By Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman, Communist Party of the Philippines
and NDFP Chief Political Consultant
New Year’s Message, January 1, 2020
The evil forces of US imperialism and local reaction are escalating the oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people with the use of neoliberalism and state terrorism. They make the people suffer but goad them to fight back and and aim for revolutionary change. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Filipino people are engaged in the new democratic revolution against the semicolonial and ruling system, now chiefly represented by the Duterte regime.
This regime is traitorous, tyrannical, genocidal, corrupt and mendacious. It has tried and failed to intimidate and deceive the people and suppress their revolutionary forces. But it has succeeded in further inciting them to wage all forms of revolutionary struggle, especially people’s war. Once more I congratulate the Filipino people for their victories in their revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation.
By offering peace negotiations to the revolutionary movement, Duterte has the burden of proving that he is willing to change the anti-national and anti-democratic character of his regime and to make agreements on social, economic and political reforms to address the roots of the civil war and lay the basis for a just peace. He can only delude himself by boasting that the revolutionary movement has no choice but to surrender or be destroyed.
He is now in the lameduck years of his term and his grievous crimes are weighing down heavily on him and his entire regime. He is increasingly being isolated by his own crimes and by a broad united front of patriotic and progressive forces. The broad masses of the people detest his regime for imposing extreme and intolerable oppression and exploitation on them and are desirous of rising up against his reign of terror and greed.
The Duterte regime cannot save itself from a disgraceful end by depending on US or Chinese imperialism or on both. These imperialist powers have no interest in the Philippines but to gain hegemony. The US wants to retain its overall hegemony and China takes advantage of the corrupt character of the Duterte regime to gain strategic footholds in the West Philippine Sea and in the entire Philippine archipelago.
The two imperialist powers are now locked in an escalating struggle for a redivision of the world to the detriment of the people of the world. The crisis of the world capitalist system continues to worsen and to generate the conditions for the resurgence of the anti-imperialist movements of peoples and for the world proletarian-socialist revolution. The strategic decline of US imperialism has led to its cut-throat competition with Chinese imperialism.
The Filipino people and their revolutionary forces (the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the mass organizations and the local organs of political power) are highly confident that they will continue to gain strength and advance amidst the crises of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of big compradors, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists.
They are certain that they will win greater victories in the new year and advance the people’s democratic revolution with a socialist perspective. They enjoy the solidarity and abundant support of the peoples of the world. Their revolutionary victories are not only for their own benefit but also for the anti-imperialist and socialist movements of the proletariat and peoples of the world.
Long live the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces!
Advance the people’s democratic revolution towards socialism!
Long live the anti-imperialist solidarity of peoples and proletarian internationalism!
