By the Communist Party of the Philippines

1.0 The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system has worsened from one level to another since the US grant of nominal independence to the puppet republic of the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord class in 1946. Thus, the objective conditions for waging protracted people’s war to achieve national liberation and democracy have increasingly become favorable.

 

1.2 The correctness of this line is proven beyond doubt by the fact that in the last 30 years the Communist Party of the Philippines and other revolutionary forces have not only preserved themselves but have gained strength and advanced through a revolutionary struggle. Without a people’s war the Party would have been destroyed totally by the Marcos fascist dictatorship. By waging people’s war, the Party grew in strength and prepared the ground for the overthrow of the dictatorship.

 

1.3 The Philippine economy has remained predominantly agrarian and semifeudal. The imperialists and the local reactionaries have prevented the establishment of basic industries and the carrying out of any genuine and thoroughgoing land reform. Thus, the cities have remained under the sway of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the countryside under that of the landlord class.

 

1.4 From time to time, there are embellishments on the persistent colonial exchange of raw materials and finished products from abroad. But nothing fundamental has changed in the colonial pattern of domestic production and foreign trade. The inflow of foreign funds for public works, some type of floating industry and high consumption have always ended in a financial crisis, more serious than the previous ones. This has always resulted in the aggravation and further deepening of the chronic economic crisis.

 

1.5 The Ramos regime vigorously pursued its predecessor’s (Aquino’s) policy of following the dictates of the imperialists and multilateral agencies (IMF, World Bank and WTO), in opposing national industrialization and land reform and in carrying out trade and investment liberalization, privatization of public assets and deregulation against the working people and against public interest.

 

1.6 The Ramos regime promoted in an unprecedentedly big way the labor-intensive, import-dependent, low value-added so-called export-oriented manufacturing (garments, semiconductors, shoes, toys and the like), a highly speculative portfolio investments and encouraged private credit transactions within the multinational firms and between these and the big comprador firms. To cover the mounting trade deficits and foreign debt service, the regime went into further foreign borrowing at super speed up to the level of US$50 billion (more than billion in six years) and local public borrowing up to the level of 788 billion pesos.

 

1.7 The export-oriented manufacturing fetches a low net export income of 10 percent relative to the 90 percent cost of imported components. Worse, it has been squeezed by global overproduction. Office and residential towers and golf courses have been built to milk the banks. Taking advantage of the free flow of foreign investments, the highly speculative foreign investments have been the first to take flight upon sight of the rapidly dwindling foreign exchange holdings of the country and the incapacity to service the foreign debt on time. Like the rest of Southeast Asia, the Philippine semifeudal economy has gone into an unprecedented financial and economic crisis.

 

1.8 The most optimistic predictions of the imperialist and puppet prognosticators are that the current economic and financial crisis in the Philippines and Southeast Asia will run on for the next two or three years. But the crisis of overproduction in export-oriented manufacturing can become as permanent as the crisis of overproduction in raw materials since the ‘70s. China, Southeast Asia and copycats in export-oriented manufacturing in other parts of the world will tend to perpetuate the crisis of overproduction in this type of production. In the meantime, the crisis becomes worse and is a part of the downward spiral in the crisis of the world capitalist system.

 

2.0 The newly-installed Estrada regime has publicly admitted that the entire economy and the reactionary government are bankrupt. And yet it is further pursuing the policies of investment and trade liberalization, deregulation and privatization and keeping the economy at being an exporter of raw materials, low-value added semimanufactures and contract workers, importer of finished products and ceaseless beggar of foreign loans.

 

2.1 The Estrada regime is trampling upon the national sovereignty of the Philippines and selling out national patrimony. It is removing all national restrictions on foreign investments and giving to the multinational corporations 100 percent ownership of land and natural resources, banks, telecommunications, mass media and retail trade. But the multinational corporations come in only to take over the most profitable assets and to prevent the comprehensive and balanced development of a self-reliant economy.

2.2 The privatization of remaining public assets is being accelerated. The multinational enterprises and the big compradors are taking over at give-away prices and by the sale state assets in major financial, trading and productive enterprises, in public utilities ad in social services. The tax burden imposed on the toiling masses and the middle social strata is being increased, especially in the form of personal income and indirect taxes.

