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CRISPIN S. TAGAMOLILA: The AFP Is Not the Place to Serve the People

in Cherish

On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the New People’s Army (NPA) on March 29, 2019, the revered memory of a martyr of the revolution comes to mind. On the same day in 1971, the second anniversary of the NPA, the 26-year old Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Lt. Crispin S. Tagamolila defected to the revolutionary people’s army. In his statement, he cited, “I have realized that the (AFP) is the primary instrument of oppression of the righteous dissent of the suffering masses,” as reason for his defection.

Born on January 7, 1945 in Tubungan, Iloilo, Crispin spent his early years of education in the La Paz Elementary School and the Iloilo High School. He was the third of five children of Manuel Tagamolila and Casiana Sandoval. One of his siblings, his younger brother Antonio, a former Philippine Collegian editor and national president of the College Editor’s Guild of the Philippines, was also killed in an encounter in the mountains of Panay, two years after Crispin’s death.

After finishing his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at the University of the Philippines in 1966, he enrolled at the Philippine Military Academy. Upon graduation in 1967, he was commissioned as a regular officer in the AFP. While serving in the army he took up law at the Philippine Constabulary Law School while at the same time taught nationalism, Philippine History and Philippine heroes. As a law student, he excelled in his studies, always landing among the five top students of his class. However, due to his radical views on politico-social issues, the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) put him under surveillance. In an attempt to restrain his activities, the ISAFP offered to bribe him with a promotion that he readily declined.

While in the service, he witnessed the control of US imperialism on the AFP through the Joint US Military Assistance Group (JUSMAG)—the aid and training it gave the Philippine army and police personnel on counter-insurgency techniques, crowd control and gangsterism. He was also immensely disgusted with how Marcos used the military to suppress his critics and perpetuate his rule while he tolerated the rampant corruption of his anointed generals.

His realization sealed his decision to leave the puppet armed forces and join the people’s revolutionary army. “It is indeed only through armed struggle by the people and the army against the exploiters that the masses can hope for a just and progressive society,” he expounded in his statement.

In the people’s army, Crispin was known by his nom de guerre “Ka Cely”. His political and military knowledge has contributed much to the masses and his comrades. From 1969 to 1972, the expansion of the organized mass base in Isabela reached 150,000.

“Ka Cely” was killed in an encounter on April 16, 1972 in Echague, Isabela while covering the retreat of his comrades. Upon his death, his family came up with a statement: “We are crying, we are saddened because he is no longer with us, but most of all we are grieving because he can no longer serve the people and the country he loved so much.”

Much as Crispin Tagamolila’s death is a loss to the revolution, it is not all in vain. It has inspired and steeled the resolve of the revolutionary movement to advance the people’s struggle. The seed he had sown has bloomed to fruition as the flame of the revolution engulfed the archipelago; as the revolution advances, much stronger, more adept and more determined to attain national and social liberation, thwarting all Oplans hatched by US imperialism and its puppet regimes in the past 50 years.

DUTERTE IS THE BEST RECRUITER AND BEST TRANSPORT AND SUPPLY OFFICER

in Statements 
Jose Maria Sison, NDFP Chief Political Consultant
23 March 2019 | https://goo.gl/MLoM8h

The Filipino people and the revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) have a lot to thank Duterte for. Though unwittingly, like the tyrant Marcos in his own time, Duterte has become the best recruiter and the best transport and supply officer of the New People’s Army (NPA).

As the best recruiter of the NPA, Duterte has driven so many people to join the NPA by running a tyrannical, treasonous, mass murdering, plundering and inflation-generating regime. The people have no choice but to fight such an evil regime.

By terminating the peace negotiations, he compels the armed revolutionary movement to concentrate on intensifying the people’s war and cast away any illusion that this regime of terror and greed can negotiate social, economic and political reforms to address the roots of the armed conflict in order to achieve a just and lasting peace.

The more direct kind of assistance that Duterte gives to the armed revolution is splitting up his military and police forces into two parts, one part for psywar and mass intimidation and the other part for blind and deaf armed offensives against the people.

The part for psywar and mass intimidation is for engaging in fake peace-and-development activities, rounding up people for fake localized peace negotiations, fake surrenders, occupation of civilian offices, too many checkpoints, guarding pro-Duterte politicians and business enterprises, over-enlarged surveillance and intelligence operations, widespread red tagging, urban arrests and death-squad operations.

The part for combat is weakened with less personnel for field deployment. In any case, whatever is the number of combat personnel of the reactionary armed forces, they are rendered blind and deaf by the lack of popular support wherever they dare to move against the guerrilla fronts.

Duterte is the best transport and supply officer when he sends his troops and police to attack the guerrilla fronts. When they advance in superior force, the NPA retreats and gives the enemy an illusion of winning. But when they camp and take over rough terrain, their strength is thinned out and they leave gaps between units and make small detachments and patrol teams, which are easy targets for the counteroffensives of the NPA.

Duterte’s scheme to destroy the NPA in Mindanao and then in Luzon and the Visayas has utterly failed. The predictions of Ano and Duterte that they could destroy the NPA before the end of 2018 have proven to be false. Duterte’s prediction that the NPA would be destroyed before the middle of 2019 have been debunked by DND secretary Lorenzana himself who begged for more time until 2022.

