From the CPP Website (Mar 29):
Intensify tactical offensives nationwide, win ever greater victories in our people's war
Message of the Central Committee on the 44th Founding Anniversary of
the New People’s Army
We salute the Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army on the
occasion of its 44th founding anniversary. We congratulate you for winning
significant victories in the previous year and for accumulating more strength.
We admire the entire people’s army for fighting firmly and fiercely the
US-Aquino regime and defeating the objective of Oplan Bayanihan to weaken and
destroy the revolutionary movement through deception and brute force.
We commend you for upholding the leadership of the Party and the glorious
tradition and revolutionary principles of the people’s army and for carrying
forward the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. As
always, we render the highest honor to our revolutionary martyrs and heroes. We
are inspired by their struggle, sacrifices, and achievements.
It is our resolve to develop fully the political and military strength of
the people’s army in the middle and advanced phases of the strategic defensive
and reach the threshold of the strategic stalemate in the few years ahead. For
this purpose, we must intensify our tactical offensives to seize more weapons
and create more units of the people’s army. Necessarily, we must expand and
consolidate the revolutionary mass base.
The objective conditions in the world and in the
Philippines are favorable for our
armed struggle and for realizing our objective. The imperialist powers continue
to fail in overcoming the crisis of their own making. The US-Aquino regime is
in dire straits because the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system
aggravates the chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system.
I. The imperialist powers aggravate the global crisis
The monopoly bourgeoisie and the finance oligarchy in the imperialist
countries continue to stick to the neoliberal economic policy of “free market”
globalization. Despite the conditions of global depression, they persist in
accelerating superprofit-taking and the concentration of capital in their
hands, suppressing trade union rights and other democratic rights; and
maximizing the extraction of surplus value from the labor power of the working
class.
They try in vain to hasten the flow of investments and trade in the real
economy but succeed only in speeding up the flow of speculative capital in the
financial markets. They continue to privatize public assets, and grab large
contracts and subsidies from the state for civil and military projects. They
continue to extract advantages from deregulation against labor, women and
children, the economy, and the environment. They also extract advantages from
the denationalization of economies of semicolonies and dependent countries.
The economic and financial crisis has turned into an epidemic of public
debt. The imperialist powers and their multilateral agencies (IMF, World Bank
and WTO) react to the ever worsening crisis by further shifting the burden of
crisis to the working people of the world through a series of austerity measures.
These involve further reduction of wages, employment, social benefits and
social services. They aggravate the crisis of overproduction and the
overconcentration of capital in the hands of the big bourgeoisie.
Even the middle social strata are being impoverished. While cutting down on
social services (education, health and low-income housing), the imperialist
powers are deploying more financial resources in speculation, war production
and wars of aggression. They misrepresent the military expenditures as helpful
to economic recovery and as a way of expanding economic territory abroad
(sources of cheap fuel and other natural resources, markets, fields of
investment and spheres of influence).
In the imperialist countries, the workers, youth, women and migrant workers
are manifesting their resistance against the deterioration of wage and living
conditions. They are shaking off the previous decades of trade union
repression, consumerism, reformism, revisionism and all sorts of reactionary
petty-bourgeois currents. Strikes and protest rallies have been most militant
and widespread in such capitalist countries as
Portugal,
Italy,
Greece and
Spain, that are most overburdened
by debts from the dominant countries.
Resistance of the people is most evident in the depressed underdeveloped
countries because they are the most exploited and oppressed in the world.
Popular wars of national liberation are intensifying and expanding. These
include the long running national liberation movements such as those in the
Philippines, Colombia, Kurdistan, India and other South Asian countries, and
those where recently the US and NATO have carried out blatant wars of
aggression as in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as thinly veiled wars of
aggression as in Libya and Syria. Imperialist proxy wars are also raging in
several African countries.
The imperialist powers are being opposed more than ever by countries that
assert independence, such as the Democratic People’s
Republic
of
Korea,
Cuba,
Venezuela,
Syria,
Iran and others. They make
provocations, engage in interferences and economic and military blockades, and
launch wars of aggression. In countries where they have overthrown governments,
more deep-seated people’s struggles for national liberation and democracy are
arising.
The imperialist powers themselves and their multilateral agencies have been
unable to overcome the crisis and depression that have swept the world.
Inter-imperialist contradictions over economic, financial, trade and security
matters are surfacing. It is pushing for the further dismantling of state
enterprises in
China to allow
the foreign monopoly capitalists full freedom to exploit
China’s working
class and penetrate its vast market. At the same time, the
US is exerting
effort to forge new economic agreements to serve the renewed push for the
further liberalization of underdeveloped countries.
The worsening economic and social crisis generates such ultra-reactionary
currents as chauvinism, racism, religious bigotry, sexism and fascism but at
the same time propels such progressive currents of resistance as those arising
from the workers, migrants, youth, women and other oppressed and exploited
classes and sectors.
All major contradictions in the world are steadily heating up. They include
the following: between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and
nations; between the imperialist powers and the countries assertive of
independence; among the imperialist powers; and between capital and labor in
the imperialist countries. Social turmoil is growing in all types of countries
dominated by imperialism. People’s resistance is growing. The revolutionary
trend is emerging.
