Volume 6, No. 8, August 2005

Let us celebrate the 36th anniversary of the establishment of the New People’s Army under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Let us rejoice over the accumulated and recent victories of the New People’s Army as the main fighting force of the Filipino people in the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

The crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system is daily worsening. It is unleashing the worst forms of plunder and terror. It is inflicting on the people the most intolerable forms of suffering. At the same time, the ever-deteriorating crisis conditions are favorable for waging armed revolution.

The people have no choice but to wage armed revolution for their national and social liberation. They wish to fight and defeat the escalating campaigns of suppression, the bombardments, the burning and looting, the kidnapping and torture, the assassinations and massacres and the forced mass evacuations. All these are aimed at pacifying the people and preserving the system of oppression and exploitation.

The Party and the people therefore urge the Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army to understand the situation, renew their fighting resolve, intensify the revolutionary armed struggle and carry out all their revolutionary tasks. Let us raise the people’s war to a new and higher level.

The imperialist countries themselves are reeling from the crisis. All of them have extremely low rates of growth. These show a state of negative growth, stagnation and depression if we consider the continuing overvaluation of assets and costs in the service sector. The high rate of mass unemployment, cutback of social benefits and termination of hard-won rights are consigning a large part of the workers, women, youth and children to the impoverished conditions of the third world.

No less than the No. 1 imperialist power, the United States, is in the throes of a severe economic, financial and social crisis. It is afflicted by huge budgetary and trade deficits and thus by a crushing debt burden. The growing debt service is taking a large chunk of the budget. Combined with tax cuts for the monopoly bourgeoisie and military expenditures for war production contracts, wars of aggression and military intervention, it has diminished the amount available for social spending on education, health, housing and so on. Moreover, the Bush regime is resorting to every trick in seeking to privatize the social security system.

Despite all its advantages as sole superpower, as No.1 imperialist power in terms of economic and politico-military dominance, the US is in serious economic trouble. It has borrowed foreign money to sustain consumerism and militarism, especially the production of high-tech military weaponry. Its edge in high-tech consumer goods over other imperialist countries has been blunted by global overproduction. It is increasingly confronted with the competition of its imperialist allies and the widespread devastation of markets, especially in the third world countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and the retrogressive countries in the former Soviet bloc.

The Bush regime is stubbornly combining several kinds of policies. It is keeping the neoliberal policy of giving huge tax cuts and "free market" privileges to the monopoly bourgeoisie, pressing down the incomes of the workers and cutting back social spending. It is adding to neoliberal policy the military Keynesian policy of stepping up military production supposedly to stimulate the economy. Further, it is carrying out the neoconservative policy of using the sole superpower position of the US, its economic, political and high-tech military supremacy, to put down any challenge or potential rival, expand economic territory and make the 21st century a new century of Pax Americana.

With utmost brutality, the US has aggressively imposed its imperialist power on several countries. It is using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for whipping war hysteria and spreading state terrorism and fascism on a global scale. It has wantonly engaged in acts of military intervention and wars of aggression since the last decade. It is expanding its sources of raw materials and cheap labor, its potential market, its field of investments, spheres of influence and strategic vantage points.

But in the process the US is overreaching and overextending itself. It is now caught in a quagmire in Iraq. The broad resistance of the Iraqi people is resolutely fighting the US occupation and the puppets and is avenging the massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians. It is inflicting more and more casualties on US military and adjunct personnel and, by frequent blowing up of oil facilities and pipelines, is deliberately making the US occupation unprofitable. The Iraqi people are outstanding in their heroic struggle for having already killed in only two year’s time more than 1500 US troops, wounded more than 11,000 and caused the medical evacuation of another 14,000.

The US is increasingly becoming entangled in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. In these areas the US and its puppet states are resisted by the oppressed peoples and nations and will be increasingly at variance and at odds with France, Germany, Russia and China. In seeking to secure strategic control over major sources and supply routes of industrial fuel, the US is generating more and more social and political turmoil and is exposing the limits of its power to the peoples of the world.

