PHNO-PNoy: NOY 'PESSIMISTIC' ABOUT PEACE DEAL WITH COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHL

NOY 'PESSIMISTIC' ABOUT PEACE DEAL WITH COMMUNIST PARTY OF
THE PHL

MANILA, OCTOBER 22, 2012 (GMA-NEWS TV) Two days after the
historic signing of the peace pact with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF), President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday admitted he does not feel
confident that a similar agreement will be reached with communist rebels.

Speaking to local and foreign correspondents at the annual Foreign
Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) forum in Manila, Aquino
said while talks have resumed with the communist rebels, he cannot give a
timeline on the negotiations.

"Well, the other day I was told that they are renewing dialogue with us. Am I
as optimistic? I tend to be pessimistic in the sense of preparing for the worst
and hoping for the best," Aquino said.

However, the President said neither the government nor the rebel group -
composed of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army, and
the National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) that have waged an insurgency for
more than 40 years - has closed the door on a possible reconciliation.
"There is some reason to believe that we are moving forward, in terms of the
dialogue and the efforts that we are trying to achieve settlement also with the
CPP-NPA-NDF," Aquino said.
Peace talks with the NDF started during the term of the President's mother,
the late President Corazon Aquino, in 1986.
The talks did not have much progress during the succeeding administrations,
and only informal negotiations are currently taking place in The Netherlands.


Aquino said he cannot provide a timeline for the sensitive talks, but he
reassured the public that dialogue has started where it previously has been set
aside.

"At this point in time, I cannot tell you that there is a fixed date already
when we will announce anything. We're moving forward where previously it had
stagnated," Aquino said.
'Guarded optimism'
Asked to comment on the President's remarks, Sec. Teresita Deles, chief of
the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, said: "It is not
news to say that the talks with the NDF are difficult. It has always been
difficult. But we continue to hope for the best."
Lawyer Alexander Padilla, chairman of the government peace panel negotiating
with the CPP-NPA-NDF, added that the President's view on the talks with the
communist group may be "borne out of past experiences."

He added that there are "huge differences" between peace talks with the MILF
and negotiations with the CPP-NPA-NDF.

"For one, there was an ongoing ceasefire during talks with the MILF. Dito
wala. Sa pronouncements din ng CPP-NPA-NDF, they always say that the
negotiations are only a means to their end," he said.

Padilla remains hopeful of reaching an agreement with the communist group,
but "with some guarded optimism."
Meanwhile, former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, who once headed the NDF peace
negotiating panel, said Aquino's pessimism on the peace talks with the communist
group is "no surprise" because the President "has not intervened to push the
peace talks."
The Philippine military has estimated the strength of the NPA, the armed wing
of the CPP, to be around 4,000 as of last year. The number of armed guerillas
had its peak in the mid-1980s at over 20,000. — Patricia
Denise Chiu and Andreo C. Calonzo/RSJ/KBK/YA, GMA News
PNoy 'actively blocking' peace deal with NDFP — CPP
October 18, 2012 6:45pm

President Benigno Aquino III has been "actively blocking" a peace agreement
between the government and the communist-led National Democratic Front of the
Philippines (NDFP), the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said in a
statement Thursday.
The statement was released a day after Aquino expressed pessimism about peace
talks between the government and the NDFP, the political wing of the CPP.
The CPP listed several factors, such as the government's counter-insurgency
movement and the arrests and detention of NDFP consultants, in stating their
case.
"Aquino's pessimism about the prospects of NDFP-GPH talks is just a
self-fulfilling prophecy," the CPP said, adding Aquino is not serious in
conducting "profound dialogue to address the roots of the armed conflict."
Oplan Bayanihan
The CPP said Aquino administration's counter-insurgency program Oplan
Bayanihan is a manifestation that Aquino has no plans to make peace with the
rebels. It also pointed out that Aquino himself ordered the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) to "decimate" the NPA, the armed wing of the CPP, in three
years as a way to show the government's "militarist approach" in tackling armed
conflict.
"This has set the framework of the Aquino regime's Oplan Bayanihan under
which the AFP has been intensifying its war of suppression especially in the
countryside and causing grave abuses of human rights and widespread terror," the
CPP said, adding the government is "busier waging its Oplan Bayanihan war of
suppression than in engaging in serious peace negotiations."
The CPP also said the Aquino administration violated ceasefire agreements in
the past, such as in 2010 when the government arrested NDF consultant Pedro
Codaste, and later on Tirso Alcantara, Alan Jazmines, Renante Gamara and Jaime
Soledad.
The CPP also said the government refuses to release "at least a dozen" other
consultants, and that Aquino has not done anything about the disappearances of
several NDF consultants.
The CPP said the Aquino administration and its armed forces carried out these
arrests to hinder peace negotiations with NDF, despite "knowing full well that
negotiations cannot be formally resumed with the constant threat of abduction,
arrest and detention of NDFP consultants."
The party also noted the alleged harassment, torture, killings and detention
of activists by the government and paramilitary forces as being propagated by
the Aquino administration, as well as citing over a fourth of 400 political
prisoners that have been arrested since Aquino came into power.
Pessimism
Text messages by GMA News Online asking for comment from Palace spokespersons
were not immediately answered.
On Wednesday, Aquino expressed his wariness of the government being able to
forge an agreement with the CPP-NPA-NDF. He was unable to give a timeline
regarding negotiations with the rebels, despite noting that talks with the
communist rebels have resumed.
"Well, the other day I was told that they are renewing dialogue with us. Am I
as optimistic? I tend to be pessimistic in the sense of preparing for the worst
and hoping for the best," Aquino said.
Aquino, however, said neither the rebels nor the government has closed the
doors to reaching a peace agreement.
"There is some reason to believe that we are moving forward, in terms of the
dialogue and the efforts that we are trying to achieve settlement also with the
CPP-NPA-NDF," he said. — Gian C. Geronimo/KBK, GMA News
FROM WIKIPEDIA

