see no factors for the industrial development of the economy. A pre-industrial type of service sector accounts for 57 percent of the national output value; import-dependent industry for 15 percent and agriculture 32 percent.
All sectors are dependent on imported equipment and foreign debt and are consumption-oriented. In terms of spending or end use, household consumption accounts for 71.5 per cent and government for around 10.2 per cent. The small share of investment of 18.3 per cent involves business operations like call centers, mining, construction, semimanufacturing, food and beverages, trading, financing and the like.
The portfolio type of investments has come in an unusually big way for most of the years of the Aquino regime, accounting for more than 65 percent at the peak of the money flow in 2012 to 2014. But it has started to flow out since 2014, resulting in a BOP deficit of more than USD 3.0 billion. This kind of investment does not put up manufacturing plants but goes to the financial markets. It has helped create the illusion of a growing economy. As it flows out, the dismal realities of underdevelopment, high unemployment, soaring prices of basic goods and services, gross inequality, widespread poverty, budgetary and trade deficits and mounting debt burden become more exposed.
The reactionary government claims a low unemployment rate of around 6.5 percent and 20 per cent underemployed for 2015. This is a big lie. Most people considered employed are in fact unemployed, doing household chores or odd jobs for a few hours a week. The much touted high number of overseas contract workers estimated at more than 12 million is 20 percent of the total labor force of 60 million and actually exposes the inability of the Philippine economy to provide employment and accounts for a huge chunk of unemployment. Around 66 million people live in abject poverty and live on PhP 125 or even less per day.
The social and economic crisis is becoming acute and is causing increasing social protests, political turmoil and armed revolutionary resistance. But in the current presidential election contest staged by the ruling system, no major presidential candidate, party or coalition (except the Makabayan coalition of progressive party list groups) offers a comprehensive political program advocating and promoting national independence, people´s democracy, economic development through land reform and national industrialization, social justice, patriotic and progressive culture, free public education and international solidarity for peace and development against imperialism and reaction.
The electoral process is controlled by foreign monopoly, big comprador and landlord interests. In the main it excludes by means of state power, finance and propaganda the representatives of the workers and peasants. Thus, the 2016 elections cannot be expected to serve as an instrument for any significant social change. The worst part of these elections is the high probability or even certainty that the results will be predetermined by the control of the Smartmatic automated electoral system, by the US-Aquino regime and the US CIA. The ruling party, the Liberal Party, is thus confident of the victory of Mar Roxas as the incoming president and the continuer of neoliberal policy and counterrevolution.
Expectation is widespread that there will be economic, social and political turmoil in the months and years after the 2016 elections. The worsening social crisis will combine with the outrage over the fraudulent election of a president and the continuance of oppressive and exploitative policies of the discredited US-Aquino regime. The political crisis will involve not only the street protests of the broad masses of the people but also the simultaneous acts of armed resistance of the NPA and the armies of the Bangsamoro.
An extension of the US-Aquino regime through a Mar Roxas regime is not auspicious for the resumption of peace negotiations between the NDFP and the reactionary government. At any rate, the rapidly worsening crisis will press whichever is the new regime to consider the peace negotiations as a way to cope with the crisis and the upsurge of armed revolution throughout the archipelago. The worst that can happen to the ruling system is that the NPA and the armies of the Bangsamoro wage offensives simultaneously.
The NDFP has consistently stood for truce and alliance against the evil forces of foreign and feudal domination, even while comprehensive agreements on basic social, economic and political reforms are still being worked out for a just and lasting peace. Without these comprehensive agreements, the Filipino people requires the NPA to stay fully armed, ever vigilant and ready to fight the hostile forces of national betrayal and counterrevolution.
The People´s Army and Fighting Tasks
Since last year, the New People´s Army has dealt heavy blows on the enemy forces in Mindanao, Visayas and Luzon. These have exposed the big lies of the regime that that the NPA has dwindled to a few thousands from a false peak of 25,000 in 1985-86. In fact the NPA strength then was only 5,600. Today, the NPA has grown much bigger with better trained and armed Red fighters than ever before . It is augmented by the people´s militia with members in the tens of thousands and the self-defense units of the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women and youth with members in hundreds of thousands.
The NPA units operate in several scores of guerrilla fronts under regional and subregional commands covering substantial areas of more than 71 provinces in hundreds of municipalities and thousands of barangays. They enjoy the active support of millions of the people in mass organizations and under the governance of the revolutionary organs of democratic political power. They can move freely in 80 percent of Philippine territory while the enemy armed forces can occupy or control only ten percent at any given time.
