President Rodrigo Duterte should launch a war of eradication against communist rebels in the Philippines. It’s about time the government ended the longest communist rebellion in world. Fortunately, President Duterte has the political will to carry out this objective.
President Ramon Magsaysay was able to destroy the Russian-inspired communist insurgency in Central Luzon in the 1950s. It can be done again, this time against the Chinese-inspired communist rebellion led by Jose Ma. Sison, who lives a life of comfort and luxury in the Netherlands while his cadres fight it out in the mountains. Duterte says Sison is in bad health.
During his time, President Ferdinand Marcos was faced with a communist insurgency that drew its support from peasant farmers, laborers, and student activists.
The communists sowed chaos in the metropolis to embarrass Marcos. Years ago, former communist cadres revealed the role of Sison in the bombing of Plaza Miranda on Aug. 21, 1971—the site of the proclamation rally of the Liberal Party, which was the political opposition party at that time. As Sison wanted, everybody who was against the government blamed Marcos for the bombing. It was only in the 1990s when the role of Sison in that carnage was revealed.
When ex-Senator Jovito Salonga, who was among the seriously injured personalities of that incident, realized that Sison was to blame, the ex-senator took back his public accusation that Marcos was the architect of the Plaza Miranda bombing.
Truth to tell, the problems of the peasant farmers began under President Manuel L. Quezon when he merely paid lip service to the lamentations of the tillers of the central plains. The problem persisted under President Manuel Roxas who enticed peasant leaders in Central Luzon to run for seats in Congress, and who later expelled them from the roll of legislators after their victory at the polling precincts.
To solve the problems of peasant farmers, President Marcos introduced land reform and agricultural development projects in the countryside. Vast landholdings were subdivided and farmers began owning the land they cultivated for decades. Marcos’ Masagana 99 project increased rice productivity in the country.
President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino also came up with her own brand of land reform, the comprehensive agrarian reform program, but her family’s vast Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac was virtually exempted from the CARP. When peasant farmers protested their plight in Mendiola, they were massacred. So much for land reform under the Aquinos.
During the Marcos administration, membership in Sison’s Communist Party of the Philippines was declared by law to be a criminal offense. In 1972, the constitutionality of that edict was sustained by the Supreme Court on the ground that the CPP subscribes to the violent and forceful overthrow of the duly-constituted government.
The martial law dragnet eventually captured Sison and several other communists like Bernabe Buscayno, also known as Commander Dante. Other communist militants like Commander Melody surrendered to the government earlier, but he was killed by other communist militants.
Sison boldly proclaimed that because of martial law, Marcos was the best recruiter for the CPP’s armed organization, the New People’s Army. As expected in typical communist propaganda, Sison did not mention that NPA cadres in the countryside were raking in millions of pesos from their clandestine extortion of so-called “revolutionary taxes” from big and medium-scale industries, and even outright banditry.
When Mrs. Aquino seized power in 1986, she ordered the release of Sison and other communist leaders detained during the Marcos administration. After remaining in the country for a brief period and after going through the semblance of peace talks with the Aquino administration, Sison and his close associates escaped to the Netherlands— but not before Mrs. Aquino repealed the old law declaring membership in the CPP a criminal offense.
Indeed, through her collective acts, Mrs. Aquino gave Sison’s communist insurgency another chance to continue destabilizing the Philippine government—a problem that continues to bedevil the nation today.
Her son, President Benigno Aquino III used all his influence in Congress to cause the impeachment and removal from office of then Chief Justice Renato Corona some time after the Supreme Court lifted the last obstacle to placing Hacienda Luisita under the CARP. Aquino III also appointed to the government bureaucracy and the judiciary several names known for their left-leaning views and affiliations.
When President Duterte assumed office in July 2017, he offered peace to the NPA since he was the head of a brand new administration. As a gesture of goodwill, Duterte even allowed the conditional release of several detained communists so they can join top level peace talks in Norway. Those communists have not returned to the country since they left for Norway.
The communists reciprocated President Duterte’s goodwill gestures by creating stalemates in the peace talks, and by allowing armed attacks against government troops in the countryside, including soldiers assisting in disaster-relief operations. Such duplicity and underhandedness forced Duterte to cancel further negotiations with the communists.
In fine, history was proved correct once again—that peace talks with communists will never get anywhere. Just look at North Korea. Endless negotiations with this troublesome communist state have gotten nowhere.
Withal, left-leaning party list representatives in Congress have embarked on an endless array of criticial remarks against President Duterte for his iron-fisted approach to the drug menace plaguing the country. They are oblivious that deaths are to be expected in a war against the drug syndicates and their collaborators. Where were these legislators just as vocal when the CPP-NPA cleaned their ranks of suspected traitors by butchering them en masse a number of years ago?
As an ideology, communism has failed. The Soviet Union and its European satellites are no more, Communist China is now engaged in capitalism. There is widespread government corruption in Vietnam and Cambodia. Cuba is a dinosaur in the new century, and everyone in the civilized world hates North Korea. Premises considered, communism in the Philippines must end.