At the moment, the US and other imperialist powers are escalating the oppression and exploitation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The peoples are therefore intensifying their mass protests and armed movements for national liberation. Some countries assert national independence against the plundering and aggressive policies of imperialism. Thus, the US has launched wars of aggression or made threats against them for refusing to comply with US demands.

The imperialist powers are finding themselves in contradiction over economic, financial, security and other issues and are tending to struggle for a redivision of the world. Under conditions of increasing disorder and turmoil in the entire world, the proletariat and other working people in the imperialist countries are driven to defend and fight for their rights and interest and thus they can rebuild and reinvigorate the anti-imperialist movements for democracy and socialism.

The crisis of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal ruling system of big compradors and landlords is worsening and plunging the country to new levels of social misery and degradation. This is due to the internal rottenness and weaknesses of the backward system, aggravated by the accelerated process of plunder under the piratical banner of "free market" globalization.

The Philippine ruling system is a neocolonial adjunct of US imperialism and global capitalism. Under the policy of "free market" globalization, the US imperialists and their most rabid Filipino puppets in power have negated the national sovereignty of the Filipino people and their aspirations for national industrialization, genuine land reform and all-round development.

They have subjected the semi feudal economy to de-nationalization, privatization, liberalization and deregulation. These are all aimed at preventing national industrialization and destroying any well-based basic industry. The manufacturing and agricultural sectors have been declining. The service sector is ever growing in proportion but it subsumes imported equipment, mere consumption and disguised unemployment.

The economy has become far more dependent than ever before on the production of raw materials for export as well as on the slight processing of imported components for re-export. The world prices of these products tend to fall far below the prices of imported manufactures and are more vulnerable to the ever worsening crisis of overproduction. The crisis of overproduction in raw materials (sugar, coconut, copper concentrates and the like) has long afflicted the economy since the late 1970s. Likewise a similar crisis in semi-manufactures (mainly semiconductors and garments) has beset the economy since the 1990s.

The foreign debt and the debt service payments are mounting. The total public sector debt has surpassed the level of PhP 6 trillion. Last year the reactionary government spent 81 per cent of its revenues to pay both interest and principal amortization. Based on data submitted to the reactionary Congress, more than 90 per cent of revenues is projected to pay the debt service in 2005.

The reactionary government is bankrupt. And it is sinking deeper. What is left of the budget after the gargantuan amount gobbled up by debt service payments is feasted upon by high-level bureaucratic corruption at every branch, department and agency of the government and by the coercive apparatuses such as the military, police and intelligence agencies. Funds actually spent for education, health and other social services continue to dwindle. And the people are now being made to pay higher prices for these services.

The Arroyo regime is deeply worried about the worsening crisis and about the rising wave of social discontent and popular resistance. But it still tries to hide the truth by claiming that the gross domestic product grew by an unbelievably high rate of 6.1 per cent for 2004. This figure covers the low-value added semi-conductor re-exports, false estimates of agricultural production, call centers, electoral spending and all kinds of fictional accounts in the service sector.

Instead of calling and opting for industrial development, genuine land reform and job generation, the regime has chosen to take advantage of the Bush call for a "war on terror". It has taken the fascist path and is frenziedly pushing an Anti-Terrorism Act that would give license to state terrorism and bring back the horrors of the Marcos fascist regime. It supports the escalation of US military intervention in the Philippines and in turn expects that this would protect it from the wrath of the people.

Within this context, the regime has collaborated with the US to sabotage the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations by designating the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant as "terrorists" and by making the arrogant but futile demand for the revolutionary forces to capitulate by signing a "final peace accord" or a "ceasefire agreement" that the US, the puppet regime and the clerico-fascists have drafted.

The Arroyo regime has directed the puppet military, police and paramilitary forces to escalate campaigns of suppression. These include the bombing of communities, the kidnapping, torture and murder of suspected revolutionaries, massacre of civilians and forced evacuation of people in the rural areas. And even in urban areas, the enemy forces are violently disrupting peaceful strikes and rallies and massacring the strikers and rallyists as in Hacienda Luisita and assassinating known leaders and members of legal democratic organizations, including journalists, human rights activists, religious and church people, and activists of progressive political parties.

