Rodrigo R. Duterte

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

Published on September 8, 2019 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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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Mindlessly Mishandling the GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations

Published on March 28, 2018 in Mainstream

by Leon Castro

Like a poker game that he plays all by himself, whimsically rigging the rules, is how Rodrigo R. Duterte now apparently treats the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. He has mindlessly cast aside all the hard work that both his government’s negotiating panel and that of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have painstakingly undertaken.

Twice did Duterte arbitrarily cancel the fifth round of formal negotiations, in May and August 2017. But in both instances (as he had done earlier) he subsequently resorted to back-channel talks and agreed to continue the negotiations.

Up till the last minute, all looked rosy for the peace talks. In two discreet back-channel discussions in October and early November—to which Duterte had given explicit go-signal—the GRP and NDFP panels worked furiously to hammer out three draft documents. They had agreed, at the minimum, to refine and initial the documents at the fifth round and, at the maximum, to finalize and sign them at the sixth round in early 2018. The heads and members of both panels were already in Oslo, Norway, when Duterte’s order to cancel the talks came.

The three draft documents were: a draft agreement on agrarian reform and rural development and on national industrialization and economic development (the prime aspects of a Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms or CASER); a draft Coordinated Unilateral Ceasefire Agreement; and a draft General Amnesty for political prisoners.

Had the fifth round of formal negotiations proceeded and achieved its set objectives, 2017 would have ended with high hopes for continuing peace negotiations. And the Duterte government would have looked good in the eyes of the Filipino people.

Hundreds of hours of meetings cum negotiations by the Reciprocal Working Committees for Social and Economic Reforms (RWCs-SER) went into the drafting of the first document, which could have accelerated the entire peace process towards addressing the root causes of the nearly 50 years of armed conflict and attaining just and lasting peace in the country.

Common agrarian reform and national industrialization drafts

Over seven months of peace talks with four formal rounds of negotiations, the NDFP and the GRP panels were able to forge ahead in crafting common drafts for agrarian reform and rural development and for national industrialization and economic development. They held bilateral meetings during the second, third and fourth rounds—in Oslo, Norway (October 7-8, 2016); Rome, Italy (January 22-24, 2017); and Nordwijk an Zee, The Netherlands (April 4-5, 2017), respectively. In addition, there were no less than 10 bilateral meetings in the Philippines and abroad by the NDFP and GRP RWCs-SER between April 25 and November 17 last year.

On agrarian reform and national industrialization, there were nine sections in the common draft signed in Manila by the RWCs last November 20 and witnessed by the Royal Norwegian Government third party facilitator. These are:

Free distribution of land to tillers, farmers, farmworkers and fisherfolks and writing off of the arrears in amortization payments by earlier land reform beneficiaries;

The agreement includes coverage of plantations and large-scale commercial farms with leasehold, joint venture, non-land transfer schemes (e.g. stock distribution option);

Immediate and expedited installation of farmer beneficiaries;
Implementation of agrarian support services on production, harvest, post-harvest, insurance, credit and free irrigation;
Elimination of exploitative lending and trading practices;
Fisheries and aquatic resources reforms;
National land and water use policy aligned with agrarian reform;
Develop rural industries and domestic science and technology; and
Building of rural infrastructure, such as irrigation, post-harvest, transport, communication, power facilities.

Signed on the same day, the NDFP and the GRP RWCs common draft on national industrialization listed 10 agreed-on sections, as follows

Use of the term “national industrialization”;
Explicit mention of economic planning;
Development of specific industries, industrial sectors, and industrial projects;
Nationalization of public utilities and mining;
“Filipinization” of minerals processing and trade;
Regulation of foreign investment;
State intervention and regulation;
Creation of workers’ councils;
Breaking foreign monopoly control of industrial technologies; and
Financing through higher taxes on the rich and lower on poor, as well as revenues from gambling, luxury goods, tobacco/alcohol, and tariffs. The parties also agreed to set up an industrial investment fund.

