Joma claims CPP-NDF growing stronger

MANILA, Philippines — Depsite the Duterte administration’s claim that it is about to destroy the revolutionary movement, members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) and their mass-based supporters are growing stronger, according to CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison.

In a statement posted on the NDF website, Sison said the cause of the CPP-NPA-NDF continues to grow precisely because of what he described as the tyrannical, treasonous, brutal and corrupt character of the regime of President Duterte.

“It is reasonable for the people to expect the NPA to seek the punishment of Duterte for heinous crimes. But entities other than the NPA are also eager to punish him. These include the relatives and friends of his murder victims and the military and police officers and their personnel who are offended by his criminal misuse of the military and the police,” Sison said.

Sison, who is also NDF’s chief political consultant, predicted that Duterte will be ousted the way the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986.

“Both active and retired military and police officers, for either patriotic or pro-US reasons, are becoming increasingly vocal against Duterte’s sellout of the country’s sovereign rights to China and his crimes of mass murder and plunder, and are preparing themselves for Duterte’s day of reckoning upon the people’s uprising as in the overthrow of Marcos in 1986,” Sison said.

Sison said Duterte is afraid of the NPA as he steps up the mass murder of unarmed people. 

He said if Duterte and his armed minions were to be believed, the NPA no longer exists because it has been supposedly decimated several times over by surrenders and encounters. 

“The more Duterte presents himself as a victorious conqueror, the more he exposes his frustration and cowardice by speaking to the public only behind a thick bulletproof glass. His false claims of victory are belied by the NPA’s intensifying offensives on a nationwide scale,” Sison claimed.

Sison decried the killing of activists, including priests, journalists, teachers, health workers, lawyers and human rights advocates. 

He accused Duterte of extending Oplan Tokhang to Oplan Kapayapaan by red-tagging, framing and murdering an increasing number of victims who are opposed to his regime. 

“He has also excelled at using his armed forces to bomb and displace rural communities of indigenous peoples and peasants to make way for socially and environmentally destructive enterprises such as open pit mining, logging, monocrop plantations and casino islands by foreign and local corporations,” Sison said.

He said Duterte cannot deny that the tactical offensives of the NPA have become more effective than ever on a nationwide scale.

Sison said Duterte has long been afraid of traveling by road even in his own region and relies on helicopters to hop from one military camp to another whenever he wants an audience in order to rant against his critics.