The people’s war in the
Philippines
is favored by the growing social and political turbulence all over the world.
The wars of aggression and interferences that the US and NATO have carried out
in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and
Africa have far reaching effects insofar as they arouse people’s resistance for
an indefinitely long time and tie down and eat up the personnel and resources
of the imperialist powers, especially the US.
But even while the US and NATO are still bogged down elsewhere, the US has
announced its policy to refocus on the Asia-Pacific region and has made war
provocations and stirred up disputes here in order to lay the ground for
military intervention and aggression. It is conspicuously exerting pressures on
China, making war
provocations on the Democratic People’s
Republic
of
Korea and stirring up troubles in
both Southeast Asia and
Northeast Asia.
The
US is now determined
to entrench itself militarily in the
Philippines. It has whipped up the
territorial disputes of the
Philippines
and other countries with
China
over parts of the
China Sea. It has no
intention of defending the
Philippines
against
China
but is using the territorial dispute in order to establish forward stations and
possibly bases from which to oversee and influence the direction of Chinese
policy and events in its favor.
The US-Aquino regime has the illusion that increasing
US military presence in the
Philippines and the Asia-Pacific region would
serve to protect the rotten ruling system in the
Philippines. But the very military
presence of the
US
can easily rouse the people’s hatred for its military intervention and for
propping up the exploitative and oppressive ruling system.
Not too long ago, the
US
had military bases in the
Philippines
and poured large amounts of economic and military assistance to the Marcos
fascist dictatorship. Despite all these, the revolutionary movement grew in
strength and caused the downfall of Marcos and the eventual removal of the
US military
bases.
The increasing
US
military presence in the East Asia region and in the
Philippines
cannot stop but can only stimulate the growth of people’s war in the
Philippines.
The Filipino people and their revolutionary forces are well aware of the
US imperial overstretch being further strained
by the
US economic crisis
and the many troubles that the
US
has stirred up all over the world.
II. Crisis continues to worsen in the Philippines
The economic and social crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling
system is worsening. The underdevelopment of the economy is deepening.
Unemployment is running high. The workers and peasants are suffering
intolerable conditions of exploitation and poverty. The middle social strata
are being dragged down.
The US-Aquino regime is a fanatical follower of the neoliberal economic
dogma. It has not adopted a single policy to promote national industrialization
and land reform. It is averse to manufacturing in general. It only favors agricultural
programs, tourism and infrastructure projects under auspices of foreign
investors and big compradors. It continues to maintain the economic policy of
dependence on superexploitative foreign investment and the export of cheap
labor, raw materials and semimanufactures. To cover trade deficits and imports
of food and consumer manufactures, the economy has to avail of more foreign
loans at increasingly onerous terms. The foreign debt continues to accumulate.
The regime boasts of an economic growth of 6.6%. This is mere illusion
conjured by speculative money (portfolio funds) coming on top of the
remittances of overseas contract workers and by the growth of conspicuous
luxury consumption rather than by any growth in industrial and agricultural
production. The enterprises most favored by the regime are business call
centers, construction of condominiums and office buildings, and export-oriented
mining, logging and plantations.
Private construction is overdependent on foreign loans and is now overheated
and on the brink of a collapse, reminiscent of 1997. Public
infrastructure-building is likewise dependent on foreign loans and is afflicted
by bureaucratic corruption. Projects previously approved by the Arroyo regime
have been subjected to review and further extortion by the Aquino ruling
clique.
It has increasingly come to light that the Aquino ruling clique is allowing
presidential relatives and cronies to engage in technical smuggling that has
resulted in the loss of at least PhP 58 billion in customs revenues for the
government since 2010. This is now the most exposed type of corruption under
the regime that boasts of being clean and honest; and of treading the righteous
path. People are now reminded of the corruption under the Cory regime and wish
to smash the Aquino mystique that has served as capital for the Aquinos and
Cojuangcos to further benefit their political dynasty and business empire.
The US-Aquino regime has been carrying out an undeclared policy of austerity
in a futile effort to reduce public deficit. It has cut back government funding
for social services (education, health and low-cost housing). It has reduced
public sector employment. It is bent on further privatizing public hospitals.
At the same time, it has increased funding for military personnel and equipment
and such programs as conditional cash transfer, PAMANA, and the like to
complement Oplan Bayanihan and to serve as slush fund for bureaucratic
corruption and electioneering.
The economic and social crisis fuels the political crisis of the ruling
system. The broad masses of the people, especially the toiling masses are in
deep discontent and are indignant over the deteriorating economic and social
conditions. Thus, the people’s war is raging. Strikes and protest
demonstrations are increasing. The rivalry of the political factions of the
exploiting classes is sharpening as they compete for power and spoils.