The Party leads the NPA as the principal instrument of the proletariat and the people in waging the people´s democratic revolution through protracted people´s war. It wields the people’s army in combination with the revolutionary united front. It integrates the revolutionary armed struggle with genuine land reform and building the mass base.
The US-Aquino regime has utterly failed to defeat or reduce the NPA to inconsequence, with the use of Oplan Bayanihan and its component programs such as PAMANA and conditional cash transfer. The prolonged ceasefire with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has allowed the regime to deploy more troops against the NPA. However, it has not only failed to prevent the growth of the NPA but has also created even more opportunities for the NPA units to launch tactical offensives against the enemy.
The NPA has grown stronger by intensifying its tactical offensives. It has won victories by waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. From month to month and from year to year, the Red commanders and fighters are conscious of advancing towards a nationwide development of the strategic defensive towards the strategic stalemate.
With Oplan Bayanihan, the US-Aquino regime hoped in vain to concentrate its attack forces on eastern Mindanao and a few other priority targets in Luzon and the Visayas. It held and worked on the pipedream that by destroying the NPA in these areas, it would achieve a final strategic victory over the NPA nationwide before Aquino’s term ends in 2016. However, when the enemy forces concentrate on the NPA in any area, the Red commanders and fighters engage them in counter-encirclements and counter offensives. Elsewhere other NPA units seize the initiative to take the offensive against military, police, paramilitary units and security agencies of hostile enterprises.
The NPA has learned through politico-military training and actual fighting how to render ineffective the superiority of the enemy in equipment and number of personnel. It gets accurate information on the deployment of enemy armed personnel, determines their weakest points and launches only offensives that it is sure of winning. The NPA can at will concentrate superior strength on an enemy weak point in order to annihilate it. In many areas where the NPA operates, no enemy column can advance in a guerrilla front or zone without the prospect of command-detonated land mines, sniping and a fulsome ambush by NPA units.
The NPA has gained strength by seizing weapons from the enemy forces through ambushes on enemy columns, raids on weak enemy points and armories, and arrest operations. Upon the increase of weapons in its hands the NPA creates more fighting units, gives them politico-military training and fields them in offensive operations and mass work.
The NPA´s main task is to fight and defeat the enemy. But it also carries out several other important tasks, such as propaganda and agitation, mass organizing and mass campaigns for land reform, production, health promotion, cultural work, mass training for self-defense and settlement of disputes among the people.
However, to gain more time for combat with short rest periods, the NPA units as soon as possible pass on the tasks of civil administration and mass work to the organs of political power and the mass organizations. They are rotated for definite periods of full-time combat, politico-military training, mass work and production.
While on combat duty, an NPA unit has short rest periods between battles. The period when a unit is not on combat duty is for gaining mass support and collecting useful information about the enemy from the mass base and from intelligence operatives of the people´s army. Even as we have described in the foregoing our achievements and constant duties and objectives, we must be aware of errors and shortcomings that must also be encompassed by summings-up and evaluations at the national, regional, subregional and front levels of command. We must understand the reasons for and circumstances of uneven development of the people’s war, including the victories, failures and stagnation, nonfulfilment of long-set objectives for advancing the people’s war in the direction of the strategic stalemate.
Some Party organs and army commands at regional, subregional and front levels have failed to carry out summings up and evaluations and to conduct significant offensive against the enemy. They do not pose the problems correctly and are thus unable to solve them. Worse, they do not make timely reports and recommendations for higher organs to help. Higher organs also do not or cannot give timely directives and assistance.
Where stagnation and decline of the forces and forms of struggle occur, certain leading cadres commit such weaknesses as conservatism, complacency and self-satisfaction with the same stagnant level of knowledge and circumstances. They let things drift from year to year; or they overstate the effectiveness and consequences of enemy actions, without considering how to advance the work, strengthen the forces and launch tactical offensives for seizing arms from the enemy. The squads and half squads of the people’s army are constantly dispersed without a definite center of gravity for tactical offensives and seem or try to perform functions that revolutionary organs of political power, mass organizations, people’s militia and self-defense units ought to perform. In the worst cases, the squads and half squads of the people’s army become roving rebel bands.
At the national, regional, subregional, provincial, district and section levels, the Party is the coordinator of all revolutionary forces and various forms of struggle. It is the Party at the appropriate level that provides the NPA and rural areas the cadres and mass activists from the ranks of urban based workers and educated youth.
