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Message to all allies and friends on the NDFP’s 50th anniversary

CPP Central Committee | Communist Party of the Philippines

April 24, 2023 | In behalf of the entire membership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), as well as all Red fighters and commanders of the New People’s Army (NPA), the Central Committee of the CPP extends militant revolutionary greetings to all its allies and friends in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines on the historic and most joyous occasion of the NDFP’s 50th anniversary.

We propose to the National Council that the NDFP and its allied organizations carry the following theme during this entire year of celebration:

Strengthen the NDFP! Unite the Filipino people to fight for Philippine sovereignty amid heightening foreign intervention and rising threats of imperialist war! Carry out militant struggles to fight for the people’s national and democratic interests against the US-Marcos fascist regime! Carry forward the national democratic revolution to victory!

On this occasion, let us remember and pay tribute to all the heroes and martyrs of the Philippine revolution. Let us give special honors to Comrades Jose Ma. Sison, Benito Tiamzon, Wilma Austria, Fidel V. Agcaoili, Antonio Zumel, Julius Giron, as well as other key leaders of the Party and the NDFP, as well as peace consultants who passed away or were killed by the reactionary state terrorists. Let us express our gratitude to the countless allies of the NDFP who continue to serve the national democratic revolution.

There is urgent need to strengthen and further invigorate the NDFP as the Filipino people face a worsening crisis of the ruling system and growing threats of getting caught in the vortex of imperialist wars, with the Marcos regime and the AFP being used by the US in its war provocations, while remaining spineless against Chinese aggression.

In the coming period, the NDFP must carry out widespread efforts to promote the people’s patriotic spirit, and unite, galvanize and mobilize the broadest section of the people to defend the country against rising imperialist rivalries and threats of wars. Amid intensifying US imperialist military intervention and worsening forms of oppression and exploitation under the neoliberal policy regime, the NDFP must exert all efforts to more vigorously advance the national democratic revolution and the cause of national freedom and democracy.

The CPP and the NDFP

On the initiative of the Party, the NDFP was formed on April 24, 1973, less than a year after the declaration of martial law by the US-Marcos fascist dictatorship. On that day, the NDFP Preparatory Commission issued the Manifesto “Unite to Overthrow the US-Marcos Dictatorship” which included its 10-point program. Since then, the Filipino people have possessed three powerful weapons: the Party, the NPA and the NDFP.

During the entire course of the anti-dictatorship struggle, the NDFP and its program served as one of the most powerful beacons that guided the broad masses of the people in their march against the fascist regime and in their overall revolutionary resistance. Through the NDFP, a wide underground network of national democratic forces was built which served as solid core of the broad mass struggles against the dictatorship.

The manifesto and 10-point program of the NDFP quickly gained traction among the broad sections of the Filipino people and galvanized them to get organized and take action against the fascist regime. The NDFP initially brought together a number of organizations of youth and students, women, peasants and other classes and sectors which were forced to go underground with the imposition of open fascist rule. Since 1973, the NDFP steadily expanded and is now composed of 18 underground organizations, namely: Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’s Army, Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions, Katipunan ng mga Samahang Manggagawa, Pambansang Katipunan ng mga Magbubukid, Makabayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan, Kabataang Makabayan, Katipunan ng mga Gurong Makabayan, Makabayang Samahang Pangkalusugan, Liga ng Agham para sa Bayan, Lupon ng Mananaggol para sa Bayan, Artista at Manunulat para sa Sambayanan, Makabayang Kawaning Pilipino, Compatriots – Revolutionary Organization of Overseas Filipinos and their Families, Christians for National Liberation, Cordillera People’s Democratic Front, Moro Resistance and Liberation Organization, and Revolutionary Organization of Lumads.

The NDFP is the most consolidated united front organization of the Filipino people. It binds together all the progressive classes and sectors in support of the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. It is the political center of gravity of the various levels and forms of united front organization against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

In the course of waging protracted people’s war, organs of political power at village or inter-village levels, as well as at municipal and inter-municipal and even district levels, have been built based on the organized strength of revolutionary mass organizations, the local Party organizations and armed strength of the New People’s Army. These perform state functions including implementing land reform policies and programs, dispensing justice and resolving contradictions among the people, conducting education and health services. These organize and mobilize the people to wage widespread armed resistance against the reactionary state.

Taken together, all these comprise the embryo of the future People’s Democratic Government of the Philippines, a united front of all progressive and patriotic classes based on the basic alliance of workers and peasants, and under the leadership of the proletariat. Until it is established on a nationwide scale, the PDG is represented by the NDFP.