Despite the attempts of the cousins Eduardo and Jose Cojuangco to harmonize
the Aquino regime and the shadow regime of Vice President Binay, the rivalry of
Mar Roxas and Binay for the presidency is escalating. As a consequence, the
competition of senatorial candidates under the Team PNoy (Liberal Party-led
coalition with the Nationalist People’s Coalition, Nacionalista Party and Laban
ng Demokratikong Pilipino) and the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) of Binay
has sharpened.
The latter is accusing the former of using government facilities and funds
to favor itself. It has also exposed the scheme of the regime to program the
automated electoral system to produce at least an 8-4 or even a 12-0 outcome in
the senatorial elections in favor of the Team PNoy. The scheme is a repeat of
the method which elected Aquino to the presidency through the same foreign
electronic outfit, Smartmatic.
The contest for local executive positions (governors and mayors) is
conspicuously becoming more corrupt and more violent. Local dynasties are
preserving their fiefdoms by using money and armed thugs to beat challengers.
The stakes are big enough to drive rival factions to engage in electoral fraud
and terrorism. They include opportunities for acquiring more power and wealth
by stealing from public funds, favoring one’s own family business, influence
peddling and taking bribes from investors, contractors of infrastructure
projects, all types of smugglers and criminal syndicates engaged in the numbers
game (jueteng) illegal logging or mining, drugs, gambling and prostitution,
kidnapping, carnapping and the like.
Criminal syndicates are either run or protected by officers of the
reactionary armed forces and police. They have different political patrons and
engage in turf wars. The violence is well demonstrated by the Atimonan massacre
in which a group of police who belong to a criminal syndicate ambushed the convoy
of another criminal syndicate, which also included police officers. The
criminal syndicates collaborate with the politicians in a wide range of
lucrative criminal activities.
The Aquino regime is gloating over the fact that it has obtained in
principle and in ample documentation from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front its
capitulation to the
Manila government by
giving up its previous objective of secession. While the regime keeps on
blaring to the press that the final peace agreement shall be signed before
2016, it demands something that the MILF might not be able to accept, the
dismantling of its army prior to any significant social and economic benefits
to the Bangsamoro.
For so long as the Bangsamoro right to self-determination and ancestral
domain is not respected, armed resistance will arise again and again. The
US-Aquino regime cannot be too sure that it will be able to rule the Bangsamoro
and plunder their resources; and that it will have more armed forces available
to fight the armed revolutionary movement of the Filipino people.
Quite unexpected by the Aquino regime, the Sulu sultanate made a dramatic
move to assert its authority and property rights over Sabah under Philippine
sovereignty. The act of the sultanate in sending a small political expedition
to
Sabah has been supported by the Moro
National Liberation Front. Aquino has openly speculated that there is a
conspiracy to upset
Malaysia
and the GPH-MILF peace deal that
Malaysia has directly brokered.
Obsequiously, Aquino has played the role of spokesman for Malaysia and
cheered on its massacre of the group of Tausugs that sailed to Sabah; and has
thus exposed his utter lack of concern for the sovereignty of the Philippines
over Sabah and the welfare of Filipinos (Bajaus, Suluks, Tausugs, Iranons,
Ilocanos, Bisayans, Tagalogs and others) who now comprise the biggest bloc of
the Sabah population. It has come to light that in 1983, the late Benigno S.
Aquino pledged a sell out to
Malaysia
of the Philippine sovereignty over Sabah and that the Cojuangcos have huge
business interests in
Malaysia.
The peace negotiations between the reactionary government and the National
Democratic Front of the
Philippines
have been paralyzed by Aquino and his minions. They have assailed The Hague
Joint Declaration as a “document of perpetual division”. They have also
declared the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) as
inoperative. They have refused to release from prison the JASIG-protected NDFP
consultants and personnel and blocked the NDFP reconstruction of its list of
JASIG-protected consultants, security officers and staff.
They have avoided any discussion on the necessity of addressing the roots of
the armed conflict through basic social, economic and political reforms. At
every turn in every meeting of the negotiating panels and special delegations,
they have demanded directly and in effect the capitulation and pacification of
the people’s revolutionary movement. At all times, the NDFP have rebuffed them.
Aquino has practically killed the peace negotiations.
It is obvious that the Aquino regime is not interested in peace negotiations
to address the roots of the armed conflict and forge agreements on basic
social, economic and political reforms. It is hell bent on waging war and
carrying out the US-instigated Oplan Bayanihan. The Party and the NPA are
therefore alerted and compelled to intensify the tactical offensives nationwide
and carry out the plan to advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic
stalemate.
III. The NPA grows in strength and advances
From Oplan Bantay Laya of the US-Arroyo regime to Oplan Bayanihan of the
US-Aquino regime, the pipe dream of the reactionary state’s highest civil and
military officials has been to reduce to inconsequentiality or irrelevance and
eventually destroy the New People’s Army. They are always frustrated.
Soon after they declare that a whole province or region is
“insurgency-free”, the people’s army launches a tactical offensive to debunk
the false claim and embarrass the liars. Certainly, they cannot proclaim
success at reducing the NPA to irrelevance this year and turn over mopping up
operations to the police, contrary to the presumptuous objective of Oplan
Bayanihan that 2011 to 2013 would be the period for debilitating or defeating
the NPA and 2014 to 2016 would be the period for the police to mop up the
remnants of the NPA.
