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The Original Founders (Early 20th Century)

The Original Founders (Early 20th Century)

Be A Part of the real Change in the New Philippines

Be A Part of the real Change in the New Philippines

2015年3月20日星期五

KARL MARX TUESDAYS 

PHILIPPINE SOCIETY AND THE REVOLUTION AGAINST THE PHILIPPINE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT
By: Comrade Mark Cua

VIII. THE PRESENT PUPPET REPUBLIC

5. The Macapagal Puppet Regime, l962-65
Enjoying the political and financial support of the U.S. monopolies, Diosdado Macapagal defeated
Garcia in the presidential elections of 1961 despite the latter’s use of government resources and facilities in the campaign. In the era of modern imperialism, Macapagal inanely ran on a platform of “free enterprise�? and “decentralization.�? The Liberal Party of which he was the principal candidate coalesced with the Grand Alliance to form the United Opposition. This coalition shamelessly echoed the U.S. imperialist dictation made through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, besides the usual run of U.S. advisors.
The first executive act performed by Macapagal when he assumed the puppet presidency in 1962 was to proclaim immediate and full decontrol. Local U.S. firms were enabled to remit huge profits even without having to conceal them any more through overpricing of goods and services bought from their mother and sister companies in the United States or elsewhere abroad. The comprador big bourgeoisie and the big landlord class gobbled up their dollar income from the export of raw materials and freely converted their pesos into dollars for the import of finished commodities. Graft and corruption shifted from the Central Bank to the Bureau of Customs and the long seacoasts of the archipelago as the system of dollar allocations was replaced by a readjusted tariff system intended to draw government revenues.

Upon the exhaustion of the dollar reserves of the reactionary government, the peso was devalued from the previous fixed rate of P2.00 per dollar to P3.90 per dollar. To maintain this rate, the Macapagal puppet regime had to accept onerous “stabilization�? loans from U.S. banks. With the new peso-dollar rate, the broad masses of the people had to suffer high prices which cut down their real income. There was not a single commodity in the Philippines unaffected by the higher cost of importing finished goods, raw materials, spare parts, fuel and the like from the United States. While the peso was devalued to the extent of almost 100 per cent, the statutory minimum wage level was raised by only 50 per cent and could be had by wage-earners only through mass struggle.

The Macapagal puppet regime used the very economic crisis caused by U.S. imperialism as the excuse for advocating an “open door�? policy for U.S. investments. The volume of U.S. investments increased but not any higher than the huge profits being remitted. U.S. investments were made only to aggravate the unevenness of the semicolonial and semifeudal economy. U.S. investors took over enterprises which could no longer pay their foreign debts and made new investments in plantations, fertilizer plants and the like. Conforming to their own policy of restraining the outflow of dollars from the United States, the U.S. monopolies employed the tactic of sucking up Filipino savings and loan capital taken by the Philippine government from U.S.-owned and U.S.-controlled hanks. Thus, even with the very little capital that they actually brought into the country, they could enlarge their capitalization through local borrowings. All these were facilitated by the puppet president through the Program Implementation Agency, an office created especially for this purpose. New lending agencies were also created to facilitate the rapid depletion of foreign loans.

Government corporations were made to borrow directly from the World Bank. Private corporations and banks were encouraged to get loans directly from U.S. and other foreign banks and to use government banks to make the guarantees. During the time of Macapagal, it was extremely clear that burdening the reactionary government with foreign loans was deliberately being done to reduce to complete absurdity the illusion of the bourgeois nationalists that they could make use of the puppet state to help them take over U.S. assets in the Philippines.

A program of public works projects which was mainly intended to exhaust foreign loans and abuse the local currency and the whole economy was initiated. It was launched despite the fact that the Macapagal puppet regime could not get from Congress the tax measures it wanted for raising government revenues so as to cover increased government expenditures. A nonsensical agency like the Emergency Employment Administration was put up to conduct sham public works and create the illusion of more employment at a time of mass layoffs.

