Pesante NEWS

March 29, 2009

New People's Army (NPA) celebrates 40th anniversary in the Philippines

MANILA- The outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on Sunday congratulated its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), on the 40th anniversary of its founding in the Philippines.

"We congratulate all the Red commanders and fighters, the Party cadres and members in the NPA and the broad masses of the people for their accumulated and current victories. We render the highest tribute to our revolutionary martyrs and heroes," the Pesante News learned in a statement posted by the CPP on its Web site.

The CPP said that the NPA "stands today as the largest revolutionary army built by the Filipino people nationwide… Today, the NPA surpasses the magnitude and scale of all previous revolutionary armies in Philippine history."

It said the NPA "has totally frustrated and defeated" the military's Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) I from 2001 to 2006 and Oplan Bantay Laya II which its said was launched from 2006 onward.

It said however that the military has "recycled and renamed the failed plan as Enhanced National Integrated Security Plan to launch a far more vicious and brutal than OBL 2."

It said the NPA now moves in 128 guerrilla fronts nationwide and operates in 21% of the total barangays in the country and in 600 out of 1,600 towns and cities.

The CPP called on the NPA fighters to celebrate its anniversary for the entire year by "intensifying and raising the people's war to a new and higher level" to include giving "priority to tactical offensives to annihilate enemy units and seize weapons."

It sought to have the NPA "increase the number of guerrilla fronts from 128 to 170 in order to encompass all or nearly all the rural districts in the country."

It also said that the NPA is being built "towards having company-size strength per guerrilla front, with a platoon as center of gravity on the scale of the district and with a platoon per municipality."

In the statement, the CPP also said: "The new chieftain of US imperialism [Barack] Obama has followed the path of [George W.] Bush in endorsing the brutal military policy of the Arroyo regime by justifying it as antiterrorism."

"In contrast to the arrogant unilateralism of the Bush regime, the Obama regime is stressing multilateralism in US relations with allies and is thus trying to make imperialist interventions and wars of aggression more effective under US command," said the CPP.

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