In fact, the reactionary armed forces, the police and paramilitary units
with varied names (CAFGU, CAA, CVO, IDF, etc.) have always collaborated and
will continue to do so in futile campaigns and operations against the NPA. They
constantly seek comfort from the lie that in the mid-1980s the NPA had 25,000
Red fighters and now has only 4,000. They deny the fact that the NPA had only
6,100 high-powered rifles in 1986.
The NPA continues to accumulate strength in terms of fighting experience and
skills, armed strength and mass base. It has people’s militia units with
personnel in the tens of thousands and self-defense units with personnel in the
hundreds of thousands. It enjoys the inexhaustible support of the people in
their millions. The Second Great Rectification Movement has corrected the major
errors that undermined the revolutionary movement in the entire 1980s until the
early 1990s.
The New People’s Army is indestructible and enjoys the ever support of the
oppressed and exploited Filipino people. It has acquired the critical mass for
accelerating the people’s war to an extent that it can shake the ruling system
from ground to rafters. At various levels of command, it has strike forces
capable of wiping out enemy units and waging battles while other NPA units
carry out mass work, production and other kinds of work for the benefit of the
people.
The NPA is led by the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the Communist
Party of the
Philippines,
which sets the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted
people’s war. This line serves the national and democratic rights and interests
of the Filipino people, especially the toiling masses of workers and peasants,
and carries forward the revolutionary cause of fighting for national liberation
and democracy against the exploitative and oppressive semicolonial and
semifeudal ruling system of big compradors and landlords that are servile to the
US
imperialists.
The NPA is the instrument of the people for overthrowing the reactionary
ruling system and for establishing the people’s democratic government. On the
other hand, the reactionary armed forces, the police and the paramilitary are
hated by the people because they serve the interests of exploiters and
oppressors, the US and local exploiting classes.
The people see through the pretenses of Oplan Bayanihan, which tries to
masquerade as a plan for so-called community organizing for peace and development.
Its psywar operations are meant to obscure the basic problems of the people,
vilify the revolutionary forces, disinform and sow intrigue among the people,
and gather intelligence for intimidating and attacking the people.
The counterrevolutionary character of the state and its coercive forces is
thoroughly exposed. The reactionary armed forces, police and paramilitary
violently oppose the people’s demand for national industrialization and land
reform as the main content of the democratic revolution. They have a brutal
antipeople character and are prone to commit a wide range of human rights
violations, including murder, rape, kidnapping, illegal detention, forced
evacuation, torture and grabbing what the people own.
The NPA carries out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis
of an ever widening and deepening mass base. It integrates its revolutionary
armed struggle with revolutionary land reform and mass base building. It has a
clear strategy and tactics of people’s war and conducts politico-military
training in order to gain the necessary revolutionary knowledge and fighting
skills. But most importantly, it carries out agrarian revolution in stages and
builds the mass base.
Despite all their braggadocio, the enemy regime and its armed forces can
concentrate on, and control only, limited parts of the Philippine territory at
every given time. It is still true that at the strategic level the reactionary
armed forces have several times more armed strength than the people’s army but
at the tactical level the NPA can launch offensives to annihilate enemy units
and accumulate victories to change the balance of forces.
The NPA has more than 110 guerrilla fronts throughout the archipelago. Each
of these has a center of gravity in order to secure the leadership, ensure
command and organize an ever-ready strike force for attacking the enemy. At the
same time, there are relatively dispersed local NPA units coordinating with the
local organs of political power, the mass organizations, the people’s militia
and self-defense units and ensuring that mass work is being done and the mass
base is being expanded and consolidated while undertaking tactical offensives
within their capability. For delivering head blows to the enemy in urban areas,
the NPA employs commando teams and armed city partisans.
The Party leads the operational command of the NPA at every territorial
level (guerrilla front, interfront or subregional, regional and national level)
and likewise of every unit formation (squad, platoon, company and so on). The
Party is above as well as inside every command level and every unit of the NPA.
Every squad has a Party group and every platoon has a Party branch. The unit
commander and the political officer exercise co-leadership of the unit and are
responsible for command and administration; and political matters,
respectively.
All the NPA territorial commands are the sources of planning and initiative
within their respective scope in launching offensives against the Oplan
Bayanihan scheme of unleashing eight to 12 battalions against three principal
target areas and six to ten battalions against secondary objectives. The enemy
forces tend to stay for six months or longer in areas of concentration. But
intensified NPA offensives elsewhere can force them to shift their area of
concentration.
Every guerrilla front under attack can use the rough terrain and the big
gaps in enemy deployment to maneuver and launch tactical offensives against the
weakest points of the enemy. At the regional and interfront or subregional
levels, the command can deploy units to attack the weak points of the enemy
forces encircling any guerrilla front or intensify attacks on the enemy in
other guerrilla fronts or areas where the enemy is weak.