The Communist Party of the Philippines (in Filipino: Partido Komunista ng
Pilipinas) is a leading communist party in the Philippines. It remains an
underground political organization since its founding on December 26, 1968 and
has been operating in clandestine manner since its founding. It aims to
overthrow the Philippine government through armed revolution with its direct
leadership over the New People's Army and National Democratic Front.
History
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was reestablished on December
26, 1968, coinciding with the 75th birthday of Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist
leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Amado Guerrero, then a central committee member of Partido Komunista ng
Pilipinas or PKP-1930, lead the reestablishment of the party. Jose Maria Sison,
allegedly the man behind the nom de guerre Amado Guerrero, confirmed its birth
at Barangay Dulacac in the tri-boundary of Alaminos, Bani and Mabini in the
province of Pangasinan. This is where the CPP's "Congress of Reestablishment"
was held on December 26, 1968, at a hut near the house of the Navarettes, the
parents-in-law of Arthur Garcia, one of the CPP founders.
Jose Maria Sison (photo) is the central figure behind the CPP
and its formation.
According to Party documents, in the 1960s, a massive leftist unrest called
First Quarter Storm occurred in the country to protest against the government
policies, graft and corruption and decline of the economy during the presidency
of Ferdinand Marcos.
The unrest was also inspired by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
the Vietnam War and other revolutionary struggles abroad against United States
imperialist aggression.
One of the leaders of this leftist movement was Jose Maria Sison, a founder
of Kabataang Makabayan. He was soon recruited to be a member of Partido
Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930).
During that time the new PKP members, independently from the incumbent PKP
members, were conducting clandestine theoretical and political education on
Marxism–Leninism, with special attention dedicated to workers, peasants and
youth. This would eventually lead to a significant split between the PKP
members.
The new members advocated to resume what they regarded as the unfinished
armed revolution against foreign and feudal domination, referring to the legacy
and de facto continuation of the Philippine-American War of 1899, combat
subjectivism and opportunism in the history of the old merger party and fight
modern revisionism then being promoted by the Soviet Union.
This ideology was the basis for the split from the PKP-1930, the (re)creation
of the CPP, and the subsequent "Congress of Reestablishment."
Reestablishment Congress
Irreconcilable differences occurred between the new party members with the
leadership of the PKP under Jose Lava. Sison, was tasked by PKP to conduct a
review of the party history of the old merger party.
However, on his report, leaders of the PKP headed by Jesus Lava disagreed
with Sison's findings that criticize the major errors of the PKP which has
caused the almost total destruction of the revolutionary movement in the 1950s.

