August 15, 2006 – (Manila) – Some time in 1988, I was given the task to do an analysis on the power and influence of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the National Democratic Front and specifically the operations of the New People’s Army for the “Philippine Political Monitor” of Institute for International and Strategic Studies of the Center for Research and Communication.
At that time, two years after the removal of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, democracy was slowly being restored through a new Constitution and a promise of justice from oppression.
The government then under President Corazon C. Aquino gave emphasis on land reform as a means to liberate the peasants from the powerful and perceived abusive land owners.
The landless peasants of the countryside were the favorite manpower resource of communist recruiters into an armed struggle, being encouraged to go up-in-arms against their continuing poverty as a result of the neglect by the government to heed their needs.
Marcos’s waltz with the then corrupt military who have been accused of pillaging the countryside at that time added to the reasons why the communists offer of an alternative communal living becoming an ideal option for a number of people in the rural areas.
In the urban centers, especially in the capital, Metro Manila’s youthful idealists students served as the catalysts to flame the fuel of dissent that in the absence of a proper democratic forum, the people bearing the rights to seek redress from government should assert their rights and what is due them either by means of dissent or an armed uprising.
The promise of the “New Society” under Marcos was viewed as a farce and a actually smoke screen to hide the fact that the Marcos family wanted to perpetuate their hold into power and live a lavish lifestyle of a king with a nation of people who are subservient subjects.
These issues helped fuel the growth in membership and even the ranks of sympathizers of the Communist movement in the country, resulting to a swell of armed members belonging to the New People’s Army, to a high of 25,000 people in 1988 all over the country.
The number of members was based on an estimate made by deep under cover military agents who started to infiltrate the armed Communist movement a few years after it was founded by the late peasant leader Dante Buscayno in 1970.
The number was extremely high, at a level that caused serious worry for the government and the numbers was equivalent to almost half of the number of active officers in the service belonging to the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
In the early nineties, the number of armed Communist insurgents was so high that there were concerns over a scenario that at that period in time, with a division within the Armed Forces of the Philippines between constitutionalists and right wing puschists out to overthrow the Aquino administration, the New People’s Army could actually raid and enter the National Capital Region and possibly cease power by forcibly removing Mrs. Aquino, the two chambers of Congress and the Supreme Court.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the first official phase of the collapse of Communism in the whole world but in the case of the Philippines, it all started a few years earlier.
Two elements could be attributed to the passing of Communism into just another movement from being “the movement” that was supposed to serve as a means of releasing the Filipino nation from a dictatorship.
The first was the failure of the Communist movement to acknowledge and provide support to “People Power” of 1986, the peaceful and non-violent means that forced Marcos into exile to the United States.
Their inability to recognize the significance of “People Power,” to ride the wave of a peaceful revolution or least enable themselves to be identified as a progressive movement for peace resulted in a belief among most of the population that the Communists were only interested in control and power in violent means.
The second reason for their failure was their own negative attitude towards their own people, a level of paranoia spread from within their ranks across the country in the late eighties and this caused into a purging of their ranks of suspected spies and traitors. The process resulted into disillusionment and the departure of important thinkers and planners of the movement.
Removal of the Communist Party of the Philippines from the list of banned political parties in the country in the mid nineties under the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos, a former Philippine Constabulary chief whose tasked under Marcos was to eradicate the Communist insurgents was not seen as again an opportunity to legitimize their cause peacefully.
The government offered the Communists the olive branch including millions of pesos in terms of assistance to those who would give up arms and return to normal life.
Large tracts of lands owned by powerful families were acquired and distributed to those who took up arms with credit assistance in order to finance their own agribusinesses.
Through the years since 1986, many who took up arms were slowly returning to the fold and leaving behind their comrades who still believes in their ideology more than the practicality of living a normal life.
There have been peace talks that were opened by the government with the leaders of the Communist Party who are now still in exile in the Netherlands after being released from prison under the Aquino administration in 1987.
The talks have dragged on and their power bases in the various regions of the country started to collapse in the late nineties as several comrades, disenfranchised and disillusioned by their national leadership’s policies started to form their own rebel groups in their area, some aligning with Muslim secessionist groups while the others turning to banditry to sustain their armed operations.
After the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the U.S. government classified the Communist Party of the Philippines, its National Democratic Front and its armed group the New People’s Army as a terrorist movement alongside the Abu Sayyaf and the Jemayah Islamiyah.
The classification of the CPP-NDF-NPA as a terror movement started the rapid decline of the movement, as the United States freezed all funds & find transfers of the group and funding for the local operations in the Philippines has become as dry as a river bed except for forcible collections of revolutionary taxes.
Some of the once active leaders of the Communist movement embraced the democratic political system and has participated on their own capacity in several political exercises and are now respected members of the Legislative branch of government.
The number of armed cadres has shrunk to a little less than 8,000 based on estimates of military intelligence but the number is still significant to cause animosity in certain regions of the country where the movement retains a level of control over villages.
Lately, during the mass evacuation of residents living within the 8 Kilometer danger zone of the restive Mayon Volcano in Albay Province, 530Km southeast of Manila, elements of the New People’s Army attacked the members of the Philippine Army.
Without any provocation, the Army who was doing an emergency effort was struck, injuring and killing some during the encounter, during a legitimate rescue mission and not for any military purposes.
This sad incident has only justified the suspicion that the armed Communist insurgency is and will always be at lost to the realities of the time, not knowing when is the right time to win respect and acceptance by the community.
When we see and hear reports of their attacks on civilian facilities, with no justifiable reason, one can’t help see that these operations are indications of an organization on the verge of death, a phase of collapse and losing completely cohesion as a group.
