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Communique of the 2nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Philippines

in Mainstream

The Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Philippines was held successfully on the fourth quarter of 2016. It was historically dated October 24 to November 7, 2016 as a way of setting off the celebration of the 100th year anniversary of the victory of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

The historic significance of the Second Congress of the Party is indubitable. For the first time in nearly five decades, key leaders and cadres representing the Party’s close to seventy thousand members, were assembled to strengthen the Party’s unity, amend its program and constitution based on accumulated victories and lessons and elect a new set of leaders.

The successful convening of the Party’s Second Congress is a testimony both of the accumulated strength and capacity as well as determination to assemble a big number of cadres. It underscores as well the inability of the reactionary state to destroy the armed revolutionary movement.

Despite relentless enemy military operations, the Second Congress was successfully held inside a guerrilla base. It was secured by a battalion of New People’s Army (NPA) Red fighters and enjoyed boundless support of the peasant masses and indigenous minority groups in the area.

The Second Congress was composed of 120 delegates, both attending and non-attending. Of those who attended, around 30% were above 60 years old, while around 60% were in the 45-59 years age bracket, while 15% were 44 years and younger. The oldest delegate was 70 years old. The youngest delegate was 33 years old.

Reflecting the relative size of the Party’s membership, cadres from five Mindanao regions constituted around 45% of the regional delegates; while those from Luzon constituted 40%; and Visayas, 14%. The other delegates represented the Party’s central leading organs and its commissions.

Guided by the theme “Greater unity, greater victories,” the Party’s Second Congress took a long view of the Party’s 48 year history, took stock of the current objective and subjective conditions and reaffirmed the Party’s determination to advance the national democratic revolution to greater heights.

 

Amendments to the Constitution

The Second Congress amended the CPP Constitution to reflect the Party’s experience in applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as ideological guide in its concrete revolutionary practice.

The biggest important amendment to the Constitution was the elaborated preamble which enshrined the Party’s basic principles including its analysis of the concrete conditions of Philippine society, its national democratic line and program for waging a people’s democratic revolution to pave the way for socialist revolution and construction, its stand and history of struggle against modern revisionism, its strategy and tactics for advancing protracted people’s war and waging armed struggle as principal form of struggle, and establishing the people’s democratic government.

A new article enunciating the role of the Party in the united front was introduced. Amendments were also made to complete the enumeration of the economic classes and their arrangement in terms of membership acceptance. A new provision was inserted to allow members of foreign fraternal parties assigned to work within the scope of the CPP to be accepted as members of the Party.

Another provision was inserted to specify the right of Party members who have reached the age of 70 years to retire from Party work but retain Party membership and to receive subsistence support and medical assistance.

A new provision was also approved specifying the formation of advisory committees to which Party cadres who have opted to retire can be organized into.

To ensure the vigor and vibrancy of the Party, a provision was introduced specifying that steps be undertaken to ensure that the Central Committee shall have a balance of young, middle-aged and senior cadres.

 

Updated general program

The Second Congress updated the Party’s Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution. It presented an updated critique of the semicolonial and semifeudal social system, giving particular attention to the post-Marcos succession of pseudo-democratic regimes, the worsening forms of oppression and exploitation of the broad masses of workers and peasants and the deteriorating socio-economic conditions of the Filipino people in almost four decades under the neoliberal regime.

Drawing lessons from the Party’s rich history, the Second Congress presented a clearer picture of the strategy and tactics for taking advantage of the insoluble and worsening crisis of the world capitalist system, the strategic decline of US imperialism and the chronic crisis of the domestic ruling system in order to advance the protracted people’s war towards complete victory.

The Party’s general program calls on all Filipino communists to “be ready to sacrifice their lives if necessary in the struggle to bring about a new Philippines that is completely independent, democratic, united, just and prosperous.”

The Party program reaffirms the necessity of waging armed revolution in order to counter the armed violence employed by the US imperialists and the local reactionary ruling classes and end the oppressive and exploitative semicolonial and semifeudal system.

