Central Committee | Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 2020
[This statement contains extracts from the longer message of the Central Committee on the 52nd anniversary of the CPP which will be released over the next few days.]
The Filipino people are waging a valiant resistance against the vicious and horrific fascist terrorism of the US-Duterte regime. The regime’s military and police forces are committing gross barbarities to suppress and silence the people.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) salutes all its cadres and members, all the Red fighters and commanders of the New People’s Army (NPA), all revolutionary forces and the broad masses of the Filipino people for all the sacrifices they make in the life-and-death struggle to end fascism and tyranny and attain freedom and democracy.
The tyrant Duterte is responsible for innumerable war crimes and crimes against humanity. Police and military massacres and extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and abductions, torture and imprisonment are being perpetrated brazenly and with increasing frequency. The most atrocious crimes are carried out in the dead of night, especially in the rural areas against the masses of peasants and national minority people.
To consolidate his regime of corruption and plunder, Duterte has militarized and fascistized the entire government and the whole country. He placed the entire nation under de facto martial law rule by enacting the Anti-Terrorism Act. This is, in fact, a law on state terrorism which gives Duterte practically limitless powers in using the entire state machinery to suppress the people’s democratic rights with the aim of silencing all dissent.
Duterte is using all the powers of the counterrevolutionary state to perpetuate his tyrannical regime. Duterte aims to aggrandize more wealth and power, secure the future of the Duterte political dynasty and avoid criminal prosecution for his crimes.
With just above 500 days remaining in his official term, Duterte is set to accelerate the implementation of one or all of his evil schemes to perpetuate his tyranny: declare a “revolutionary government” and install a fascist dictatorship, railroad charter change on the pretext of “federalism,” or ensure the dynastic succession through rigged elections of her equally fascist, corrupt and power-hungry daughter.
The Duterte regime is the embodiment of the evils of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. It is responsible for aggravating the social crisis and the sufferings of the Filipino people with its neoliberal, militarized and epic failure of a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, its corruption, over-reliance on foreign borrowing, refusal to prioritize people’s healthcare, and complete disregard for their economic well-being.
The socioeconomic conditions of the Filipino people are set to worsen in the coming year with the Duterte regime’s plans to impose new taxes on the people to finance debt payments. Joblessness will continue to rise as Duterte’s economic managers continue to rely on capital investments by foreign monopoly capitalists even amid global economic slowdown. In the countryside, peasants are being driven to bankruptcy by high land rent and high costs of production, land grabbing and encroachment by big corporate interests.
Duterte prioritizes counterinsurgency and kickbacks from infrastructure projects of his cronies and oligarchs. Response to the pandemic remains inept and riddled with corruption in the botched plans to purchase vaccines. While the regime allotted a mere ₱2 billion for the purchase of vaccines, a whopping ₱19 billion was granted to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) to gratify his loyalist generals. While it allocated around ₱33 billion for “AFP modernization” it allotted ₱0 for the urgent need to modernize the public education and health systems.
Duterte does not have the voluntary and wholehearted support of the masses. What he claims and projects as support is, in fact, forced obedience and compliance exacted through fear with having the military and police invade almost all aspects of civil life.
Duterte is politically isolated from the rest of the people. He mortally fears the people. He is deeply hated by the people for his campaign of mass murder against the poor in its drug war sham, for the massacre of their jobs and loss of income and bankruptcy, for the onerous taxes and rising prices, and for causing hunger, widespread poverty, misery and economic desperation.
The broad masses are outraged by Duterte’s brazen corruption and insatiability in bulldozing infrastructure projects and abuse of power to take over protectorship of the drug syndicates in the country.
His regime has resorted to intensified political repression and armed suppression to prevent the masses from rising up in numbers. It is using red-tagging and terrorist-labelling to neutralize the legal democratic forces and hamper their efforts to give a voice to the grievances of the people.
Labor organizers, critical media, human rights defenders and others dissenters have been subjected to surveillance, harassment, arrests, trumped up charges and prolonged detention. The attacks against them are set to further intensify with the use of the regime’s law on state terrorism.
In its desperation to stop the growth of the New People’s Army, the Duterte regime has mobilized close to 150 battalions (around 50,000) combat troops to conduct focused military operations against the NPA’s guerrilla fronts. These troops occupy rural villages and subject the peasant masses to armed suppression.