The escalating counter-revolutionary violence against the people serves the flagrant violation of workers’ rights, the mass layoffs, the privatization of public assets, the auctioning of the national patrimony, the alienation of ancestral domain of national minorities and natural resources to foreign monopolies and the accelerated reclassification ("conversion") of land to nullify the certificates of land ownership amortization (CLOA) and the certificates of land transfer (CLT) previously issued by the reactionary government to deceive the peasant masses.

The Arroyo regime wants to cow and make the people retreat. In this regard, it overestimates the capacity of its military, police and paramilitary forces to intimidate the people and suppress their resistance. It also overestimates the capacity of US imperialism to come to its aid. It conveniently forgets that the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the Estrada regime underestimated the capacity of people’s resistance and the broad united front of opposition forces to overthrow a detested regime, no matter how arrogant and brutal.

A broad united front that includes the anti-Arroyo reactionary forces is possible and is quite potent as was a similar broad united front in the overthrow of Marcos and Estrada. It can adopt and implement agreements and measures to mobilize the masses, encourage the military and police to abandon the regime, keep the military and police officers from usurping political power and make way for a council of patriotic and democratic forces to assume governmental authority.

However much delayed is the realization of a broad united front effective enough to overthrow the Arroyo regime, the revolutionary forces of the people can continue to strengthen the forces of the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie for a new democratic revolution. Their intolerable situation and suffering make them eager for revolutionary change.

Under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army has grown in strength in the course of the people’s struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

Since the launching of the Second Great Rectification Movement (SGRM) in 1992, the NPA has integrated revolutionary armed struggle with genuine land reform and rebuilding the mass base more conscientiously than ever before. It has sought to conduct extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. For the purpose, it has reoriented and redeployed units of the people’s army to enable them to do painstaking and solid mass organizing.

In all the regions where the NPA is operating, except the national capital region, there are several guerrilla fronts. A certain number of guerrilla fronts have a sum total of armed strength amounting to a company and another number have less than a company. Every guerrilla front has a relatively concentrated unit that serves as the center of gravity and other units that are relatively dispersed for wider mass work.

Following the resounding success of the Second Great Rectification Movement, the Eleventh Plenum of the Party Central Committee promulgated the 3-year program for building the Party, the people’s army and the united front. Under the program, the NPA has carried forward the victories of the rectification movement.

The NPA has significantly increased the number of its full-time Red fighters and its automatic rifles and other high-powered weapons. It has organized and trained the people’s militia for police work or internal security in the localities and the self-defense in the mass organizations. It is now operating in more than 130 guerrilla fronts covering significant portions of nearly 70 provinces, in around 800 municipalities and more than 9,000 barrios.

In mass work and mass base building, it has built the organs of political power (the appointive barrio organizing committees and the elective barrio revolutionary committees, the organizing groups and committees and full-fledged mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, cultural activists and women and the working committees to assist the organs of political power).

These committees are for mass organizing, education, land reform, production, health, defense, arbitration and cultural activities. They carry out the functions of government on a daily basis and mobilize the people in related campaigns. They carry out land reform as the principal campaign for realizing the main content of the democratic revolution.

The Party has led the NPA in carrying out its tasks successfully. The Party and the NPA are united in upholding the revolutionary cause and serving the people. The proletarian revolutionaries, Red commanders and fighters are united within and outside the command structure and units of the NPA. They work together to build the Party branches in localities and Party groups in mass organizations. For a while, in areas of expansion, the Party in the NPA looks after the Party in the localities but eventually the regular territorial organization of the Party develops.

The NPA has continued to criticize the various major kinds of "Left" opportunism repudiated by the SGRM. These include the impetuous and adventurist notion of the "strategic counteroffensive" as the third phase of the strategic defensive and the so-called Red Area-White Area line of making urban insurrectionism the leading factor, to be propelled supposedly by the spontaneous masses and armed city partisans and assisted by prematurely regularized and unsustainably enlarged vertical formations of the people’s army.

