PESANTE NEWS

December 25, 2009



Revolutionary Forces says more guerrilla fronts, fighters needed to win in the Philippines



Los Angeles— The PESANTE NEWS learned today through news sources that the revolutionary group--the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said in a statement marking its 41st founding anniversary today that it needed to increase the number of its guerrilla fronts and combatants if it were to win its protracted war against the government.

The CPP said the guerrilla fronts of its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), should grow “from around 120 to 180 in order to cover the rural congressional districts and gain the ability to deploy armed city partisan units in the urban congressional districts.”

To achieve this, the party said it “must intensify the recruitment and the politico-military training of the Red fighters” and “win the steadfast support of the poor peasants, farm workers and lower middle peasants.”

The CPP’s mass base declined starting in the early 1980s following a nationwide purge of suspected government spies, sparking outrage among local supporters.

As in previous years, the CPP vowed to “intensify tactical offensives.”

“The weapons for arming new units of the NPA at the levels of the district, province and region must be obtained mainly from the enemy through ambuscades, raids and other operations,” the statement said.

Strategic stalemate

The CPP also said it foresaw a “strategic stalemate” between its forces and the government within the next five years, but “we can look forward to still greater revolutionary possibilities within the next 10 years.”

It also mocked anew the 2010 deadline set by President Macapagal-Arroyo to reduce the insurgency into insignificance.

The Arroyo administration has “utterly failed to realize its pipe dream of destroying or reducing the armed revolutionary movement of the people to inconsequentiality,” the party said.

It said it had “the sufficient strength and critical mass to carry out the tasks and plans for advancing from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate [in] the people’s war within the next five years.”

Pesante observed that the revolutionary forces have been fighting the government for 41 years. The peace talks with the CPP has been going on for more than 23 years.

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