The crisis of the Communist movement in the Philippines emerged out of the troubles that began in earnest with the February 1986 “People Power” revolution. At no earlier moment had political events so resoundingly contradicted the CPP’s predictions. The dictatorship collapsed and civilian rule was installed, thanks to a combination of military mutiny, a popular and determined presidential candidate, and a mass uprising. While the Communists could neither have instigated nor prevented the 1986 revolt even if they had wanted, internal and external critics of the CPP agree that the national democratic movement would have suffered less from this change in political regime had they been participants in the process. If they had not opted for boycott, but instead joined with the broad opposition to defeat Marcos first at the ballot and then on the streets, then the revolutionary movement would have been in a better position to influence the course of events that followed.
In contrast, this essay will argue that such an alternative—indeed any substantially different approach to the 1986 presidential elections—was never an easy possibility for the Party. The Party’s history and its strategic situation prior to the surprise election announcement militated against a different decision, not regarding the election itself (whether to boycott or participate), but regarding the strategy that would underpin such a choice. That is, it was difficult to resolve questions about how the Party would behave towards a post-Marcos government should it ascend, for example, or about the deployment of cadres between countryside and city during the anti-Marcos campaign. Like any institution, the Party’s own history and culture have always been strong determinants in its decision-making—they shape the way in which the Party sees the “objective, structural facts” of the world around it and in general, tend to slow down the process of adapting to exogenous change. At that particular moment in the political history of the Philippines and the revolutionary movement, key people in the CPP leadership could not read the changes outside the tried-and-true protracted people’s war framework. Over the years, the explanatory powers of the CPP’s revolutionary lexicon have been increasingly stretched in order to explain the vagaries of political “realities,” and they were bound to snap at some stage; but that could not happen easily or quickly.
Underlying the argument in this essay is the notion that central aspects of CPP theory and practice that have contributed to its success have also been obstacles to its further development, or, crucial elements in its decline into the present crisis. Specifically, this refers to the simplicity and clarity of the Party’s ideology and its set of tight, disciplined organizational structures. At different moments, the Party’s emphasis on revolutionary “correctness” and organizational unity have been either assets or liabilities. Contrary to the views of some other observers, however, the story of strategy debates within the CPP has not been a simple one in which those with new ideas always ran up against a dogmatic and recalcitrant central leadership bent on imposing the official “line.” [2] The arguments rarely have been simply dichotomous, and “self-censorship” has always been an important brake on conflicts over substantial matters of policy. The culture of the Party—its history, structures, symbols—created, over the years, a tendency towards unity and away from discord, which resulted at times in a lack of initiative (especially in theoretical matters) and a kind of institutional inertia. The present review of some Party debates which took place prior to this current crisis will illustrate the point. [3] Before the CPP could have led its legal mass movement forces act effectively in the events from December 1985 to February 1986 and after, a fairly sudden but thorough review of strategy and tactics would have had to occur. Such a review necessarily would have involved changes to the ways individuals and Party units viewed their own roles within the movement, and a fundamental reassessment of some long-held assumptions about the nature of the state and society. As it was, the CPP was unprepared for the relatively peaceful transition to a civilian regime and Cory Aquino’s ascendancy to the Presidency.
The People Power revolution was indeed a watershed for the Communist Party and the national democratic movement as a whole because it revealed key problems in the Party’s analysis and strategy more starkly than they had been revealed before. It was therefore a catalyst for the articulation of open dissent within the Party and outside it. The self-criticism at the highest levels of the Party which followed the boycott “error” provided an opening, albeit very narrow at the time, for the expression of longer held doubts, questions, and disagreements that had not been strongly expressed before then. However, the Party’s failure satisfactorily to debate the questions that arose, and especially its later attempts to deal with the challenges to Party theory and leadership by administrative fiat, led to more serious antagonisms. These antagonisms finally could not be contained within the Party’s discursive and organizational boundaries, and a crisis ensued.
