DAVAO CITY – The National Democratic Front said President Benigno Aquino III will be ending his term “frustrated” in defeating the revolutionary movement in Mindanao.
In a statement in celebrating the NDF’s 43rd year anniversary, NDF Mindanao spokesman Jorge Madlos, nom de guerre Ka Oris, said since the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s, “the NDFP, with its allied organizations, has supported and coordinated closely with the New People’s Army in successfully frustrating all the successive fascist internal security and operational plans until the current Oplan Bayanihan (OPB) of the US-Aquino III regime.”
“Under the OPB of Mr. Aquino, the NDFP has fought against and withstood the brutal attacks and campaigns of the AFP, PNP and paramilitary forces in both cities and the countryside. In Mindanao, there has been an unprecedented surge in the armed struggle despite the 60 percent deployment of AFP troops in the island,” said Madlos.
Madlos said as of April this year the NPAs in Mindanao launched “at least 750” tactical offensives against government troops.
“For the same period, the enemy forces sustained casualties of over 700 killed in action and over 500 wounded in action,” said Madlos.
Madlos said the number of NPA guerrilla fronts in Mindanao has increased from only 40 in 2010 to 46 by the first quarter of 2016.
“In more than 200 cities and municipalities in Mindanao, these guerrilla fronts, from only 1,850 barrios in 2010, presently cover 2,500 barrios, a third of which is consolidated, and many are with standing Organs of Political Power or people’s revolutionary government at barrio and, some, at municipal levels,” he said.
Madlos also claimed that the NPA’s fighting capacity has increased from “a few thousand Red fighters with more or less 10,000 high powered rifles” in 2013, to “more than a hundred formations of squads, platoons and companies” as of March 29, 2016, coinciding with the 44th anniversary of the NPAs.
Belligerent status
The NDF was founded on April 24, 1973.
Madlos said in 1980, the International Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal “recognized the NDFP as a legitimate representative of the Filipino people, which affirmed the revolutionary movement’s status of belligerency.”
Upon its establishment, Madlos said the NDFP put forward a 12-point program that “guided the Filipino people on the path of the new democratic revolution with a socialist perspective for the overthrow of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial system.”
“The NDFP recognizes the political leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It upholds revolutionary armed struggle led by the New People’s Army as the primary form of struggle,” said Madlos.
“It also upholds genuine land reform as the main content of the new democratic revolution, and, national industrialization as the leading factor towards a self-reliant economy,” he added.
At present Madlos said the struggle for genuine agrarian reform including “free distribution of land to till, reduction in the rent of land, tools, implements and farm animals, increase in the wages of farm workers, increase in the farm gate prices of agricultural products, reduction of usury, lowering of prices of farm inputs and basic commodities, and the launching of campaigns to improve cooperative production, self-reliant economy,” have earned support from the people.
“In the whole of Mindanao, the mass base, which covers millions in the populace, has continued to expand, where the number of masses who are direct members of revolutionary mass organizations rose from 130,000 in 2010 to 200,000 at present,” he said.
Madlos added that the NDFP has also established and sustained alliances with Moro revolutionary groups.
Commitment to peace
Since 2010 the peace talks between the NDF and the government have stalled.
However, the NDF said that it has upheld its program of just and lasting peace through peace negotiations with the government despite its “refusal to honor previously signed agreements.”
“Since 2010, the US-Aquino III regime repeatedly sabotaged the peace process through co-optation, imposition of capitulation as a precondition, and infliction of brutal attacks against NDF consultants who are JASIG protected, and, in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the harassment of the NDF’s chief negotiators and consultants and the surveillance and raid of the international office,” said Madlos.
But as its gesture of commitment to continue the peace negotiations, Madlos said they have released 61 prisoners of war in Mindanao.
Currently, there are 11 POWs under the custody of the NPA in Mindanao, which include five police officers captured on April 16 in Paquibato, Davao City. (davaotoday.com)
