by Brennen Ryan
(leadinglightarmy.com)
In a recent poll, Senator Grace Poe and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte are tied for the Presidency in the Philippines. Poe is at 34 percent and Duterte is at 33 percent, a “statistical tie.” This is significant because these are the two candidates that the revisionist Communist Party of the Philippines and their leader Jose Maria Sison have unofficially supported. Sison has supported the candidates with numerous public statements while still maintaining “plausible deniability” by “officially” saying he supports nobody. However, the reality is that everyone on the street knows exactly which candidates Sison and his party are pulling for. Sison has said that “If the likes of Duterte or Grace were to be president, I can go home.” In other words, if any of these two candidates win, there will be peace enough so that he can return from exile. Both are ahead, even though Duterte is currently in a controversy over joking about rape. Makabaya, a leftist coalition associated with the Party, is “committed to Grace,” according to Sison. And Duterte has already publically offered Sison’s Party positions in government if he wins the Presidency:
“What kind of coalition? I can concede to him DAR (Department of Agrarian Reform), DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources), the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development…Other proprietary functions, they can have it… But they cannot have the military, police, finance, and international relations…”
Sison, his Party, Poe, and Duterte have all been making separate statements preparing the public for a possible end to decades long insurgency led by Sison and his Party. They have all made statements preparing the public for the possibility of entry of Sison’s Party into a coalition, “national-unity” government. At the same time, Sison’s Party recently made a statement opposing the joint exercises by the United States and the state’s armed forces. Sison’s Party stated:
“The New People’s Army must contribute to the struggle against US military intervention and US military bases by, among others, directing tactical offensives against the host camps and the treacherous armed forces that provide perimeter security to the interventionist troops.”
Does this statement really represent heightened militancy by Sison’s Party? Does it represent a turn to the left? A few things must be considered. Firstly, the NPA has been declining for a long time. It probably does not have the capacity to take on the US military directly, let alone fortified US bases. Secondly, would Sison’s Party risk future negotiations with a Poe or Duterte regime by attacking the United States? Probably not. Thirdly, it is not uncommon to see movements that are shifting rightward to put out left-sounding rhetoric in order to appease their own left wing and to hide the rightward shift. Although it would be positive if the turn did out to be true, given that the overall trajectory of Sison’s Party has been rightward, it is probably the case that the recent statement is all bluster.
Sison’s movement has stagnated for many years. Looking for a way forward, Sison and his Party have been moving toward traditional revisionist compromise with the bourgeois state. The answer to the problem of stagnation is never surrender. The stagnation is a result of the two-headed hydra of dogma and opportunism. It is not people’s war that is the problem, it is the lack of the Party keeping pace with the times. The problem is the Party’s lack of scientific advancement. The Party is fighting the same people’s war it fought a half century ago. The world has changed. The world needs Leading Light Communism to break the stagnation and decline in the revolutionary movement. There is a way forward.
Sources
http://llco.org/duterte-announces-power-sharing-plan-with-filippine-maoists/
http://bulatlat.com/main/2016/04/15/reds-to-target-us-military-bases-in-ph-2/
Army of the Leading Light 
Reblogged this on llcobanglazone.
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