THE CRISIS
The earliest signs that a crisis threatened the CPP loomed with the release of a document on December 26,1991, entitled “Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors,” signed “Armando Liwanag, Central Committee, CPP.” [4] The historical reference is recognizable immediately to those who are familiar with the document prepared by Jose Maria Sison for the old Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in the late 1960s, in an attempt to get the Party to criticize its past mistakes and prepare itself for future revolutionary tasks. The analysis and proposals for strategy were rejected by the old leadership, and the paper ended up as the key document for the “Congress of Re-establishment” in 1968 which founded the Communist Party of the Philippines (Marxist-Leninist Mao Tse-Tung Thought). The very title of the 1991 document signified that the leadership of the CPP regarded the state of the Party as critical. The echoes of the 1968 rectification campaign suggested that the Party needed once again to take serious stock of the movement’s strengths and weaknesses and make crucial decisions about its future. All the signals said that the situation was so grave that extraordinary measures would be required to rectify it.
Accordingly, “Reaffirm” is a quite extraordinary document; it makes some sweeping statements about wrong directions taken by various elements in the revolutionary movement and states in categorical terms the correctness of sticking to the “basic principles” laid down at the 1968 CPP Congress. These include: 1) the repudiation of modern revisionism and adherence to ... 2) the theory of MarxismLeninism, 3) a class analysis of Philippine society as semi-colonial and semi feudal, 4) a general line of a new democratic revolution, 5) the leading role of the working class through the Party, 6) the theory of people’s war and the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside, 7) the concept of a united front along the revolutionary class line, 8) democratic centralism, 9) a socialist perspective and proletarian internationalism. [5]
While declaring that the movement is “still far stronger in several respects than [it was] in 1968, 1977, or 1980,” Liwanag states that the Party must now confront “certain long-running problems” and “an unprecedented loss of mass base.” [6] The last section, headed “The Rectification Movement,” begins by announcing that it is
a matter of life and death for the entire Party to reaffirm its basic principles, assert its correct line, and criticize, repudiate, and rectify those major deviations and errors which have run for so long (overlapping with half of the existence of the Party and armed revolution) and which have brought about unprecedented setbacks to the Party, the New People’s Army and the entire revolutionary movement. [7]
In a deliberate effort to draw a line of historical continuity from the first “rectification,” in 1968, to the present, Liwanag/Sison argues that all the errors of the last few years constitute one fundamental problem: the latest form of “modern revisionism.” Very briefly, this involves “adulat[ing] Gorbachev on a simplistic notion of anti-Stalinism” and seeing him as “the ideologist of socialist renewal and democracy,” whereas, his
glib advertising job . . . has turned out to be a cover for the total negation of Marxism-Leninism and the entire course of Bolshevik history; for capitalist restructuring; for the rise of the bourgeois class dictatorship; for unleashing nationalism, ethnic conflicts, and civil war; and for the emergence of all kinds of monsters, including racism, fascism, and rampant criminality. [8]
Growing demands within the Party for a repudiation of “Stalinism”—especially strong after the revelations of the extent of the anti-infiltration campaigns (discussed by P. N. Abinales elsewhere in this volume)—were of great concern to Sison. They represented (for him and his followers) not only a weakening of the line against the conservative, bureaucratic form of socialism practiced in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, but perhaps more importantly, a call for “ultrademocracy” within the Party and a weakening of traditional Marxist-Leninist democratic centralism. The extent to which party members actually advocated these revisions to Party doctrine will be discussed later; suffice to say here that it seems from most available evidence that, in this and other matters of contention, Sison was closing off sources of potential trouble rather than responding to explicit demands for specific, fundamental changes to Party policies.
