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Happiness is in the Revolution

in Mainstream

 

In truth, it was never what she expected.

After five years in the New People’s Army (NPA), Ka Nina, who was a youth activist, admitted a lot of her earlier perception of what a Red fighter is had changed.

For one, she thought Red fighters don’t know how to laugh, “Akala ko laging seryoso. Laging politika ang inilalabas ng bibig. Di marunong tumawa. Kaya laking gulat ko pagpasok ko dito sa sonang gerilya dito sa aming rehiyon (in Bicol) napakakwela pala ng mga kasama (I thought they were always serious, unsmiling, and talking only about politics. So I was surprised they were a cheery bunch when I came to the guerrilla zone here in Bicol),” she commented. They laugh at the littlest of things—when a dog that passes by, while practicing new songs, the pronouncements of Pres. Duterte. It must be “because we know we always face a life and death situation. That brings us closer and builds our rapport and camaraderie,” Ka Nina explained.

Ka Nina’s life in the NPA was far from the image she once held about the red fighters. Even as an activist she had no idea what kind of life they lived. Curiously, Ka Nina found her way into a guerrilla zone. And she stayed on. “Perhaps it was also because as a student activist, I saw the brutality of the state—in rallies, in picket lines,” she added.

Life with the masses

Half a decade in the people’s army, Ka Nina’s integration with the masses sustained her even as she misses her family and friends. “Mayaman kasi sa mass work ang Hukbo. ‘Yun ang isa sa pinakamahalagang salik kung paano namin napapangibabawan yung mga sakrispisyo, mga hirap, mga pisikal na pagod,” she narrated. Sharing stories with the masses erases their tiredness. “Kahit na wala ka pang kain buong araw. (Even if we haven’t eaten the whole day).”

We do a great deal of mass work. That must be one factor why we are able to overcome sacrifices, hardships and physical difficulties.

She was bursting with stories on her life with the masses. Asked to give a highlight, she begged, “pwede pong dalawa? (May I share two?).”

The first story she loved to tell and retell was when she was still new in the NPA. “Nag-ikot kami sa bahaging coastal area. Tapos yung masa doon talagang hirap sila sa pananim. Sabi nila, wala daw tumutubo doon sa lupa nila. Hirap din sila sa tubig tapos wala rin silang mga ipantatanim (As we went around the coastal community we saw the difficulties of the masses to grow plants. Nothing grows on the land. They have no fresh water and they don’t have anything to plant),” she related. Through the efforts of the comrades and the organized masses, they were able to solicit cassava cuttings and distributed these to the community members for planting. “They were so euphoric. They hugged us. That was great. It was satisfying to have done something for the masses,” Ka Nina exclaimed as she relived the moment.

The second story was when their unit had an encounter with the military. Two comrades fell, recalled Ka Nina. The masses went with them to retrieve the remains of the comrades. “It was a long walk, it was raining, and worse, we had to pass through enemy lines.” When the community members got to the place, they immediately tended to the remains of the comrades, like their own. “Bagamat malungkot ang pangalawang halimbawa na binigay ko, isa po ‘yun sa pinakamatingkad na karanasan ko kung gaano kamahal ng mga masa ang mga kasama, (The story may be sad but I just wanted to show how the masses love the comrades),” Ka Nina noted.

Collective life

Like the masses, Ka Nina’s collective carried her through hard times. “When you feel weary and weak because you miss your family, the collective is there to guide you, help you, listen to how you feel.” She said all their concerns are discussed in the collective. “Lahat ng bagay dito sa Hukbo—problema mo sa pagkain, sa pagdumi, kalungkutan— napag-uusapan, nabubutbot po yung mga ganun tapos nagagawan ng solusyon. (We discuss everything in the collective—food, poop, loneliness. We dissect and find solution to everything).”

It has also never been a problem that she is a woman. “Totoo na may pantay na pagtingin sa kababaihan dito sa loob ng rebong kilusan.

It is true. Women in the revolutionary movement are treated equally and fairly.

In her five years with the NPA, or even when she was still an activist, she claimed she has not experienced discrimination.

