By Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
June 9, 2019

The national democratic movement of the Filipino people has long exposed the historical and current fact that the three evil forces of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism are responsible for the people’s oppression and exploitation and the country’s underdevelopment, mass unemployment and widespread poverty.

Constructively and positively, the national democratic movement has put forward the general line of people’s democratic revolution to change the semicolonial and semifeudal system with a program of realizing full national independence, real democracy, social justice, economic development through genuine land reform and national industrialization, a patriotic and progressive culture and independent foreign policy.

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) has been open to peace negotiations with the GRP in order to realize the aforesaid patriotic and progressive program which involves bourgeois democratic reforms and far from being socialist. But the rabid anti-communists (who are puppets of US imperialism and agents of the exploiting classes) have always sabotaged the peace negotiations and insisted on counterrevolutionary violence in order to preserve the the unjust ruling system.,

The broad masses of the people see and detest the treasonous and corrupt bureaucrats and the brutal military and police forces as the instruments of the three evil forces of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic corruption. Thus the Filipino people have engaged in various forms of struggle, including mass protest actions and armed revolution, in order to fight for national and social liberation.

The Duterte regime and its armed and political agents have been stirring up the psywar line of rabid anticommunism to deflect attention from the three evil forces of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism and blame the revolutionary forces and the people themselves, who are the victims of oppression and exploitation, for all the wrongs for which the US-dominated ruling system of big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats are responsible.

The Duterte regime and its armed and political agents use the line of rabid anticommunism as the main line of their “whole of nation approach) to justify the gross and systematic violations of human rights, the militarization of civilian departments and agencies of the reactionary government and the compulsion on people to denounce the revolutionary movement or have themselves listed up as surrendered and repentant rebels only to be subsequently subjected to summary executions as in Oplan Tokhang.

Duterte himself is the most brazen instigator of state terrorism against the people. He has called for mass intimidation and mass murder of suspects, shooting women in the vagina, killing social activists, religious people and human rights defenders, bombing, burning and looting the poor communities of peasants and indigenous peoples and forcing them to evacuate in order to make way for the mining, logging and plantation companies.

Duterte and his political and military minions red tag or slander the patriotic and progressive people as “communists” and “terrorists” in order to strike fear and discredit them and create an atmosphere of terror. Worst of all, the Duterte regime, its psywar agents and its death squads from the police and military threaten the people with all kinds of harm and to actually abduct, torture and murder an increasing number of people.

In using the unlawful and malicious tactics of witchhunt and casting guilt by association, the objective of the US-Duterte regime is to terrorize the entire Filipino nation and to impose on the people a full-blown fascist dictatorship. The Duterte ruling clique has become more arrogant and murderous after rigging the elections and controlling every major branch of the reactionary government.

But the result is that the Filipino people are not at all cowed by Duterte’s reign of terror and greed. The people detest it and are determined to fight and defeat it. The puppets of imperialism and reactionaries in the Philippines never learn from history. They forget that after they have their malicious way for a period of time, the broad masses of the people eventually bring them down.

The rabid anticommunism during the Cold War in the 1950s did not stop the resurgence of the national democratic movement and the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the 1960s.

The ultra-reactionary attempt to suppress the people’s aspirations for national and social liberation with the use of the Anti-Subversion Law and the anti-communist witchhunts challenged the young proletarian revolutionaries to regenerate the national democratic movement and the revolutionary armed resistance.

The tyrant Marcos thought that he could use rabid anticommunism as the instrument of establishing a fascist dictatorship and thus he aggravated the chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system. Ultimately, he would be overthrown by the people in 1986. The persistent scheme of Duterte, the Marcos heirs and their fellow plunderers to glorify Marcos wil fail.

Like Marcos, Duterte thinks that he can repeat the Marcos example of using anti-communism and state terrorism to establish a full-blown fascist dictatorship and further accumulate private wealth from overpriced infrastructure projects, foreign loans and other major rackets. He will meet the same ignominious end as his idol Marcos.

The Filipino people are inspired by their long history of revolutionary struggle against their oppressors and exploiters. They are determined to struggle for the just cause of national and social liberation. They are confident of winning victory against a tyrant whose crimes of treason, mass murder, plunder, electoral fraud and deception are already weighing him down to his grave.###