So, while the “Reaffirm” document was presented as an authoritative “summing-up” of the Party’s successes and failures since 1968, it is, more importantly, a political document, identifying the trends in thinking which led to certain “errors” so that those responsible for the errors would be pressured into admitting their own mistakes and affirming the correctness of the author’s view. Those who had been in error but who refused to admit it and restate adherence to the original “principles” were either to leave the Party voluntarily or be thrown out. The document states:
The rectification movement should raise the Party’s level of theoretical knowledge, political consciousness, and practical activity. The Party membership should be mobilized to join and support this movement. Only those who oppose this movement and who are incorrigible should come under disciplinary action and be removed from the Party .. . It is a fair estimate to make that only a few will be removed from the Party .. . In this regard, the slogan of the Party is “A bit fewer but a lot better, to paraphrase Lenin and Mao.” [9]
By the end of 1993, it is true that relatively few people had been “removed from the Party,” but some of those who might have been expelled announced their split from the Party before that could occur, taking with them whole groups of Party members and other cadres. [10] Adding to the volatile atmosphere was the fact that some of those who were expelled or who left “voluntarily” also were publicly charged with “criminal offenses” under CPP rules. [11]
The appearance of the “Reaffirm” document was bound to anger many people within the Party simply because its range of fire was so broad, but there were other problems as well. First, it seemed that the paper had been released without being approved by the Central Committee, the Politburo, or even the Executive Committee of the Central Committee (KT-KS), yet it was released under the pseudonym usually reserved for the Chairman of the Party. (Indeed, it was not officially approved by the Central Committee until around six months later.) Even many people not usually given to criticism of the leadership were concerned that it had not been clearly identified as merely a discussion paper before being distributed. Second, the summary assessments of various aspects of the CPP/NPA/NDF’s (NPA—New People’s Army; NDF—National Democratic Front) history did not fit with participants’ own views, and many felt strongly that such a comprehensive assessment should not have been made without a more involved process of collecting and integrating “summings up” from the various regional and organizational units of the Party. Third, there were many questions of substance, not only about the Party’s history but about the nature of the post-Marcos political situation, the state of international communism, the assessment of Stalinism, and so on, which many Party members thought required a more thorough investigation and theorizing than is represented by the call to “Reaffirm Basic Principles.”
In the months following its publication, a number of papers were written in response to the document by both individuals and Party units. Some of them called for the Party to hold its second Congress, [12] following a period of proper discussion and debate, in order to settle important questions of past practical experiences, and future strategy and tactics. Some criticized the assessments of “errors”; some criticized the lack of consultation before the document was released. Tensions increased, as did the number of Party members identified as “Rejectionists,” when the Central Committee met to hold its Tenth Plenum in mid-1992 and approved the “Reaffirm” document presented by the KT-KS, with minor amendments. As far as the leadership and those loyal to them are concerned, this document and the “Rectification movement” were now official Party policy.
However, a number of CPP members, including some top-level cadres recently released from prison, rejected the Tenth Plenum as invalid. According to many reports, the number of Central Committee members who attended was very low; intelligence reports and sources quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer and other newspapers put the figure at eight. (Some of those former Central Committee members whose status had not been resolved since their release from prison were not invited.) Critics of the Tenth Plenum asserted that eight members does not constitute a quorum; so, during the second half of 1992, heated discussions continued. The critics continued to argue for further discussion and consultation, asking that the Plenum be reconvened (with expanded attendance) to initiate plans for a subsequent “Unity Congress.” However, the leadership responded with further memos, one of which instructed members to keep discussion of the “Reaffirm” document within their immediate Party units; there should be no “horizontal” discussion of the issues—all discussion beyond the immediate Party unit should follow a vertical line upwards through the Party hierarchy, from the lower unit to the next “higher-up” unit. [13]
It was a time of confusion, disappointment, and disillusionment for many long-time Party members; but at the same time, many lower-ranking members had little idea of the arguments occurring at the higher levels. Of course, there were many who had not even seen the document in question. Then, in an extraordinary move by “Joma” Sison, the internal problems became a matter of very public curiosity. On December 10, 1992, he sent a fax from his base in Utrecht, Netherlands, to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, denouncing three former CPP leaders as “renegades”:
Three of those recently released [Ricardo Reyes, Benjamin de Vera, and Romulo Kintanar] are now prominently active in a psy-war campaign to discredit the CPP central leadership in a futile attempt to decapitate and destroy the movement and the CPP.
