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MILITARY AND REGIME CHANGE

in Mainstream

The EDSA People Power uprising has shown how the collective action of a long-suffering people buttressed by the military has toppled decades of Marcos’s fascist dictatorship.

Authority became paper tiger as the strongman’s order to crush the uprising was defied.

Soldiers from various regions left their camps and marched to EDSA to join the raging throngs. Even some members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) left their posts to support the mass.

Although the people’s victory was short of overthrowing the depraved social system, it was a testament to the strength of the people’s will bolstered by a military component. It signalled the weakening of a moribund system, it presaged that the upcoming rulers would not be able to rule in the same old way.

The ouster of President Joseph Estrada by the mass movement was also punctuated by the withdrawal of support by the military to the regime.

The Oakwood mutiny followed by the Peninsula siege staged by the Magdalo group of junior officers and enlisted men though foiled by their failure to rely on the support of the masses rather than that of interest group of politicians, bears hope that the disillusioned members of the AFP/PNP can be enlightened and mobilized against a debased spent force of the ruling elite.

The show of the critical support of the military in regime change inspires an intensifying efforts for arousing, abetting the patriotic, organizing and mobilizing them, and winning them over to the people’s army, to the people’s cause.

Over the years, the number of commissioned officers, soldiers and paramilitary forces who have supported and made significant contributions to the revolutionary movement is growing.

As the people’s war advances and the depraved system continues to putrefy, more and more patriotic and conscientious officers and men in the AFP and PNP will join the fight. ###

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READ: Rise up for country and people

#ServeThePeople
#JoinTheNPA

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RISE UP FOR COUNTRY AND DISSENT (Pt. 2 of 2)

in Mainstream

by Pat Gambao

Dissent in the military

The debased culture and unscrupulous practices in the military institution of the reactionary government have caused demoralization and dissent among its constituents. These have awakened their consciousness and revitalized their ideals.

Political patronage, an abomination passed on to the Filipinos by our Spanish and American colonizers, is an enduring feature of the AFP and PNP. The breaking away of then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and Constabulary Chief Fidel Ramos from the DND-AFP command was in resentment of the favor and privileges accorded to General Fabian Ver by Pres. Marcos. The fray ignited the 1986 EDSA People Power Uprising.

The defection of bemedalled Brig. General Raymundo Jarque, the highest-ranking AFP officer who joined the New People’s Army (NPA), was in extreme disgust of the corruption in the military and then President Ramos’s accommodation of his allies. Jarque displeased the well-connected Pena family in Negros over a land dispute. This put him in a bad light as the court favoured Pena and turned the table on Jarque who was falsely charged with stealing prawns from Pena’s farm and ambushing the judge.

Amidst the struggling masses, Jarque realized that his greatest mistake was to have rendered service to the greedy and powerful who exploits and oppresses the poor. Having led the implementation of the bloody Oplan Thunderbolt in Negros in 1989-1990, he manifested his sincere repentance by going to the people, crying as he asked for forgiveness. Weeks after Jarque’s defection, a number of CAFGU (Civilian Armed Force Geographical Unit) members from Northern Negros fled with their weapons and joined the NPA.

Corruption is deeply entrenched in the reactionary ruling system. It is endemic and at its worst in the military establishment because of the latter’s authoritarian nature and armed supremacy. Corruption in the military is manifested in the procurement process, in bribes extracted from foreign and local business and industrial corporations, through involvement in smuggling, in illegal drugs, and in the sale of arms and military materials to rebel groups.

Juggling and malversation of funds is just as common. Corruption plagues the top hierarchy of the institution and any dissent or exposé from below is met with drastic if not fatal repercussion.

Young Philippine Navy Ensign Philip Pestaño was found dead with a single bullet wound in the head inside his cabin after he discovered the loading of logs and drugs in the navy ship. Navy officials dismissed the case as suicide although autopsy results showed otherwise.

Lt. Jessica Chavez, platoon leader of the 191st Military Police Battalion stationed in Fort Bonifacio, was being used by her superiors in gunrunning and other criminal activities. She had planned to expose the corruption before leaving the service but she was summarily killed before she could do so. Again, the AFP declared her death as suicide.

The Oakwood mutiny in 2003 by 300 soldiers from the Philippine Army, Navy and Air Force, including 70 junior officers, was an expression of their grievance and dissent over the gross corruption in the military and the fascist regime of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which she wanted to perpetuate. The mutineers declared withdrawal of support from the chain of command and demanded Arroyo’s resignation.

