EXACTLY 57 years and four days ago, Jose Maria Sison, also known as Joma Sison, founded the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)—a far-left, Marxist–Leninist–Maoist revolutionary organization—on December 26, 1968.
After more than half a century, I believe we can safely say that almost all fronts of this irritation have been cleansed and neutralized—except for one particularly noisy remnant now burrowed in the House of Representatives.
At the time of its inception, the government automatically outlawed the CPP under the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957, or Republic Act No. 1700.
The CPP – New People’s Army – National Democratic Front has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by both the United States Department of State and the European Union.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, the CPP-NPA-NDF aims to destabilize the Philippine economy and overthrow the national government.
Then President Rodrigo Duterte issued a proclamation declaring the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), as terrorist organizations.
The proclamation was anchored on the Human Security Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act, or Republic Act No. 10168.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government said that 1,546, or 90.1 percent, of the country’s 1,715 local government units—along with the majority of regions—have declared the CPP-NPA-NDF persona non grata.
In 2019, the Duterte administration unilaterally declared the end of peace talks between the government and the NDFP, shifting its focus to a counter-insurgency strategy it termed a “whole-of-nation” approach—eventually leading to the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), which proved highly effective.
Here is a cruel joke born either of stupidity or naïve noble intentions: the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957 was repealed by President Fidel Ramos in October 1992, effectively decriminalizing membership in the CPP and the NPA.
Take note: being a communist per se is no longer illegal, but destabilizing and attempting to overthrow the legitimate Philippine government certainly is—hence, the State has every right to defend itself against such forces.
The irony is that almost all card-bearing communists in the Philippines are hell-bent on overthrowing the government, yet when authorities identify them as such—terrorists—they immediately play the “victim card” by invoking a conveniently manufactured term called “red-tagging.”
Hilarious, isn’t it? These pseudo-communists are terrified of being identified as what they openly claim to be, even though being a card-bearing communist in the Philippines today is about as consequential as being a member of the Vice Ganda fan club.
Of course, the ulterior motive makes all the difference: Vice Ganda’s fans merely worship their idol, while local communists seek to overthrow the government—an ambition that is far more dangerous, albeit just as pathetic.
Moving on, the revolution will not be televised—because it has failed. This 57-year-old irritant is now in its final death throes.
Founder and self-styled demi-god Joma Sison died of COVID-19 while living comfortably in the Netherlands. More recently, National Democratic Front (NDF) head Luis Jalandoni succumbed to old age. Most of their remaining leaders are either dead—many from successful AFP operations—or octogenarians more preoccupied with maintenance medication and adult diapers than with running a revolution.
On the local front, CPP-NPA-NDF leaders such as Concha Araneta Bocala and Tomas Dominado have either been killed or neutralized.
The CPP-NPA-NDF now runs around like a headless chicken. Their so-called Red fighters are sickly and starving in the hinterlands, with an ideology no longer capable of sustaining them. As a result, many have turned to banditry or have surrendered in droves to the AFP.
All guerrilla fronts have been neutralized and dismantled—save for one entrenched in the House of Representatives. The CPP-NPA-NDF has shifted from armed struggle to parliamentary struggle, with the Makabayan bloc aligning itself with the so-called “flood control” bloc in Congress. No longer hiding in rural areas, they now operate in urban centers, using government resources to undermine the very government that funds them—raking in billions in public money along the way.
It is deeply ironic that many provinces, cities, and municipalities in the Philippines have already been declared insurgency- and NPA-free. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the House of Representatives. Somewhere, Joma Sison must be smiling—and dancing—in his grave./PN