In the same article, the Inquirer quoted a press statement received from Sison two days earlier, in which he said that he had information from the Philippines that,
those who oppose the rectification movement most bitterly are those who have been responsible for the militarist viewpoint, the gross reduction of mass base, witch-hunts of monstrous proportions . . . and degeneration into gangsterism. [14]
The three “renegades” held a press conference to deny the charges and to express their hope that the issues being debated within the revolutionary movement could be studied and discussed in a “rigorous and scientific” way, and one which would “preserve the integrity of the national democratic movement.” [15]
While Sison’s “fax war” seemed to harden the opposition of many members to the Rectification campaign, as mentioned earlier, the camp of the so-called “Rejectionists” was not a homogenous one; the only basis of unity was some measure of dissatisfaction with the “Reaffirm” document and the process by which it was approved and its recommendations set in motion. That is, while some wanted further discussion about how to shape strategy and tactics for the 1990s, many others rejected the leadership’s decisions only on the basis of “organizational questions.” The criticisms coincided only at the point where the leadership’s methods were regarded as inappropriate for resolving the dispute. Consequently, while tension was mounting, little headway was being made on the organizational front by the “Rejectionists.” This happened partly because many members were genuinely disinclined to make any move that would jeopardize Party unity or leave them open to charges of creating a faction, but also because no strong consensus developed around an alternative vision from the one presented in the “Reaffirm” document. The core group of oppositionists was at that time committed to “exhausting all administrative channels” to resolve matters; this precluded the possibility of producing, for example, written material explaining their views on how the movement’s strategy and tactics must change. In fact, even those seen to be the key antagonists in the dispute did not then have a shared set of clear ideas about how things should be changed. During the first few months of 1992, they were holding meetings among themselves in order to discuss their ideas. The topics included the general question of “strategy,” tactics for the peace talks, internal democracy, the future of socialism and the nature of the NDF program. [16]
CAGES OF PARTY CULTURE
If the way in which the Communist Party of the Philippines “behaves” is strongly affected by both its revolutionary rhetoric and its organizational structure, the two aspects are in many ways inseparable. Very briefly, the CPP was founded on an analysis of Philippine society that mirrored Mao Zedong’s analysis of pre-revolutionary China. [17] The Philippines, Guerrero said, is a “semi-colonial, semi-feudal” society requiring a “national-democratic revolution .. . seeking the liberation of the Filipino people from foreign and feudal oppression.” [18] Because “the peasant problem” is the main problem of Philippine society, the revolution must be an armed struggle fought mainly by the peasants, and “the principal stress should be put on revolutionary struggle in the countryside and the secondary stress on revolutionary struggle in the cities.” [19] These were adopted as the “basic facts” of the revolution. For various reasons (only some of which are raised in this essay), this founding framework was not subjected to serious review before 1992.
An important reason why this reassessment did not take place earlier had to do with the past successes of the Party; for more than a decade, the national democratic movement was the most highly organized, consistent, and daring opposition to the Marcos regime. [20] With no serious contender for the position of chief active moral and political critic of the dictatorship, the national democratic revolution inspired a deep commitment and faith in its cadres and its rank and file members. They were inducted into a movement that occupied virtually the whole of “Left stage,” that sustained a significant challenge to the militarized state, and was winning increasing support from the various “basic sectors” of urban and rural populations. Sison’s vision and plans for the revolution seemed to be affirmed. Where was any credible critique or alternative to come from?
A second reason had to do with a scarcity of leftist alternatives. The absence of significant challenge to the CPP’s ideological hegemony from other progressives within the country has been compounded by the parochial nature of Philippine communism. Probably largely because of the circumstances of the CPP’s founding (as a Maoist split from the old communist party), Philippine communists have had relatively little access to ongoing debates within other, broader, Marxist circles in the world. One critic argues that this isolation from international communism has been an obstacle, for instance, to CPP appreciation of a dialectical view of reform and revolution. [21] It certainly seems to have contributed to the CPP’s narrow view that a revolution in a “Third World” /post-colonial setting must follow the particular Maoist strategy of a protracted people’s war wherein the cities are eventually encircled from the countryside.