She admitted though that this is not true for all the masses they meet and so they have to reorient the masses on this. The same goes for the new recruits in the NPA. But the new recruits, Ka Nina said, immediately get it, citing “We are together 24/7, death is always upon us, we could encounter the enemy anytime” as possible reasons.

“Ang sabi nga ng mga kasama dapat laging maging handa, babae ka man o lalaki kasi di namimili ang punglo. Babae ka o lalaki, tatamaan ka niyan. Sa pagpapaputok ng baril, di mo kailangan macho ka o sobrang lakas mo. Babae ka o lalaki, o anuman ang kasarian mo, ang kailangan mo ay ang kapasyahang iputok ang baril. Kalabitin ang gatilyo. (A comrade said we should be prepared, always. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female because bullets don’t discriminate. One need not be macho or tough. Whether you are male, female, or whatever is the gender preference, the most important is the will to fire the gun., to pull the trigger.)”

A new generation of cadres

As the CPP and the NPA celebrate its 50th year, Ka Nina recognized the contributions of the revolutionary movement to Philippine society—from understanding its nature to instituting meaningful changes while advancing the people’s war. “In the last five decades we have proven we can rise above all challenges because what we are fighting for is just and right.”

She sees a bright future ahead with the kind of unity among the people’s army, the masses, and the Party members. There was obviously pride and elation as Ka Nina takes part in the celebration, “Masarap sa pakiramdam kasi umabot yung henerasyon namin sa ika-50 anibersaryo. Napakasarap sa pakiramdam. (I feel joyful because our generation is part of the 50th anniversary.)”

As the conversation closed, Ka Nina cracked her third highlight without a prompt: “Tapos, yung simple po na pagtawag nila lagi sa amin na kasama o Kas, o anak, ganyan po ang tawag nila sa amin. Samantalang dun sa kabila ay kaaway. Ang sarap sa pakiramdam. Talagang tama ‘tong ipinaglalaban natin.

When the masses call us comrade, or Kas [short for kasama, also comrade], or my child while they call the reactionaries as the enemy, that makes us feel good. We know that what we are fighting for is right.

ServeThePeople

PagAsaNgBayan

JoinTheNPA

*Quote from Benito Tiamzon on his June 2014 interview

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DUTERTE REGIME: A propaganda war with dire consequences

in Countercurrent
by Erika Hernandez

Neophyte Senator Ronaldo “Bato” dela Rosa, the controversial Philippine National Police chief of the Duterte government, recently led a public inquiry in the Senate and instantly spurred controversy and criticisms. He attempted to link progressive youth organizations with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA).

He presented two witnesses who claimed they were “students by day and NPA by night”—a giveaway phrase as to where it came from: the military. That he sought to turn a public inquiry, purportedly in aid of legislation, into a witch hunt immediately became obvious.

The frontman in President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” also presented parents of youth activists, who apparently had been goaded to vilify leaders of Anakbayan and Kabataan Partylist as “kidnappers who brainwash their members.” Bato’s witch hunt came with memes on social media showing NPA martyrs from the youth sector and victims of state-perpetrated enforced disappearances with a theme, “Sayang ang buhay ng kabataan (Youth lives just wasted).”

Military officers, who had been invited as resource persons, called for a review of an agreement between a youth leader and then defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile, prohibiting the presence of state security forces in the universities and colleges. They gave lame excuses, such as to prevent “front organizations” from recruiting students to join the NPA; avert the proliferation of drugs in schools; and give the military an equal opportunity to explain government programs.

Following the Senate inquiry, members of the PNP attempted to conduct “mandatory” drug testing on students at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP). Courageous PUP scholars who knew their rights valiantly resisted, driving away the cops from the university premises.

Bato couldn’t wait to use the Senate as platform for pushing the propaganda line against the CPP-NPA of the Duterte regime in its bid to defeat the revolutionary movement before the end of its term.

By striving to directly link the progressive youth organizations with the CPP-NPA and the armed struggle against the reactionary state, the fascist regime aims to justify its red-tagging, harassment, abductions, and killings of youth leaders and activists. The regime blurs—if not totally removes—the distinction between the armed revolutionary movement and the legal, above-ground democratic mass movement fighting for the people’s legitimate demands. It regards the open democratic mass movement as the propaganda component of the armed revolutionary movement.