In an attempt to dissimulate its brazen puppetry to U.S. imperialism, the Macapagal puppet regime had “independence day�? changed from July 4th to June 12th. The fable that the United States “granted�? independence to the Filipino people was supplanted by the equally arrogant fable that the United States “restored�? it. It became a vogue among puppet politicians to pay lip service to the events and heroes of the old democratic revolution so as to give a superficial local color to their puppetry. Romulo, an old running dog of U.S. imperialism, was put in the University of the Philippines to be always on hand for consultations with Macapagal in the embellishment of pro-imperialist policies and also to refurbish the state university as a tool of U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes.

To further make itself appear progressive and to swindle the peasantry, the Macapagal puppet regime enacted the Agricultural Land Reform Code. This code piously declares share tenancy as “contrary to public policy�? and makes the false promise to emancipate the tenant masses. Underneath all the bombast about emancipating the tenant masses is the full assurance to all landlords that if a piece of land is to be expropriated from them by the reactionary government they shall be given “just compensation.�? The tenant masses would not be able to afford the redistribution price and the reactionary government would not have enough funds to go beyond a few token instances of expropriation.

The code also provides that before there can be any expropriation of land from the landlords, the tenant masses should first become “leaseholders,�? paying a fixed land rent amounting to 25 per cent of the average annual net crop based on the three normal crop years preceding the landlord-tenant “leasehold�? agreement. The tenant is obliged to shoulder all agricultural expenses and to deliver to the landlord the fixed rent whatever is the outcome of the crop, come floods, drought or crop epidemics. “Leasehold�? does not actually reduce the land rent; it is nothing but one more form of share tenancy. But the code makes it appear that merely adopting this form of share tenancy means the abolition of share tenancy.

The Philippine claim on Sabah and the Maphilindo (Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia) plan were initiated by the Macapagal puppet regime ostensibly to carry out an irredentist policy but in reality to facilitate the recognition of the Philippines as an intervenor in and supporter of the Anglo-American concoction that is “Malaysia.�? The Maphilindo was nothing but an imperialist trick to outwit the Sukarno government of Indonesia and to extort more privileges for U.S. monopolies in Malaya and North Kalimantan. In pretending to take an independent course in Philippine foreign relations, Macapagal even had the U.S.-R.P. Treaty of General Relations abrogated but he allowed all other unequal treaties elaborating on this treaty to continue.

It was anomalous that, whereas the Macapagal puppet regime could not assert Philippine sovereignty and jurisdiction over the U.S. military bases within the Philippines, it sought to acquire more territory outside. When the number of murder cases involving U.S. military personnel and their Filipino victims increased, the Macapagal puppet regime conspired with the U.S. ambassador in the old trick of negotiating the amendment of the U.S.-R.P. Military Bases Agreement. The amendments agreed upon actually enlarged the jurisdiction of the U.S. base commander. However, no serious step was ever taken to submit these to the Philippine Senate for ratification.

The Macapagal puppet regime thoroughly exposed to all the Asian peoples its puppetry to U.S. imperialism when it rabidly campaigned for the sending of Filipino mercenary troops to participate in the U.S. war of aggression against the Vietnamese people. Filipino C.I.A. agents who had gained substantial business interests in the U.S. war of aggression in Indochina were most vociferous in joining Macapagal’s call for sending Filipino mercenary troops to Vietnam. The first mercenaries to be sent there under an act of the puppet Congress took the guise of engineering and medical teams.

To promote the imperialist partnership of the United States and Japan in exploiting the peoples of Asia and strengthen Japan’s role as the regional puppet chieftain of U.S. imperialism in Asia, the Macapagal puppet regime sponsored the conference which led to the formation of the U.S.-Japan-controlled Asian Development Bank and offered to make Manila its headquarters. The Asian Development Bank is one more financial institution designed to manipulate the Philippine puppet government into perpetuating a semicolonial and semifeudal economy for supplying raw materials principally to both the United States and Japan. During the time of Macapagal, the share of Japan in Philippine foreign trade had already gone up to around 20 per cent.