The NPA has become stronger in Mindanao, with more enemy units being annihilated and disarmed. At the same time, the people’s war in Luzon and the Visayas has successfully intensified. Thus, Duterte is compelled to redeploy some of his forces from Mindanao to the Visayas and Luzon. The 75 percent of his military forces concentrated in Mindanao since 2017 are now down to 64 percent, according to inside AFP sources.

The diehard reactionaries like Duterte and his armed minions always fail to appreciate the strategic line of protracted people’s war in pursuit of the people’s democratic revolution. This strategic line gives the wide space and time for the NPA to grow from small and weak to big and strong and to lure in the enemy forces to spread out thinly in the countryside and to so many islands for NPA tactical offensives to become more effective.

It is impossible for the reactionary military, police and paramilitary forces to defeat the NPA through sheer military operations and puerile psywar. The NPA already has nationwide strength and is deeply rooted among the toiling masses. It occupies almost all the strategic areas favorable for guerrilla warfare in the stage of strategic defensive and for the prospective regular mobile warfare in the strategic stalemate.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has wisely changed the NPA force structure, with 40 percent of its units relatively concentrated for tactical offensives and 60 percent relatively dispersed units for mass work in each of the 110 guerrilla fronts. By seizing more arms from the enemy forces, the NPA is increasing its ability to hit the weak points of the enemy at will all over the archipelago.

At this time, the termination of the peace negotiations seems to benefit Duterte’s scheme of fascist dictatorship but in fact, it drives the broad masses of the people and the organized revolutionary forces to wage all forms of resistance to isolate and intensify them in order to isolate and defeat the tyrannical US-Duterte regime.

As an observer of the current civil war in the Philippines, I have learned from CPP revolutionary publications that the best way to frustrate Duterte’s scheme of fascist dictatorship, to puncture its arrogance and debunk the fake surrenders and fake encounters staged by the regime and its armed running dogs is for the NPA to deliver more lethal blows on weak points of the enemy forces in the countryside and deliver head blows to the regime’s most brutal, corrupt and drug-trading officials in the urban areas.

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ON DOCUMENTS OF IDENTIFICATION OR SAFE CONDUCT PASSES

in Statements 
Fidel V. Agcaoili
Chairperson, NDFP Negotiating Panel
Press Statement | March 23, 2019
https://goo.gl/x2zrxx

For the information of Gen. Galvez and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, it is not a crime to participate in peace negotiations and to possess a document of identification or safe conduct pass in order to do so.

The Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) mandates the two Parties to issue documents of identification or safe conduct passes to negotiators, consultants, staffers, security and other personnel to enable the Parties to hold peace negotiations and forge comprehensive agreements on human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, and end of hostilities and disposition of forces in order to pave the way for a just and lasting peace in the country.

Except for the negotiators who are appointed by the respective principals of the Parties, the consultants, staffers, security and other personnel in the peace negotiations are chosen for their experience and expertise in the fields of economics, politics, law and human rights – both international and domestic, – military, etc., as well as their capability to consult with concerned communities and organizations on matters pertinent to the peace negotiations to move these forward.

In any legal and judicial system, criminal offenses are defined in law, codified and enriched in jurisprudence. Under the laws of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP), there is no crime attached to participation in peace negotiations or being holders of documents of identification or safe conduct passes.

Mr. Renante Gamara is protected from arrest under the JASIG as a publicly known consultant of the NDFP for political and constitutional reforms. Even under GRP laws, he could not be the subject of arrest because there is no warrant against him and he has an outstanding bail on the case with which he is charged. But his arresting unit resorted to the usual ploy of planting evidence in order to charge him with the trumped up offense of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, as in the cases of NDFP consultants Edilberto Silva, Vic Ladlad and Rey Claro Casambre.

On the other hand, Fr. Art Balagat is a priest who was based abroad for a long time and had recently returned to the Philippines to retire in the Diocese of Imus, Cavite. He is neither a participant nor a holder of document of identification or safe conduct pass in the peace negotiations. But he was during the time of the Marcos dictatorship, the spokesperson of the Justice for Aquino, Justice for All (JAJA) movement. His arrest smacks of the regime’s irrational and unrelenting assault and persecution of church people.

The militarists in the GRP’s security cluster are fond of ignoring and violating their own laws, more so today under an enabling commander-in-chief whose apparent preferred solution to the nation’s problems is to intimidate, terrorize, jail or kill his opponents, suspected drug users from the poor, peasant activists, trade unionists, lawyers and human rights defenders. But there is a limit to his threatening speeches, brutal ways, corrupt practices, and treasonous policies. It will soon be reached.

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Unholy Trinity

in Countercurrent

What is the common thread binding former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, former President and now House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and current President Rodrigo Roa Duterte?
Dictatorial and extraordinary powers. Forgive the pun: “Those whom the gods which to destroy they first make MAD.”

 

As is being repeated in history, no amount of force or threats or promises could fool the people to believe that these tyrants—like MAD—have the best interests of the people at heart.

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