KARL MARX TUESDAYS

PHILIPPINE SOCIETY AND THE REVOLUTION AGAINST THE PHILIPPINE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

By: Comrade Mark Cua

VIII. PRESENT THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES PUPPET

By waging a peopleâ € ™ s war and building a peopleâ € ™ s army against the Japanese fascists and their puppets, the Communist Party of the Philippines achieved the status of being a powerful instrument of the Filipino people and the position of being able to play a significant role in Philippine history. Before US imperialism landed its troops in Luzon, the Hukbalahap under the leadership of the Party had liberated almost the entire region of Central Luzon, had organized provincial and municipal governments and armed units had dispatched to Manila and Southern Luzon.

There was however no ideological and political preparation against the return of US imperialism and the reimposition of feudalism in the countryside. Consistently acting as the instrument of US imperialism within the Party, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs harped on loyalty to the US government and the puppet commonwealth government and hoped to engage in parliamentary struggle under the dispensation of these monsters. Yet, US imperialism and the local exploiting classes were determined to attack the Party, the peopleâ € ™ s army and the people with real bullets as well as with sugar-coated ones.

Misled by the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs, the Hukbalahap welcomed the US imperialist troops that marched through Central Luzon from Lingayen in 1945. Some units of the peopleâ € ™ s army fought together with the US imperialist troops in dislodging the Japanese troops from the Floridablanca airfields but were surprised when after the battle the US troops turned their guns on them and disarmed them. In Manila, the imperialist aggressors also disarmed and turned back units of the Hukbalahap that had preceded them. 77 Squadron, a unit of the peopleâ € ™ s army, was massacred in Malolos, Bulacan while on its way from Manila after having been disarmed.

To suppress the Filipino people, US imperialism put together under its Military Police Command USAFFE its puppets and the erstwhile pro-Japanese Philippine Constabulary. It encouraged the traitor landlords to take back full control over the lands that they had left during the war, to demand rent arrears from the peasants and to organize private armed gangs, then known as the civilian guards, to enforce their class rule in coordination with the military police. In their attempt to dissolve the provincial and municipal governments established by the Party and peopleâ € ™ s army, the US imperialists and the landlords unleashed a campaign of terror against the white people. The general headquarters of the Hukbalahap in San Fernando, Pampanga was raided by the US Counter-Intelligence Corps. Mass arrests and imprisonment of Party cadres, Red fighters and common people were made all over Central Luzon. Massacres, assassinations, torture and other forms of atrocities were perpetrated by the military police and civilian guards.

So incensed were the people that they wanted to fight back and continue the peopleâ € ™ s war. But the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs insisted on the line that the people were tired of war and that a campaign for œdemocratic peaceâ € â € ?? was called for. The hidden traitors within the Party hailed the fake independence promised by US imperialism in their desire to occupy high positions in the puppet reactionary government. So the headquarters of the Party was moved out of the countryside to the city. They organized the Democratic Alliance so that it could help US imperialism put up a sham republic. They converted the Hukbalahap into the Huk Veterans € ™ League and thus put the people at the mercy of the enemy. The peopleâ € ™ s committees, tempered by the anti-fascist war, were turned into mere chapters of a legal peasant association and these were used to spread the false illusion that land reform could fall from the palms of the enemy.

The bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs regarded as top item in its agenda of parliamentary struggle the question of turning the Communist Party through the Democratic alliance into a mere adjunct of either the Nacionalista Party or the Liberal Party in the 1946 elections. It chose to put the Democratic Alliance on the side of the Nacionalista Party against the Liberal Party, which had only been recently a mere faction of the Nacionalista Party. There was no basic difference between the Liberal Party and its mother party.

Osmena, the presidential candidate of the Nacionalista Party, had in his capacity as president of the puppet commonwealth government participated in absolving Roxas, the founder of the Liberal Party, of the charge of pro-Japanese collaboration. In accordance with the orders of his imperialist masters, Osmena convened the Congress Prewar the majority of whose members had become pro-Japanese collaborators during the war. This assemblage of traitors elected Roxas, the former top rice collector of the Japanese imperial army, to the position of Senate president, a position from which he could challenge the puppet leadership of Osmena. This puppet Congress even collected backpay services it had rendered to the Japanese fascists.