However, because it lacked strong support from a people’s movement as the mutineers relied on spent politicians, the Oakwood mutiny, as well as the succeeding Peninsula Siege, quickly dissipated.

The brazen corruption is incessant and sickening. Imagine allocating PhP50 million from AFP funds as send-off gifts to retiring generals, over and above their legal retirement pay. Imagine the PNP police director for comptrollership being questioned by Russian customs office for carrying excessive amount of cash (105,000 Euros or PhP6.9 million). The general was with an 8-member PNP delegation that attended the International Police (Interpol) Assembly in St. Petersburg in Moscow in 2008.

The most contemptuous scam committed by the military top brass was the diversion of the funds of the AFP Retirement and Separation Benefits System (AFP-RSBS) for their vested interest. The funds came from the compulsory collection of five percent of every soldier’s monthly salary. The government continued to pay the pension and separation benefits of soldiers.

Meantime, the RSBS funds and proceeds from its investments were pocketed by the AFP officials. Although most investments incurred losses, the officers still benefited from brokering the deals and from substantial allowances they received, charged to the funds.

The Mamasapano incident in Maguindanao, on January 25, 2015, claimed the lives of 44 members of the PNP’s elite Special Action Force (SAF). Without notifying or coordinating with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the SAF conducted Operation Exodus against a US-tagged “terrorist” adversary, the Malaysian bomb-maker Marwan or Zulkifli Abhir, (also known as Abdul Basit Ulman). Marwan was killed, but the MILF and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighter (BIFF) bivouacked in the area were alerted by the firefight. They ambushed the SAF members as they were withdrawing, resulting in the latter’s massacre.

Operation Exodus was a joint operation with the US Army. However, the SAF was left alone in the implementation, while US authorities and Filipino political leaders and generals monitored the incident from afar through telecast.

It was utterly bad that for the protection of foreign (US) interest and the local ruling class the lives of members of an expensively-trained elite police force were unnecessarily sacrificed. The Mamasapano incident was no different from how soldiers are sent to senseless violent battles and pitted against their own class.

This is a wakeup call for the military minions of the ruling class. ##

RISE UP FOR COUNTRY AND PEOPLE (Pt. 1 of 2)
Revolution strikes chords in the state military

#ServeThePeople
#CherishThePeoplesArmy

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Rise Up for Country and People (Pt 1 of 2)

in Mainstream

by Pat Gambao

Revolution strikes chords in the state military

Many young men and women, imbued with a keen sense of nationalism and patriotism, had chosen a military career where they believed they could best serve the country and the people.

But as they uncovered the true nature of the military establishment in the semi-colonial, semi-feudal character of the Philippine society, as they witnessed how US imperialism and its local cohorts of big comprador and landlord class used the military as an instrument to preserve their rule and protect their interests, disillusionment sets in.

However, this was not enough to dampen their aspirations and weaken their conviction. Many junior officers and soldiers have continued to hold on to their ideals and principles, and to the noble mission to defend the country and serve the people in varied ways.

A prime example is Dante C. Simbulan, former professor at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), political prisoner of the Marcos dictatorship, author of books, and a political activist till now in his late 80s.

A member of PMA Class 1952, Simbulan was an intelligence officer and Philippine Army combatant going after communist rebels. However, it did not take long for the military service was so serious about proved to be a great disappointment for him.

He observed, in not a few instances, military officers unfairly treating ordinary soldiers. He detected the alienation of the military from the people it was supposed to serve and protect, the racial discrimination by Americans towards Filipino soldiers, the PMA being a copy of the West Point in New York rendering its graduates virtual puppets of imperialism. He also realized how a handful of the ruling class controls and dominates Philippine politics and the economy to the detriment of the mass majority.

Eventually, he opted to discontinue his field service and turned to teaching at the military academy. He taught history and nationalism. His main concern was to develop cadets who, after graduation, would not become instruments of the ruling system in exploiting and oppressing the people. His progressive teachings and political activism caused his incarceration, without charges filed against him, for three years during the Marcos martial-law regime.

In 1980, Simbulan went on self-exile in the United States and continued to campaign for ending US support to the Marcos dictatorship and for the closure of the American military bases in the Philippines. He remained in the US even after the ouster of Marcos, but remained in touch with the open mass movement in the country and issue relevant statements when so requested.

Simbulan has written two books related to his brief military career and his political awakening. One is titled, Whose Side Are We On? (Memoirs of a PMAer) and the other is titled When the Rains Come, Will Not the Grass Grow Again? (The Socialist Movement in the Philippines: 1920-1960).