The Party is at the head and at the core of the NPA. Within the NPA, the Party branch is based in the platoon and the Party group in the squad. A Party committee leads the NPA units from the level of the company upwards. The Party at the head and core of the NPA ensures that the Red commanders and fighters become Party members in due course and get political education on a daily basis beyond the period of politico-military training in order to ensure that they have high revolutionary morale and they understand the revolutionary line concerning current events.
Under the leadership of the Party, the NPA must carry out the following fighting tasks.
1. Uphold the Filipino people’s national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity.
The NPA must uphold and defend Filipino people’s national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity, which are now being violated by the US and other imperialist powers. These powers must not be allowed to divide Philippine territory among themselves in the process of collaboration and contention.
The US has long benefited from its successful aggression against the Philippine revolution since 1899, turning the Philippines into a colony and subsequently a semicolony from 1946 onward. It continues to dominate the Philippines through unequal treaties, agreements and arrangements with the state of the local reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords.
The US controls the reactionary armed forces and engages in military intervention through the US-RP military assistance agreement, mutual logistical support agreement and the visiting forces agreement (FVA), despite the lapse of the US-RP military bases agreement in 1991.
Under various pretexts, especially the so-called war on terror, the US has maintained increasing military presence in the Philippines. The latest pretext of defending the Philippines from China within the context of the strategic pivot to East Asia has allowed the US to acquire military bases and forward locations using the puppet reactionary armed forces as perimeter guards and mercenaries under the EDCA.
The NPA must give special attention to these military bases and forward locations wherever these are established. It must conduct mass work to isolate them immediately and to discover the ways by which these can be disabled and destroyed.
China is unlawfully claiming more than 80 percent of the Philippine exclusive economic zone and 100 percent of extended West Philippine sea continental shelf. It has began to encroach on areas belonging to the Philippines by conducting reclamations and other hostile actions. The NPA must pay attention to these growing transgression or threats to the people´s national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity from capitalist China.
2. Disable and dismantle enterprises that violate economic sovereignty and national patrimony.
The Philippine puppet government connives with the US, China, Japan and other foreign powers in the violation of the economic sovereignty and national patrimony of the Filipino people. Operations must be conducted to disable and dismantle foreign-owned and controlled enterprises that violate economic sovereignty and national patrimony, grab the land and the forest, mineral and marine resources, prevent land reform and national industrialization, poison the soil and the streams and damage food production for the people and the environment.
The prime targets for NPA operations are the logging, mining and plantation operations of foreign-owned and controlled companies. These can be disabled and dismantled through actions against equipment, energy supply, company security guards and government-provided armed detachments. Company officials are also subject to arrest and detention for investigation and further action.
Punitive actions taken by the NPA against the unwelcome and hostile enterprises can be a way of dividing the armed personnel of the state and forcing them to guard duty in weak positions, exposing them as mere puppets and mercenaries of foreign companies and discouraging the violations of economic sovereignty and national patrimony through further amendments of the constitution of the reactionary state.
The NPA must serve the Filipino people in combating these violations. It must act as the reliable armed force on the ground for discouraging, disabling and dismantling those enterprises that violate the economic sovereignty and national patrimony.
The NPA must also carry out punitive actions against the big compradors, landlords and bureaucrats who engage in the wanton destruction and sellout of the country’s national patrimony to foreign monopolies, cause the displacement, exploitation and deprivation of livelihood of peasants, settlers and national minorities.
3. Defend democracy and take actions against human rights violators.
The NPA must uphold, defend and promote democracy and human rights. It must respect all basic freedoms and fundamental rights, especially the freedom of thought and belief, the freedom of expression and assembly, the right of the people to self-organization and the right to due process.
Conversely, the NPA must take action against violators of human rights and international humanitarian law, especially those who commit murder, torture, abduction and illegal detention, the forced eviction and evacuation of communities through massacres, arson and other forms of mass intimidation, and various forms of extreme oppression and exploitation of the workers, peasants, women, national minorities and social activists.
The NPA must give battle to the worst violators of human rights, who are armed and dangerous, whether they be enemy personnel in uniform or in mufti. Suspected violators of human rights and international humanitarian law who claim to be civilians and innocent of charges may surrender themselves for investigation and may in advance assign a representative to plead their case.
Whenever possible, NPA forces and units must arrest suspected violators of human rights and international humanitarian law for investigation and if evidence warrants for prosecution, trial and judgement by the people´s courts and in accordance with due process and international norms. Those proven guilty must be punished according to the measure of their culpability and those proven innocent released immediately with due courtesy and assistance.
