JOMA SISON AND HIS ‘PERSONALITY CULT’

Editor’s Note:

LAST March 13, 2020, the government announced the death in Baguio City of Julius ‘Ka Nars’ Giron. The government claimed that Giron and his two companions had resisted arrest while being served an arrest warrant.

As it turned out, Giron, 70, was no ordinary member of the highest organs of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)— the Politburo, the Central Committee and the Executive Committee—but was in fact the CPP’s chairman.

As CPP chairman, Giron is also the head of its National Military Commission, which has control over the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).

Among the documents seized by government agents are a complete copy of the CPP’s new ‘Constitution and Program,’ which the party discussed and approved during its ‘Second Congress’ held from October 24 to November 7, 2016, in the hinterlands of Surigao del Sur.

It was also claimed the government also seized other “documents of high intelligence value,” especially, the list of businesses silently paying off the CPP-NPA over the years.

Before we proceed to the discussion of the new CPP Constitution and Program, we start with a discussion, by way of a ‘backgrounder,’ on how CPP founder, Prof. Jose Maria ‘Joma’ Sison, has regained his position as the “party’s top boss”– with the support of Giron. We also discuss here Joma’s final ambition: his narcissistic effort to create, like other tyrants, a ‘personality cult’ around him.

THE continuing influence and control of CPP founder, Jose Maria Sison, in the affairs of the party, the operations of the NPA and the activities of their front organizations here and abroad sometimes pose a question to a lot of observers.

Why does he continue to “act” like the CPP “chairman” up to now, decades after he left the country after EDSA 1 (1986) for the comforts of Europe? As the CPP and Joma have insisted since then, he is now just “chief political consultant” in the CPP’s peace talks with the government.

The answer lies not in the CPP’s new Constitution but rather, in the ‘communique’ released by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) on March 29, 2017, on the 48^th anniversary of the NPA, pertaining to the party Congress held several months before.

Aside from summarizing the result of the Congress for party and NPA members, the communiqué also mentioned that among the “resolutions” passed and read in the congress proper was one which “resolved to give the highest honors to Comrade Jose Maria Sison.”

In a paean that would have brought tears in his eyes, Sison was praised as a “great communist thinker, leader, teacher and guide of the Filipino proletariat.”

Further, Sison, in a description that would have turned Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong in their graves in envy– or anger– was also described as the “torch bearer of the international communist movement.”

That Sison has re-established his complete control of the CPP after the Second Congress—even minus his presence back home—is thus no longer in doubt.

The CPP Congress, indeed, could be described as a sort of “coup d’ etat” by Joma with the willing participation of Giron and all the others who labored to ensure the success of their Congress.

But as if this is not enough, Joma now also appears to be striving, like other tyrants before him, for a “personality cult.” This is shown in the messages of adulations sent by his minions from the boondocks of Surigao del Sur.

It cannot be doubted that Joma owed a lot on his resurgence to power and prominence in the CPP to Julius Giron, who, according to the NDFP, was instrumental in bringing together, during the Congress, “120 delegates” representing “close to seventy thousand members” of the CPP all over the country.

And while rightfully “rewarded” for his efforts as the “new” party chairman, the present reality of power in the CPP-NPA made him Joma’s “altar boy.”

But observers wonder. Would Sison be successful in his coup and venerated in God-like fashion by the local communists, had Benito Tiamzon not been arrested in 2014 by the government?

Tiamzon succeeded Sison as CPP chairman after Sison decided to abandon his comrades in 1986 for the safety and comfort of an “exile” in Utrecht, Netherlands.

After Tiamzon and his wife, Wilma, CPP secretary, were arrested in Cebu in 2014, the void was temporarily filled up by Edilberto Silva, the head of the CPP’ National Organizing Department (NOD).

Silva, however, was also arrested just several months later, paving the way for Giron, who, it turned out, was no more than a rabid follower of Sison.

Tiamzon, also a product of the University of the Philippines, is not known to be beholden to Sison.

And why should he be, considering that it was on the back of his efforts—and at great risk to his own life– that the CPP-NPA has managed to grow while Sison was comfortably styling himself abroad as “the torch bearer of the international communist movement.”

Critics also proffered: What has Sison “contributed,” actually, to the “deepening” of Marxism-Leninism that even European communists should pay homage to him?

Was not except for academic discussion in universities, Marxism-Leninism has been totally rejected by the working classes of Europe as just another “thing of the past?”

Did he not also know that Lenin never wanted to be “glorified” when he is dead; it was the decision of his successor, Josef Stalin, that he be treated the way the Romans treated their dead (and living) emperors: as “human Gods.” Stalin decided on this in order to justify the Soviet system.

The drive for a “personality cult” among tyrants is only necessary on the basis of keeping and consolidating political power.

In the case of the CPP-NPA, which cannot hold even a barangay without being driven out the next day by the military, Joma’s effort to create a personality cult can only be explained in two ways:

To satisfy his own vanity and remove his own insecurities and second, as a tool for the continued corruption of the young generation of Filipinos who are now cannon fodders in the CPP’s armed struggle to create a communist Philippines (end of first part).