2.3 The foreign trade deficit will continue to grow. However, it can be lessened by the decrease of imports for export-oriented manufacturing due to the global crisis of overproduction. The mass layoffs in the sweatshops have aggravated general unemployment.

2.4 Mass unemployment is already grave due to the bankruptcies and production setbacks. Those who remain employed are required to accept wage freeze or even lower nominal wages and longer working hours.

2.5 The incomes of the toiling masses and the middle social strata are drastically reduced by the peso devaluation and by the soaring prices of basic commodities and social services.

 

2.6 Social unrest is widespread in both urban and rural areas because of the drastic fall in production, peso devaluation, inflation and the rapidly increasing mass unemployment and loss of income. There is a systematic campaign to emasculate, terrorize and destroy the trade unions and other mass organizations. But the workers conduct strikes and other forms of concerted actions, the peasants participate in both the armed revolutionary movement and the legal democratic movement and the broad masses of the people engage in mass protests and other forms of resistance.

 

2.7 In a period of unprecedented economic and social crisis since World War II, the Estrada regime is bringing back to power and privilege the most hated reactionaries in Philippine society, the Marcos family and the worst of the Marcos cronies, like Eduardo Cojuangco and Lucio Tan. But because of the current crisis, there is a constriction of the ground for amicable accommodation among the reactionaries. There is now a glaring tendency of the ruling clique to monopolize the loot.

 

2.8 The Estrada regime is pushing for the ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement. This agreement reinforces a previous secret executive agreement made in 1992 on "access and cross-servicing". It seeks to allow the US military forces in any size to use any part of the Philippines and any Philippine source of supply and facility at any time and for any duration, with full immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of Philippine courts. The US has also built runways in South Cotabato for its military planes and is preparing to build a naval base in Sarangani Bay, a location convenient for US intervention in the whole of Southeast Asia.

 

2.9 The scheme of the US and the Estrada regime to turn the entire Philippines into a US military base has outraged the broad masses of the people and even the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. Thus, there is now a broad united front of patriotic and progressive forces against the scheme.

 

2.10 The Estrada regime is pushing for a new constitutional convention in order to replace the 1987 constitution with a worse kind of constitution. It is most interested in removing from the 1987 constitution what little restrictions there are on foreign investments, the prohibition of foreign military bases and nuclear weapons and certain limitations on the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, on the proclamation of martial law and on arrests, searches and seizures.

 

2.11 The GRP-NDFP peace negotiations is on "indefinite recess" according to the Estrada regime. The Estrada regime has told the NDFP that the negotiations can continue only if the NDFP accepts the absurd precondition that the revolutionary forces capitulate and criminalize themselves by submitting to the GRP constitutional, legal and judicial system.

 

2.12 There has been an intensification of campaigns of suppression by military, police and paramilitary forces. Violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws are on the rise nationwide. The people and the revolutionary forces have no choice but to intensify their resistance.

 

3.0 The Second Great Rectification Movement, which began in 1992 as a result of the decision of the Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPP, is mainly and essentially a movement of education within the Party in order to reaffirm the basic principles of the revolutionary proletariat, to sum up experience and take stock of the situation, identify and rectify major errors and shortcomings, promote criticism and self-criticism in current work and set forth the constructive and fighting tasks for advancing the revolution. It has won resounding victories in ideology, politics and organization. It has revitalized and strengthened the CPP as the advanced detachment of the proletariat leading the Philippine revolution forward.

 

3.1 The Party is resolutely is carrying out ideological work, involving the study of the rectification documents and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist classics, concrete social investigation, evaluation and summing up of work and comradely criticism and self-criticism.

3.2 Formal Party study courses at the primary, intermediate and advanced levels are being carried out. The first part of the three-part new basic Party course has been completed and taken by all Party organs and units. The course is given to all Party candidate-members as part of their candidature.

3.3 In April 1996, the executive committee of the central committee (EC-CC) made a pilot run of the intermediate Party course attended by regional Party committee members of two regions and the national military staff. Through these pilot courses, the syllabus of the intermediate course is being improved and finalized. The Mindanao Commission has taken initiative to run encouraged to read and study the materials in advance of taking the formal courses.

3.4 Simplified versions of the Party study courses and study materials, including standardized audio-visuals, have been issued for the benefit of Party candidate-members and full members who come from the toiling masses and who have a low level of literacy.

