THE Communist Party of the Philippines was founded on Dec. 26, 1968, or 56 years ago today.
Together with its armed wing, the New People’s Army and its political arm, the National Democratic Front, the CPP has been leading what it calls a “protracted people’s war.”
But what is the current status of this revolutionary project at present?
The CPP-NPA-NDF armed rebellion today was patterned after the Chinese model successfully waged by Mao Zedong starting from the 1930s onwards. But while the Chinese communists attained victory in 1949 after less than two decades, the revolutionary project of the CPP-NPA-NDF appears doomed to failure after nearly six decades.
If the Armed Forces of the Philippines is to be believed, the communist-led armed struggle is on its death throes, with the NPA’s strength reduced to only 2,000 regular fighters from its peak of 25,000 in the 1980s.
The AFP had earlier this year even claimed a “strategic victory” over the NPA, with the remaining 2,000 NPAs being relentlessly pursued in the only active two guerrilla fronts in the Visayas and Mindanao islands.
If this military search and destroy campaign succeeds with the surrender or the deaths in the battlefield of the remaining NPAs, then the government can rightfully claim to have attained “total victory” against the communist-led rebellion.
But is the government’s projection of vanquishing the NPA soon realistic and attainable?
Recall that the military targeted victory over the NPA by the end of this year.
While the communist apparatus has been severely weakened by battlefield losses, the arrest and neutralization of top CPP leaders and NPA commanders, and surrenders of NPA fighters, news reports of continuing fighting between the military and the NPA in various parts of the country would suggest that the communist rebellion is not about to raise the white flag amid widespread poverty in the countryside and social inequality in Philippine society.
In Nov. 2023, the Marcos Jr. administration revealed that government representatives had reached an agreement with NDF negotiators to resume the peace talks abruptly terminated by the Duterte administration in 2017.
The agreement during the Oslo meeting brokered by the Norwegian government brought renewed hope that peace would soon be on the horizon. But more than a year later, there’s little indication that the two sides have gone beyond backchannel talks and have already worked out an agenda and timetable for the formal peace talks to restart.
This is unfortunate since both sides have already agreed to talk rather than fight tooth-and-nail in the battlefield with all the resources at their command.
Nearly six decades of fighting should now end to avert further loss of lives on both sides and focus on earnest efforts to end poverty and social injustice.