If there is one lesson that the movement needs to learn and practice is that it needs to know how to sway with the tune of the times, re-invent itself as an alternative perhaps to the chaotic political system this country has, then perhaps, the Communist movement can find itself relevant once more.
At that time, two years after the removal of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, democracy was slowly being restored through a new Constitution and a promise of justice from oppression.
The government then under President Corazon C. Aquino gave emphasis on land reform as a means to liberate the peasants from the powerful and perceived abusive land owners.
The landless peasants of the countryside were the favorite manpower resource of communist recruiters into an armed struggle, being encouraged to go up-in-arms against their continuing poverty as a result of the neglect by the government to heed their needs.
Marcos’s waltz with the then corrupt military who have been accused of pillaging the countryside at that time added to the reasons why the communists offer of an alternative communal living becoming an ideal option for a number of people in the rural areas.
In the urban centers, especially in the capital, Metro Manila’s youthful idealists students served as the catalysts to flame the fuel of dissent that in the absence of a proper democratic forum, the people bearing the rights to seek redress from government should assert their rights and what is due them either by means of dissent or an armed uprising.
The promise of the “New Society” under Marcos was viewed as a farce and a actually smoke screen to hide the fact that the Marcos family wanted to perpetuate their hold into power and live a lavish lifestyle of a king with a nation of people who are subservient subjects.
These issues helped fuel the growth in membership and even the ranks of sympathizers of the Communist movement in the country, resulting to a swell of armed members belonging to the New People’s Army, to a high of 25,000 people in 1988 all over the country.
The number of members was based on an estimate made by deep under cover military agents who started to infiltrate the armed Communist movement a few years after it was founded by the late peasant leader Dante Buscayno in 1970.
The number was extremely high, at a level that caused serious worry for the government and the numbers was equivalent to almost half of the number of active officers in the service belonging to the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
In the early nineties, the number of armed Communist insurgents was so high that there were concerns over a scenario that at that period in time, with a division within the Armed Forces of the Philippines between constitutionalists and right wing puschists out to overthrow the Aquino administration, the New People’s Army could actually raid and enter the National Capital Region and possibly cease power by forcibly removing Mrs. Aquino, the two chambers of Congress and the Supreme Court.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the first official phase of the collapse of Communism in the whole world but in the case of the Philippines, it all started a few years earlier.
Two elements could be attributed to the passing of Communism into just another movement from being “the movement” that was supposed to serve as a means of releasing the Filipino nation from a dictatorship.
The first was the failure of the Communist movement to acknowledge and provide support to “People Power” of 1986, the peaceful and non-violent means that forced Marcos into exile to the United States.
Their inability to recognize the significance of “People Power,” to ride the wave of a peaceful revolution or least enable themselves to be identified as a progressive movement for peace resulted in a belief among most of the population that the Communists were only interested in control and power in violent means.
The second reason for their failure was their own negative attitude towards their own people, a level of paranoia spread from within their ranks across the country in the late eighties and this caused into a purging of their ranks of suspected spies and traitors. The process resulted into disillusionment and the departure of important thinkers and planners of the movement.
Removal of the Communist Party of the Philippines from the list of banned political parties in the country in the mid nineties under the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos, a former Philippine Constabulary chief whose tasked under Marcos was to eradicate the Communist insurgents was not seen as again an opportunity to legitimize their cause peacefully.
The government offered the Communists the olive branch including millions of pesos in terms of assistance to those who would give up arms and return to normal life.
Large tracts of lands owned by powerful families were acquired and distributed to those who took up arms with credit assistance in order to finance their own agribusinesses.
Through the years since 1986, many who took up arms were slowly returning to the fold and leaving behind their comrades who still believes in their ideology more than the practicality of living a normal life.
There have been peace talks that were opened by the government with the leaders of the Communist Party who are now still in exile in the Netherlands after being released from prison under the Aquino administration in 1987.
The talks have dragged on and their power bases in the various regions of the country started to collapse in the late nineties as several comrades, disenfranchised and disillusioned by their national leadership’s policies started to form their own rebel groups in their area, some aligning with Muslim secessionist groups while the others turning to banditry to sustain their armed operations.
After the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the U.S. government classified the Communist Party of the Philippines, its National Democratic Front and its armed group the New People’s Army as a terrorist movement alongside the Abu Sayyaf and the Jemayah Islamiyah.
The classification of the CPP-NDF-NPA as a terror movement started the rapid decline of the movement, as the United States freezed all funds & find transfers of the group and funding for the local operations in the Philippines has become as dry as a river bed except for forcible collections of revolutionary taxes.
Some of the once active leaders of the Communist movement embraced the democratic political system and has participated on their own capacity in several political exercises and are now respected members of the Legislative branch of government.
The number of armed cadres has shrunk to a little less than 8,000 based on estimates of military intelligence but the number is still significant to cause animosity in certain regions of the country where the movement retains a level of control over villages.
Lately, during the mass evacuation of residents living within the 8 Kilometer danger zone of the restive Mayon Volcano in Albay Province, 530Km southeast of Manila, elements of the New People’s Army attacked the members of the Philippine Army.
Without any provocation, the Army who was doing an emergency effort was struck, injuring and killing some during the encounter, during a legitimate rescue mission and not for any military purposes.
This sad incident has only justified the suspicion that the armed Communist insurgency is and will always be at lost to the realities of the time, not knowing when is the right time to win respect and acceptance by the community.
When we see and hear reports of their attacks on civilian facilities, with no justifiable reason, one can’t help see that these operations are indications of an organization on the verge of death, a phase of collapse and losing completely cohesion as a group.
If there is one lesson that the movement needs to learn and practice is that it needs to know how to sway with the tune of the times, re-invent itself as an alternative perhaps to the chaotic political system this country has, then perhaps, the Communist movement can find itself relevant once more.
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