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INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGE TO THE CULTURAL FORUM
IN CELEBRATION OF THE FIRST QUARTER STORM
By Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman, Kabataang Makabayan
and Communist Party of the Philippines
January 31, 2009
I am deeply thankful that Bishop Felixberto Calang, Chairperson of INPEACE,
has honored me with the invitation to give an inspirational message to the
Cultural Forum entitled “Remembering the First Quarter Storm: Four Decades
of the People's Movement for National Liberation.”
I have great appreciation for the Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao, the
Sisters' Association in Mindanao, Kasimbayan and Bagong Alyansang
Makabayan-Northern Mindanao for conjoining to organize this forum
and to manifest the high and broad significance of the FQS to the entire
Filipino people.
You have chosen well as main speaker Bonifacio Ilagan, one of the most
distinguished leaders of the FQS, who has been outstanding in adhering
to the revolutionary spirit and principles of the FQS, in promoting the FQS
as a beacon to the continuing struggle of the people for national and social
liberation and in developing the arts in the service of the people.
The FQS was an unprecedented event in Philippine history in terms of
significance, scale, intensity and consequences. It was a crucial turning
point in the people's movement for national liberation and democracy.
It confronted the drive of the Marcos regime to aggravate and deepen
the oppression and exploitation of the people by the evil triad of foreign
monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
The best and brightest sons and daughters of the nation participated in
the FQS. The more the reactionary state unleashed violence against
them, the more the masses of youth and people became resolute and
militant in standing up and fighting for national and democratic rights.
The FQS was centered in Manila, the seat of reactionary power. But it
spread the revolutionary message to the entire nation in an immediate
and lasting way. In response to the escalation of violence by the Marcos
regime, it urged the broad masses of the people to fight back with the
call, “Makibaka, huwag matakot!” Against the rising trend of state terrorism
or fascism, it raised the battlecry, “Digmang Bayan ang Sagot sa Batas Militar”.
The FQS generated a sustained popular movement upholding national
independence and democratic rights, demanding national industrial
development and genuine land reform, promoting a national, scientific
and mass culture and espousing international solidarity of peoples against
imperialism and all reaction and for justice, peace and development.
Many of those who directly participated in the FQS and those who were
inspired by it became the most conscious and the most energetic militants
in a wide array of patriotic and progressive formations, including the
revolutionary party of the working class, the Christians for National
Liberation, the progressive sections of institutions and the sectoral mass
organizations and multisectoral alliances of the workers, peasants, youth,
women, professionals and national minorities.
Since the occurrence of the FQS, all those who have been moulded and
inspired by it have been a significant driving force in the sustained resistance
of the people to the anti-national and anti-democratic policies of the Marcos
regime and the 14-year reign of fascist terror, in the mass movement that
eventually caused the overthrow of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and in
the continuing opposition to the persistence of anti-national and
anti-democratic policies under the post-Marcos regimes.
The memory and spirit of the FQS and its consequences in the people's
struggle for national liberation and democracy continue to live on and
grow in strength. But all of us must always consciously cherish the FQS
in our hearts and minds, lest it be taken for granted and pass into oblivion.
It is fine to celebrate the FQS in the entire year before and in the entire
year after its 40th anniversary.
I call on the present mass activists, the church people, the lawyers,
educators and other professionals to draw inspiration from the FQS.
Let us emulate the FQS participants in their eagerness to learn the
history and the basic problems of the Filipino people, in grasping the
need to continue the Philippine revolution and carry out the new
democratic revolution and in fighting courageously and tenaciously
for the national and democratic rights and interests of the Filipino
people.
We are confronted today by problems far worse than those during
the time of Marcos. The semicolonial and semifeudal character of
Philippine society has persisted. The problems of foreign monopoly
capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism have been
aggravated and deepened by the US-instigated policy of “neoliberal”
globalization, which has accelerated superprofit-taking, and the policy
of “global war on terror”, which has stirred up state terrorism, US
military intervention and imperialist wars of aggression.
Now, an unprecedented global financial and economic crisis, generated
from the US, has descended upon the frail pre-indusrial semifeudal
economy of the Philippines. The broad masses of the people are
suffering acutely from the depressed economic and social conditions
and from the escalating campaigns of state terrorism by the Arroyo
puppet regime. We must draw from the FQS the fighting spirit, the
principles and the methods of generating resistance in the national
and provincial capitals and on a nationwide scale in both urban and
rural areas. ###
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