A sharp division and struggle developed between them in ideological and
political issues, Sison and his group lead the reestablishment of the party
after he and his colleagues bolted out from the PKP.
Jesus Lava, the General Secretary of the PKP was repudiated as
counterrevolutionary revisionist and also the gangster clique of Pedro
Taruc-Sumulong in the old people's army of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan
(HMB), remnant of the Hukbalahap in Central Luzon.
The Party issued the document of rectification, "Rectify Errors and Rebuild
the Party," and promulgated the Programme for a People's Democratic Revolution
and the new Party Constitution in its Congress of Reestablishment.
The two communist parties deviation was clear ideologically when the Lava's
PKP was supporting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union whom Sison's group
considered revisionist while the latter supported the line of the Chinese
Communist Party.
The reestablishment was centered on a comprehensive and thoroughgoing
criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism and the Lava revisionist
renegades in Manila as well as the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique which had
usurped authority over remnants of the HMB.
The party congress was attended by 12 members, namely Jose Maria Sison,
Monico Atienza, Rey Casipe, Leoncio Co, Manuel Collantes, Arthur Garcia,
Herminihildo Garcia, Ruben Guevara, Art Pangilinan, Nilo Tayag, Fernando Tayag
at Ibarra Tubianosa. Jose Luneta was counted as the 13th member. He was elected
in the Central Committee in absentia, since he was still in China.
People's War
Soon after its reestablishment, the Party linked up with the other cadres and
commanders of the HMB and engaged them in ideological and political studies,
mass work and politico-military training. On March 29, 1969, the New People's
Army was established and on April 24, 1973 the National Democratic Front
(Philippines).
Afterwards, the CPP launched the "protracted people's war" a strategical line
developed by Mao Zedong during the phase of guerrilla warfare of the Communist
Party of China. The eventual objective is to install a "people's revolutionary
government" via a two-stages revolution: National Democratic Revolution followed
by a Socialist Revolution.
The reestablishment was considered by the party as the First Great
Rectification Movement, criticizing the errors of the old Party. The CPP adheres
to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its guiding ideology in analyzing and summing up
the experience of the party and its creative application to the concrete
conditions in the Philippines in fighting US imperialism, feudalism and
bureaucrat capitalism. It considers Maoism as the highest development of
Marxism-Leninism.
It considers the Philippine society as semicolonial and semifeudal, the
character of the present revolution as national democratic of the new type (led
by the proletariat), the motive forces, the targets, the strategy and tactics
and the socialist perspective of the Philippine revolution.
Despite the arrests of CPP Central Committee members in 1973, 1974, 1976 and
1977, the erstwhile skeletal regional Party organizations gained flesh and
muscle from the growth of the armed revolutionary movement and the urban
underground.
Second Great Rectification Movement
In the 10th plenum of the CPP, the Party engaged in a "second rectification
movement" that reviewed and correct the erroneous errors that created a havoc on
the revolutionary movement for more than a decade since its founding in 1968.