In opposition to the reactionary policies of the Macapagal puppet regime, the revolutionary mass movement in the city surged forward. Increasingly bigger protest demonstrations were staged by workers, peasants, students and other patriots. On October 2, 1964, workers and students demonstrated against U.S. parity rights and the U.S. military bases in front of the U.S. Embassy and then in front of Malacanang Palace where they battled the presidential guards. The most militant demonstrators subsequently became charter members of the Kabataang Makabayan. The Kabataang Makabayan was founded on November 30, 1964 to become a consistent major factor in the struggle for national democracy.

On December 25, 1964, the people of Angeles City and adjoining towns held a big meeting to denounce the murder of Filipinos inside the U.S. military bases and demand the withdrawal of these bases. On January 25, 1965, twenty thousand people composed of workers, peasants, students and the unemployed marched to the puppent Congress and then to the U.S. embassy to expose in a comprehensive way the workings of U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Demonstrations were also repeatedly made against the Anglo-American concoction of “Malaysia�? and the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam.

These demonstrations were preceded and followed by study meetings at several places in order to discuss the issues thoroughly. Altogether, the militant demonstrations and study meetings constituted a further development of the cultural revolution of a national-democratic type signaled by the anti-CAFA demonstration of 1961. The youth played a vanguard role in these mass actions. The workers and peasants could have immediately played an even bigger role were it not for the more than one decade of sabotage perpetrated by the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs in the revolutionary mass movement.

In the countryside, Red commanders and fighters who refused to heed the call of the Jesus Lava leadership for liquidating the armed struggle persisted in their revolutionary efforts. However, in the absence of a definite Marxist-Leninist leadership capable of striking down the counterrevolutionary leadership of the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs, those who persisted in revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside were susceptible to the outlook of the roving rebel band and were prey to the usurpation of leadership by the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique. Despite the usurpation of leadership by both the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique, the broad masses of people clamored for a correct proletarian revolutionary leadership.

The one-man Jesus Lava leadership exposed its completely bankrupt character when it forwarded letters of support to Macapagal for its policies, especially the Agricultural Land Reform Code, and when it subsequently arranged its surrender in May 1964. Before his surrender, Jesus Lava vainly tried to sow disorder in the ranks of the revolutionary mass movement by making arbitrary appointments that appeared to recognize the independent kingdom of the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique and yet encouraged certain kinsmen of his to claim Party leadership even as they were isolated from the masses and were actually accomplices in his surrender.

The independent kingdom of the Lavas based in Manila took to using a reformist peasant organization, the Masaka, to assert its fake authority in the revolutionary mass movement and also to comply with Jesus Lava’s commitment of supporting the sham land reform programme of the reactionary government.

Soon after the surrender of Jesus Lava to Macapagal, Marxist-Leninists emerging from the revolutionary mass movement rose up to criticize and repudiate the counterrevolutionary acts of the Lavas and Tarucs. At first, expressions of criticism and repudiation were spontaneous. Then these matured into a full-scale rectification movement. The rectification movement would still entail some years to develop towards the stage when the Revolutionary School of Mao Tsetung Thought could be formed and the Communist Party of the Philippines could be reestablished under the great red banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The long dynastic rule of the Lavas and Tarucs in the Party could not be done away with overnight.

6. The Marcos Puppet Regime, 1966-
What Magsaysay had done in 1953, transfer from the Liberal Party to the Nacionalista Party to become no less than the presidential candidate, Ferdinand Marcos did in 1965 without having to account for any change of political principles, thus exposing once more the absence of any basic difference between the two puppet reactionary parties. Marcos had been no less than the president of the party he had left and the close associate of Macapagal .