Thus in the following weeks, the Duterte regime’s red-tagging spree, branding almost all legal organizations as “fronts” of the CPP-NPA, was raised a notch higher. Duterte’s rabid pro-US defense chief urged the illegalization of these organizations by reviving the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957 (the cold war-era legislation that illegalized the CPP; it was repealed under the Ramos government in 1992 as it entered into peace negotiations with the NDFP).

Myth-making through red tags and incessant lies

Red tagging and vilification of people’s organizations is a key facet of the “strategic communication” thrust under the “whole of nation approach (WNA)” of the Duterte regime’s counterinsurgency program. Under this overarching WNA concept—applied unsuccessfully by the US in its unending wars of intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and 2002—the regime seeks to “create a movement of and crusade against communist ideology starting with the youth.” It also aims to “assess and conduct counter measures on the current tri-media and social media being infiltrated and targeted by the “CNN [CPP-NPA-NDFP)” through inter-agency collaboration to counter and contain the spread of extremism and revolution.”

What the regime is trying to portray is a supposed state inter-agency collaboration with civil society collaboration against the Left revolutionary movement. While Bato exploits the Senate as platform, Congress is poised to enact repressive measures such as the revival of the Anti-Subversion Law, amendments to the Human Security Act of 2007 (the anti-terrorism law), mandatory military training in schools, among others. The Anti-Subversion Law and Human Security Act amendments portray critics and activists as “terrorists,” to justify unrelenting unarmed and armed attacks against them.

Red-tagging and vilification have preceded many cases of extrajudicial killing, torture, arrest and detention and other human rights abuses against farmers, workers, environmentalists, Church people, lawyers, human rights defenders and other sectors.

The Duterte regime’s propaganda machinery involves both the military and civilian bureaucracy, with the former taking the lead role. The composition of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), formed through Executive Order No. 70 and headed by President Duterte, shows how civilian agencies are being mobilized for counterinsurgency operations.

The NTF has been busy in its efforts to red tag and vilify the legal and progressive mass organizations critical of the Duterte regime and its continuing subservience to US imperialism and obeisance to China as the rising imperialist power.

One of the most glaring incidents of red-tagging happened during the May 2019 elections. PNP men and women in uniform were caught on camera in the act of distributing a PNP newsletter linking Makabayan Coalition-affiliated partylist groups to the underground revolutionary movement.

In other areas such as Panay, Negros, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, leaflets containing a list of persons alleged to be communists were distributed by state agents. In the list are human rights activists, lawyers, members of the religious, journalists, and academics.

Brig. Gen. Antonio Parlade, AFP deputy chief of staff for civil-military operations, is one of the most vociferous in publicly labeling human rights organizations and sectoral groups as “CPP-NPA fronts” and in peddling the lie that these organizations are involved in “terroristic” activities.

The regime also takes advantage of social media to vilify its the most vocal critics. The Philippine News Agency (PNA) and the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) makes use of fake photos, fake statements, and incredible claims against leaders of the people’s organizations.

The regime has spent tremendous amounts of taxpayers’ money in disseminating its propaganda against the progressive movement to the international community. The NTF-ELCAC went as far as dispatching a team that visited officials of European Union (EU) member states to red-tag Karapatan, Ibon International, Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, Gabriela, among others. The task force urged these EU countries to cut funding for organizations serving the most neglected rural communities in the Philippines.

The NTF-ELCAC sent a delegation to the United Nations Working Group on Involuntary Disappearances in Bosnia-Herzegovina and egregiously urged that body to delist 625 cases of enforced disappearances in the Philippines, mostly attributed to state security forces. NTF members also furiously lobbied against the passage of a resolution filed by Iceland in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), urging the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to look into the spate of extrajudicial killings and make a written comprehensive report on the human rights situation in the Philippines. Their lobbying failed; the UNHRC adopted the resolution.

Even the academe, hospitals and other civilian agencies are not spared from the witch hunt. Policemen did rounds in schools, government hospitals and other offices, profiling the members and officers of employees’ unions.