When all or most guerrilla fronts of a whole region are under enemy attack,
coordination and cooperation with adjacent regions become even more important
for intensifying coordinated tactical offensives, better use of border and
other accessible areas for maneuver and other needs of guerrilla forces, and
joint efforts in propaganda and political campaigns. Direct link and regular
joint assessment and planning between adjacent regional NPA commands can
strengthen exchanges of information and experiences, foster mutual help in
training, logistics and other needs, and speed up the development of guerrilla
fronts in border areas.
To help regions under heavy enemy attack, the NPA national operational
command can also direct the intensification of tactical offensives in other
regions and find ways of extending more direct assistance to them. It can also
take the initiative of directing nationally coordinated offensives in a
concerted effort to accelerate the accumulation of more arms and the building
of new NPA units, put in disarray the enemy plans, inspire the open democratic
mass movement, further expose the rotten system and weaken the enemy.
The NPA forces in various regions in Mindanao, in
Negros
and in Samar-Leyte have come under concentrated enemy attacks. But they have
become stronger as a result of fighting the enemy. They have excelled at
seizing initiatives and inflicting casualties and material damage on, and
seizing arms from, enemy forces. Regions such as Southern Tagalog, Bicol,
Ilocos-Cordillera and other regions are now targets of escalating enemy
attacks. They can learn from the regions where the NPA has not been weakened
but strengthened by repelling enemy attacks and seizing every opportunity for
launching offensives.
The armed struggle in a few regions has at various times declined from their
peaks of revolutionary struggle at various periods in the past. But it is
steadily being reinvigorated as the revolutionary forces there learn lessons
and are assisted with cadres and weapons from other regions through the Party
Central Committee. The regional Party cadres and NPA commanders concerned look
back to their previous victories and major contributions to the people’s
democratic revolution. They are determined to overcome previous errors and
shortcomings and are enthusiastic to develop the revolutionary forces, expand
the mass base and fulfill the plan to advance from the strategic defensive to
the strategic stalemate.
Advancing wave upon wave from existing guerrilla fronts is still the
principal method for increasing the guerrilla fronts. It is wrong to fragment
the existing armed strength and dissolve or weaken the center of gravity in any
regional or subregional level of command. There has to be a center from which
to coordinate and direct the existing forces in the region and to deploy the
strike forces against the enemy. Time and again, experience has shown that
dividing the NPA armed strength into small units and dispersing them to cover
too many congressional districts only leads to passivity, conservatism and an
even slower rate of expansion and growth.
The Party can deploy cadres and mass activists to prepare guerrilla zones in
new areas through Party building and mass organizing. If the line of the Party
is correct, a unit of the people’s army arises where there is none either
because the local Party members and mass activists are determined to form the
NPA from their ranks or welcome the introduction of NPA seed elements from
elsewhere in the district, province or region.
The NPA has been able to strengthen itself and weaken the enemy by launching
tactical offensives of annihilation and seizing arms from the enemy.
Ambuscades, raids and arrest operations have been conducted. Enemy weak points
include isolated elements or small detachments of the reactionary armed forces,
local police stations, paramilitary units and private security forces of
private enterprises.
At the same time, attritive actions against the enemy have been undertaken
to inflict casualties, destroy facilities and effect demoralization in enemy
ranks. They involve sniping, land mines, grenade attacks and use of
inflammables; the destruction of facilities; and the sabotage of military and
military-related facilities. The capture of enemy armories, the destruction of
enemy vehicles and the interdiction of supply lines and depots are prime NPA
objectives.
Mining, plantation and logging enterprises owned by foreign and big
comprador firms have been successfully attacked in various parts of the
country, with the revolutionary forces of
Mindanao
undertaking the biggest actions and showing the way to other NPA commands
nationwide. Such enterprises are legitimate targets because they extract and
bring out superprofits, export raw materials and undermine national economic
development, ruin the environment, destroy agriculture and lessen the land
available for land reform and frustrate the people’s aspiration for national
industrialization and land reform.
The NPA has arrested and taken criminals and local tyrants to account for
their crimes before the people’s court. Punishing those found guilty and
stopping criminality have been an effective way for the NPA to assert people’s
democratic power. It is the effective way to do away with the worst
counter-revolutionary elements and to strengthen Red political power in the
guerrilla fronts. The worst counterrevolutionary enemy units and elements that
are based in urban areas and that engage in physical assaults against the
people and progressive forces are subject to punitive operations by NPA
commandos and armed city partisans.
To make the NPA an effective fighting force, the NPA command at various
levels develop personnel for departments or staffs in charge of planning,
recruitment and politico-military training, intelligence and reconnaissance,
logistics, medical services, production, cultural work and other major
functions. The Party pays close attention to these functions in connection with
the intensification of tactical offensives and the plan to advance from the
strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate.
The broad masses of the people cherish and support the NPA Red commanders
and fighters because they do not only fight the people’s enemies but they also
engage in work that help the people in their daily lives and involve close
relations with them. They engage in propaganda and agitation, encourage mass
organizing and campaigns of various types, extend medical services, stage
cultural performances, undertake production for the people’s army and the
families of Red fighters and martyrs and carry out relief work in times of disaster.
The organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers,
peasants, women, youth and cultural activists constitute the solid
revolutionary mass base. Under the leadership of the Party within the NPA units
and in the locality, they have expanded and consolidated themselves and they
have carried out campaigns for land reform and other purposes for the social
benefit of the people.
They pursue the antifeudal united front in order to gain the broad support
of the people in the rural areas. This involves relying mainly on the poor
peasants and farm workers, winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the
rich peasants and taking advantage of the contradictions between the
enlightened landlords and the despotic landlords in order to isolate the
despotic landlords and destroy their power. The antifeudal united front is at
the base of the national united front against
US imperialism and the local
exploiting classes. It has resulted in a powerful mass movement in the rural
areas and is a crucial part of the national democratic mass movement.
Under the leadership of the Party, the NPA has been able to inspire the
formation of various types of mass organizations and to generate the
rural-based mass movement along the line of the antifeudal united front. It
enjoys the wide and deepgoing participation and support of the people in the
process of armed revolution. It is therefore confident of winning greater
victories and advancing in the people’s war until the total victory of the new
democratic revolution.
IV. Fighting tasks of the New People’s Army
The NPA is fighting for the just cause of national liberation and democracy,
while the enemy seeks to preserve the oppressive and exploitative system. It
can therefore take full advantage of the support of the people, especially the
workers and peasants. It can maneuver easily in more than 90% of the country,
while the enemy can concentrate only in limited parts of the country.
The NPA is invincible as long as it fights for the Filipino people and is
led by the Communist Party of the
Philippines. It combines
revolutionary armed struggle with agrarian revolution and building the mass
base. Though the enemy is superior in the number of trained troops and military
equipment at the strategic level, the NPA is superior at the tactical level by
seizing the initiative and intensifying the offensives.
The New People’s Army must continuously seize the initiative and intensify
the tactical offensives in order to defeat Oplan Bayanihan of the US-Aquino
regime and to realize the revolutionary plan to advance from the strategic
defensive to the strategic stalemate. The various levels of command must have
strike forces for wiping out enemy units, seizing arms and inspiring the
Filipino people to fight against the rotten ruling system.
*1. Carry forward the people’s democratic revolution through protracted
people’s war!
The NPA must grasp the general line and carry forward the people’s
democratic revolution. It must be conscious that it is waging the people’s
democratic revolution in order to overthrow the semicolonial and semifeudal
ruling system of big compradors and landlords servile to
US imperialism.
The only way for the NPA to overthrow the ruling system is to pursue the
strategic line of protracted people’s war.
This entails the NPA encircling the cities from the countryside, making the
enemy bleed from many wounds and accumulating military strength until it gains
the capability of seizing the cities nationwide. The countryside offers the NPA
ground for maneuver and the advantages of launching offensives and developing
strength in stages against a militarily superior enemy.
Within the current stage of strategic defensive, we are determined to build
and strengthen several guerrilla theaters in every region in accordance with
the operational art of people’s war in order to raise the level of armed
struggle nationwide. In building guerrila theaters, we aim to bring together
the power of three to four guerrila fronts that can reach brigade strength with
2-3 platoons or undersize companies as centers of gravity amidst company
strength local guerrillas forces per front complemented by squad to platoon
size militia units in several hundred barrios. With raised level of strength,
planning, coordination and maneuverability of the NPA, it can wage rapid
tactical offensives to change the balance of forces and advance towards a
higher stage of the people’s war.
The NPA must pursue the general line by following the leadership of the
Party, carrying out mass work, undertaking politico-military training and
actually seizing the initiative and intensifying the tactical offensives.
2. Fight the US-Aquino regime and defeat Oplan Bayanihan!
The NPA must fight the US-directed Aquino regime as the enemy. This regime
is now the chief representative of the exploiting classes of big compradors and
landlords. It is a brutal defender of the ruling system and rabid running dog
of
US
imperialism.
The NPA must defeat Oplan Bayanihan. This enemy plan involves both brutal
campaigns of suppression and campaigns of deception and intelligence gathering.
It concentrates forces on selected regions and guerrilla fronts in order to
encircle the NPA forces by deploying combat, psywar and intelligence units in
these target areas. The NPA must combat all these enemy units as armed units
even when these pretend to be noncombatants but are nonetheless armed as they
pursue the objectives of Oplan Bayanihan.
The way to defeat the enemy forces is for the NPA forces in guerrilla fronts
and regions to avail of the wide gaps between enemy units and wipe out the
enemy units that they can wipe out. At the same time, the NPA forces elsewhere
can seize the initiative in launching tactical offensives upon the direction of
the commands at the guerrilla front, interfront or subregional, regional and
national levels of the NPA.
The US-Aquino regime and its Oplan Bayanihan must be exposed and isolated in
order to weaken and ultimately defeat them. Tit-for-tat propaganda struggle
must be waged at all levels to combat the regime’s deception and lay bare its
anti-people schemes and crimes. The economic and political struggles of the
masses and progressive forces must be invigorated and expanded in direct and
indirect coordination with the armed struggle.