The Red commanders and fighters also criticize and combat the Right opportunist and reformist trends of thought generated by imperialism and local reaction, modern revisionism, social democracy, open bourgeois liberalism and imperialist-funded nongovernmental organizations which harp on the slogans of "civil society" and the "culture of nonviolence" to oppose the armed revolution but support the violence of imperialism and the puppet state.

The NPA combats the latest manifestations of the purely military viewpoint as well as reformism. Even as the NPA is a healthy and vigorous revolutionary force, the Red commanders and fighters continuously conduct assessments and evaluations, criticism and self-criticism in order to improve the result of their work and their work style. They strive to solve the problems that come with the rising demands of the struggle and the escalating assaults of the enemy.

They are intimately linked with the toiling masses. They have expanded and consolidated a mass base that supports the intensification of the tactical offensives against the enemy. From their accumulated victories the revolutionary forces and the broad masses of the people are able to intensify the rural-based armed revolution and the legal democratic movement as the ruling system continues to deteriorate.

The Arroyo regime harbors the illusion that with the escalation of state terrorism and US military intervention under the pretext of anti-terrorism it can contain or destroy the revolutionary movement. It is recycling the old slogan of "total war" with the synonymous expression "strategy of holistic approach" and the old national campaign plan "Oplan Lambat Bitag" with "Oplan Bantay Laya".

The enemy armed forces continuously seek to make their strategic offensive more effective against the strategic defensive of the people. They concentrate task forces of the military, police and paramilitary on certain selected or prioritized areas to clear and hold and secure a perimeter for encircling and suppressing the people’s army. They seek to compel the NPA to fight on interior lines relative to the perimeter. At the same time, they deploy special operation teams, ranger teams and paramilitary forces within the perimeter for extended periods of no less than six months in order to conduct psywar, intelligence and combat or search-and-destroy operations.

In practice, the enemy forces can concentrate only on portions of a few guerrilla fronts at every given time. They can launch campaigns of encirclement and suppression against ten or more guerrilla fronts at the same time. But beyond the scope of the enemy are over a hundred more guerrilla fronts and these are free to expand and consolidate their strength. From these guerrilla fronts, the NPA can also launch tactical offensives in order to support directly or indirectly the NPA units under attack in other guerrilla fronts.

At no instance has the NPA been completely driven out of any guerrilla front under enemy attack. NPA units can still maneuver and fight or evade superior enemy action within the same guerrilla front. They can move in appropriate sizes in and out of enemy encirclements and deliver surprise lethal blows. There are also portions of the guerrilla front that the enemy simply cannot cover and dominate. From these the NPA can launch tactical offensives against the enemy on exterior lines and can expand to new areas.

Every day the NPA can inflict a thousand cuts on the enemy and make him bleed from a thousand wounds. It can launch tactical offensives by using small units, from teams of three to five fighters, to squads and platoons. These are still the most effective units for penetrating the defenses of the enemy forces as well as striking at them on exterior lines in order to seize firearms and punish their worst elements.

Until now, small unit operations are still far more effective than company-size operations. The former are easier than the latter to prepare, maneuver and withdraw from a successful operation. There can also be a coordination of such small units to seize more weapons on a wide scale. It is fine for the NPA to give full play to small-unit operations and undertake tactical offensives that are sure of victory. However, conditions are arising and improving for employing two or more platoons in operations, especially where the terrain is favorable or when the element of surprise is ensured.

From year to year, the enemy has failed to destroy the armed revolution. In the vain hope of destroying or disrupting the centralized political leadership and rising coordinative ability of the NPA units that operate in a decentralized way on a national scale, the enemy is now increasingly assassinating leaders and activists of the legal democratic parties and organizations.

The US imperialists and the Arroyo puppet regime are culpable for escalating violations of human rights. They are collaborating in resurrecting an open rule of terror similar to that of the Marcos fascist dictatorship. They are pushing the enactment of an Anti-Terrorism Law that is far worse in anti-democratic content than the fascist presidential decrees of the late unlamented Marcos. They have paralyzed the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and are poised to suppress the legal democratic mass movement.