The updated program presents ten general tasks and then proceeds to lay down the specific tasks in the political, economic, military, cultural and foreign relations fields.

 

Elections

The Second Congress elected the new Central Committee and Political Bureau for a five-year term. More than half of the newly-elected CC members are from the young and middle-aged cadres of the Party, ensuring that the Party leadership will remain vibrant, tightly linked with the lower levels of leadership and capable of leading the practical work and day-to-day tasks of the Party, especially in waging revolutionary armed struggle against the reactionary state.

The combination of senior Party members with the young and junior Party cadres will ensure the ideological, political and organizational training of a new generation of Party leaders who will be at the helm of the Party in the coming years.

It is the task of the senior cadres to transfer knowledge and skills by summing up their individual and collective experiences in order to help guide the present work of the younger generation of Party leaders.

 

Resolutions

The Second Congress resolved to give the highest honors to Comrade Jose Maria Sison as founding chair of the CPP. It extolled Ka Joma as a “great communist thinker, leader, teacher and guide of the Filipino proletariat and torch bearer of the international communist movement.” The Second Congress recognized his immense contribution to the Philippine revolution and the international working class movement.

It likewise resolved to continue to seek counsel and take guidance from his insights on the ideological, political and organizational aspects of the Party’s work. It also endorsed the five-volume writings of Ka Joma as basic reference and study material of the Party.

The Second Congress averred that the Party having the treasure of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist work that Ka Joma has produced over the past five decades will ever be capable of leading the national democratic revolution to greater heights and complete victory in the coming years.

The Second Congress also resolved to honor all the heroes and martyrs of the Party’s Central Committee “who served as models of selfless dedication and served the Party to their last breath.”

The Second Congress also approved the official Filipino lyrics of the Internationale, the Party’s anthem, which includes a translation of the third section of the original French, and improves the translation of some other parts. The Second Congress also resolved that only the Filipino lyrics will be sung in official Party gatherings.

The Second Congress approved to celebrate with boundless joy and appropriate festivity the 100th year anniversary of the victorious 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia on November 7, 2017.

The objectives are to draw lessons and inspiration from the first successful socialist revolution and the unprecedented rapid economic and social progress achieved from 1917 to 1953 under proletarian leadership as well as to reaffirm the continuing viability of the socialist revolution in the face of worsening crisis of the global capitalist system.

The Second Congress also approved to mark the 50th anniversary of the Party on December 26, 2018 by summing up the Party’s history and celebrating the victories achieved by the Party and people in the past five decades of revolutionary struggle.

The Second Congress finally resolved to salute all Red fighters of the NPA composite battalion force, as well as members of the people’s militias, and all other Party members and activists who helped secure the delegates, assist in their travel, prepare meals, provide medical assistance and other support services.

 

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People’s War for Just Peace

in Editorial

Peace talks between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and five Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) administrations since 1986 have gone on and off because of the unresolved protracted armed conflict between them.

By consensus of the parties, the sequential formal peace negotiations are aimed at ending the armed conflict—and attaining just and lasting peace for the Filipino people—by seriously addressing and resolving its root causes. Happily, this has been grasped and persistently supported by a growing network of peace advocacy formations and people’s organizatio

ns. However, this consensual objective has yet to be deeply understood and appreciated by the general public.

Less comprehended still, outside the ranks of revolutionary forces, is this fact: The people’s war, at bottom, is a struggle for a just and lasting peace.  Yes, the people’s war, led by the CPP-NPA/NDFP over the last 48 years, has pursued such peace “in the most comprehensive and strategic way.”

No wonder the slogan, “People’s war is for people’s peace,” was raised before a huge crowd during the unprecedented public celebration of the 48th founding anniversary of the CPP last December 26 in Davao City and  in various regional commands of the NPA across the country.