The relationship between the CPP’s theory/analysis and its structure requires deeper consideration than is possible here. However, it can be noted that the democratic centralist principles around which the CPP is organized have discouraged any substantial exchange of ideas beyond the core leadership and encouraged a voluntary, or internalized, deference to the wisdom of the leadership. Even when leading cadres have criticized or questioned prevailing views, debate has been stultified by a self-imposed need to speak within the protracted people’s war framework. [22] One former member of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the CPP told of his difficulty in pushing hard for any new ideas he had about tactics:
[One] always operate[s] with a theory and in my theory, there was always [the] possibility of mistake. I even doubted my own proposals. So, I would not die fighting for my case, knowing that I myself was not sure where it is going. And against somebody who is arguing on the basis of certain timehonored principles that are in “the books,” it is hard to win .. . I was caught within the same mold, trying to propose something that I believed is still within the same [principles] .. . [I was] not arguing out of a different framework, so, if [confronted] with some basics, [I] lost the battle easily. [23]
This aspect of Party culture has discouraged not only individual dissent but also the theorizing of regional, local, and sectoral practical experiences that could have had an impact on the traditional strategic discourse. Thus, it has been a key weakness in the CPP’s ideological and theoretical development, or lack of development.
The widely held view among students and supporters of the national democratic movement that one of its strong features has been its “dogmatism in theory but flexibility in practice” overlooks a significant problem. That is, the flexible interpretations of central leadership policies by regional and sectoral cadres, which so often produced imaginative, successful local action, rarely worked their way “upwards” as ideas that prompted a re-thinking of the central tenets of Party thought. This became rather shockingly clear when the “Reaffirm” document began to make its way around the upper levels of the Party: its “summing-up” of the past few years of the movement’s experiences often did not match the regional and sectoral cadres’ own understandings of those experiences. And, as the latter saw it, the author had certainly not made any attempt to adjust the original strategic framework in the light of lessons learned on the ground by the movement’s chief policy implementors. A common (and strongly made) criticism of the document (from those “second-tier” cadres) was that it was simply unacceptable—and unrealistic—to “reaffirm” the same “basic principles” as had inspired Party leaders more than twenty years ago. Much readjusting, improvising and filling in of detail had occurred since 1968, as movement activists responded to varied and changing political, economic, and cultural conditions.
So, both the “world view” of CPP communism and the culture of the revolutionary movement, especially that of the Party proper, have acted to circumscribe critical thinking about the prevailing strategic analysis. Also, and not surprisingly, it has only been when the movement’s practices seem lacking that any challenges have been made. This is why fundamental challenges to party thought did not commence until after February 1986. Even then very few members articulated their doubts in any thorough-going fashion until the powerful core of the central leadership moved deliberately to divide the critics from the unsure and/or dedicated at the end of 1992. Critics kept quiet not simply because they were acting diplomatically, for the sake of Party unity, but also because they had not yet understood how far beyond the traditional framework their thinking would take them. Until pushed to argue their points of criticism more thoroughly, many had not admitted to themselves that their thoughts might be “heretical.” In the last two years, it was the central leadership’s attempts to resolve those ideological differences by organizational means that prompted the articulation of some clear disagreements over strategy and tactics.
The next five sections of this essay comprise a brief review of some discussions about electoral and other legal politics within the Party which took place beginning in the early seventies up until the decision to boycott the Presidential elections of 1986. These debates raised questions about, among other things, the nature of the state, the balance between struggles in the countryside and urban areas, united front work, and regional versus central control of party activities. Investigation of the two situations shows that the “strategy debate” was never simply polarized and that the challenges were not necessarily as directly threatening to official analysis and strategy as they might have appeared.