Marcos defeated Macapagal in the election of 1965 to become the sixth president of the puppet republic. After one term, he ran for reelection in 1969 and won over Sergio Osmena, Jr. of the Liberal Party. Each time in the two presidential elections, he faced an opponent raucously claiming to be the more efficient running dog of U.S. imperialism. On the other hand, U.S. imperialism wanted a puppet of the Marcos type, one who could most effectively make use of counterrevolutionary dual tactics in a period marked by the rise of the revolutionary mass movement in both city and countryside.

While sounding “nationalist�? interested in the economic emancipation of the Filipino nation and pledging to let the Laurel-Langley Agreement, particularly parity rights, lapse in 1974, the Marcos puppet regime enacted as early as 1967 the Investment Incentives Law which declares it the state policy to encourage foreign investments and defines a corporation with a maximum foreign equity of 40 per cent as a “Philippine national.�? By this definition, the U.S. imperialists can create a system of interlocking corporations by which a “Philippine national�? already bearing and camouflaging 40 per cent equity invests in another corporation and actually increases foreign equity in the latter corporation beyond 40 per cent. The law, however, clearly allows foreign equity to exceed 40 per cent in an old or new corporation registered with the Board of Investments and to remain so indefinitely as long as “Philippine nationals�? do not buy the shares of stock offered in the stock exchange on the eleventh year after registration. In guaranteeing the property rights of foreign investors, the Investment Incentives Law goes to the extent of guaranteeing the right of nonexpropriation and exposes the primacy of foreign investments over any pretension of the present puppet state to sovereign rights. The ‘‘incentives�? offered by the law are unprecedentedly abusive of the sovereign Filipino people and are geared to aggravating the colonial status of the Philippines.

An insidious propaganda drive supporting the perpetuation of the interests of the U.S. monopolies in the Philippines has been unleashed by the counterrevolutionaries, especially by the C.I.A. and the American Jesuits through the Manglapus-Manahan gang. Brandishing their slogans of “peaceful revolution,�? “constitutional reform�? and “profit-sharing,�? the Christian Social Movement, the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism, the Congressional Economic Planning Office and several other reformist groups spread the mendacious line that the nationalization of the economy could be advanced through legislation and through the stock market. The workers are told that they can become capitalists and can participate in joint ventures with foreign investors by going to the stock market to buy their own shares and putting on mortgage their future wages. This is akin to the old lie repeatedly told to the landless peasants that they can become landowners by buying land from the landlords.

There has been so much ado about another colonial Constitutional Convention. It is publicized as a channel for changing the status quo. The actual purpose of the Constitutional Convention, however, is to adjust the wording of the colonial constitution to such a law as the Investment Incentives Law and the treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation between the U.S. and the Philippines which is now being prepared. The broad masses of the people are reminded at every turn that they have to attract and be hospitable to “dollar-bringing tourists,�? meaning to say, the U.S. monopolies. Every town or barrio is made to expect itself as a possible tourist spot in a clever campaign to counteract the growing sentiment of the people against U.S. imperialism.

Rendering completely inutile the reformist view that the economic interests of U.S. imperialism could be taken over by the reactionary government or Filipino businessmen in accordance with “due process’’ and “just compensation,�? the Marcos puppet regime has faithfully followed the dictation of U.S. imperialism to exhaust the financial resources of the reactionary government and to overburden the people with inflation and repeated devaluation. Despite the raising of taxes, the internal debt of the reactionary government has risen to the level of at least P6.0 billion because of the profligate spending on projects that merely deepen the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the economy. On top of this internal debt, an external debt of more than $l.9 billion has been incurred mainly with U.S. imperialism. Thus, the nation is severely afflicted with a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions.4 The broad masses of the people have to suffer steeply rising prices as a result of the rapid erosion of the purchasing value of the peso from within and from without.