The agrarian reform and rural development and the national industrialization and economic development accords, are parts of the prospective Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) Part III, under the title Developing the National Economy. These are mutually acknowledged by the NDFP and the GRP as the most important aspects of the peace negotiations. When finally approved by the principals and implemented, they are expected to alleviate poverty and inequality in the country—addressing the root causes of the armed conflict.

From both sub-agreements, the social and economic reform negotiations are expected to move on to the next issues, which are environmental protection, rehabilitation and compensation. The other parts of the CASER agenda include the following:

Part IV. Upholding people’s rights
A. Rights of the working people
B. Promoting patriotic, progressive and pro-people culture
C. Recognition of ancestral lands and territories of national minorities

Part V. Economic sovereignty for national development
A. Foreign economic & trade relations
B. Financial, monetary & fiscal policies
C. Social & economic planning

Part VI. Overall implementing mechanism

Part VII. Final provisions

Negotiations on the above issues are expected to be easier and faster, compared with those on agrarian reform and national industrialization which are deemed to be the hardest part of the entire negotiations.

Volatile GRP president

Apparently, all it took for Duterte to mindlessly cast aside these great achievements of the negotiations was his seeing on television militant activists protesting US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Philippines for the Asean summit last November. Were imagined personal slights arising from such protest action against one he probably considered a soul mate, more important to him than assiduously working to achieve peace?

Not long after seeing ASEAN protest videos on television, Duterte ordered his negotiators to cancel “all planned meetings with the CPP/NPA/NDFP.” Subsequently, he issued Proclamation 360 (November 23) terminating the GRP-NDFP peace talks. This was followed by Proclamation 374 (December 5) declaring the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) as “terrorist organizations” under both the Human Security Act of 2007 (RA 9373) and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (RA 10168).

Under the law, the proscription of the CPP and NPA as terrorist organizations doesn’t instantly take effect. The government needs to first file a petition with a Regional Trial Court to proclaim the CPP and NPA as terrorist organizations, which petition will have to undergo hearings before the court can issue a ruling. Yet Duterte’s proclamation and his military minions’ relentless campaign to slander the revolutionary organizations have opened the gates to more human rights violations, as happened in his notorious Oplan Tokhang against suspected drug users and peddlers.

His ordering the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the reactionary government’s intelligence branches to arbitrarily list down suspected officers and members of underground revolutionary organizations and of their alleged aboveground “fronts” can only be interpreted as orders for increased intimidation, abduction, torture and murder of legal democratic activists and other civilians.

In the latter part of 2017, Duterte did these things that expose himself as a fraud and a liar disinterested in peace as well as a tyrant in the exact mold of his idol Ferdinand Marcos.

NDFP determined to fight for just peace

Duterte’s lies and slander against revolutionary organizations, however, failed to gain traction among the Filipino people. The people have become aware of and disgusted over Duterte’s mass murder of suspected drug users and peddlers. More and more have also wisened up to his obvious subservience to capitalist and foreign interests, plunder of the environment, attacks against peasant and national minority communities, and his own family’s connections with underworld groups. And his lies against the revolutionary forces are increasingly being dismissed as hot flashes of a drug-addled mind.

NDFP chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison has remarked that the US-directed Duterte regime is daydreaming that it can discredit and destroy the sovereign revolutionary will of the Filipino people by proscribing the revolutionary forces as terrorist organizations, by requiring them to submit themselves to the sham processes of the reactionary state, and by unleashing gross and systematic crimes of terrorism and human rights violations.

The Filipino people and the revolutionary forces, he said, are determined to fight for national and social liberation, people´s democracy, economic development, cultural progress and just peace.

While the Duterte fascist regime may have terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, Sison pointed out, “it cannot be too sure that it will last long [in power] because the Filipino people and even those in the GRP detest the monstrous crimes of the regime, especially mass murder, corruption and puppetry to the US.” The crisis of the ruling system continues to worsen and the resources of the regime for violence and deception are limited.