Representing the PDG, the NDFP has established political, economic, military and proto-diplomatic relations with other entities. It has actively promoted international solidarity among anti-imperialist forces. Directly or indirectly, the NDFP has received quasi-state recognition by other governments or international entities.

Presently, two governments exists in the Philippine countryside: the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the PDG represented by the NDFP. The PDG is Red and revolutionary; while the GRP is White and reactionary. Both sides are belligerents in the civil war of the past 54 years.

The NDFP has been conducting peace negotiations with the GRP since 1987. It has firmly and excellently represented the national and democratic interests of the Filipino people, and frustrated the GRP’s scheme to use peace negotiations as an instrument of deception and pacification. The negotiations have produced important agreements, foremost of which is the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). The NDFP has clearly demonstrated its dedication to addressing the socioeconomic and political roots of the civil war, and in doing so, has drawn the support of broad segments of society to the cause of just and lasting peace.

Relevance and urgency of the NDFP’s 12-point program

The 12-point program of the NDFP is a systematic expression of the Filipino people’s collective aspiration for national freedom and democracy. It is the most superior of all programs of political parties and organizations in the Philippines.

The NDFP program is the anti-thesis of the neoliberal, anti-Filipino and anti-democratic policies and programs of the ruling Marcos fascist and puppet regime, as well as all previous regimes whether pseudo-democratic or tyrannical. It represents the interests of workers, peasants and all other exploited and oppressed classes of Philippine society as well as all progressive and patriotic forces, which are diametrically opposed to the interests of US imperialism, and the local ruling classes of big bourgeois compradors and big landlords.

The sharpening crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system underscores the relevance and urgency of implementing the NDFP’s 12-point program. Fifty years or so since the NDFP’s program was drawn up, the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions in the Philippines remain qualitatively unchanged. It has only worsened quantitatively, with the Filipino people suffering from conditions of oppression and exploitation far worse than ever before.

In the countryside, the problem of landlessness has become even more acute in the face of various forms of land grabbing and land dispossession by new and old type landlords, big bourgeois compradors and multinational corporations in mining, plantations, infrastructure, real estate, and so on. All over the country, the broad masses experience increasingly intolerable socioeconomic conditions amid low wages, loss of income, skyrocketing prices of fuel, food and basic commodities, joblessness, and dispossession. The ruling reactionary state has resorted to more brutal fascist measures to suppress the people’s resistance and preserve the ruling system.

Amid their gross economic conditions and political repression, the Filipino people are continually being drawn to the 12-Point Program of the NDFP as the most viable and direct solution to their pressing problems. The demand for genuine land reform and national industrialization is even more urgent in the face of the widespread destruction of productive forces in both cities and rural areas. The demand for a comprehensive and progressive social program is even more relevant amid the aggravation of the crisis of public health and public education. Every other item in the NDFP program is in sharp contrast to the dark facets of the ruling system.

The prospect of establishing a new country where people enjoy genuine freedom and true democracy, and where they themselves benefit from the fruits of their labor, infuses them with revolutionary fervor and optimism and invigorates them to wage revolution.

The NDFP’s program is a general reflection of the program for a people’s democratic revolution of the Communist Party of the Philippine. In pursuing the Filipino people’s struggle for genuine national freedom, the NDFP’s 12-point program is historically linked to the old democratic revolutionary program of the Katipunan. It serves to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution, and thus, create the conditions to carry forward socialist revolution and construction.

Current burning issues of the day under the Marcosfascist and puppet regime

The de facto Marcos fascist and puppet regime is currently the most concentrated expression of the rotten semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system. It embodies the interests of US imperialism and that of the ruling exploiting classes; more specifically, that of the Marcos-Duterte ruling clique. Amid the crisis of the ruling system, the ruling Marcos-Duterte clique has become obsessed with monopolizing economic and political power, causing its isolation from the people, and generating rifts and rivalries within.

The current US-Marcos regime is causing the further aggravation of the economic and political crisis of the ruling system. Its anti-national and anti-democratic policies are most clearly demonstrated in the following four key issues:

(a) Heightening US military intervention in the Philippines. This is marked by US plans to build at least four more military bases and facilities under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). This is in addition to the already existing five military bases and facilities where the US prepositions weapons and stations American troops in the Philippines. The new military bases will be part of US plans to build a $27.1 billion network of missile stations in the so-called “First Island Chain” of countries nearest China. This also forms part of continuing war provocations against China, centered on undermining the One China Policy and stoking calls for Taiwan Independence.