Taking advantage of the financial plight of the Philippine puppet government, U.S. imperialism through the International Monetary Fund has dictated the devaluation of the peso at the expense of the broad masses of the people. At the beginning of 1970, the value of the peso sank to the level of more than P6.00 per U.S. dollar from the previous level of P3.90 per U.S. dollar. This is the second time in only eight years that devaluation has been imposed on the people without any corresponding increases in their income. Since 1962, the prices of many basic commodities have gone up by more than 150 per cent. There is not a single commodity in the Philippines that is not affected by the rising costs of imported fuel, equipment, spare parts, raw materials, and the like. The Filipino national bourgeoisie is daily facing bankruptcy because its products are being squeezed out of the local market and it cannot avail itself of adequate credit assistance from a bankrupt puppet government.

As a result of the peso devaluation, the value of U.S. assets in the Philippines and also of Philippine foreign debt has automatically increased. It is idle and downright stupid to expect the reactionary government or private Filipino stockbuyers to be able to buy out the U.S. monopolies. On the other hand, the reactionary government has become worse as a beggar of usurious foreign loans and Filipino-owned enterprises have become more than ever subject to takeover, assimilation or crushing by the U.S. monopolies. Devaluation has only made the Philippines more dependent on the U.S. dollar and has only served to aggravate the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the economy.

Though the Marcos puppet regime has flamboyantly declared so many towns in the country, especially in Central Luzon, as land reform areas, the reactionary government is simply bereft of the financial resources to carry out what it hypocritically labels as a land reform program. In the countryside of the Philippines, it has become too clear that only by waging a people’s war can the peasantry achieve agrarian revolution. In the city, the proletariat is pressed hard by mass layoffs and by the inflation caused by the workings of imperialism within and without the country.

Only the reactionary classes in Philippine society have shared in the exploitative privileges and gains enjoyed by U.S. imperialism. The comprador big bourgeois and the big landlord class have been extremely favored by the automatic increase of the peso equivalent of their dollar earnings on their raw material exports. They are the principal beneficiaries of the various public works projects facilitating the movement of raw material exports and finished manufacture imports. They have received various forms of “export incentives.�? They have been extended the biggest loans in constructing and reconstructing milling facilities. Playing up to the trick of U.S. imperialism of using preferential trade for sugar as a lever for increasing its privileges in the Philippines, the Marcos puppet regime has extended the biggest loans for the construction of new sugar mills at so many points in the country. In the disposition of government funds and the granting of government approval for business projects, the bureaucrat capitalists led by Marcos have aggravated the economic crisis by exacting kickbacks on all sorts of government contracts.

As a rabid puppet of U.S. imperialism, Marcos has outdone Macapagal in sending Filipino mercenary troops to participate in the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam and Indochina in general. Despite the worsening bankruptcy of the reactionary government, he dispatched the Philcag (Philippine Civic Action Group) to South Vietnam. Until now, there are Filipino mercenaries there who merely carry other labels, the Philcon, Operation Brotherhood and engineering firms. U.S. imperialism brazenly uses its military bases and Philippine skies and waters to conduct its wars of aggression in Asia. On U.S. military bases here, U.S. military personnel continue to murder, rape, and commit all kinds of abuses against the Filipino people and yet the Marcos puppet regime, like all previous puppet regimes, has conspired with the U.S. imperialists in holding “negotiations�? that end in upholding the latter’s extraterritorial rights. Instead of fighting for the people’s sovereignty, the reactionary government unleashes its police and troops to attack the anti-imperialist protest actions of the people.

The Marcos puppet regime has echoed every “new�? policy and followed every “new�? step taken by U.S. imperialism. It follows Nixon’s “new Asia policy�? of “making Asians fight Asians.�? It rabidly supports the U.S.-Japanese partnership in the Pacific and the troublemaking activities of this partnership in Asia. It bows to the U.S. imperialist policy of reviving Japanese militarism and making it play the role of fugleman for U.S. imperialism in Asia. Resurgent Japanese militarism is being promoted as the “regional leader�? of Asia through the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Pacific Council (ASPAC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southeast Asian Ministers Economic Council (SEAMEC), the “Asian Forum�? and the like.

