Editor’s Note:
AFTER 7 series, Pinoy Exposé’s special report on the Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) held in Surigao del Sur in 2016, would have concluded with this edition.
However, we defer the conclusive part of the special report for next week as we give way to developments from outside our shores.
As it turned out, CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, is presently under attack from the world communist movement represented by the ‘Fourth International,’ after Sison vilified and slandered historian Dr. Joseph Scalice last month.
Currently, Scalice is a postdoctoral researcher at the Nanyang Technology University (NTU) in Singapore with a doctorate in South and Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Scalice, who had lived in the Philippines since the age of 6 from Protestant parents doing ministry in the country’s urban poor communities in Manila and Central Luzon, has established himself as a “scholar” who has been studying Philippine communism for the last 10 years.
Scalice was maligned by Sison, for exposing, during a lecture last August 26, 2020, at the NTU, the CPP’s support for the presidential campaign of then Davao City mayor, Rodrigo Duterte and up to the year 2018, at least.
In other words, whatever “crime” the CPP and its front organizations are now pouring on the Duterte administration, it should share half of the blame, at least.
Also, the CPP, for all its condemnation of the other Stalinist’ party in the country, the ‘Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas’ (PKP) to justify its “coup” against the PKP in 1968, is just the same Stalinist “dog” with a “different collar.”
We are reprinting portions of the articles and interview conducted by the Fourth International with Scalice in order to show that far from being the “standard bearer” of the world communist movement as he portrayed himself to be, Sison, in fact, has no following outside of the country, a realization that must be shocking reading for his supporters here.
To better understand, readers are invited to visit the website of the Fourth International at:
The reader should be aware however that the Fourth International represents the ‘Trosky Wing’ of the world communist movement, in contrast to the ‘Lenin-Stalin Wing’ under the Third International.
The Third International was formed in 1919 by Vladimir Lenin after the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia two years before and was disbanded in 1943, at the height of World War 2 and Germany’s occupation of the Soviet Union.
Leon Bronstein ‘Trotsky,’ first “marshal” of the ‘Red Army’ who helped consolidate the Bolshevik Revolution during its early years, became a personal enemy of Stalin, who succeeded Lenin. A special assassination team sent by Stalin literally axed Trotsky to death in Mexico in 1940.
LAST Augustst 25, 2020, the CPP’s official organ, ‘Ang Bayan,’ came out with a 3-page “special issue” focused solely in personally attacking, Dr. Joseph Scalice, a scholar and “expert” in the history and development of communism in the Philippines.
The character assassination on Scalice was led by no less than CPP founder, Jose Maria Sison, thus again betraying Sison’s actual role in the party as its supreme leader and not just a “political consultant” to the peace talks with the Philippine government as he and the CPP claim.
Sison’s virulent attack has been seen as an effort to discredit Scalice (whom he branded as a “paid agent of the CIA” and a ‘Trotskyite,’ among others), and the impact to the audience of Scalice’s “lecture” that he delivered at the Nanyang Technological University (TNU) in Singapore the next day, titled, ‘First A Tragedy, Second as Farce, Marcos, Duterte, and the Communist Parties of the Philippines,’ (which can be viewed on YouTube here: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/01/lect-s01.html).
Sison’s attacks on Scalice, clearly, has struck a raw and sensitive nerve within the CPP as the lecture essentially demolish the CPP’s narrative that it is, first, a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party genuinely committed to upholding the class interests of the workers, peasants and other “exploited” social classes in the Philippines.
For the essence of Scalice’s argument is that the CPP is just another opportunist political party that has thrown its support, first behind the Philippine ‘bourgeoise class’ against Pres. Ferdinand Marcos and afterwards, to other politicians, the last of whom is Pres. Duterte’s campaign in 2016 (and until 2018, according to Scalice). And more importantly, that Sison is an inveterate, pathological liar.
Based on evidence after evidence, Scalice bared how the CPP had campaigned for Pres. Duterte and afterwards, defended him, a recent past historical event that Sison would never want Filipinos to recall anymore.
Much the same as the CPP deliberately removed the role of Bernabe, ‘Kumander Dante’ Buscayno, the founder of the New People’s Army (NPA) from its own historical record, Sison and the CPP, by attacking Scalice, would not want the people to conclude on the CPP’s opportunist character.
But the most jarring “exposé” of Scalice that particularly hurt Sison’s prestige is that he came from the “landlord class,” another privilege, spoiled child of the country’s elite.
More revealing, that his family was anti-Huk (the peasant-based army of the PKP) and that his studies at the University of the Philippines (and first real job) was funded by the United States, thru the International Cooperation Agency (ICA), predecessor of USAID.
In the interview by the ‘World Socialist Web Site’ (WSWS) to Scalice, a good point was also raised that the violent attack by Sison on Scalice had endangered the life and safety of the latter. This is given the CPP’s notorious record of eliminating “dissenters” and “Trotskyites” in its ranks such as:
Hector ‘Ka Hector’ Mabilangan, Romulo Kintanar and Ricardo Reyes, who were among the more prominent names in the CPP-NPA gunned down by their ‘Special Operations Group.’
Too, it should be remembered that as soon as Josef Stalin took control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, he began a campaign targeting the followers and supporters of Leon Bronstein ‘Trotsky,’ the first “marshal” of the ‘Red Army,’ within and outside the central committee of the CPSU.
The ruthless purge of ‘Trotskyites’ began immediately, particularly during the so-called “show trials” of the 1930s in the Soviet Union and culminating with the murder of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940, when a special assassination team sent by Stalin literally axed him to death.
And probably aware of the CPP’s amoral use of violence and terrorism to advance its agenda (remember the bombing of Plaza Miranda in 1971 and the wholesale massacre of entire communities in Inopacan, Leyte in 1985, among others) and the real threat Sison’s attacks on Scalice bring, the world socialist movement thru the Fourth International, had closed ranks in denouncing Sison and in supporting Scalice.
Indeed, messages of support to Scalice and condemnation of Sison and Stalinism had poured in from Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Australia, among other countries, as posted at the world socialist website.
As of this writing, Scalice’s YouTube post about his lecture had been viewed more than 5,000 times, a considerable achievement for a lecture that runs for more than an hour and a half (you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=30&v=kYXCRIRKRyU&feature=emb_logo).
Significantly too, none from the Stalinist camp in the world communist movement had came out to support Sison (end of part 8).