April 24, 2012
NDFP Press Statement on its 39th founding anniversary:
PERSEVERE IN ADVANCING THE NDFP 12-POINT PROGRAM, THE ONLY VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO THE ANTI-PEOPLE PROGRAM OF THE US-AQUINO REGIME
On the occasion of the 39th founding anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), today April 24, the NDFP-Mindanao congratulates all the revolutionary organizations and personalities under the NDFP umbrella organization for their revolutionary victories. We honor our revolutionary martyrs who unselfishly offered their lives for the highest interest of the Filipino people.
Nationwide, there are now 17 revolutionary organizations under the NDFP that include the Communist Party of Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA). This united front organization strongly supports our protracted people’s war that is now in the later part of the strategic defensive stage and advancing towards the strategic stalemate stage. Mindanao is marching in step with the overall advance of the people’s war nationwide.
As we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the NDFP, it is most timely to put forward once again the NDFP 12-Point Program, and give a brief appraisal of its level of development in Mindanao:
1. Unite the people for the overthrow of the semicolonial and semifeudal system through a people´s war and for the completion of the national democratic revolution. Under the correct political guidance of the Communist Party of the Philippines, we have already established the basic alliance of the workers and peasants; the progressive alliance that includes the middle class; and the patriotic alliance that includes the left wing of the upper class. In Mindanao, our political influence is fast expanding, with a mass base numbering more than a million of the population, hundreds of thousands of which are directly under the different revolutionary organizations.
2. Establish a people´s democratic republic and a democratic coalition government. In Mindanao, we have already established organs of political power in many barangays, including a few section or municipal levels, functioning as a real people’s government. In the formative stage of the local revolutionary government, the Party branches and mass organizations exercise some interim governmental functions.
3. Build the people´s revolutionary army and the people´s defense system. In Mindanao, we have already established 42 company and platoon-sized fronts, and thousands of local People’s militia and self-defense corps. In the last 16 months, these have launched more than 600 tactical offensives, and annihilated a total of over a battalion of enemy troops.
4. Uphold and promote the people´s democratic rights. The revolutionary armed struggle and mass movement in Mindanao focus against the brutal “Oplan Bayanihan” suppression campaign of the US-Aquino regime and against those multi-national companies that prevent the people from realizing their aspiration for agrarian reform and national industrialization.
5. Terminate all unequal relations with the United States and other foreign entities. These one-sided agreements, such as the onerous policies imposed by the IMF-World Bank, the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Mining Act of 1995 that allows 100% foreign ownership, and others, must be scrapped.
6. Implement genuine agrarian reform, promote agricultural cooperation, raise rural production and employment through the modernization of agriculture and rural industrialization and ensure agricultural sustainability. In Mindanao, more than one million peasants have already benefited from the victories of our minimum and maximum land reform program in the countryside, and these victories are expanding faster in other areas.
7. Break the combined dominance of the U.S. and other imperialists, big compradors and landlords over the economy. Carry out national industrialization and build an independent and self-reliant economy. In Mindanao, we are gradually establishing a self-reliant economy in our base areas. We have launched punitive actions against plundering and environmentally destructive large-scale mining, logging and agri-business companies of the imperialist and their local lackeys. These are mainly raw material extracting companies that block national industrialization, and are land monopolists preventing the implementation of genuine land reform.
8. Adopt a comprehensive and progressive social policy. In Mindanao, education, health, production, and other social services are top priorities in our base areas.
9. Promote a national, scientific and pro-people culture. Along this line, we are launching campaigns for literacy, education, cultural and other such activities. We have eradicated the problem of illegal drugs and other anti-social activities in our base areas.
10. Uphold the rights to self-determination and democracy of the Moro people, Cordillera peoples, Lumads and other national minorities or indigenous peoples. In Mindanao, we have established the Moro Resistance Liberation Organization (MRLO) and the Revolutionary Organization of the Lumad (ROL). We reiterate our commitment and extend our support to the MILF and other Moro revolutionaries in their struggle for the right to self-determination.
11. Advance the revolutionary emancipation of women in all spheres. In more than 2,000 barrios and in urban communities in Mindanao, we can find women involved in the struggle for their social emancipation. They are the members of MAKIBAKA, the revolutionary organization of women; many of them are heads of territorial Party committees, political officers of NPA units, Red Fighters and those performing other revolutionary tasks.
12. Adopt an active, independent and peaceful foreign policy. We are at the forefront in the world-wide struggle against imperialist domination and oppression. The US-sponsored Balikatan exercises and China’s incursion in the West Philippine Sea are clear cases of foreign intervention worthy of our condemnation.
Thus, on the occasion of the 39th NDFP founding anniversary we call on all the people of Mindanao and the whole country to rally around the NDFP 12-Point Program; unite, support and advance the people’s war against imperialism and its local puppet; and, achieve national liberation and genuine democracy.#
(Sgd.) Ka Oris
Spokesperson
NDFP-Mindanao