4. Carry out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution.
The NPA must persevere in carrying out the minimum and maximum phases of the revolutionary land reform program or agrarian revolution in accordance with the given circumstances regarding the strength of the revolutionary movement and the contrary forces.
Land reform is the main content of the democratic revolution. It must liberate the peasant majority of the people economically, socially, politically and culturally. It is the way to win the firm and militant support of the peasantry for the people´s democratic revolution through protracted war. It is to the advantage of the revolution that the reactionaries in power are so intoxicated and obsessed with the neoliberal economic policy that they no longer take any pretense at land reform and flagrantly render the landless tillers incapable of fully paying the market price of the land.
The policy of the enemy is to allow the old and new types of landlords and the export-oriented enterprises in mineral extraction, agriculture and logging to grab the land. The NPA must carry out revolutionary land reform more resolutely than ever before. It must dismantle enterprises that grab lands and make these available for restitution, occupation and development by the peasant masses.
In principle, all lands belong to the Filipino nation and is subject to nationalization as the first decree upon nationwide seizure of political power. But nonfeudal use of land by legitimate holders must be respected and the free distribution of land titles to the landless tillers must be given due course in the implementation of land reform preparatory to the advance of agricultural cooperation in stages.
5. Integrate the armed struggle with agrarian revolution and persevere in guerrilla warfare.
The NPA must carry out the armed struggle integrally with the agrarian revolution and building the mass base. The mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth , children and cultural activists must flourish. They must serve as the strong foundation of the revolutionary organs of democratic power. These must be organized up to the municipal level wherever feasible.
It must persevere in waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. Mass work should not be the excuse for avoiding combat but should be a favorable factor for seizing the initiative in launching offensives against the enemy and for forestalling passivity and preventing purely defensive actions. Guerrilla warfare must bring about the maturation of the strategic defensive, the initial development of regular mobile warfare and the start of the the strategic stalemate.
The objective is to increase and expand the existing guerrilla fronts and bring them to a higher level of organization under the direction of the national, regional and subregional commands. Elements of regular mobile warfare should arise as increasing number of NPA platoons and companies arise for combat on the scale of one, two or three companies. And the total number of NPA fulltime fighters should approach 25,000.
The NPA must intensify tactical offensives in order to seize more arms from the enemy. Always in preparation for increasing NPA fighting units, the people´s militia and other self-defense units of the mass organizations must be oriented towards becoming fulltime fighters for the NPA although the enlistment of young people is prioritized. Periodically and as often as necessary, politico-military training must be undertaken to prepare young people to join the ranks of the fulltime Red fighters.
There must be definite plans and clear guidelines for seizing weapons, dismantling antipeople enterprises and carrying out campaigns and operations on a wide scale and with flexibility on the basis of existing strength and capability. Well-planned offensives must be carried out to seize armories of enemy forces.
The following weak points of the enemy must be subjected to offensive operations:
5.1 small AFP detachments that are inferior relative to NPA strength that can be concentrated for surprise attacks;
5.2 municipal police stations and detachments of PNP mobile brigades;
5.3 paramilitary units in localities;
5.4 Security personnel of mining, plantation and logging enterprises;
5.5 criminal syndicates engaged in drugs, robbery, kidnap-for-ransom and the like;
5.6 private entities that refuse to donate, surrrender or sell their weapons to the NPA.
6. Develop coordinated or synchronized offensives at the national and regional levels of command.
Under the direction of the Party Central Committee, and in particular its Central Military Commission, nationally and regionally coordinated or synchronized offensives must be developed. The national guidelines for this purpose must be drawn. Periodically, plans must be adopted and implemented at the national, regional, subregional and front command levels, with full consideration of the capabilities of the NPA forces and those of the enemy in the target areas.
Guidelines and plans must define the targets and allow flexibility and maintain the initiative within the war of fluid movement. The NPA must concentrate forces for offensives against the weakest enemy points and wage only battles that can be won. All major tactics of concentration, dispersal and shifting should be availed of according to need and circumstances. At present, the platoon is the basic formation of the NPA. The basic deployment of an NPA company in a guerrilla front should be a platoon as the center of gravity at the guerrilla base and platoons principally doing mass work in relatively dispersed squads in a wider range of guerrilla zones.
On many occasions, NPA forces have demonstrated that they can take offensive action against one enemy point and are prepared to use landmines to blow up and ambush the reinforcing enemy military or police forces. This tactic can be repeatedly used to attack and lure in enemy forces to their grave. One more tactic is to attack one enemy point but to concentrate attack on another enemy weak point that has no prospect of being immediately reinforced.