The AFP and PNP have been spreading outright lies. They claim to have succeeded in ending the “insurgency” in some provinces—claims that have repeatedly been belied since the Ramos government first declared, in 1994, that it had strategically defeated the NPA (which it admitted to be untrue several months later). They present to the media fake surrenderers, mostly farmers they either coerced, deceived, or bribed—through the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP)—into admitting they were NPA members. They churn out these falsehoods to conjure the illusion that they are winning against the revolutionaries.

But when their most heinous crimes are exposed, they readily put the blame on the CPP- NPA. This has been shown in the case of the extrajudicial killings in Negros Oriental. Braving threats and the pain of repeatedly recalling the tragic massacres, families of the victims have testified how their loved ones were killed in cold blood during the joint AFP-PNP’s Oplan Sauron operations.

When members and other paid elements of the AFP and the PNP get killed in legitimate armed encounters, they try hide their defeats, or worse, misrepresent these incidents as violations by the NPA of international humanitarian law.

Criminalizing dissent: the biggest lie

Through the Inter-Agency Committee on Legal Action (IACLA), the AFP and the PNP jointly try to use the judiciary as a weapon against critics of Duterte and his corrupt and bungling regime. The following are just some examples showing how this administration is criminalizing dissent: the perjury charges filed by Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, the president’s national security adviser, against Karapatan, the RMP, and Gabriela; the sedition and cyberlibel cases filed against Vice President Leni Robredo, political opposition candidates in the May senatorial elections, and some Catholic bishops; and, the kidnapping charges against youth leaders and former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares.

A similar ridiculous and malicious kidnapping and child abuse charges were earlier filed against Bayan Muna President Satur Ocampo and Representative France Castro of Act-Teachers partylist in late 2018, when they helped rescue Lumad students who had been forced out of their school that was shut down by the military.

A number of activists, service providers of progressive NGOs and organizers or campaigners of legal progressive organizations, have also been arrested based on patently made-up accusations including illegal possession of firearms and explosives. In most cases the arresting teams have planted the “evidence” in the activists’ bags they seized, in vehicles or residences as in the case of labor organizer Maoj Maga, long-time peace advocate and NDFP peace consultant Rey Claro Casambre, and NDFP peace consultants Vicente Ladlad, Adel Silva, and recently Esterlita Suaybaguio.

Professional “witnesses” or “surrenderers” dragooned as witnesses are used from one case to another to churn out false testimonies, almost always bordering on the ridiculous. The use of arrest warrants against “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” have become the norm to justify the illegal arrests of any targeted person.

The “multiple murder” case involving, as supposedly prime evidence, “travelling skeletons”—first allegedly dug up from a mass grave in Baybay, Leyte then years later supposedly dugged up again in Inopacan, Leyte—has been discredited and should have been laid to rest long ago.

But, no! The biggest legal fiction of Gloria Arroyo’s Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG)—the filing of trumped-up murder charges in 2007 against Ocampo (then Bayan Muna congressman) and several others was questioned before the Supreme Court, which granted Ocampo bail. However, the case awaited action by the highest tribunal for seven years. Only in 2014 did the SC, mostly with new justices sitting, referred the case for trial to a regional trial court. Then after hearings held over about five years, the prosecutors recently asked the court to issue warrants of arrest against 38 of the co-accused, including NDFP chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison. The court issued the warrants.

In another case, the Court of Appeals recently junked both the petition for writ of amparo and writ of habeas data filed by the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) and a similar petition filed by Karapatan, RMP and Gabriela (the NUPL is the groups’ legal counsel). The parallel rulings indicate the sway of military influence on the judiciary. The rulings, issued by different CA divisions, practically denied the human rights defenders the legal remedies sought for their protection against political persecution and threats to their personal security and their lives.

Silencing the media

As part of its “strategic communication” strategy, the Duterte regime has been discrediting the journalism profession in an apparent bid to drown out the truth in media reporting and spread more lies. By calling journalists as bayaran, “press-titute”, and other derogatory labels, Duterte wants the Filipino people to doubt and reject the media’s role as watchdogs in society.

