HERESIES
P.N. Abinales
Pinoy
Communism at 32
The Communist Party of the Philippines, one of three surviving Maoist
armed movements in the world (the others being the Naxalites in northern
India and Peru's Sendero Luminoso), celebrated its 32nd birthday last
December 26. There was the usual anniversary statement in its website,
handouts in rallies and painted slogans on the roadside and inside campuses,
but compared to past celebrations, this one was quite sedate.
Understandably so. For while the CPP seems to show signs of recovery after the 1992 massive purge carried out by cadres loyal to chairman-in-exile Jose Ma. Sison, it is a far cry from its potent form in the early 1980s. Then, the Partido had about 20,000 regular NPA units, some already organized in company formations, its underground network was launching one welgang bayan after another nationwide, and its legal alliances controlled the tempo of the anti-Marcos mass movement. So confident was the Party of its power that its cadres were predicting the cathartic final confrontation between state and revolution to happen by the end of the century. That prediction proved erroneous.
Now, the NPA has reverted to scattered squad formation and having difficulty reversing the decline of its manpower. While it has renewed its tactical offensives, these have had very little effect in eroding state and cacique power and projecting a revolutionary presence in the rural areas. There is hardly any national underground network and its united once powerful legal front bodies are a far cry from their old forms. In the open public arena, the Partido is forced to recognize and grant equal space to leftist rivals, and its legal organizations like BAYAN have conceded the leadership of the anti-Estrada movement to a politician, Gloria Arroyo (the sight of Nathaniel Santiago doing "beso-beso" with social democrat Dinky Soliman was unimaginable in the 1980s).
There are added tribulations. Sison's purge had devastating organizational consequences on the organization. His coup practically removed an entire generation of leaders who built the party while Sison was languishing in jail. These were cadres who learned their Marx and Mao from "Joema", but relied on their own talent and creativity to build the party amidst the most adverse of conditions. In 1992, Sison practically dismissed their experiences as revisionist and reactionary, depriving the current generation of cadres and activists an opportunity to learn from the immediate past (Sison wrote a "general summation" of the CPP experience, but it is clearly tailored to justify his coup, the return to Maoism and his use of labels to malign those who disagreed with him).
The removal or resignation of more than 60% of the central committee of the 1980s has also affected organizational continuity as it created a big gap between generations. At the apex is an ageing leadership. Sison, his wife Juliet, Luis Jalandoni and wife Connie, and the ailing Antonio Zumel are nearing or just turning sixty. The middle is thin and husband-and-wife team Benito and Wilma Tiamson, Alan Jazmines, George Madlos and the sick Gregorio Rosal do not have the charisma and fame as the old guards (a potential public relations figure could have been Kumander Benzar of the southern Mindanao region - but he resigned for reasons still unknown). There is a younger crop of cadres, but not only are their numbers small, their experience is new (post-Marcos) and limited to Sison's view of revolution history.
Finally, there is the bothersome political terrain. It is common knowledge that one reason why the Partido grew was the polarized politics of the Marcos era. Everything was simplified between state and revolution, and the failure of the incompetent social democrats and the opportunistic traditional politicians to fashion a "Third Way" merely reinforced this view. When Benigno Aquino's head was blown off and his widow consequently assumed the presidency, politics reversed back to bourgeois constitutionalism - a political system in which the CPP knew very little about. The internal debates during the Aquino and Ramos periods effectively deprived the Partido of a chance to evaluate its role under these non-authoritarian conditions. Then the split came, followed by a long period of introspection and consolidation. These "two steps backward" may have made good organizational sense, but they also aggravated the Party's limited familiarity with the present.
Sison's former comrades, more pragmatic and less ideological, had adjusted to bourgeois politics and were instrumental in the NGO explosion of the post-Marcos era and the electoral victories of the petite natdem-socdem-socialist coalition AKBAYAN. The Partido initially greeted these successes with derision, but as the impasse in the rebuilding process continue to linger, even the Filipino Ayatollah himself decided that elections may just help jumpstart the revolution. Of late, Utrecht appears to have given the approval for certain cadres or ex-cadre (like Satur Ocampo) to run for congress via the party list system (Renegade Etta Rosales has shown the way, but that cannot be acknowledged by the Sisonites). Sison is, of course, silent on the fact that elections and other reformist tactics fly in the face of his Maoist reaffirmation. But these are hard times, and pragmatism (or in the Party lingo, "tactics," is a better recourse than keeping the political line pure.