Armando Liwanag, chairman of CPP issued a document Reaffirm Our Basic
Principles and Carry the Revolution Forward that repudiated the deviations of
leading party cadres in the country that resulted to the gravest setbacks and
destruction to the Party and the revolutionary movement, first in one major
island and subsequently on a nationwide scale.
This erroneous policies has caused setbacks through a process of
self-constriction and has inflicted unprecedentedly heavy losses in the strength
of the Party and the people's army and gross reductions of mass base.
With the criticism and debates that ensued between the leading party cadres
resulted to the expulsion of advocates of "left and right opportunism" notably
forming the so-called "rejectionists" and "reaffirmist" factions.
The rejectionist banners the line of "strategic counteroffensive",
"regularization", and combining military adventurism with insurrectionism from
1980 onward that overlapped with reafirmist that upholds the correct
revolutionary of the people's war.
The rectification movement was aimed to defeat the wrong line in a
comprehensive and thoroughgoing manner and strengthen the Party ideologically,
politically and organizationally. Thus, the rectification movement came into
force in 1992, especially after the Plenum of the Central Committee approved the
rectification documents.
Splits and Divisions
Not all CPP cadres abided the "Reaffirm" document penned by Liwanag. Those
who affirmed the Maoist ortohdoxy was called the "Reaffirmists", or RA, while
those who rejected the document were called "Rejectionists" or RJ. In July 1993,
the Komiteng Rehiyon ng Manila-Rizal (KRMR), one of the Rejectionists, declared
its autonomy from the central leadership:
"From this day on, we severe our ties with the illegal and absolutist circle
that passes itself off as the 'Central Committee' of the CPP...It is a
principled declaration of independence...not a secession from the entire Party
organization." —CPP Manila-Rizal
Within a few months, several of the Party's regional formations and bureaus
followed suit: Central Mindanao, Western Mindanao, Negros and Central Visayas,
the Visayas Commission (VisCom) staff and New People's Army units under its
control, the National Peasant Secretariat, the United Front Commission and the
Home Bureau and Western Europe committee.
The KRMR, VisCom and the Central and Western Mindanao regional committees
will later merge to form the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa - Pilipinas
(RPM-P) in 1998. However the Mindanao-based cadres will later leave the RPM-P
after a debate regarding the RPM-P's signing of a peace pact with the government
then led by Joseph Estrada, they formed the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng
Manggagawa - Mindanao (RPM-M).
The KRMR faction led by Filemon Lagman was earlier expelled from the RPM-P
due to his "liquidationist" attitude and refusal to help in Party preparations
and functions. He will then form the Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino (PMP),
however his closest associates, led by Sonny Melencio, bolted to form the legal
political party Sosyalistang Partido ng Paggawa (SPP) in 1998.
The United Front Commission cadres formed the Partido Proletaryo Demokratiko
(PPD) which will then merge with Lagman's PMP and Melencio's SPP to give rise to
the Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino-Pinagsanib (PMP-Pinagsanib). But in 2007
another reported split occurred due to the rift between Lagman and Melencio
supporters.
In 1997 several cadres from the Central Luzon committee was accused of sowing
factionalism and "civilianization" of the NPA units. These cadres earlier
supported the "Reaffirm" document by CPP Chairman Armando Liwanag and would
attempt to appeal for the Chairman's support.
The expected support did not materialize though, and the cadres formed the
Marxist-Leninist Party of the Philippines (MLPP) and organized the armed wing
Rebolusyonaryong Hukbo ng Bayan (RHB). The MLPP-RHB maintains the
national-democratic framework of social analysis by the CPP, although slightly
modified.
They also maintain the strategy of people's war, but are more akin to
Vietnamese and Nepalese revolutionary strategies.
International Relations
It participates in the Maoist International Conference of Marxist-Leninist
Parties and Organizations. It heads the broad revolutionary front organization,
the National Democratic Front.
Ideology
The Communist Party of the Philippines, Marxist-Leninist-Maoism (MLM), is a
revolutionary proletarian party that looks upon the legacies of past Philippine
rebellions and revolutions and of the theories of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.
It assists the progress of theory and practice in the world proletarian
revolution that is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (Preamble, Constitution of
the Communist Party of the Philippines, 1968).
"So long as it resolutely, militantly and thoroughly carries out its
ideological, political and organizational building, the Communist Party of the
Philippines is certain to lead the broad masses of the Filipino people of
various nationalities and ethno-linguistic communities to total victory in the
national democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local
reactionaries; and bring about the start of the socialist revolution." —Armando
Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines

Amnesty Proclamation

On September 5, 2007, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Amnesty
Proclamation 1377 for members of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its
armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA); other communist rebel groups; and their
umbrella organization, the National Democratic Front.
The amnesty will cover the crime of rebellion and all other crimes "in
pursuit of political beliefs," but not including crimes against chastity, rape,
torture, kidnapping for ransom, use and trafficking of illegal drugs and other
crimes for personal ends and violations of international law or convention and
protocols "even if alleged to have been committed in pursuit of political
beliefs."
The National Committee on Social Integration (NCSI) will issue a Certificate
of Amnesty to qualified applicants. Implementing rules and regulations are being
drafted and the decree will be submitted to the Senate of the Philippines and
the House of Representatives of the Philippines for their concurrence. The
proclamation becomes effective only after Congress has concurred.
In January 2008, Avelino Razon, Philippine National Police chief stated that
the New People's Army (NPA) rebels have only 5,700 members as of 2007 due to
military destruction of 13 guerrilla bases (lowest level in 20 years). NPAs
fought in 69 of 81 Philippine provinces since 1969. 40,000 people have died in
the conflict.
Ten Years for Victory
In 2009, the CPP leadership, in its 41st anniversary statement, boldly called
for an advance in the revolutionary struggle and touted its forces to make a
great advance in the people's war for new democracy.
It declared its determination to strive within the next five years to make
the great advance from the stage of strategic defensive to the strategic
stalemate, fulfilling all the requirements and without skipping any necessary
phase.
It also predicted that a revolutionary government will win the revolution by
toppling the current Philippine government and establish a new state led by the
Maoists in ten years.
"The strategic stalemate means that the revolutionary armed forces shall have
achieved parity in the revolutionary war against the armed forces of the
reactionary government. The strategic stalemate paves the way for the next stage
in the protracted people's war, namely the strategic offensive, which pushes
towards the nationwide victory in the struggle for national and social
liberation." —Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee of the Communist
Party of the Philippines
Referring to Maoist military doctrine, the CPP-lead NPA adheres to the three
progressive phases of protracted warfare—strategic defensive, strategic
stalemate, and strategic offensive.
According to the CPP's calculations in the statement, they considered the
present revolution to be at an advance sub-stage of strategic defensive.


Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All
rights reserved




PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE


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