  1. The Duterte regime is trying to intimidate the more critical journalists using some of these methods: Producing fabricated matrices that link to a conjured ouster plot against Duterte the media organizations—the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), the Vera Files, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)—and individual journalists such as Inday Espina-Varona and Danilo Arao.
  2. Threatening non-renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise, a virtual Damocles sword on the broadcasting giant.
  3. Filing a string of charges against online news site Rappler and twice trying to detain its CEO.
  4. Conducting “background checks” on journalists. Members of the Philippine National Police Press Corps have reported police visits and interrogations.
  5. Visiting media outfits in the pretext of “getting fair stories” regarding the bloody war on drugs, such as in the case of two media outfits in the Visayas. Some journalists have been included in the drug watch list even though there is no evidence on the alleged use or trade in illegal drugs.
  6. Red-tagging of the NUJP, the largest organization of journalists in the country, for being vocal in its defense of press freedom. Individual members of the NUJP have also been red-tagged.
  7. Utilizing trolls to harass critical journalists. Some of these include, among others, death threats and threats of raping women journalists.
  8. Launching systematic cyber attacks against alternative media websites Bulatlat, Kodao, Altermidya, Pinoy Weekly and NUJP. The cyber attacks have also targeted the websites of Bayan, Karapatan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela Women’s Party, Ibon and scores of other organizations, including the CPP’s Philippine Revolution Web Central (PRWC). Sweden-based Qurium Media Foundation’s forensic report on the cyber attacks revealed that the attacks were launched on websites which are based in the Philippines.

The escalation of cyber attacks and vilification of media outfits, critical think tanks, progressive service-oriented NGOs and people’s organizations are also part of the Duterte regime’s “strategic communication” plan. The AFP first announced its creation of a cyber workforce in 2017. Since then until 2019, the AFP, the PNP and the Philippine Coast Guard have yearly held a Cybersecurity Summit.

Early this year, the Duterte regime launched a national cybersecurity plan. It created a cybersecurity management system “to monitor cyber threats,” headed by the Integrated Computer Systems (ICS) and the Israeli surveillance company Verint, with an initial licensing period of three years. Verint is a billion-dollar company with a global interception and surveillance empires.

The Duterte regime’s dirty propaganda tactics are coupled with heightening repression.

Labeling activists interchangeably as “terrorists,” “suspected drug addicts,” “kidnappers,” and the like aims to demonize and criminalize dissent and justify their killing and other human rights violations against them.

All these latest misuse of new technology to spread lies, combined with the age-old armed repression, are like carpetbombs seeking to harm not only the armed revolutionaries. Mostly targeted are citizens critical of the regime, the activists, the Church, the media and any other supporter of human rights and the struggle for genuine democracy.

The intended victims of this campaign are unarmed, visible and easy targets. The Duterte regime is fighting a truly dirty war. But the more it lies and kills even non-combatants, the more it reveals the bankruptcy of any promised good inuring to the people that it trots out to justify this dirty and costly war.

As such, the Duterte regime and its dirty war will not likely last long. With every attack it reveals its true face, the face of a rotting government that is puppet to foreign interests and seeking to maintain a crumbling status quo. It only highlights the correctness of waging and advancing the now 50-year national democratic revolution.

To break the cycle of lies and killings being perpetrated by this fascist regime, the people here and abroad should harness the courage and will power to expose and denounce its lies, and call for ever-broadening people’s resistance.###

#DuterTerorista
#FightTyranny
#DefendPressFreedom
#MakibakaWagMatakot

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Condemn Mass Arrest and Duterte Regime’s Heightened Fascist Drive

in Statements
November 02, 2019
https://cutt.ly/GeRnGFQ

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) condemns in the strongest terms the mass arrest of activist workers, peasants, women, and media practitioners over the past few days in Bacolod, Escalante and Manila. Police arrested and detained more than 60 people belonging to various sectoral organizations were arrested. More than five children were also accosted.

The CPP condemns the statement issued by Malacañang which makes the patently false claim that the arrested activists in Bacolod City were members of the New People’s Army (NPA). This brazen lie aims to conceal the martial law crackdown on mass-based organizations.

The mass arrest marks a heightening of the Duterte regime’s fascist drive against all democratic forces. It is a brazen display of force and abuse of state powers. It seeks to terrorize the people and their democratic forces. It aims to silence the broad masses against worsening oppression under the Duterte regime.