All forms of struggle need to be carried out more militantly than ever before. The legal form of struggle is necessary. But those in grave danger of being kidnapped, tortured and killed by the enemy should be encouraged to go underground andjoin the armed revolution. As in the period of 1969 to 1972, when the Marcos regime was clearly taking the fascist path, Party units and mass activists were urged to strengthen the underground and prepare themselves for joining the people’s army. The education, training and experience of the urban-based workers and educated youth are in urgent demand in the countryside.

Although the struggle in the urban areas is principally legal and defensive, it is high time to develop the capability to deploy armed teams of partisans principally from the countryside and secondarily from the cities to punish the worst elements of the enemy side and undertake other special operations. While the people’s army is working and fighting hard to achieve systematic wave upon wave advance, it can assign units and teams to deliver lethal actions to the worst enemy elements and to demonstrate that the enemy cannot attack the people and their unarmed leaders and activists with impunity.

All the revolutionary forces must be prepared against the worst so that they can hope for the best. All possible efforts must be exerted to stop and slay the growing monster of state terrorism. US imperialism and the Arroyo regime try hard to look powerful and terrible. But in fact, US imperialism is already overextended and bogged down elsewhere and the Arroyo puppet regime is economically, politically and morally bankrupt and is far weaker than the Marcos fascist regime.

Following the leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army must resolutely and courageously raise the people’s war to a new and higher level along the line of the new democratic revolution, with a socialist perspective.

The 3-year program of 2002 to 2005 for expanding and consolidating the New People’s Army, which was decided by the 11th Plenum of the CC, has been extended by the Political Bureau by one year to 2006 in order to provide ample time to the NPA and other revolutionary forces to fulfill the targets of the program.

The proletarian revolutionaries, the Red commanders and fighters must conscientiously and vigorously carry out the revolutionary tasks set forth in the program. The Party Central Committee directs the National Military Staff and the regional operational commands of the NPA to strengthen their offices and the various departments of the NPA in order to raise the people’s war from current capabilities to a new and higher level.

The Red commanders and fighters must always refresh themselves on the principles and policies of carrying out the armed revolution. They must study the writings of Comrade Mao Zedong on people’s war and the accumulated documents of the Party on military strategy and tactics. They must never forget the lessons learned from the criticism and repudiation of "Left" and Right opportunism in the Second Great Rectification Movement. They must learn from their daily experience and engage in criticism and self-criticism promptly and periodically in order to get better results and improve the style of work.

In cases of setbacks in whatever respect and of whatever scale, we must look into the causes whether they are due to internal problems, the severity of enemy actions, the tremendous odds arising from an objective situation or all. Whatever the causes, we must look into individual and collective responsibilities and unite to overcome the problems and advance in our work and revolutionary struggle.

The New People’s Army can strengthen itself as a fighting force upon the fulfillment of such requisites as political and military training, building the organs of political power and the mass organizations, carrying out land reform and other campaigns and intensifying tactical offensives that are sure of victory. The NPA must be able to annihilate enemy units and seize weapons to strengthen itself as a fighting force. In this regard, it must have the inexhaustible support of the people.

It must multiply the platoon as the basic formation. This is the suitable size for the center of gravity in a guerrilla front and eventually for the headquarters force at the provincial and regional levels. This is also the cohesive shape for the squads and teams that are deployed on a wide scale for mass work and the most flexible small-unit offensive operations. The Party branch must be based in the platoon and the Party group in the squad.

The existing guerrilla fronts must be expanded and consolidated. We hope to attain soon a stable number of 140 guerrilla fronts in at least 11,000 barrios. We expect that 50 per cent of the guerrilla fronts will have a sum total of NPA fighters equivalent to a company and the other 50 per cent, less than a company. Those with less than a company as armed force must increase towards that level. Those with more than a company must give way to formation of a new guerrilla front or give their relative surplus of firearms to a smaller guerrilla front.

We must augment the strength of the NPA by training and forming the people’s militia as the police force in the barrios as well as the self-defense units of mass organizations. These formations can help the NPA cover extensive areas and render service within the range of their competence and training. They are also the reserve forces for increasing the number of Red fighters as more arms are seized.

