HALF a century after it was formed to wage a protracted guerrilla war against the government, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) continues to assert that the movement is still making great strides to achieve its goals, a claim which defense and military officials strongly dispute.
Both parties have made their own assertions as the CPP marks its golden anniversary in three days, and days after its guerrillas captured two soldiers and 12 militiamen in Agusan del Sur. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana believes the abduction could be used by the rebels as leverage for the resumption of the peace talks that President Duterte permanently scuttled last month.
The CPP’s struggle, direction
CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison, who has been in exile since 1986 in the Netherlands, asserts that the CPP has systematically strengthened itself “ideologically, politically and organizationally,” and it is now more entrenched among communities across the country.
When it was founded under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on December 26, 1968, the CPP only had 80 members, mainly from Manila, Central and Southern Luzon.
“Now it has more than 70,000 members nationwide in all regions and provinces of the country and it is deeply rooted among the workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, youth, women and other sectors of Philippine society,” Sison told the BusinessMirror.
“The CPP has organized and led local organs of political power in thousands of barangays, who constituted the people’s democratic government of workers and peasants [PDG] in order to oppose the reactionary government of big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats based in the urban areas,” he added.
The PDG is in charge of various functions, including public education, land reform, production, mass campaigns, health and sanitation, arbitration and justice, self-defense, cultural work and others.
The rise of the PDG, Sison said, was borne by the growth in strength and advance of CPP’s military arm, the New People’s Army (NPA), whose strength, according to Lorenzana, is ebbing.
Lorenzana said the gains that Sison is claiming are merely based on propaganda and, as it is, skirt the factual condition on the ground—with what is actually happening within the revolutionary movement around the country.
Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Benjamin Madrigal said the CPP’s clout has been on a steady decline, something that Sison refused to admit.
During its Second Congress held on October 24 up to November 7, 2016, which the underground movement said was attended by leading cadres representing the 70,000 members of the CPP, the congress elected a new central committee and political bureau with a five-year term.
The new central leadership represented the CPP’s “most advanced cadres and integrates young, middle-aged and senior cadres to ensure the smooth transition of leadership to the next generation.”
It was during this meeting, and even with the CPP’s Central Committee plenum in December, also in 2016, where the rebels hatched the three-year plan to oust President Duterte should he refuse to go into a coalition government with the Left, according to Lorenzana.
He said the plot was reinforced during the plenum of the NPA’s military commission in January 2017. The alleged plot was among the reasons the military recommended the termination of talks with the CPP’s political arm, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
Lorenzana said the meetings were held while the government and the rebels were observing a unilateral cease-fire, which the NPA, he said, had also used to recruit members.
The umbrella organization
The CPP carried out and adopted the policy of having a united front by organizing the NDFP in order to reach Filipinos, and which it founded on April 24, 1973. It considered the umbrella organization as its most “solid realization.”
Sison said the NDFP currently counts 18 formations or groups, which included the CPP, NPA, the Christians for National Liberation, the revolutionary organizations of the people of the Cordillera, Aetas, Moros, Lumad and other national minorities, and the underground mass organizations of workers, peasants, youth, women, teachers, cultural workers, lawyers, health professionals, scientists and technologists, and from other sectors.
Sison did not identify these groups, but said the mass organizations and movements of people serve as the foundation of the CPP, NPA and the NDFP.
“They have patriotic and progressive members and followers who run into millions. They uphold the rights and interests of all the oppressed and exploited people in various classes and sectors. They continuously learn the conditions, needs and demands of the people and they struggle for national and social liberation against foreign domination and the local exploiting classes,” he said.
The military maintains that members of the central committee of the CPP form the backbone of the NDFP and what is only left of the umbrella organization is the NDFP itself, the CPP and the NPA.
According to Lorenzana, at least 16 “high-value targets” from the central committee have been neutralized.
The armed wing
On March 29, 1969, the CPP founded its armed wing, the NPA, in the Second District of Tarlac with only 60 fighters, who shared nine automatic rifles and 26 “inferior firearms.”
“Now the NPA is in the thousands with high-powered rifles, supported by tens of thousands of people’s militia acting as the local police force in barangays and hundreds of thousands in self-defense forces of the mass organizations,” Sison said.
The communist founder claimed the rebels are operating in more than 110 guerrilla fronts, covering a big part of 73 out of the 81 provinces in 17 regions outside Metro Manila.
The NPA is assisted by the people’s militia and self-defense units of mass organizations. It follows the strategic line of protracted people’s war, carries out agrarian revolution and guarantees the building and functioning of the people’s democratic government.
Sison said the NPA was the strongest “people’s army” that was assembled since the defeat of the Philippine revolutionary army by the US in 1902 and since the backbone of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan was broken in 1952.
He claimed that the current armed strength of the NPA in terms of high-powered rifles is bigger than the 5,600 recorded in the 1985 plenum of the CPP Central Committee.
“This is contrary to the claim of the enemy that the NPA had 25,000 in the mid-1980s and that it has only 2,000 to 4,000 now. And yet the tyrant Duterte and his military minions claim to have caused the surrender and death of more than 7,000 Red commanders and fighters, victimizing the civilian population and privately collecting reward money for the purpose,” he said.
The NPA, Sison said, has an effective national operational command, with several departments, including political, personnel training, intelligence, logistics, ordnance, medical and technical, and with lower levels of command down to the basic level.
