PH communist leader slams defense chief for denying rebels’ growth, strength

From the Manila Times (Apr 2): PH communist leader slams defense chief for denying rebels’ growth, strength  

EXILED Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chairman Jose Maria “Joma” Sison on Monday slammed Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana for “denying” that the New People’s Army (NPA) has “grown and gained strength” nationwide by calling them a “failure.”

“Lorenzana mocks the NPA as supposedly a failure in waging armed revolution. But he obscures and denies the fact that against tremendous odds, the NPA has grown and gained strength nationwide from its modest beginnings in the second district of Tarlac, with only nine automatic rifles and 26 single-shot rifles and handguns,” Sison said in a statement.

His statement comes after Lorenzana, during the NPA’s 49th anniversary last week, branded the NPA a “failure” for its “irrelevant” cause and “bankrupt” ideology.

In response, Sison lambasted the Defense chief for also “denying” that the communist rebels were “fighting for the Filipino people” and that he “misrepresented” the NPA when he blamed it as being the cause of underdevelopment and mass poverty in the country.

He also took note of “Oplan Kapayapaan,” the counter-insurgency program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) under the Duterte administration, which he called as “coercive apparatuses” of the US.

“As a rabid reactionary, Lorenzana obscures and denies the fact that the cause of underdevelopment and mass poverty in the Philippines is US and other foreign monopoly powers which take out super profits from the country and the conniving local reactionary classes of big compradors, landlords and corrupt high officials of the reactionary government,” Sison said.

http://www.manilatimes.net/ph-communist-leader-slams-defense-chief-for-denying-rebels-growth-strength/390044/