The NPA has formally established a tactical alliance with the MILF, a prudent move that could potentially benefit each other - with MILF and its armed resources, and the NPA its guerrilla experience. The MILF's international links would also be useful to the CPP now that North Korea and Libya are trying to get out of their image as rogue states. The only sources of sophisticated weaponry then are the Islamic regimes and movements supporting the MILF. The alliance with Islamic clerics is aimed at tapping this resource base - even if it is not ideologically correct and smacks of opportunism (note for example the CPP's vehement refusal to enter into any short- or long-term alliance with the cadres Sison expelled).
Where will all these features of the CPP at 32 lead the Partido? There are possibilities for expansion, but with them are also potential problems. First, the presence of war will continue to give the CPP a reason for being. The party, after all, matured under civil war conditions. Its fastest growing regional body in the Marcos era was the Mindanao Commission whose area of operations experienced the bloodiest conflict in post-war Philippines and where the most brutal and intense militarization of rural society happened under Marcos. Mindanao is today still a militarized society and despite assurances by Orly Mercado that the AFP has professionalized, reports of human rights violations continue. From those victimized by military atrocities will surely come the most dedicated new peasant recruits of the revolution. They will also be the ones who will keep the CPP in the political arena.
These recruits from the militarized areas may also create difficulties for the CPP if and when militarization intensifies. The brutal cases of Operasyong Kampanyang Ahos and Oplan Missing Link in the Philippines suggest that bloody purges are often the result of the inability of the revolutionary movement to keep rural militarism under control within their ranks. A brutalized people's army could easily be transformed into a brutal guerrilla force.
Second, the break between generations might also prove beneficial to the current CPP leadership. With the cadres of the 1970s effectively out of the Party, Sison and his loyalists could train and provide inspiration to younger comrades. With very little or no connections at all with the martial law era, save what their "political grandfathers" in Utrecht and elsewhere have told them, they could "start all over again." The only two drawbacks from this are that the protégés may end up encountering the same problems the cadres of the 1970s confronted. With no one from that generation sharing their experience (they were, after all, the ones that directly dealt with these, not Sison who was in jail), the Young Turks may be left on their own. Moreover, the absence of a national student movement would definitely hamper their ability to lead the resurrection. The history of radicalism in the Philippines and elsewhere indicate the importance of sustained mass student mobilization that, in turn, provide the impetus for radical resurgence. That is not present in today's political scene.
Third, the link between rural poverty and revolutionary upsurge has always been weak historically, and so the immiserization of the countryside may not necessarily translate into more men and women joining the NPA. Given the surprising performance of Estrada's agricultural ministries (specially in irrigation), peasants may just opt to till their lands rather than join the mäquïs. Urban poverty and limited employment have more Filipinos entering the international labor market or joining the illegal economy (note for example jueteng's extensive network). This goes for industrial workers as well as students. Will they, like their rural counterparts, be attracted to the Party? This will depend on how much Party discourse and the example of cadres will appeal to them.
Unfortunately on both counts, we still have to see a renaissance. CPP leaders still write as if they are stuck in the Lin Biao era and their jaded view of Philippine society has often obfuscated the employment of an otherwise superior Marxist analysis. Sison knows very little about today's society - having been away from the country since 1987. If we add the seven years of isolated detention, he has had no meaningful interaction with Filipinos for over 20 years now! While there is a new set of leaders, today's Left has yet to produce cadres of the caliber of Rodolfo Salas, Benjie de Vera, Rolly Kintanar, Horacio Morales, Ed de la Torre, Ricardo Reyes, Lean Alejandro, and Edgar Jopson - all save Jopson and Alejandro because they are conveniently dead - have been branded as traitors to the revolution by Sison.
However, there is reason for the Party faithful to remain optimistic. Bourgeois politics is in disarray and it continues to deteriorate thanks largely to the mafia presidency of Joseph Ejercito. Not since Marcos has a president generated such a massive social opposition and given the Left a new lease of life. The Estrada issue alone is sufficient enough to keep CPP in the political landscape, and for us to expect it to have more birthdays in the years ahead.
But whether it will actually "encircle the cities from the countryside" successfully and bring about the establishment of a People's Republic of the Philippines, is something that I doubt will happen. At least not under the aging leadership of Sison and his cohorts.
(P.N. Abinales is presently writing a book on Sex and the Filipino Communist and working on a documentary history of the CPP's Mindanao Commission)
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