Lorenzana said, however, the rebels are being decimated to the point that it was already forced to deploy even young fighters from the Visayas and Mindanao to Northern Luzon, particularly in the province of Abra.
He cited the recent surrender to the military in Abra of six Visayan-speaking young fighters from Mindanao.
Military Public Affairs Office chief Col. Noel Detoyato said the former rebels were transported from Butuan to Manila by legal fronts of the CPP, where they joined rallies before they were deployed to Abra as fighters.
Detoyato claimed the number of rebels in the area of the Armed Forces Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) has greatly dwindled.
“About 70 percent of their members in the Eastmincon is Lumad and most, if not all, have already surrendered,” he said.
The military reported that from January up to November this year alone, a total of 10,986 rebels and members of the Sangay ng Partido sa Lokal, Militia ng Bayan, underground organizations and mass supporters have been neutralized, arrested or have surrendered. At least 280 encampments were also seized.
Lorenzana said the government has also cleared 210 barangays from the influence of the NPA and dismantled three guerrilla fronts and broke or captured territorial commissions such as those from Northern and Southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The defense secretary said the massive and steady stream of surrenders from the Left was the principal reason they constituted the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) under the reinvigorated Task Force Balik Loob, headed by Defense Undersecretary Jose Mapagu.
Peace talks nil
The CPP doubts that the scuttled peace talks could still be resurrected and pursued under the Duterte administration despite a recent resolution from the House of Representatives urging the government to revive and continue the negotiations.
“Duterte has been carrying out an all-out war policy since he became president. And he has terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations so many times and has even deployed Duterte death squads to murder any suspected potential or actual member of the NPA by using the same modus operandi of extrajudicial killings in Oplan Tokhang against drug suspects,” Sison said.
Still, he said, the NDFP remains open to peace negotiations with the government in order to stop Duterte’s drive for a “fascist dictatorship and to demand social, economic and political reforms to address the roots of the armed conflict and lay the basis for a just and lasting peace.”
As the government and the rebels are at war, Sison said the CPP and the NPA have the right to defend themselves and carry forward their revolutionary cause through the people’s war for national and social liberation.
But Lorenzana shot down any effort for both parties to return to the negotiating table, claiming the talks were being used by the rebels, not for the objective of peace, but to further their ideological goal.
“If we sit down with them, our obsession is for peace. But for the NDFP and Sison, the peace talks are just part of their struggle,” he said. “Peace is not the end goal for them. The CPP-NPA is oriented to grab power and establish a communist rule.”
End of insurgency in 3 years
Sison said it would be “impossible” for the government to end the revolutionary movement within the remaining term of the administration by way of intense military operations.
The President has recently ordered the deployment of additional forces in the Bicol region, Samar and Negros provinces, areas where the rebels are reported to be still strong, in order to end what he called the lawlessness and terrorism that he attributed to the rebels.
“The reactionary military is the instrument of US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big comprador, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats, now chiefly represented by the tyrannical Duterte regime. In contrast, the CPP, NPA and other revolutionary forces are the instruments of the oppressed and exploited people for their national and social liberation.”
“It has worked out the strategy of protracted people’s war by which the NPA accumulates armed strength in the countryside until it is possible to seize political power in the cities. The armed revolution advances wave upon wave as a result of the struggle to seize weapons from the enemy side, carry out agrarian revolution and build the mass base in the countryside,” he said.
The communist founder said the President himself is “unwittingly” helping the armed revolution “by abusing and violating the national and democratic rights of the people, thus driving them to join the revolution, and by sending his troops to the countryside for ambush by the NPA.”
“Therefore Duterte is aptly described as the best unwitting recruiter of the CPP. He is also the chief transport and supply officer of the NPA,” he said.
According to Sison, the Duterte administration cannot simply end the CPP and the NPA with mere military force.
“The CPP and NPA have outlasted all regimes, including the 14-year Marcos ‘fascist dictatorship’ that have boasted of finishing them off,” he said.
“They will continue to exist and grow stronger long after the rule of Duterte, whether he can last until the end of his term in 2022 or whether he succeeds in his mad drive to establish a fascist dictatorship through Cha-cha [Charter change] for a bogus kind of federalism.”
He said an overstretched military cannot defeat the rebels spread across the country.
Sison said 75 of the total 98 maneuver battalions of the military are concentrated in Mindanao under conditions of martial law. Forty-four battalions are deployed against the NPA areas and 31 against Bangsamoro groups.
“Meanwhile, the guerrilla fronts in Luzon and the Visayas have even better opportunities for launching and winning offensives against the overstretched 23 maneuver battalions that are deployed against them,” he said.
“As it has been able to do repeatedly, the NPA can take advantage of gaps in the enemy encirclement operations and conduct counter-encirclement operations and annihilate the vulnerable parts of the enemy forces in Mindanao. The party and the NPA can use the basic tactics of guerrilla warfare, as well as more complex tactics against both the military and police forces of the enemy,” Sison added.
Lorenzana, however, said the continued neutralization of the rebels and the massive surrender of their colleagues and their supporters all point to the demise of the rebel movement.
This situation was the basis for Duterte’s earlier declaration that the CPP-NPA would be over by next year.
The military is more modest, with no less than Lorenzana reiterating that they could end the insurgency within Duterte’s administration.
He said the localized talks, wherein the local government units are taking the lead, would take the communist experiment to its “coffin.”
Amid such claim and counterclaim, the one burning question left is: Will the country ever know peace after half a century?
https://businessmirror.com.ph/half-a-century-of-conflict/
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