Bulatlatan
Written by: Ka. Karlo
Published: Bulatlatan, March 5, 2010;
Source: Bulatlatan snapshot at the Internet Archive;
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
The Maoist Fundamentalists in the CPP leadership in a press statement dated February 27, 2010 openly declared “that the CPP-led revolutionary movement is not a ‘non-state actor,’ as it has its own state power and runs its own government.” This absurd statement has placed the whole revolutionary movement in an awkward and embarrassing situation.
The statement runs contrary to previous statements of supportive Human Rights organizations such as Karapatan and other national democratic political formations whenever confronted with the issue of CPP-NPA violations of human rights and the International Humanitarian Law. The usual argument that the CPP-NPA are ‘non-state-actors’ and thus could not be held accountable for violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Protocol#2 to the International Humanitarian Law, is now clearly untenable.
This open statement of the CPP Maoist Fundamentalists or “Pinoy Senderistas” was made in their ‘acrobatic’ defense of the policy imposing “permits to campaign” on political parties and candidates who conduct electoral campaign activities “within areas under the jurisdiction of revolutionary authorities.”
The CPP dogmatists’ statement would want everyone to believe “that there exists in the country today dual political power.” They claim that there are “two governments and two political systems” existing side-by-side in their guerilla fronts. These are apparently the “reactionary” Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the “emergent… Revolutionary People’s Government” ruling simultaneously but also “locked in a civil war.” The CPP dogmatists are peddling a myth that theirs is a ‘government at war’ or in a ‘state of belligerency’.
Despite this so-called ‘state of war’ between the CPP revolutionary government and the constituted government of the Philippines, the dogmatists ridiculously admit that “the revolutionary movement allows the free exercise of reactionary elections in the revolutionary areas.”
The dogmatists’ claim of having political authority and jurisdiction over 120 guerilla fronts in the country remains to be proven.
First, its claim that they have now a ‘belligerent state’ has to be fully supported by tangible factors. A state has to have a defined contiguous territory, a constituency of citizens having an independent economy, a distinct culture, a standing army defending its sovereignty and a government participated in and supported by its tax-paying constituency.
Up to now the Party has not declared the definite territorial jurisdiction of the revolutionary government. The territorial scope of the guerilla fronts are widely scattered and highly fluid due to their guerilla character. The instability and military inferiority of these guerilla fronts reflect the non-permanence or tentativeness of the dogmatists’ “governed” territory.
There is no substantial section of the Philippine population that has declared their separate allegiance to the NDF or a revolutionary government. The Maoist Dogmatists with their “stronghold mentality” could simply stand over a mountain top and declare all the adjacent villages as their constituents, and lord it over the local population through terror with their guns trained against those who will resist their rule.
There is still no independent economy to speak of in the guerilla fronts. Their socio-economic programs are sparsely scattered, sporadic and there is no distinct culture that characterizes their ‘socialist or communist oriented populace.’ The education services provided by the local party branches are limited to literacy and numeracy adult and daycare classes. If it would be considered as an “emergent” revolutionary government, it is at its embryonic stage and still too far from being a “state”.
If there really are existing “armed independent regimes” inside the guerilla fronts, why would the dogmatists tolerate “some activities of the reactionary system, such as the reactionary elections” inside their ‘liberated enclaves’? If there really are “revolutionary people’s governments” why couldn’t they assert autonomy from the reactionary state? This ‘rib-tickling paradox’ merely proves that the dogmatists are peddling a myth or weaving lies, just so they could justify their extortion activities as “tax collection” or imposition of “permits to campaign” by an imagined ‘revolutionary government’.
The Maoist Fundamentalists in the Party should see that their frantic ‘grasping for straw’ puts the credibility of the whole movement at risk. Reality can never be faked through propaganda statements. Even the classic propagandist Goebbels of Nazi Germany failed to save their fascist republic with a book of lies.
The Filipino people are much more intelligent than what the dogmatists may have thought. They can never be fooled by empty propaganda.