When the enemy tries to take the initiative of launching concentrated attacks on any guerrilla front or region, the NPA forces in the targeted area must avail of the classic rudimentary guerrilla tactics as well as the more advanced guerrilla tactics already developed by the NPA. The NPA can engage in tactics of counter-encirclements and counteroffensives, especially after the enemy discloses its deployment, capabilities and weak points.
Every NPA command and unit under concentrated enemy attack should always maintain a high offensive spirit and take advantage of the fact that the enemy has been lured into a terrain advantageous to our guerrilla forces. Thus the enemy forces become the transport and supply officers of the NPA by delivering their bodies and equipment to the NPA.
But there is a wider equation, the NPA commands and units that are not under concentrated enemy attack or are under less enemy pressure must intensify their offensives in order to relieve the comrades under concentrated enemy attack in certain areas and take advantage of the diminished enemy strength in their areas.
The current reactionary elections in the country is a good opportunity for the NPA to launch tactical offensives to underscore the armed revolution as the only way to eliminate the evils of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and achieve genuine national independence and democracy.
7. Contribute to the development of a national, scientific and mass culture.
The NPA commanders and fighters must be conscious of contributing to the development of a national revolutionary culture. Their revolutionary feats of combat and mass work for the Filipino nation and the people are ever treasured and cherished. The propagandists and cultural workers must continue to celebrate the Red commanders and fighters as heroes of the Philippine revolution alongside the workers and peasants.
There is no Filipino nation to speak of if it were not for the revolutionaries who rose up against Spanish colonialism and then against US imperialism. The Red commanders and fighters of the NPA belong to the tradition and raise the level of this tradition to fighting for a new democratic revolution in preparation for the socialist revolution.
The guerrilla bases in the vast countryside under the organs of political power serve as revolutionary cultural bastions for developing a national, scientific and mass culture. The NPA under the leadership of the Party must arduously combat the bourgeois neoliberal cultural onslaughts while discarding the backward feudal culture in the countryside.
Under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the class leadership of the proletariat, the NPA is bound by the scientific spirit to muster the necessary strength to win the revolution and to build a society that avails of science and technology to defend the country, further empower the Filipino people, develop the economy and foster solidarity of the people with other peoples of the world.
8. Defend the right of national minorities to self-determination, ancestral domain and cultural identity.
The NPA must defend the right of national minorities to self-determination, ancestral domain and cultural identity. The national minorities have welcomed and joined the revolutionary forces, especially the NPA, to be able to fight ever more effectively for their right to self-determination and ancestral domain against various schemes to take away their land and means of livelihood, extract nonrenewable mineral ores, cut the forests and make plantations for export crops.
The strength of the NPA and the entire revolutionary movement is deepgoing because of the active participation and support of the national minorities. The national minorities have a long history of struggle against foreign invaders. Their warriors who have joined the NPA are among the best Red commanders and fighters.
The Moro people have several armies against the oppressive Manila-based government. The MILF has a formal and working alliance with the NDFP. The MNLF also has a long-running objective and informal alliance with the NDFP. The BIFF is a welcome ally against the common enemy. Any oppressive regime in Manila can shake and fall if the armies of the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro agree to coordinate or synchronize their offensives.
9. Gain the support of overseas Filipinos for the NPA and the people´s war.
By waging a protracted people´s war to achieve national liberation and democracy, the NPA gains the support of the Filipino people, including compatriots who have gone abroad to obtain work. But definite efforts must be exerted to gain the support of overseas Filipinos for the people’s army and the people’s war. It is relatively easy to obtain this support because overseas Filipinos come from various parts of the country where the armed revolutionary movement is growing.
10. Support the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle of the people of the world and seek their support for the Philippine revolution.
The Filipino people and the NPA wage the people´s war as an internationalist duty in support of the struggle of the people of the world against imperialism and reaction. They are today in the forefront of the anti-imperialist and democratic struggle. They are waging just revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation. A number of revolutionary organizations and similarly oppressed and exploited peoples from other countries have endeavored to learn from the NPA’s experience and practice, especially in its resilience and self-reliance in waging people’s war. For this reason, the people of the world are willing to extend support to the Filipino people and the New People´s Army.
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20160329_aim-to-win-greater-victories-in-people-s-war-message-of-the-central-committee-in-celebration-of-the-47th-founding-anniversary-of-the-npa