ASSERTING THE PRIMACY OF THE SWORD
Between the time of his re-election to the presidency in 1969 and the 1978 elections for an “interim” parliament, Ferdinand Marcos allowed only two electoral exercises. In 1970, there were elections for the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There seems to be little existing documentation about this, but in Manila, the national democrats (NDs) supported the candidacy of a progressive, Voltaire Garcia. In the rest of the country, the NDs boycotted the election. [24] The so-called “moderate” youth and student movement led by Edgar Jopson was active in the campaign and was criticized by the “radicals” (the NDs) for “making people expect much from the Con-Con when you know that they have nothing to expect from such a body.” [25] This view was confirmed later, of course, by the Con-Con’s inability to withstand the pressures from Marcos to produce a Constitution designed to enable his plans for dictatorial powers. [26]
In 1971, there were elections both for local governments and for the Senate, which the CPP-led forces appear to have boycotted. Six of the eight seats in the Senate were won by the opposition Liberal party candidates. [27] If Gregg Jones’s assertions are true that some CPP leaders planned and executed the infamous Plaza Miranda bombing, then the attitude of at least part of the CPP leadership to the electoral exercise was a great deal more than merely condemnatory. [28]
Between the declaration of martial law in September of 1972 and the 1978 elections, Marcos tried to sustain the legitimacy of his regime by holding referenda via the notorious “Citizens’ Assemblies” in which voting was conducted sometimes by “secret” ballot and sometimes by the raising of voices/hands in open public meetings in the barrios. For the first few years of martial law, there was little organized opposition to these machinations of Marcos. Many of the nonrevolutionary, Social Democratic forces had been badly shaken by their sudden “illegal” status and the repression that followed Marcos’s decree, and the Communist Party was concentrating on building the New People’s Army:
Those who can no longer conduct legal work or underground work in the cities and towns should be dispatched to the people’s army through the various regional Party committees. The people’s army is the Party’s principal form of organization and should be built up as such. [29]
Even if it had been capable of doing so, the Party was thus not inclined to organize mass opposition to Marcos’s “legal” maneuvering in those years. [30]
However in 1975 an urban communist committee proposed to challenge the dictatorship on legal grounds in the urban center. [31] The Manila-Rizal Regional Party Committee (MR-KR) proposed that a campaign be launched to demand an end to martial law and for democratic elections. Such elections would be, MR-KR argued, “ ... the last alternative for a ‘peaceful revolution,’ before the majority of the masses understand and support the only true alternative . . . the armed revolution for national democracy.” [32] As Malay notes, the Executive Committee of the Central Committee did not agree, and the Manila regional leadership was later criticized for errors of “Right Opportunism.” [33]
One of the supporters of the proposal at the time claimed that the Manila cadres
saw it as merely a “freeing move” for the mass movement in the national capital.
The situation was: [from] ’66 to ’72 [there] was an upsurge; then ’72 to ’74 was a real ebb, [there was] no movement... We were trying to break the bind [so] we said . . . “what is the form [of struggle] and slogan that can enliven again the mass movement in the cities . . . that can unite as many sectors of the population [as possible] and make an assault on the legal hold of Marcos?” . . . At that time . . . the fettered elements of the Marcos regime were trying to [conduct a] campaign [to amend the martial law constitution] and our idea was to come up with a parallel campaign whereby, eventually, we [would] link up with them in a broader front, an anti-fascist, legal front... [34]
Fortuna insisted that this did not constitute a questioning of the Party’s basic strategic framework because:
[our] overriding [understanding] at that time was that we could only win power through a people’s war; that premise was never challenged by the proposal of [’75].
Hence, he, for one, claimed to have been dissuaded from supporting the proposal quite easily when it did not meet with central approval.
At that time, “the Metro Manila committee had no allies in the Central Committee,” and the head of the Party at that time, Jose Maria Sison, “was really a figure of such prestige” that the only reason Fortuna personally could debate with him at all was that their relationship had already been a long one. The leadership argued that the mass movement must be rebuilt at a time and in a manner suitable to the protracted people’s war strategy; they did not want to revive it “for the wrong reasons.” MR-KR’s proposal, they said would be
giving the initiative to the bourgeois reformers ... After about four exchanges [between M-R and the Central Committee] ... we were prevailed upon not to continue with [the idea] . . . [However], the essence of that campaign was revived in ’78. [35]
A few years later, the leader of the MR-KR of the party was willing to go further than this in arguing for participation in broader front work in the legal arena in the national capital. 1978 saw the CPP’s first serious internal dispute, when the Manila-Rizal Committee refused to obey a KT-KS directive to abandon its project of supporting an opposition election campaign.