The barbaric attacks being made by the enemy against the leaders and activists of democratic parties and organizations and against the people in both urban and rural areas should push all of us to accelerate the recruitment of Red fighters and build the units and organs for absorbing and tasking promptly those being threatened by the enemy with death. We must be good at combining the workers and educated youth from the cities with the peasant fighters and the veteran fighters.

In carrying out the tactical offensives, we must give priority to annihilating enemy units and elements and seizing weapons, attacking enemy facilities and supply lines for armaments, fuel and other necessities, and punishing the worst elements of the enemy, including those who are notorious for human rights violations, plunder, etc. and grave anti-social activities.

We must seize the initiative, use flexible tactics, including the following: strike at the enemy by using the element of surprise or when he least expects it; lure in the enemy deep to put him in a series of traps or deliver a blow at the weaker force where he comes from; when he advances with a superior force, let him punch the wind and we wait for his weak points to show; we can snipe at him or harass him to confuse him and slow down his movement; when he retreats, we pursue him and deliver blows we are capable of; make a feint towards the East to strike a blow at the West; leapfrog to deliver a blow and conceal where we come from; tickle an enemy outpost and deliver the big blow elsewhere; and ambush an enemy unit and lay a bigger ambush on the reinforcement.

We can raise the level of fighting tactics and technique by gaining further experience through fighting and seizing weapons from the enemy.

We must turn the enemy into our supply and transport officer who delivers to us the weapons from the Pentagon and the big puppet camps. In the current period, we can use rifles, grenades, command-detonated land mines, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and the like. We can also use modern means of communications, night vision goggles and so on. In a later period, we can get more of the basic and advanced equipment of the enemy through victories in the revolutionary armed struggle.

We have repeatedly told the US imperialists to respect the national sovereignty and territory of the Filipino people, to withdraw their troops from the Philippines and to stop their acts of military intervention. Instead, they are escalating their military presence and acts of military intervention. The NPA is therefore prepared to take the necessary actions against these foreign troops who in fact engage in terrorism under the pretext of anti-terrorism. These arrogant intruders are cowardly users of cruise missiles against civilian populations and fixed structures of city-based governments. But they can be made to bleed and die on the ground, as now demonstrated by the Iraqi people and previously by the Vietnamese and other peoples.

In land reform, we must still carry out the minimum land reform program of rent reduction, controlling interest rates, raising farm wages, improving the prices of farm products and promoting agricultural production and sideline occupations. In this connection, we pursue an anti-feudal united front, which means relying mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, winning over the middle peasants, obtaining the neutrality or support of the rich peasants on land reform and taking advantage of the split between the enlightened and evil gentry in order to isolate and destroy the power of the latter.

In the national united front, we must build the worker-peasant alliance as the foundation, win over the urban petty bourgeoisie to make the progressive alliance and further win over the middle bourgeoisie to make the patriotic alliance. For the purpose of discrediting, isolating and overthrowing the enemy, i.e. the most rabid puppets and worst reactionaries ruling the country, we must build the broad united front, in which we develop the appropriate forms and ways of alliance with sections of the reactionary classes against the enemy. In this regard, we must maintain independence and initiative, especially in dealing with unstable and unreliable allies.

We must work hard for the overthrow of the US-directed Arroyo regime. For any length of time it takes to overthrow this regime, we must strengthen our forces and the people independent of the unstable and unreliable allies. It is fine if we can overthrow the regime soon and we can try to cause the formation of an urban-based government that is better than before. But if such is not yet possible because the balance of forces does not allow us, then we are satisfied with further developing the rural-based people’s government and gaining further strength from the previous struggle and continuing with the struggle to gain still greater strength.

We are revolutionaries who seek the immediate improvement of the lives and conditions of the people. But we aim to overthrow the entire ruling system of big compradors and landlords ultimately and replace it with the truly democratic government of the working people. We wish to accomplish the NDR and upon its basic completion proceed with the socialist revolution. In this regard, we wish to contribute the revolutionary victories and struggle of the Filipino people to the struggle of the people of the world for the defeat of imperialism, the global triumph of socialism and the dawning of communism.

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