Even before the ratification of the unequal Japan-R.P. Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation, the Marcos puppet regime has encouraged the Japanese monopolies to invade the Philippines. They now rank as the second biggest foreign investor. Japanese commodities are being dumped into the country and Japanese investments are penetrating every major field of business activity. Japan today is next only to the United States in getting Philippine raw materials and ranks first in getting copper concentrates, logs, molasses and iron ores. Japan’s share of Philippine foreign trade is now more than 30 per cent. Its military vessels and fishing fleets do not respect the territorial waters of the Philippines. In a desperate attempt to hoodwink the Filipino people about Japan, the Marcos puppet regime is bandying about the lie that Japan is a benevolent aid-giver and actually begs for loans from it in exchange for the plunder of Philippine natural resources and exploitation of the people. Its war reparations payments which have been grabbed by the local reactionaries for themselves are even misrepresented as gracious aid to the people. The strategic Pan-Philippine highway is obsequiously called the Japanese Friendship Highway.

The Marcos puppet regime has also steadily opened the way for trade and diplomatic relations with Soviet social-imperialism and other revisionist countries in line with the U.S. imperialist policy of maintaining a global alliance with the Soviet Union in opposing China, the people, revolution, and communism. In a futile attempt to deflect attention from itself, U.S. imperialism is raising the joint oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people by the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union. In this connection, there is an imperialist scheme to whip up the evil wind of modern revisionism inside the country. The local agents of modern revisionism, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas, are being accommodated in the arena of bourgeois parliamentarism in the imperialist scheme to sabotage the revolutionary mass movement.

In carrying out its reactionary policies, the Marcos puppet regime has inevitably laid out its fascist character. Unable to cope with the political and economic crisis into which it has pushed the nation and also unable to deceive the people with such hypocritical slogans as “this nation can be great again�? or “new Filipinism,�? it has ruthlessly employed the apparatuses of the state to suppress the broad masses of the people through selective and mass terrorism. In conducting its anti-democratic campaign, it cynically waves the banner of “liberal democracy�?.

Through the JUSMAG, U.S. imperialism is supplying more military equipment to the reactionary armed forces and is egging them on to launch counterinsurgency campaigns, that is to say, to attack the broad masses of the people. Through A.I.D., U.S. imperialism is also providing communications and anti-riot equipment to attack mass organizations and disperse protest actions. U.S. military personnel have even taken to the field of supervising police and military operations. The buildup of local fascism by U . S . imperialism is clearly intended to quell the growing revolutionary mass movement inflamed by the rapid deterioration of the ruling system.

As fascism is on the rise, private armies and official murder units, such as the “Monkees,�? “BSDU,�? “Home Defense Forces,�? “Special Forces,�? “provincial strike forces�? and the like brazenly commit atrocities against the people. Even as the tyrannical character of the reactionary government has clearly emerged, the counterrevolutionaries rig up reformist groups to whip up confidence in the reactionary government and slander the revolutionary mass movement.

Massacres, mass arrests, kidnappings, assassinations, rape, arson, extortion and looting of homes have characterized the Marcos puppet regime. The Culatingan massacre, Corregidor massacre, Lapiang Malaya massacre, Capas massacre, the Mendiola massacre and the Tarlac massacre are blatant proofs of its fascist character and they typify the many more atrocities inflicted on the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, and the national minorities.5 In the last presidential elections, it made use of fraud and terrorism on an unprecedented scale to ensure its continuance in power. Government funds and facilities and both the reactionary government armed forces and the warlord gangs were employed on an unprecedented scale to keep the Marcos fascist clique in power.

