By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
Chairperson, International League of Peoples’ Struggle
29 February 2008
The magnitude of the protest mass actions today will indicate how close is the end of the Arroyo regime. If the level of 50,000 to 100,000 protest demonstrators is reached at the focal point in the national capital region, then we can hope that in the near future we can reach the level of hundreds of thousands or a million demonstrators that will certainly persuade the bureaucracy and the military to withdraw support from the Arroyo regime.
The fake and corrupt president and her retinue of spin doctors and bloodthirsty ruffians in the military and police are terrified that a great number of people will rise up today. Thus, they are trying hard to dissuade the people from joining the protest mass actions through deceptive statements, scare tactics, intimidation and actual plans to prevent or disrupt the assembly, marches and convergence of the outraged masses of the people.
The broad masses of the people are responding to calls for communal action by a broad united front of patriotic, progressive and ecumenical forces.
These include the legal forces of the national democratic movement, opposition parties and organizations, labor unions, residents of urban poor communities, associations of peasants and fisherfolk, student and youth organizations, professional and business organizations, and the constituents of social, cultural and religious institutions.
As in the gigantic mass actions of 1970, 1986 and 2001, the communists will exercise their right to join the protest actions in the national capital region and in the provinces. But contrary to claims of the Arroyo regime, there will be no armed units of the New People’s Army in the the mass protest mass actions. It is the long-held principle of the CPP, NPA and NDFP to uphold the right of the people to speak and assemble peacefully as well as to respect the legal and defensive character of protest mass actions in urban areas.
It is idle and futile for the Arroyo regime and its military and police minions to try to discourage the people from joining the protest mass actions with hysterical claims that “communists and terrorists” will disrupt, infiltrate and sow violence. The protests demonstrators know each other very well and their experienced marshalls will make sure that the violent agents of the Arroyo regime will not be able to perpetrate the foul deeds that they are blaming in advance on the most progressive sections of the protesting forces and masses.
The real bad news for the Arroyo regime is that the NPA has declared its intention of keeping away from the urban protest mass actions and concentrating on the launching of tactical offensives against the die-hard loyalists of the regime, the worst of the human rights violators and the foreign and local plunderers. At the same time, the CPP, NPA and the NDFP are calling on the military and police rank and file to withdraw support from the Arroyo regime and to demand the resumption of GRP-NDFP peace negotiations in the post-Arroyo period.###
