CPP/NDF Mindanao: Statement on the CPP’s 45th Founding Anniversary: The Party in Mindanao grows ever stronger in leading the people’s revolution towards the strategic stalemate phase in the next few years, and, eventually, towards the socialist revolution

The Revolutionary movement and the broad masses in Mindanao join the entire nation in celebrating the 45th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines (MLM). Let us give our highest accolade and salute to all the revolutionary martyrs of the Party, Red Fighters and the masses who unselfishly offered themselves for the people and the revolution.

It is only right to celebrate the many victories of our revolutionary struggle of the past 45 years.

Despite the AFP’s military and psy-war operations by way of the RSOT/COPD, the revolutionary bases have rapidly expanded and gained strength in more than 2000 barrios in more than 200 municipalities and 19 provinces in Mindanao. Hundreds of thousands of organized masses actively support the armed revolution,

The utter brutality of both Arroyo’s OBL and Aquino III’s OPB are literally stopped in their tracks against the continued growth and strength of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Mindanao, especially in the past five years. Currently, NPA platoons and companies, spread in 46 guerilla fronts in five regions in Mindanao, number to about 10 battalions and are supported by numerous squads and platoons of the People’s Militia, which also run collectively into several battalions. In the last five years, tactical offensives (TOs) of the NPA have significantly intensified. From only 250 TOs in 2010, this has increased to 350 in 2011, to 400 in 2012 and to more than 400 in the entire year of 2013. Major victorious TOs this year include the highly successful punitive action leveled against the US-Del Monte Phils Plantation; the raid against the CAFGU-Army detachment in Brgy. Lantad, Balingasag, Misamis Oriental; the ambush against an army unit in Brgy, Bituan, Tulunan, North Cotabato; the confiscation of arms from Dasia Security Agency in Tagum City as well as from PNP headquarters in Kibawe, Bukidnon and in Don Victoriano, Misamis Occidental.

We have launched punitive actions against large-scale mining and plantations owned by the big bourgeois comprador and imperialists who continue to exploit millions of peasants and agri-workers, grab their lands, and plunder and ravage the environment. From 2011 until 2013, casualties sustained by enemy forces have risen to at least a battalion per year, while, on the part of the NPA, the number of casualties did not go beyond a platoon each year of the same period.

In the midst of abject poverty suffered by peasants and their continued deprivation of genuine agrarian reform by the Aquino III reactionary government, the revolutionary movement in Mindanao has sustained the implementation of an ever-widening minimum program of the revolutionary agrarian reform in the countryside at the municipal and provincial levels, where hundreds of thousands have benefitted from the significant lowering land rent and rent on farm tools and farm animals; the increase in the wages of agri-workers; the gradual eradication of usury; the increase in prices in farm products as well as the decrease in the prices of certain consumer goods; marked improvements in the level of productivity; the establishment of cooperatives and delivery of basic services, and so much more. We have also initiated mass movements in extending help to the victims of typhoons Sendong, Pablo and Yolanda.

The ever-growing alliance of workers, peasants, students and professionals, religious and other groups who launch legal and open mass mobilizations in urban areas against the different forms of exploitation by big business and the repression of their democratic rights of the various social classes, at the same time opposing the environmental plunder and destruction of the environment by multi-national mining corporations and agri-business plantations. The protest movement against US imperialist intervention in the country has grown larger and wider, aiming these protests against such travesties to sovereignty as the US naval exercises in Zamboanga and General Santos City, and the ever increasing deployment of US troops, deviously disguised, of late, as humanitarian missions to aid the victims of typhoon Yolanda and other calamities.

The Party leading the Philippine Revolution is intrinsically rooted in the five regions of Mindanao through its more than 10,000 Party members within the units of the NPA, the organs of political power, and in the Party branches of the peasants in the countryside, the workers and the youth and the petty bourgeoisie in the urban areas, and tirelessly strive to raise the level of its ideological foundation in Marxism, Leninism and Maoism.

Through these advances in the revolutionary struggle in the island, the reactionary government is constrained to augment their military forces in Mindanao with battalions coming from Luzon and the Visayas, beefing up their offensive and psywar operations in Southern and Northern Mindanao as priority areas, while attempting, but sorely failing, to frustrate the reinvigoration of the revolutionary struggle in both the Western and Far Southern Mindanao regions. The US-Aquino regime has only succeeded in further isolating itself away from the people because of its outright militarism that has resulted to grave human rights violations.

While the people continue to suffer from destitution as a result of the country’s economic crisis, the US-Aquino III regime holds no interest in and has lost its capability to alleviate the misery of the millions of victims of catastrophes, such as those hit by typhoons Sendong, Pablo, Yolanda and the quake in the Visayas, because it is preoccupied with squandering away people’s funds, such as in the detested cases of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and other vile forms of corruption. The regime’s economic policies have only aggravated poverty, increased the prices of goods and services, and despoiled the environment as a result of its subservience to giant mining and plantation. Huge military spending has contributed to the government’s bankruptcy and further isolated itself because of its intense oppression, its utter failure to deliver justice to the victims of the Maguindanao massacre as well as the victims of the mounting cases of extrajudicial killings, its indiscriminate bombing during the ZamboangaCity siege and other forms of human rights abuses.

The agreement between the GPH and the MILF, which intends to neutralize the armed resistance of the Moro people, is an outright failure. Instead of emasculating it, it has in fact rekindled the armed struggle of the Moro people who continually aspire for real autonomy.

With the grave crises plaguing the political and economic spheres of the nation, which is aggravated by a system that relies heavily on debt from the crumbling economy of imperialist US, the people cannot hope for any form of mitigation from the severe poverty in the next few years, but we can hope for the further advance of the people’s democratic revolution and the eventual establishment of socialism.

Thus, we call on the people to wage a broader movement for genuine agrarian reform, starting from the minimum program of land reform until we are able to undertake the free distribution of agricultural lands to the peasants. The peasant masses must organize themselves in order to demand the increase wages of agri-workers, lower the rent of land, milling, farm tools, farm animals, the gradual eradication of usury, engage in labor-exchange, build collective farms, establish cooperatives and self-sufficient and war economies.

Swiftly build and strengthen the real government of the people in the countryside in order to implement genuine social reforms and win for the people true political power.

Rapidly widen and strengthen the workers’ movement to increase wage rates and benefits, defend their labor and democratic rights, and prepare themselves for the worsening of the national and world crisis.

Briskly expand and strengthen the youth and students’ movement in order to defend their interests in education and their rights; and to head for the mountains, link with the peasant masses, and join the ranks of NPA Red fighters.

The people must unite against the total plunder and destruction of the environment, against extrajudicial killings, and against USinterventionism. Launch a broad movement for the restoration of the environment.

We must advance the armed revolution until the strategic stalemate phase is achieved in the next few years.

We must further consolidate and expand the membership of the Party in order to increase its ability to lead in raising the level of the people’s war towards the strategic stalemate phase until complete victory.

Long live the People’s Democratic Revolution!
Long live the 45th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines (MLM)!