At the same time, the US is intensifying its counterrevolutionary war in the Philippines for suppressing the national democratic revolution by supplying weapons, funding and supporting the AFP’s counterinsurgency operations. The vain hope of the US imperialists is to crush the revolutionary armed struggle so that it can fully utilize or maximize its puppet armed forces in a possible armed confrontation with its imperialist rival China.

(b) Intensifying fascist suppression and state terrorism under the US-directed counterinsurgency operations. There is rampant violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the AFP and Philippine National Police (PNP), including hamletting of communities, food blockades, indiscriminate firing of weapons, aerial and artillery bombing, extrajudicial killings, abductions, unlawful and unjust arrests, torture and other brutalities against civilians or non-combatants.

(c) Increasingly aggressive push for neoliberal policies and measures which worsen mass poverty and aggravate the socio-economic conditions of the people. These policies subject people to more severe forms of oppression and exploitation. The heightened drive to expand the operations of multinational corporations are causing widespread dispossession of peasants and fisherfolk, economic dislocation and destruction of productive forces. These further deepen the backward, agrarian and pre-industrial state of the Philippine economy, resulting in acute unemployment, low wages amid high prices, dependence on imports and foreign borrowing; and so on

(d) Deepening crisis of the ruling political system. In the rush to maximize bureaucratic privilege, the ruling Marcos-Duterte clique are aggressively pushing efforts to monopolize political and economic power. The plan to amend the 1987 constitution clearly falls into the schemes to do away with provisions restricting powers to impose martial law and perpetuate the ruling clique in power. These machinations deepen rifts and rivalries among various cliques of the ruling classes. At the same time, conflicts between the Marcos and Duterte camps are also deepening as they rival over control of bureaucrat capitalist loot including control of the military, police and other key government agencies, pocketing bribes from government contracts, collection of protection money from smuggling and drug trafficking, and so on.

These issues underscore the moribund state of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system. Any of these or a combination of two or more factors can form the fulcrum of a sharp turn in the economic and political crisis, which in turn can stir the broad masses of the people and heighten their democratic and militant mass movement.

The explosive and destructive potency of these issues are also heightened by the context of the continuing crisis of the international capitalist system, and growing prospects of another round of financial crisis, recessions and economic depression. Across the world, a surge in mass demonstrations is steadily developing in both the capitalist centers and in less developed semicolonial countries as oppressed and exploited classes resist worsening policies and imperialist wars.

The role of the NDFP in the developing revolutionary surge

The Communist Party of the Philippines continues to lead the Filipino people in waging national democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. It is gratified to have as its allies the organizations and members affiliated with the NDFP.

Amid the sharp deterioration of the ruling system, rising inter-imperialist rivalries and increasing possibility of inter-imperialist war, the Party sees a forthcoming period of surge in the revolutionary armed struggle, mass movement in both the cities and countryside, and building the NDFP and other united front organizations. There are bright prospects for the revolutionary forces to achieve unprecedented strength in the coming period of growth.

The New People’s Army is more than ever determined to carry out protracted people’s war in the countryside. It has preserved and persevered along the path of revolutionary armed struggle, and continues to wage extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on an ever widening and deepening mass base.

The revolutionary mass movement is bound to surge forward in the coming months and years. After a period of militarist lockdown during the pandemic, there is now a conspicuous rise in the level of economic and political struggles of various sectors. There is the increasing tempo of workers’ strikes and mass actions to demand higher wages, oppose gross working conditions and fight contractualization and other oppressive flexible labor schemes. The clamor to end agricultural liberalization and other oppressive neoliberal policies that cause land dispossesion, rural bankruptcy and economic dislocation continue to unite and rouse peasant mass struggles alongside their demand for genuine land reform. The struggle against dams and other infrastructure projects, expansion of mining and plantation operations across the different regions continue to intensify. The broad masses of fisherfolk are coming together to resist destructive reclamation plans, and underwater mining by big foreign companies that cause their economic dislocation. The recent strike of jeepney and public utility drivers highlight how the semiproletarian masses are resisting oppressive socioeconomic policies and programs that take away their livelihood. The militant and patriotic students and youth movement is bound to rise amid rising costs of education and state abandonment, as well as against heightened imperialist intervention.

Political repression and violations of civil and political rights continue to incite the people’s outrage, condemnation and resistance. The responsibility of the US imperialists behind the war of suppression is being thoroughly exposed. The Filipino people’s anger continue to rise against foreign plunder and destruction of the environment and people’s livelihood by multinationals and its local agents, and against widespread corruption by big bureaucrat capitalists led by the Marcos-Duterte clique.