3. Intensify the tactical offensives to seize more arms and create
more NPA units!
The NPA must field strike forces to intensify the tactical offensives in
order to seize more arms and create more NPA units. The strike forces must
carry out ambushes, raids and other disarming operations at an accelerated rate
and with short rest periods. They must wage only the battles that they are
capable of winning. They must target the stationary and moving weak points of
the enemy.
The enemy weak points include the small army detachments, police units,
paramilitary units and private security guards. Large enemy camps and fortified
positions are not at all awesome because these are vulnerable to various forms
of attack. Enemy units emerge from them to conduct patrols, run supply errands
and perform other functions, thus exposing their vulnerability.
The NPA must exercise flexibility in using a wide range of tactics to induce
or lure in enemy forces and turn them into supply and transport officers
unwittingly delivering arms to the NPA. Incidents of harassment of enemy units
or punishment of enemy elements can draw reinforcements and investigating
units, which can be ambushed while on their way. Successful NPA offensives or
feints can also draw enemy forces to one area but can allow the NPA units to
ambush the enemy rescue or reaction units or to launch offensives against more
vulnerable enemy points elsewhere.
While annihilation of enemy units is the main NPA tactic, attritive
operations to inflict serious damage on the enemy must also be undertaken by
deploying teams to lay mines on the path of enemy units, to snipe at them,
assault them with grenades or mortar fire; and by attacking enemy supply lines,
depots, motor pools, fuel stocks and the like. Such operations done widely and
frequently seriously damage not only the material resources but also, and more
importantly, the morale of enemy personnel.
Upon the intensification of the people’s war, the NPA territorial commands
must attend to the need for planning, recruitment, politico-military training,
intelligence and reconnaissance, combat operations, logistics, medical service,
production, cultural work and other necessary services.
While combat is the main function that distinguishes the NPA from other mass
formations, it must carry out functions that can make it an even more effective
fighting force. The Red fighters must take turns at engaging in
politico-military training, mass work, production, tax enforcement, cultural
work, production, and disaster relief and rehabilitation work. Recruitment
campaigns and the expansion and development of the people’s militia must be
constantly looked after to ensure that there are sufficient recruits for
forming new units and replacing losses.
4. Carry out agrarian revolution and dismantle enterprises that grab
and ruin the land!
The NPA must ensure that the minimum land reform program is carried out as
the first step in the agrarian revolution. It involves land rent reduction,
elimination of usury, raising wages of farm workers, fair prices at the farm
gate and promotion of agricultural and sideline occupation through rudimentary
forms of cooperation. The NPA must also engage in production to support itself
and assist in providing for the needs of families of Red fighters and martyrs.
Maximum land reform, essentially the free distribution of land to the
tillers, becomes practicable upon the success in widescale implementation of
the minimum land reform program. It also encompasses the restitution of land
previously grabbed from the peasants, the distribution of idle land, the
dismantling of landlord power and control over the land and the break up of
plantations owned and operated by foreign agricorporations and big comprador
landlords for the production of bio-fuels and fruit and other crops for export.
The NPA must break up the aforesaid export-oriented plantations in order to
make land available for land reform for the benefit of farm workers and other
landless tillers. It must also break up the export-oriented logging and mining
enterprises because they ruin the environment, cause soil erosion and floods,
poison the rivers and streams, damage agriculture and prejudice national
industrial development.
5. Expand and consolidate the mass base by building and activating
the organs of political power and mass organizations!
The NPA mass base must always be expanded and consolidated by building and
activating the organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers,
peasants, youth, women, children, cultural activists and others. Mass campaigns
for land reform, mass education, production, health and sanitation, cultural
work and settlement of disputes must be carried out.
The revolutionary organs of political power must supplant the councils
established by the reactionary government, unless it is necessary for reasons
of united front tactics, security, and other considerations to keep said
councils. They must be established at the level of the barangays and at higher
levels where possible. The mass organizations must support the organs of
political power under the direction of the Party.
Consolidation of the mass base spells the difference between the guerrilla
base and guerrilla zones. It produces the competent cadres for helping the
guerrilla zones elsewhere to rise to the level of guerrilla bases and to link
up the guerrilla fronts in the process of building eventually the relatively
stable areas.
Suppression of criminal elements and enforcement of revolutionary justice
are essential to the consolidation of the mass base and the strengthening of
revolutionary political power. Upon the instruction of the pertinent NPA
authority or the people’s authority in charge of prosecution, the NPA must
arrest for trial and prosecution and judgment by the people’s court persons
liable for serious crimes against the people. Complaints shall be received and
investigated by the people’s army or people’s militia for submission to the
people’s prosecutors.
Suspects are encouraged to surrender themselves peaceably for investigation.
The NPA unit assigned to arrest a suspect is prepared to counter armed
resistance, especially if the suspect is armed and dangerous, protected by
bodyguards, is actively engaged in armed counterrevolution or makes any show of
armed resistance.