Under the Marcos puppet regime, the revolutionary mass movement has risen to new heights. In 1966 repeated mass protests against Philippine involvement in the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam culminated on October 23 and 24 when the Manila summit attended by the U.S. imperialist chieftain Johnson and the Asian puppet chieftains were dealt powerful blows by a multitude of workers, peasants and students. In 1967 powerful demonstrations condemned the economic enslavement of the people by the U.S. monopolies; the U.S. military bases and the atrocities being committed therein; and the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. In 1968 militant demonstrations broke out all over the country against the U.S.-RP negotiations preparing the extension of “national treatment�? to U.S. monopolies beyond 1974, against U.S. military bases, against the further Americanization of the University of the Philippines and the entire educational system and against Anglo-American support for “Malaysia.�?

The whole year of 1969 was spanned by student and teacher rebellions against the reactionary educational system, by peasant demonstrations in Manila against the landlords and the fascist rule in the countryside and by workers’ strikes supported by student activists. The coming of the U.S. imperialist chieftains Nixon and Agnew on two separate occasions was met by fiercely militant demonstrations. While militant mass actions raged in Manila and other urban centers, revolutionary workers, students and intellectuals went in larger numbers than before to the countryside to conduct rural surveys and mass work among the peasants. The cultural revolution of a new-democratic type advanced rapidly under the leadership of the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines.

From year to year, despite fascist brutality, the revolutionary mass movement has intensified, increasing in frequency, becoming larger, spreading throughout the province and delivering a clearer revolutionary message among the people. In 1970, unprecedented mass actions involving 50,000 to 100,000 direct participants on each occasion unfolded as a great summation of revolutionary efforts in the past decade and as a striking storm signal for the entire current decade. These started with the January 26 and 30-31 demonstrations of workers, peasants, students and intellectuals. Efforts of the reactionaries to raise the counterrevolutionary slogan of “peaceful revolution�? were drowned out by the revolutionary slogan of the masses of “protracted people’s war�? in answer to the fascist brutality unleashed against them and also in answer to the repeated threats of the Marcos puppet regime to make a formal declaration of martial law. The First Quarter Storm of 19706 marked the maturation of the cultural revolution spearheaded by the revolutionary youth oriented to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and conscious of the people’s democratic revolution. The essence of the cultural revolution clearly emerged as being the propaganda movement for the national-democratic struggle against U.S. imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism.

Confronted with the increasingly fierce opposition of the revolutionary masses, the Marcos puppet regime has harped on formally declaring martial law notwithstanding the fact that it has wantonly practiced fascist terror in both city and countryside, especially so in the latter where uniformed troops and their goon assistants vent their ire on the peasant masses. By resorting to more counterrevolutionary violence, the Marcos puppet regime is enraging the people and is hastening the collapse of the semicolonial and semifeudal system.

The Marcos puppet regime can no longer attack the revolutionary masses without being counterattacked. The Communist Party of the Philippines has been reestablished under the powerful inspiration of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and has taken the road of armed revolution in order to fight for national liberation and people’s Socialist War. The New People’s Army under the leadership of the Party is vigorously establishing revolutionary bases in the countryside and is advancing from victory to victory in a protracted people’s war. The Communist Party of the Philippines is today applying Chairman Mao’s strategic principle of encircling the cities from the countryside.

At the end of 1969, which marked only less than a year of its existence, the New People’s Army inflicted on the enemy a death casualty which was well more than 150 per cent higher than the average annual death casualty of the enemy during the period of 1966-68 when the peasant guerrillas significantly raised the level of armed resistance from the level of immediately preceding years. From March 29, 1969 to March 29, 1970, the New People’s Army wiped out at least 200 enemy troops, spies, local tyrants, and bad elements.7
Despite the fact that they have been singled out for attack by the enemy, the Party and the New People’s Army have successfully withstood enemy-assaults and have gained greater strength. That is because they are waging a revolutionary armed struggle in defense of the broad masses of the people.

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