The AFP continues to squander billions upon billions of pesos of people’s money to acquire fighter jets, helicopters and drones to intensify aerial bombardment campaigns which have caused widespread fear and trauma among the rural population, as well as damage to their farms and the environment, even as these have been largely ineffective against the NPA.
Duterte, however, cannot forever perpetuate himself through armed suppression. In fact, the more that Duterte resorts to massacres and killings, the more that the people are roused to fight back. The broad masses of the Filipino people will not allow themselves to suffer forever the intolerable socioeconomic conditions and political repression under the Duterte regime.
While the tyrant Duterte pretends to be strong and powerful, he is in fact weak and tottering as he sits atop a rotten system made bankrupt by its corruption and subservience to foreign capitalists interests. It is unable to satisfy its greed without taking away resources to address the basic needs of the people. It is being weakened by bickering among his insatiable cronies and minions.
The chronic crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system is worsening under the Duterte regime. It is stoking the fires of resistance of the Filipino masses.
The broad masses of workers, peasants and unemployed semiproletariat, who comprise the majority of the Filipino people, are being roused to unite and collectively take action to fight for their urgent demands amid the severe economic crisis and pandemic. The urban intellectuals and professionals are ready to join them in alliance to support their clamor for wage increases, suspension of land rent and debt collection, social subsidies, free distribution of Covid-19 vaccines and health service and other demands.
The regime’s relentless attacks and use of the state terror law is rousing various democratic forces and compelling them to strengthen and expand the broad antifascist united front. They must continue to generate broad international support by exposing the crimes of the Duterte regime perpetrated in the course of its sham drug war and dirty war of suppression.
The New People’s Army will continue to strengthen as it surmounts the all-out offensives of the AFP through mastery of guerrilla tactics. Some NPA units are determined to recover from the losses they suffered in some parts of the country over the past years largely as a result of the inability to quickly adapt to the enemy’s tactics of large-scale focused military offensives.
Most of the NPA commands have adapted to the enemy’s tactics and succeeded in expanding their guerrilla territories and forming new guerrilla fronts or expanding existing guerrilla fronts, while strengthening and deepening the support of the peasant masses by assisting in their antifeudal struggles.
The NPA is accumulating military and political successes even in the areas under the AFP’s concentrated offensives such as in Bicol, Eastern Visayas, Negros and Southern Tagalog. NPA units have availed of a wider area for guerrilla maneuver and are successfully evading enemy efforts at encirclement and mounting tactical offensives from the enemy’s flanks or rear.
There are excellent examples of tactical offensives in Bicol, Southern Tagalog, Negros, Eastern Visayas, Northeast Mindanao, North Central Mindanao and Far South Mindanao where NPA units dealt blows against enemy operating troops engaged in focused military operations.
Despite great counterrevolutionary adversity, the Party and all revolutionary forces have stood courageously to fight for the interests and welfare of the Filipino people and to advance their national democratic cause. The Party continues to consolidate and gain strength.
It remains ideologically firm through the constant study and application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and through self-critical assessment of its work. It remains organizationally strong by building new branches and training new cadres and leaders. It continues to gain political strength by deepening its roots among the masses and providing them leadership in their mass struggles and armed resistance. The Party firmly wields the New People’s Army and will lead it to surmount and defeat the AFP’s all-out offensives.
The Party takes pride for continuing the militant and revolutionary tradition of the Katipunan, for selflessly serving the broad masses of the Filipino people, for self-reliantly growing in strength and persevering along the revolutionary path, and for serving as one of the beacons of the international communist movement.
The Filipino people are proud of the Communist Party of the Philippines and their revolutionary forces for having enabled and empowered them to stand for their rights and to fight for national freedom and social justice.
With the guidance and leadership of the Party, and with the New People’s Army by their side, the broad masses of the Filipino people have persisted in more than five decades of armed struggle and revolutionary resistance. They are united and imbued with the indomitable spirit of revolution. They will never be subdued.
The Party will continue to rouse, inspire and lead the broad masses of the Filipino people in their resistance against the Duterte regime’s reign of terror and evil. Through sacrifices and arduous struggle, victory in the fight for freedom and democracy is certain. The Philippine revolution will continue to flourish.
