Sison belie AFP’s decimation claim, say numbers actually growing

01/13/2008

Manila.--NDF consultant Prof. Jose Maria Sison refuted the military’s claim that the rebel group is weakening as its membership is being decimated due to the continuous offensive operations against it by government forces and the string of rebel surrenderees, saying its numbers are even growing nationwide.

In a statement sent to the media, CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison said the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), is now working the expansion of guerrillas that will cover all 173 congressional districts in the country

The repott said they will also deploy armed partisan teams known as “sparrow units” in the 44 districts of the cities eyed by the rebel group for operations.

“The NDF National Council has informed its Negotiating Panel that the CPP is already providing politico-military education and training to thousands of CPP cadres and NPA officers for the accelerated expansion and consolidation of the NPA, the development of the NPA regional and provincial commands with their own strike forces, the increase of guerrilla fronts in order to cover all the 173 congressional districts in the provinces and allow the armed city partisans to operate in 44 congressional districts in the cities and the formation and training of the people “militia units in villages and self-defense units in mass organizations,” Sison said.

The CPP head also belittled the pronouncement of Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. that while the NPA is decreasing in numbers the Army is gearing to beef up its strength by some 3,000 troops, or six battalions, to boost its campaign to crush the communist insurgency by 2010 as ordered by President Arroyo. Mrs. Arroyo will end her term of office that year.

Sison scoffed at the government, which he said “is irrationally obsessed with the futile ambition to destroy the armed revolution by military force.”

This, he said, is why the government “continues to ignore proposals for the resumption of the formal talks in the peace negotiations, or even only for informal exploratory talks to possibly prepare the resumption of formal talks.”

“..(I)t is actually on the side of the armed revolution that there are far more significant developments in accordance with a comprehensive plan to further strengthen the armed revolution and deliver more powerful blows against the reactionary state,” Sison claimed.

He said currently, the number of guerrilla fronts has fluctuated between 120 and 130. “This is far from the false claim of 87 (guerrilla fronts) by the military henchmen of the Arroyo regime,” he stressed.

Earlier, the military claimed it had dismantled at least 13 guerilla fronts last year, reducing their number to 87. But this was also quickly debunked by CPP-NPA spokesman Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal.

Sison said military efforts to dismantle guerrilla fronts have failed to destroy NPA units and instead the Armed Forces have further incurred “the ire of the people” with its commission of “gross human rights violations.”

He said the military mistakenly believes it is winning in its campaigns against the insurgents whenever it has taken over an encampment of the rebels.

“(Unknown to them) (a)s soon as the enemy Armed Forces leave, the local units of the NPA completely recover the guerrilla front,” he said.

Sison moreover said the “worsening conditions of socio-economic and political crisis” were in the rebels” favor and would allow them, “before and after 2010,” to “at will, undertake tactical offensives to disprove the false claims of military success by the Arroyo regime.”

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