The mass arrest is an unbridled exercise of military and police power in Negros, which together with Bicol and Samar, are under Duterte’s Memorandum Order 32. This is combined with Executive Order #70 through which Duterte has established a virtual civil-military junta and placed the entire country under undeclared martial law. The mass arrest is a dress rehearsal for a nationwide crackdown against all democratic forces.

Duterte’s all-out campaign of suppression are driving the broad masses to join the revolutionary underground. In the face of Duterte’s brutal fascist drive, many are encouraged to join the New People’s Army or seek its protection.

The Party calls on the Filipino people and the broad democratic forces to condemn the Negros mass arrest and demand their immediate release. They must firmly oppose the attempt of the fascist regime to take away completely the people’s democratic rights. They must rise up in protest, continue to defend their democratic rights, especially their right to organize and to oppose government treachery, corruption and tyranny.

The Party urges the NPA in Negros and across the country to heed the Filipino people’s demand for justice against Duterte’s abuses. They must exert all effort to mount tactical offensives against the AFP and PNP units, especially those behind fascist crimes.

#DuterTerorista
#FightTyranny

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Vibrant Democracy Thrives in the People’s Army

in Mainstream

by Vida Gracias and Pat Gambao

Soon after breakfast they started moving into a makeshift schoolhouse on a hillside surrounded by lush vegetation. The sun was shining brightly and the weather was cool. Most of them were young, in their late teens, early 20s and 30s, largely local men and women making up a company of Red fighters somewhere in a guerrilla front in Eastern Visayas.

Casually, with their rifles at hand, they sat on long, tiered bamboo benches, bantering, smiling, some were quiet, others in deep conversation. Soon all eyes were glued to the blackboard as the Red commander finished sketching vicinity maps, with arrows pointing at target structures, entrance and exit points. Silence hovered when the commander, in his forties and apparently a veteran of many battles, turned to face his audience.

The meeting was called to discuss three simultaneous raids to be executed in a day or two. The objectives were to disarm the local police station, warn the despotic town mayor of his abuses and confiscate his firearms right inside his home, and punish a certified informer with blood debts to several victims.

Before laying out the plans, the commander cited the political objectives. He didn’t seem like a commander at all, never flaunting authority or arrogance. Much like a teacher and moderator, he invited his audience to comment on the plan, examine the tactics and details, look for loopholes, alter, adjust, modify. What followed was a lively discussion, with voices resonating, never drowning out those who raised questions or clarifications, seriously listening to the pros and cons. In the middle of the interchanges, jokes would be thrown in and laughter would erupt, until unity was attained.

Then the meeting focused on the most crucial task. The commander did not select who should go in each assault team — he asked for volunteers. And without any prodding, several arms were raised. Everyone knew death could await him/her more than any other, but that seemed like the least of their concerns. How so easily one can offer his life in the service of the people is the mark of a true guerrilla of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The NPA commander was wise about not getting stuck in his own ideas. Instead, he produced results acceptable to all by rousing his troops to suggest how to attack and capture enemy positions and how to fulfill their tasks. Mutual instructions came off fluidly between officers and soldiers and also among the soldiers themselves.

On the day of the raid the entire camp was busy. It seemed like everybody was descending into town to attend a fiesta—except that each Red fighter had baon—a slice of chicken and boiled rice wrapped in banana leaves, prepared by the kitchen staff well before dawn. Days before, clothes and even shoes were washed and dried; firearms were cleaned, polished and examined; and backpacks were sorted out. The women tied their hairs and the men combed theirs. Although the water supply was a bit low as the streams had been drying up, the Red fighters took their baths or simply washed their faces and brushed their teeth. Everyone looked neat and fresh before they began to trek down to the village.
Later in the day the three teams carried out their tactical offensives, swiftly and efficiently. Not a single shot was fired, not one casualty on the side of the Red fighters.

Covered by the dark night, and with high spirits, they went back to the camp, anticipating another round of meeting and lively discussions to assess their strengths and weaknesses in carrying the tactical offensives (TO). Everyone was eager to tell his or her story. No single person would claim credit for the victory as each one had a part in achieving it.