The NDFP and all its allied organizations must serve as the core of all-out efforts to unite, organize and rally all revolutionary, progressive and positive forces to build the broadest united front against US-Marcos regime as the most concentrated expression of all the social evils being suffered by the Filipino people, and to advance the people’s war for national and social liberation.

We urge the NDFP and its allied organizations and other affiliates to carry out the following tasks, campaigns, struggles and activities in the coming year, with the aim of broadening and strengthening the anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and antifeudal united front:

a) Build the broadest alliance against the US-Marcos fascist regime. Expose and oppose Marcos’ subservience to foreign economic interests. Expose, oppose and isolate the ruling Marcos-Duterte clique in its schemes to monopolize economic and political power. Expose the corruption of the ruling clique, including the machinations to recover the Marcos dynasty’s ill-gotten wealth, diverting public funds to big bourgeois operations, smuggling behind the facade of import liberalization, and other schemes.

b) Wage a campaign to expose and demand the dismantling of US military bases in the Philippines, the withdrawal of US troops, an end to US military intervention and war exercises, war provocations against China and funding of brutal counterinsurgency operations that violate the principle of non-interference. Call for the abrogation of the EDCA, the Visiting Forces Agreement, the Mutual Defense Treaty and all other unequal military treaties with the US. Demand the dismantling of Chinese military facilities and withdrawal of military forces, and a stop to the plunder of Philippine marine resources.

c) Generate widespread support for the economic struggles against neoliberal policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, especially for the workers’ demand for wage increases. Draw broad support for the struggles for genuine land reform in the countryside, and against the entry of mining companies, expansion of plantations, ecotourism, dams and energy projects, and other programs that destroy the environment and people’s livelihood. Oppose the imposition of onerous taxes and burdensome foreign debt payments.

d) Build a broad anti-fascist united front. Expose widespread state terrorism, violations of human rights and attacks against civilians and civilian communities in violation of international humanitarian law, especially violation of women and child rights. Demand a stop to indiscriminate and disproportionate use of aerial bombing and artillery shelling which endangers the lives of civilians. Expose the link between rising fascist repression and the aggressive neoliberal push to pave the way for foreign companies to plunder the country’s resources, further pull down wages, grab land and dispossess the people.

e) Vigorously promote and carry out the NDFP’s 12-Point Program through all possible forms and venues—from the academe to the slums, the factories and workplaces to the countryside. Actively develop a mass education, propaganda and cultural movement to reach out to the broad masses in their millions. Raise the people’s knowledge and consciousness about the victories they have won in the past 54 years of revolutionary struggle, and the need to bring forward the national democratic revolution to fruition to end their sufferings.

f) Develop a vigorous organizing movement to achieve unprecedented expansion and growth of all NDFP allied organizations, and build new ones to represent other oppressed classes and sectors. Hold study meetings and special conferences and build their organizational structure. Produce new mass leaders capable of rousing the people in their numbers. Strengthen the revolutionary underground and ensure the formation of self-defense committees to secure all revolutionary forces.

g) Strengthen the NDFP as an alliance. Raise the consciousness of the membership of allied organizations by carrying out internal education about the NDFP, its history and its work. Develop coordination and cooperation among the NDFP’s allied organizations. Strengthen their links with the NDFP’s overseas office and support the work of the NDFP’s international representatives.

h) Generate widespread political and material support for the New People’s Army. Actively recruit Red fighters from among workers, students, women and other sectors. Mobilize self-defense units to extend material, political, and intelligence assistance to local people’s militia units and guerrilla units of the NPA.

i) Continue to promote and represent the People’s Democratic Government. Carry out an international campaign to promote the NDFP as representative of the Filipino people. Continue to gather international support for the Filipino people’s struggle for national and social liberation. Continue to build proto-diplomatic relations with countries and other international entities. Continue to promote the NDFP’s commitment to a just and lasting peace.

j) Help efforts in building and expanding anti-imperialist solidarity networks and alliances. Help build broad international alliances against imperialist wars. Extend solidarity support to the democratic mass struggles of workers, peasants and other toiling people, as well as revolutionary armed resistance in other countries.

The Central Committee of the CPP sees the NDFP playing a crucial role in the coming period of revolutionary resurgence. We are confident that all the NDFP’s forces will continue to exert all efforts to rouse the people and shoulder the difficult tasks in waging all forms of patriotic and democratic resistance, generating widespread support for the people’s war and carrying forward the national democratic revolution.

Long live the National Democratic Front of the Philippines!

Long live the New People’s Army!

Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the Filipino people!

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