Valbuena: NPA wholeheartedly accepts CPP’s rectification call
The New People’s Army (NPA) wholeheartedly accepts the Communist Party of the Philippines’ (CPP) call to carry out a rectification movement among all revolutionary forces in the country, CPP chief information officer Marco Valbuena announced.
Valbuena said NPA fighters and commanders had been enlightened by the CPP’s 55th founding anniversary statement that analyzed past internal weaknesses and errors that affected their advance in 2019 to 2022.
Last December 26, the CPP criticized “widespread complacency” in its forces’ study and application of revolutionary theory along with “timidity in drawing theory from practice.”
The underground party said such errors resulted in battlefield losses by the NPA as well as a slowdown in the recruitment of new members and retardation of the revolutionary mass movement nationwide.
Valbuena however added the NPA are starting to once again grow strong as their morale had been heightened by the launch of the CPP’s rectification movement.
“Majority of the units of the NPA have adjusted to the AFP’s (Armed Forces of the Philippines) tactics of large-scale military mobilization and are expanding their areas of operation and strengthening their mass base,” he said.
Valbuena added that the NPA have adapted guerrilla tactics of concentration, shifting and dispersal in its military and mass work.
“The peasant masses, even those who were subjected to military suppression and forced to ‘surrender,’ are elated by the return and presence of NPA units in their areas,” he announced.
“All in all, we anticipate steady growth during the rest of the year and succeeding period,” he added.
AFP demoralization and infighting
It is the turn of the AFP soldiers to suffer creeping demoralization as they realize the government’s failure to defeat the NPA, Valbuena said.
The CPP officer said AFP’s rank-and-file is well too aware of the deep and wide support the NPA receives from the peasant masses and people.
“They are further dispirited by the corruption of their higher officers who mulct and pocket millions of pesos of public funds, and by the infighting among the generals who are deeply loyal to rival politicians and bureaucrat capitalists,” he added.
Earlier this week, 22 retired generals and flag officers met with House of Representatives Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez to vow support for the Marcos administration.
The military officers belonged to the Philippine Military Academy Alumni Association; Association of Generals and Flag Officers; Philippine Military Academy Retirees Association; and National ROTC Alumni Association, Inc. (NARAAI) who also denied the existence of a plot against the president.
A week previous, Senator Imee Marcos reported hearing about destabilization plots against her brother’s government
“I think these destab plans are all coming from the inside,” she said, referring to parties allied to the Marcos camp of the government.
The senator is perceived to be allied with Vice President Sara Duterte and former president Rodrigo Duterte in their reported rift with her brother and cousin Romualdez.
Earlier, in November, former president Duterte denied he rallied retired generals to topple Marcos in a coup d’etat.
Duterte says he had met some retired generals but plotting a coup was not discussed.
Valbuena said the infighting and corruption in the military has brought demoralization among the AFP’s foot soldiers.
“They are utterly dejected by the fact that they are used as cannon fodder to defend a rotten system while their commander-in-chief enjoy a high-style living using public money to have helicopters ferry him from concerts and late-night parties,” he said.
Masbate NPA accepts rectification challenge
The Jose Rapsing Command of the NPA in Masbate Province meanwhile said it vows to implement the CPP’s rectification movement to further advance their armed struggle for justice.
“As part of the rectification movement, NPA Masbate humbly vows to do all it can to defend the people of Masbate and claim justice for all victims of oppression and exploitation by the rotten government,” its spokesperson Luz del Mar said.
Del Mar said that martial law is practically in effect in the province that extends to the provincial prosecutor recently filing frustrated murder charges against five innocent farmers.
Instead of charging the military for indiscriminately firing at the victims that led to the death of their companion Rey Belan last June 16, the government accuses farmers Jamara Tumangan, Rowel Hagnaya, Alden Tumangan, Rico Cuyos at Senen Dollete of being NPA fighters, the spokesperson said.
“For every farmer killed, deprived of land, deprived of rights and a bright future, the NPA in Masbate is determined to aid them in their fight for justice,” del Mar said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
