The twilight of the Phil. Communist Movement?

THE formal designation by the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) of the top echelon of leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) beginning with its founder, Jose Mariaq Sison, as “terrorists” can be seen as the “beginning of the end” of armed local communist movement that has festered on for over five decades now.

For no matter how they and their communist fronts argue that they are “revolutionaries” “guided by the “light of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought,” they would henceforth be seen for what they really are: terrorists.

They would be seen as a group of people who, lacking any sense of morality, would respect no one, undertake anything without regards for the life and limbs of their victims and would stop at nothing to gain political power, whether at the point of a gun barrel, the pin of a fragmentation grenade (remember Plaza Miranda) or the detonation cord of an improvised explosives (IEDs).

Indeed, all the rhetoric about ending “class exploitation” and the “building of a free and independent Philippines” towards the attainment of a “classless society” are mere camouflage to advance their ultimate goal of seizing power for themselves and creating a society that, given their savagery, would make Pol Pot or the ISIS blush with shame and envy.

For too long, generations of Filipinos have been made to believe, thru the work of their all-rounding “legal democratic forces” (as Sison puts it), that everything in the world and in the country is bad and that only their “armed struggle” is our path to national salvation.

There may be fertile grounds to entertain such notion, especially during the Cold War years, but today, people, Filipinos especially, are beginning to see things in a much better light.

If back then, Filipinos are ready to accept that the murder of policemen, village leaders, nay, the wiping out of entire communities, such as the Inopacan massacre in Leyte, or the destruction of private and government properties are necessary actions in the name of the “revolution,” many Filipinos have since realized these actions for what they are: acts of terrorisms that is so “un-Filipino” that went against their core moral values.

Pres. Duterte has been criticized for a lot of things. But in this never-ending fight against the terrorism being waged by the CPP, the one strategic decision he has made that counted the most and which should earn praise from everyone is his signing, on December 10, 2018, of Executive Order 70 (EO 70), that created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NT-ELCAC).

Indeed, as an organized social force intent on our destruction, we also need another organized social force to deal with the CPP in its entirety. And on this job, the task force is doing its job admirably under its ‘Whole of Nation, Whole of Government’ strategy.

Indeed, the establishment, finally, of the ATC and the creation of a more effective anti-terrorism law (RA 11479) last July 3, 2020, arises from the collective and conscious effort of the task force to acquire for the country the necessary tools and mechanisms to address the threat of terrorism of which, the most constant danger is coming from the CPP.

With Sison and his gangmates officially branded as terrorists, the fiction of their being “revolutionaries” has been laid bare.

It is our belief that this “truth” is what would make Filipinos see the falsehood of Sison’s “movement” and the realization that they have been taken for a ride for so long.

And as more people embrace this truth, the faster would be the twilight of the CPP.