This practice of military democracy, under the centralized leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is replicated many times over in various regions of the country where units of the NPA operate. Meetings have become “second skin” to red fighters in arriving at collective decisions and collective actions. Victory is invariably achieved via a democratic movement. Hence, anyone who has seen the NPA in action up close can verily debunk the “terrorist” images painted by the reactionary state about the people’s army. Likewise, all the Operational Plans (OPlans) hatched up by successive regime and the Armed Forces of the Philipines (AFP) over the decades, in collaboration with American imperialists, have failed miserably as the people’s army frustrated them all and thus advanced the people’s war.

Democratic Centralism

Democracy thrives in the NPA, guided by the principle of democratic centralism whereby policies and decisions by central leadership correspond to the needs and aspirations of the broad masses. Under the system, the interest of the whole takes primacy over the interest of the parts, the minority is subordinate to the majority and the lower level to the higher level. Through training, commanders and fighters grasp the relationship between democracy and centralism and how democratic centralism is put into practice.

Democracy is attained through the firm grasp and understanding of the cadres and fighters of the principles, policies and line of the national democratic revolution through free and deep discussions among them.

Democracy is manifested in the abolition of feudal practices in the army such as highhandedness and arrogance of officers towards their men, docility of the troops and acquiescence to orders without questioning. Instead, camaraderie prevails in the Red army as officers and men share the problems and difficulties, the passion in their tasks and the joy of fulfilment of their service to the people. It is democracy that enables them to endure and triumph over travails.

The management of the limited resources of the NPA—equipment, supplies and funds—is a collective responsibility. The unit members assist the leadership.

Discipline in the NPA

Democracy strengthens discipline and combat effectiveness. For an army to be hailed by the people as capable of defeating the superior enemy must have a high sense of discipline. This galvanizes the unity among commanders and Red fighters and between the Red army and the people. Thus, the NPA has in its heart and mind the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points of Attention, a legacy from Chairman Mao Zedong and the victorious Chinese Communist Revolution.

The Three Main Rules of Discipline are:

  • (1) Obey orders in all your actions;

  • (2) Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses;

  • (3) Turn in everything captured.

The Eight Points of Attention are:

  • (1) Speak politely;
  • (2) Pay fairly for what you buy;
  • (3) Return everything you borrow;
  • (4) Pay for anything you damage;
  • (5) Do not hit or swear at people;
  • (6) Do not damage crops;
  • (7) Do not take liberties with women;
  • (8) Do not ill-treat captives.

The Three Main Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention also serve as the NPA’s guide in the treatment of Prisoners of War (POW). Unlike in the reactionary armed forces, the revolutionary forces fully respect human rights and adhere to the principles of humanitarian law. Contrary to the image created by the reactionary state’s propaganda machine, the people’s court in the guerrilla fronts is no “kangaroo court.” The people’s court abides by a judicial system that observes a “judicious procedure: investigation, indictment, hearings, sentencing, pardon and release.”

Well-rounded Fighting Force

The revolutionary cause that the New People’s Army (NPA) is fighting for—the interests of the broad toiling masses, their social emancipation and national liberation from US imperialism and the local exploiting classes—strengthens its resolve to be the epitome of unflinching self-sacrifice, courage, discipline and democracy. With this resolve and as it deeply immerses in the bosom of the masses, the NPA under the absolute leadership of the CPP has become an invincible force to contend against.

Communists advocate peace, just peace, and the “abolition of war.” But the US-supported local big bourgeois comprador and landlord class keep a ferocious reactionary army to perpetuate their hold on power and continue to exploit and suppress the struggling masses. Acknowledging the lessons of history, the truth that “political power grows of the barrel of the gun” the NPA, composed largely of the peasantry, takes up the gun and wages a revolutionary war to seize power, smash the reactionary state, and create a sovereign democratic republic of the people. However, ever conscious that politics commands the gun and not the other way around, the Party leads the army and ensures that it is not just a fighting force but an edifice of revolutionary strength and power of the people.

Under the Party leadership, the NPA has a fundamental task to push forward the armed struggle, carry out agrarian revolution, and build the revolution’s mass base. Closely linked with the masses, it organizes and rouses them as well as helps them in economic production, and in building the organs of political power.

The practice of democracy in the New People’s Army is essential to its consolidation and development. Democracy in the New People’s Army has steeled unity, fortified discipline and fired up a potent force that will sustain the protracted people’s war until victory.###

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