For a deeper insight on this matter, Liberation readers may refer to the article, “NDFP Framework in Contrast with the GRP Framework”, written, on May 15, 1991, by Jose Ma. Sison, founding chairperson of the reestablished CPP and chief political consultant of the NDFP negotiating panel.  It is included in the first volume of his selected writings (1991-2009), titled For Justice, Socialism and Peace. 

“The struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and local reactionary classes [embodied by the people’s war] is a struggle for a just and lasting peace,” Sison succinctly writes, “because it strives to solve the fundamental problems of the nation and people, fight and defeat the violence of oppression and exploitation, and bring about the basis for a just and lasting peace.”

Correlating this to the peace negotiations, Sison points out: “The strategic line of the national democratic revolution is the NDFP’s strategic line for a just and lasting peace.  There is no other strategic line.”  To claim there is no strategic line or to replace it (in the peace talks), he emphasizes, “is to confuse the people and the revolutionary forces.”

As regards struggling for peace in the most comprehensive and strategic way, he  explains: “The struggle for a just peace entails as many specific forms of struggle as does the national democratic revolution. These include all legal and illegal forms of struggle.” Armed struggle is the main form, he stresses, because it settles the question of power which is the principal question in any revolution. “No social revolution is possible without the prior change of political power.”

In contrast, the GRP’s strategic view is to preserve the oppressive and exploitative system and to defeat and pacify the revolutionary forces.  Almost all the previous presidents demanded that the NDFP submit to the GRP constitution, which the latter consistently rejected. Given this GRP strategic view, why has the revolutionary movement persisted in pursuing peace negotiations?  Sison explains:

“The NDFP has manifested its just and reasonable position by declaring that although the optimum condition for a just and lasting peace is the total victory of the people in their national democratic revolution, (it) is willing to engage in peace talks for several important reasons, including the promotion of national independence and democracy and a number of basic reforms, immediately beneficial to the people (emphasis ours).

While firmly holding fast to its fundamental principles and strategic line, the revolutionary movement has shown flexibility in talking peace. It makes readjustments in policy as the situation warrants and encourages the GRP to do the same regarding the armed conflict and related issues.

This flexibility has been amply shown in the current peace negotiations, enabling these to move forward relatively fast. That, until President Duterte irascibly cancelled the talks in February, then  calming down, agreed to continue them as scheduled, in April. The CPP-NPA reciprocated the GRP’s unilateral ceasefire declaration in August and (after two months of withdrawal) has acceded to restore it and to work on an interim bilateral ceasefire agreement for the duration of the peace talks.

These concessions to the GRP are based on carefully weighed expectations that the GRP will make good its repeated promise to release more political prisoners, in compliance with the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).  More significant, the GRP has shown willingness to forge and sign a mutually acceptable Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) within this year, and soon after that to begin implementing—along with the NDFP—some of its immediately doable provisions that will benefit the people.

These developments in the peace talks with the Duterte government have played out essentially as Sison envisioned in his 1991 article.  Consider these passages:

“Revolutionaries determined to carry out the objectives of the (National Democratic Revolution) can logically and legitimately consider peace negotiations as a way of pushing forward the aforesaid objectives  in the same way that the other side considers the same peace negotiations as a way of pushing forward its own objectives. Inevitably, the struggle across the table reflects, first of all, the struggle in the battlefield and then influences further developments in the battlefield.”

“It takes the two basic parties in the armed conflict to agree on a truce and what national purpose is to be served. Even if the peace talks were to fail… the people can see who [of the two parties] has the just and reasonable position.”

Photo by Manman Dejeto/Rappler

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Nothing but Change

in Mainstream 
by Vida Gracias

I wanted to give him a face, but this once university-educated youth who turned NPA guerrilla would rather live in anonymity. He is known simply to his comrades and the masses in the barrios as Ka Carlo.

By his looks and sun-baked skin he would appear to anyone as ordinary masa.  But, when he started to talk I knew he was no ordinary fighter. What struck me was not so much his background (as more and more university students to this day—yes, under the Duterte regime–go up the hills to fight) but how he articulated his thoughts about the current regime.