In the introduction of the first book, Simbulan wrote: “I found myself engaged in a serious study of who we really are. What is our real role in this scheme of things, why were we being trained and indoctrinated by foreigners, by American officers in JUSMAG [Joint US Military Action Group], our former colonial masters, to fight our own people? Why do we have to fight under them in their foreign wars against fellow Asian peoples—in Korea, in Vietnam and elsewhere—with whom we had no quarrels? It is in this context that I started asking myself the question: Whose side are we on?”

In the preface to the second book, he pointed out: “The reader will perhaps note the duality of my position as a PMA graduate, trained and conditioned to regard critics of the status quo as “enemies of the state,” and my short experience in the field fighting the peasant Huks. The military blinders I had were removed when I saw with my own eyes the exploitation and oppression suffered by the peasant farmers, which were inflicted on them by the wealthy hacienderos.”

Having had a parallel experience as Simbulan was the late Philippine Navy Captain Danilo P. Vizmanos. He had a much longer career in the AFP than Simbulan but became a very vocal dissenter in the AFP and a stern critic of the US military, although he was a graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York.

On Filipino soldiers graduating from US military academies, he decried the fact that their education there caused them to think that “the only way to the salvation and security of the Philippines is closer ties with the US, more arms and equipment from the US, and more loyalty to Washington overlords.” As for his impressions on fellow AFP officers, he wrote in 1973: “Their most significant shortcomings [was] the inability to come up with critical and in-depth observations and analyses of situations, issues and subject matters—especially those that are controversial or that could run counter to conventional wisdom.”

His cynical views were reinforced by what he had witnessed in South Vietnam in 1967, when he was the AFP Inspector General checking up on the work of the Philippine Civic Action Group (Philcag), the civic-action contingent sent by the Marcos government to support the US imperialist war there. Visiting a hospital where Filipino doctors and nurses were attending to civilians wounded by US round-the-clock bombing operations, Vizmanos was aghast at what he saw.

“Something I will never forget,” he wrote in 1974, “small Vietnamese children completely burned by napalm chemicals dropped by US aircraft on their villages… I saw the real face of US imperialist aggression against the children of a country that had done no harm to the US and the American people. [That] was the catalyst that hastened my transformation from an ‘Amboy’ to an activist in the people’s struggle against US imperialism and its continuing support of the Marcos dictatorship.”

He argued for a self-reliant armed forces, divorced from the influence and control of US imperialism. He called for the abrogation of the various onerous RP-US military agreements and advocated for the recognition of the People’s Republic of China.

After Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, Vizmanos filed for early retirement from the service. He did not want to be a part of the oppressive and fascist armed forces of the dictatorship. For his intransigence, he was arrested and detained.

He gathered together his diary and other writing into a book, Martial Law Diary and other papers. In the preface, he depicted the dire conditions under martial law, thus: “These were the days when henchmen and agents of the regime had license to kill and commit the most heinous crimes against anybody tagged as an ‘enemy of the state.’ … the term ‘human rights’ was considered subversive and inimical to the regime. It was a period of betrayal of the people by an armed forces that allowed itself to be used as an oppressive instrument of the dictatorship to intimidate, threaten and instill fear among the people with impunity.”

Another valiant young man in the AFP who turned against it was Lt. Crispin S. Tagamolila. He enrolled in the Philippine Military Academy after finishing a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of the Philippines. After graduation, he was commissioned as a regular officer with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. At the same time he studied law and taught nationalism and history at the Philippine Constabulary Law Center.
At the PMA Tagamolila became a student of Simbulan in nationalism and history. Outside the classroom, he lost no time in educating and arousing his fellow students, teachers and officers on raging political issues. In view of this, he was subjected to surveillance by the Intelligence Service of the AFP (ISAFP).

Tagamolila’s stint in the military turned out to be a great letdown for him as he witnessed how US imperialism controlled the AFP; used the latter to pursue various anti-people schemes in cahoots with its big comprador-and landlord-class accomplices; how the ruling elite oppressed and suppressed the suffering masses; how unabashed corruption and grave abuses persisted in the government and military services.

This was not the place he had wanted to be. This was not the army he had dreamed to belong to. This was not the army that would truly defend the country and serve the Filipino people.

On March 29, 1971, two years after the founding of the New People’s Army (NPA), 26-year-old Lieutenant Tagamolila defected to the NPA. Enthusiastically, he shared his military and political know-how with the people’s army. He found his niche in the struggle with the masses for emancipation and social liberation.