As a law enforcement agency, the NPA is bound by the laws, rules and
regulations under the criminal justice system of the people’s democratic
government, by the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and
International Humanitarian Law and by the international instruments of human
rights and international humanitarian law. The organs for the arrest,
investigation, prosecution and trial by jury of suspects are differentiated and
well defined. Suspects have the right to legal counsel, subject to security
precautions.
*6. Provide politico-military training to the Red commanders and fighters
and to the reserves and auxiliaries!
The NPA must provide politico-military training for Red commanders and
fighters at the level of the existing formations and in the process of building
a higher formation. The political part of the course should involve Party and
mass education and the military side should involve the further development of
command, communications, coordination and combat technique and tactics.
The Party and the NPA instructors must also provide basic politico-military
training to the people’s militia for the purpose of police or internal security
work and for coordinating with NPA units in cases of joint offensive
operations. The mass organizations must be instructed and provided with a
simple manual for the purpose of providing politico-military training to
self-defense units of the mass organizations.
The effective functioning of the people’s militia and self-defense units
assure the NPA of well-motivated reserves and immediate support; and allows it
to have more time for combat as well as for mass work in new areas. The NPA
should not be tied down by police work where the people’s militia can be
established and administered by the organs of political power and led by the
local Party branch.
7. Strengthen Party leadership and political work within the NPA!
The NPA cannot fight well, expand and grow strong without correct, vigorous
and militant Party leadership and political work within. The NPA must steadily
be supplied with select and proven young cadres and activists from the worker,
student and peasant movements so that there are enough quality commanders and
cadres at the core of the NPA. Party committees, branches and groups must be
established, strengthened and consolidated.
The Party within the NPA makes sure that ideological and political education
among the officers and fighters is well taken care of, that tasking is correct
and clear and effectively mobilizes all available personnel, and that timely
check-ups and assessments and criticism and self-criticism are conducted.
Vigorous political work within the NPA should raise political awareness and
fighting will, strengthen unity between the people’s army and the masses and
between the officers and fighters, and foster democracy in the three fields.
Commandism, bureaucratism and other harmful feudal and bourgeois influences
and practices must be combatted promptly and tirelessly. Passivity, complacency
and lack of discipline must not be allowed to take hold and wreck havoc on the
morale and fighting will of the guerrilla units.
8.Advance wave upon wave from existing guerrilla fronts to create
new guerrilla fronts!
In the plan to advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic
stalemate, the NPA must advance wave upon wave from the existing guerrilla
fronts. It must not fragment its armed strength just to cover all the rural
congressional districts immediately. It must take into account the need for
having a center of gravity, for countering enemy attacks and for avoiding the
unnecessary overstretch of NPA armed strength.
The basis for establishing a new guerrilla front can be laid by the Party
and the mass organizations running ahead of NPA units. The Party goes ahead in
expanding the mass organizations to the rural areas and doing social
investigation. Subsequently, a team of seed cadres or an initial squad unit
from the NPA is deployed to the new area.
The middle and advanced phases of the strategic defensive must be developed
through successful tactical offensives, the creation of more fighting units,
expansion of mass work, and establishment of new guerrilla fronts.
Consequently, the NPA can move closer to the threshold of the strategic
stalemate.
9. Strengthen the antifeudal united front at the base of the
national united front!
In carrying out the people’s war, the NPA pursues the antifeudal united
front, with the Party relying mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers,
winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the rich peasants and taking
advantage of the contradictions between the enlightened landlords and the
despotic landlords in order to isolate the despotic landlords and destroy their
power. The antifeudal united front is at the base of the national united front.
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines integrates the basic
worker-peasant alliance, the progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the
urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of the progressive forces and
the middle bourgeoisie; and the temporary and unstable alliance with certain
sections of the reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords for the
purpose of isolating the worst among the reactionaries, which acts as the most
rabid running dog of US imperialism. The US-Aquino ruling clique is now the
enemy of the people and main target of this broad united front.
10. Further gain the solidarity and support of compatriots and
friendly forces and peoples abroad!
The NPA must further gain the solidarity and support of the more than 10% of
the Filipino people who now work and reside abroad as a consequence of the
underdevelopment and impoverishment of the country. It can do so by persevering
in and advancing the general line of the people’s struggle for national
liberation and democracy and developing ever closer relations with the families
and communities left behind by our overseas compatriots.
The NPA must also gain further the solidarity and support of all friendly
forces and peoples abroad. It can do so by availing of the international work
of the Party, the NDFP and various Filipino mass organizations abroad. Such
forces can and must inform the people of the world, the working class parties
and the movements for national liberation, democracy and socialism about the
NPA’s role in the struggle for national liberation and democracy and seek
international solidarity and moral and material support for the NPA and the
Filipino people.
Long live the New People’s Army!
Carry out the people’s democratic revolution!
Defeat the US-Aquino regime and its Oplan Bayanihan!
Advance the protracted people’s war from the strategic defensive to the
strategic stalemate!
Long live the Filipino people!
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20130329_intensify-tactical-offensives-nationwide-win-ever-greater-victories-in-our-people-s-war