The day I met him he was wearing his standard faded jacket and a cap, his M-16 rifle slung on his side. His rain boots were caked with mud. Probably in his forties, after two decades of guerilla struggle he had seen a dozen battles, sometimes on the offense, sometimes on the defense. A bullet had torn his flesh and hit a bone and took him a year to recover.  But he never waivered, he went back to the hills, and now sat on a ridge in chilly weather overlooking the vastness of the Cordillera mountains, talking about the armed struggle and the Duterte regime.

He said he had his doubts  over the election of a president who claimed to be socialist and leftist. But he recognized that Duterte’s rise to power was phenomenal and rode on tremendous popular support. But he has battled too many regimes to believe everything said about the new president.

Ka Carlo was willing to give Duterte the  benefit of the doubt and see what promises are fulfilled. “It is just Duterte,” he remarked, “and he is lording over a reactionary regime.” How Duterte could make true his promise of change remained a mystery to him.  Especially when in the following days Duterte would flip-flop on his statements, run aground with his own words, and rant about anti-people and anti-poor programs from “tokhang” to demolitions to bombing New People’s Army (NPA) territories. Definitely, Ka Carlo made it clear he would settle for nothing less than a change in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal system that brought widespread poverty, injustice and plunder in the country.

So there would be no laying down of arms, he said firmly. There maybe times the guns were silenced, he said, just like in a ceasefire, but “you cannot trust the military.”  In previous ceasefires, he explained, state troopers would take advantage of the situation and arrest comrades who were visiting their families. Most of the NPA guerrillas are farmers whose families live in the barrios.

Ka Carlo’s words rang true when the unilateral ceasefires both by the revolutionary left and the Duterte regime were withdrawn and President Duterte “cancelled” the peace talks arbitrarily and ordered the arrest of consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) who had been freed on bail by the courts. The NPA charged the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that during its own ceasefire had launched counter-insurgency campaigns in no less than 500 barangays within the areas of the revolutionary forces and killed activists and suspected NPA fighters. Also, President Duterte continued to hold off the release of all political prisoners that he had promised to do,  through general amnesty, in the early days of his regime. The NDFP has emphasized that releasing the political prisoners would be in compliance by the GRP with the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

The AFP countered with a “total war” against the NPA, a boast that rang hollow as the AFP had always threatened to do the same thing in the past—yet the NPA has survived over four decades of counterinsurgency campaigns. The AFP raised a lot of complaints and accusations over the killing and arrest of soldiers by the NPA but it kept silent over its own atrocities and violations of human rights against those they deemed enemies of the state.

Thus the fighting could definitely continue until reciprocal unilateral ceasefires were to be declared before resuming the peace negotiations in the first week of April. “You cannot leave the masses defenseless, even when there are peace talks,” Ka Carlo stressed. The ceasefires would remain interim or temporary for as long there is no resolution to the armed conflict. No bilateral ceasefire agreement could be forged during the peace negotiation that would only lead to the surrender or pacification of the armed movement. The negotiation could proceed but the matter of attaining just and lasting peace would ultimately hinge on the strength of the revolutionary forces on the battlefield as well as their mass support.

I stared at Ka Carlo’s battle scars and counted the years he had been fighting.  The Duterte regime, I concluded, would be up against fighters with such deep resolve for change that nothing can draw them away from battle except genuine change itself.

 

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Gilbert Torres: The Artist is a Revolutionary

in Arts & Literature
The artwork for this cover was by Gibet Torres and Jess Red
by Pat Gambao

Art transcends beauty when it serves the struggling masses and fires the revolution.  Art becomes a weapon of war, and as such it becomes a weapon of peace.

Gilbert Torres’s artworks, which effused the sense of commitment and principle, passion and dedication, were spread in the pages of revolutionary publications, such as the Liberation of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the Ulos of ARMAS (Artista at Manunulat para sa Sambayanan), an organization of artists and writers allied to the NDFP, the education materials of the Commission on Education of the Communists Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the protest paper, Sick of the Times, a lampoon of the evils of the Marcos dictatorship.