His selfless service to the people through the NPA was abruptly cut short: in April 1972 he was killed in an encounter in Isabela while covering the retreat of his guerrilla comrades. His martyrdom was duly recognized by the revolutionary movement; his selfless revolutionary spirit remains alive in the ranks of the people’s army. ###

#ServeThePeople
#CherishThePeoplesArmy

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WHY THE DUTERTE REGIME CANNOT WIPE OUT THE ARMED REVOLUTION OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE

in Editorial

Jose Maria Sison, NDFP Chief Political Consultant

September 1, 2019

From the revolutionary publications of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, I have been able to gather the ten points enumerated below to demonstrate why the Duterte regime cannot wipe out the armed revolution of the Filipino people.

  1. The crisis of the world capitalist system is at its sharpest in countries like the Philippines which are semicolonial and semifeudal. The evil forces of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism exploit and oppress the Filipino people and incite them to wage the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war.
  2. In committing mass murder and other gross crimes with impunity, the Duterte regime aggravates the chronic crisis of the domestic ruling system, which is dominated by imperialism and run by bureaucrat capitalists who represent the big comprador and landlord classes. The gross crimes that the regime commit characterize it as treasonous, tyrannical, murderous, and corrupt. They give no choice to the people but to engage in armed revolution.
  3. The so-called whole nation approach, which is being carried out by the National Task Force to militarize and spread anti-communism in all branches and agencies of the government and all sectors of society involves huge wastage of public funds in an already bankrupt government and outrages the people who perceive it as a brazen scheme to impose fascist dictatorship through red-tagging, persecution, murders and widespread violation of democratic rights.
  4. The Philippine economy is characterized by underdevelopment, misallocation of resources, mass unemployment and widespread poverty and the absence of any plan to industrialize and develop the economy, generate employment and improve the living conditions of the people. Public funds are being used to serve the interests of foreign corporations, the exploiting classes, the corrupt bureaucrats, the military and police.
  5. The armed revolution is led by the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has a correct ideological, political and organizational line and which has the experience of overcoming the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the subsequent pseudo-democratic regimes. It always carries out theoretical and political education among the Party cadres and members, and political education on the Philippine society and the people’s democratic revolution among the masses of workers and peasants, the indigenous peoples, women and the youth who fight for national and social liberation.
  6. The CPP leads and provides the New People’s Army with the strategy and tactics of protracted people’s war for fighting the enemies of the people. The NPA now operates in more than 120 guerrilla fronts nationwide and can at will strike at the weakest points of the counterrevolutionary military and police in order to seize and increase its arms. It is carrying out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution and is enabling the establishment of the democratic organs of political power which are growing in waves against the counterrevolutionary state.
  7. The relatively stronger forces of the NPA have assisted the relatively weaker forces with the redeployment of cadres and arms. The problem of conservatism is now being solved. The overdispersal of NPA squads and small teams for mass work is now being corrected by the necessary balance of combat and mass work units in periodic rotation under the appropriate command. The “local guerrilla units” or people’s militia units are tasked to concentrate on internal security, instead of being expected to serve as combat units.
  8. The NPA is determined to secure the people from the enemy military, police and paramilitary forces and from local tyrants and bad elements. Armed city partisans and rural-based commando teams are also being deployed to punish the big criminals in power and the criminal syndicates that are in urban areas and to disable or destroy the installations that allow the exploiters to control and exploit the people. Thus more and more armed forces of the enemy will be forced to do guard duty and become defensive.
  9. The peasant masses in the countryside are being driven by the brutal enemy campaigns to support the revolutionary armed struggle, carry out land reform and other social reforms, strengthen their mass organizations and the organs of political power and to adopt necessary security measures. They are effectively applying the anti-feudal united front, neutralizing by persuasive means the unreliable sections of every locality and rallying to the democratic organs of political power.
  10. The anti-communist witch hunts, the constant threats and violent attacks of the enemy against patriotic and progressive organizations in town centers and cities are generating widespread resistance, inducing said organizations and other democratic entities to fight back in defense of their democratic rights. Many social activists who are in danger of arrest or murder go underground and join the armed revolution. They are welcomed by the revolutionary forces and people in the countryside who need more personnel for military and civil tasks.

While the Duterte tyranny persists, the armed revolution will grow in strength and advance. The drive of the Duterte regime to impose fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people will be defeated, like the Marcos fascist dictatorship. The revolutionary forces and people will emerge ever larger and stronger as a result of the revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation.###

#FightBack
#FightTyranny
#OustDuterte

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