3.5 Study materials are being reproduced and distributed on a wider scale than before. Outlines for concrete social investigation at all levels are being improved, refined and propagated. Marxist-Leninist classics and documents are being translated in as many as five major languages. Publishing houses of regional Party committees publish in their respective regional languages the respective regional publications. The electronic edition of the five volumes of the selected titles from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and our Party’s own documents are being prepared for publication in the major Philippine languages.

3.6 The Party organ, Ang Bayan (The People), has begun to come out regularly. The regional Party committees have revived and regularly issue their regional publications, including sectoral publications.

3.7 There is a vibrant revival of the Party’s cultural work. The cultural publication, Ulos, has been revived and has collected and distributed revolutionary songs and published a compilation of revolutionary poetry. Illustrated versions of such basic documents as Philippine Society and Revolution have been published in some major Philippine major languages.

3.8 The Party’s ideological work has resulted in significant political and organizational gains. The 14 regional Party organizations are revitalized and are consolidating their forces. Among our important victories in 1998 were the regional Party conferences of five regional committees in Luzon (major island) and one in Mindanao (second major island). All these conferences were convened amidst continuing enemy offensives and intense struggles against revisionist traitors as well as amidst strenuous expansion and consolidation work in the revolutionary mass movement and the armed struggle.

3.9 The national conference on trade union work was also successfully convened to assess the situation, identify the problems and set the tasks of the revolutionary workers’ mass movement, including the urban semiproletarians.

3.10 To carry out the new-democratic revolution, the Party leads the New People’s Army as the principal instrument for overthrowing the ruling system of big compradors and landlords, for making possible the ruling system of big compradors and lanlords, for forging the worker-peasant alliance and realizing land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution.

3.11 The NPA operates in more than 80 guerrilla fronts of varying sizes and strengths at strategic points in 13 regions (excluding Metro Manila, the country’s urban capital). There has been an increase in the number of tactical offensives in 1998 and 1999. This month (March), our tactical offensives include the seizure of arms and the capture of several high-ranking military officers, including one general. Our successful mass work has enabled the NPA to increase its tactical offensives.

3.12 Our mass work involves social investigation, propaganda and agitation, organizing the organs of political power (at first appointed and then elected) and the mass organizations of peasants, workers (if any), fishermen, women, youth, cultural activists and children and mobilizing them in campaigns for their own benefit. These campaigns include land reform, production, public education, local self-defense, health, settlement of local disputes, and culture.

3.13 The land reform campaign is the key one because its responds to the main problem of the peasant masses and is the main content of the democratic revolution. At the moment, what is realizable in most areas is the minimum land reform program. The tasks are to reduce land rent and interest rates, raise wages of farm workers hired by landlords and rich peasants, require merchants to pay fair prices at the farm gate and raise production in agriculture and sideline occupations.

3.14 The Party wields the united front as a weapon complementary to the armed struggle. This united front is principally for armed struggle. It seeks to unite the broadest range of forces and mobilize the people in their millions against the against the enemy at every given time.

3.15 The Party constantly builds an echelon of alliances: the basic worker-peasant alliance, the alliance of progressive forces which includes the urban petty bourgeoisie, the alliance of all patriotic alliance is possible with sections of the reactionaries that are against the enemy on general or specific issues.

3.16 Under the leadership of the Party, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines has remained an underground united front of the basic progressive forces. At the same time, it is always ready to make further alliances with other forces. The alliance with the middle bourgeoisie has continued to be informal up to this day.

3.17 The Party has always supported the Moro people’s struggle for self-determination against national oppression. An outstanding recent case of developing a formal alliance is that between the NDFP and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Informal, friendly and cooperative relations in previous times are now developing into a formal NDFP-MILF alliance by written agreement and with liaison offices. Each party in the alliance maintains its own independence and initiative. Both parties are committed to cooperating for their mutual benefit and for coordinating their forces against the common enemy.

3.18 The urban-based legal democratic movement is rapidly growing in strength and surging forward vigorously. This is the political result of the rectification and the daily worsening crisis of the ruling system. The trade unions and the legal organizations of peasants, urban poor, women, youth in general, students, teachers, government employees, lawyers, health workers, scientists and technologists, writers and artists, economists, other professionals and progressive religious are working hard to consolidate and expand their ranks.