Gibet, as he was fondly called, started his activism during his senior year at Don Bosco Technical  College.  It had not been difficult to kindle in him a sense of nationalism, and even the revolutionary spirit.  His grandfather was an Irish-American who had been in the Philippines since the early nineteen hundreds.  Gibet had always been proud of his Irish descent having known the valiant struggle of the Irish people for independence from British rule.  He had idolized the Irish Republican Army.  Of course, he was also aware that in his veins likewise flowed the heroic blood of his Filipino forefathers who for centuries had fought against foreign invaders. Thus, in his fondness for books, what created great impact on him were stories of people’s struggles for liberation and love for freedom.

It was never difficult for him to associate with the masses.  He studied in a school the orientation of which, as founded by its namesake (St. John Bosco, an Italian priest), is a school for the poor.  But as a private sectarian school owned and operated by the Salesian Congregation that St. John Bosco also founded, it had become also a school for the affluent.  As he loathed the hypocrisy of the elite Gibet was more comfortable in the company of his schoolmates who were in relatively lower social strata or in the same petty-bourgeois class where he belonged.  As a member of the Nationalist Corps, an organization of the youth in Don Bosco, he immersed with the peasants and workers.

As a fine arts student at the University of the Philippines (UP) in the 70s, he provided art works to the “rebel” Philippine Collegian, a parallel publication handled by student activists at the time when the official campus paper was in the hands of the “reactionaries”. In those days, before the advent of electric typewriter, photo stencil and IBM typesetting machine, computer and Risograph printers, underground papers used manual thin stencils to type in articles. Mimeograph machine was used for printing.  Art works were done more exhaustively using a pointed steel, called stylus pen, on the delicate stencil paper.  Extreme care was required.  Gibet did his art works, meticulously, superbly.

With the abolition of student councils in 1973, following the declaration of martial law, student activists in UP worked hard to put up the Student Conference Committee on Student Affairs or CONCOMSA.  Gibet was its representative from the UP College of Fine Arts. In other campuses, students also moved to form progressive student organizations. These bodies pushed for the restoration of student councils. The students’ struggle for their democratic rights in the campuses became a part of the broader anti-fascist struggle of that time.

With his exposure, as a member of the Nationalist Youth or Kabataang Makabayan (KM), to peasants and farm workers and to the underground movement, Gibet’s art work assumed a new dimension.  The influence of his favorite Italian painter Fra Filippo Lippi and German painter and printmaker Albrecht Durer was probably still there but infused in the flesh and actions of the revolting peasants, the striking workers, the restive students.

In April 1982, Gibet was arrested by military men as he was about to enter the Liberation underground staff house in Quezon City.  He was carted off to the Bagong Bantay military camp in Quezon City and tortured.  But despite the blows to his body and the gun pointed to his head, Russian-roulette style, he staunchly stood his ground. The military failed to break him down and extract information from him.  He was released after six months.

Upon release, Gibet had the time to bake his favorite Irish bread that his friends relished upon.  He also spent time in Philippine solidarity groups for Latinos in El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru. He was also involved in the peasant campaigns in Hacienda San Antonio and in the Sta. Isabel Tabacalera land issue in Cagayan Valley.

Even when Gibet joined the mainstream arena of digital arts and advertising, he continued to do art works for the mass movement.  For IBON Foundation, he had designed covers for calendars and did illustrations in its book TNCs Por Biginers.  His standpoint never dwindled.  It is immortalized in the verse by Jonas Leopoldo of ARMAS which was quoted in the NDFP greeting card where Gibet did an artwork under the nom de guerre Andres Magbanua:  “Real and lasting peace is born out of struggle for freedom and justice.”  To these days, Gilbert Torres’s life and works continue to inspire young revolutionary artists.

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