A CHALLENGE FROM THE URBAN CENTER?
Supposedly as a key element in the process of “normalization” of national politics, and under pressure from the US administration, Marcos called an election for an “Interim Batasang Pambansa” (national parliament—IBP), to be held on April 7, 1978. Martial law was still in place and the chief opposition figure, Benigno (“Ninoy”) Aquino, was still in prison. Although the US suggested that Marcos release Aquino at least for the duration of the election, he refused, so Aquino ran his campaign from jail. [36] Aquino was the head of the Lakas ng Bayan (People’s Power) ticket, known as Laban (“fight,” in Tagalog), which included some personalities much more radical than himself. Alex Boncayao and Trinidad Herrera, for example, were both national democrats, well known organizers among Manila’s working class. [37] Most felt that the Laban ticket, no matter how well received by the Manila citizens, had little hope of being “allowed” to win seats. On the day before voting, the US Embassy reported to its government that, “Marcos will likely resort to major fraud and manipulation to assure KBL (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan. New Society Movement) sweep in Metro Manila.” [38] That is exactly what happened. Election results were manipulated so that every Laban candidate in Metro Manila “lost” the contest, even “Ninoy” Aquino.
The KT-KS of the Communist Party had declared that the IBP was a “gimmick of the US-Marcos fascist dictatorship to deceive the Filipino people and the world at large that. . . Marcos is finally yielding some of the powers he has usurped.” Quite correctly, they pointed out that the IBP would be “powerless to repeal or even just amend any of the 2,000 anti-national, anti-democratic ‘laws’ promulgated . . . since 1972 [because] Marcos can veto and completely disregard any ‘laws’ that the IBP may pass.” The Executive Committee’s memo went on to state that:
A massive boycott of the polls on “election” day itself, combined with the most militant protests of the people during the “election campaign” is the most effective and strongest means of frustrating the regime’s deceptive scheme. We must all do our best to achieve this.
Perhaps as a remark specifically aimed at the pro-participation elements in the MRKR, the memo pointed out that the non-revolutionary Civil Liberties Union had already “correctly exposed the hand of US imperialism” in the IBP election and taken a “principled stand” in favor of a boycott. [39]
However, the leaders of the Manila-Rizal Party unit had different ideas. They had already decided to participate in the election by helping to set up the Laban ticket and including national democrat activists on the ticket. Claiming not to hold “too many illusions about winning,” the Secretary of the MR-KR at that time argued that the Committee was “more concerned about maximizing the opportunity to propagate the national democratic line and expand to other areas.” [40] Edgar Jopson, former leader of the moderate National Union of Students of the Philippines, who had become head of the Manila-Rizal United Front Committee, was among those in favor of participation. His role as a liaison between the Party and the personalities of the “traditional opposition” was undoubtedly very important in convincing some of the latter to work with the Manila Party cadres as “tactical allies.” [41] (When the KTKS decided to remove the leader of the MR-KR for acting against its directive to abandon the participation campaign, Jopson replaced him.)
It seems that the Manila protagonists did not intend their position to be taken as a critique of the basic strategic framework, but rather as an interpretation of what was the most effective way for the revolutionary forces to work, within that broad strategy, in the national capital. The central leadership, however, recognized that MR-KR’s tactics may have caused cracks to appear in the basic project, especially in relation to the Party’s uncompromising attitude towards the bourgeois opposition. As Malay says, the 1978 election was the first opportunity since the declaration of martial law for the “anti-Marcos, anti-communist ‘third alternative’” to become a real political force. The Central Committee also pointed out that, if the revolutionary movement helped anti-Marcos “reactionaries” to topple the martial law regime, it would then have had great trouble further advancing the armed struggle, the goal of which was seizure of state power. [42] The oppressive aspects of martial law were proving conducive to the growth of the armed struggle in the countryside, if not to the mass movements in the urban centers. At such an important moment in the revolution’s development, the Party leadership did not want to lose those conditions to a regime of anti-Marcos but conservative, traditional politicians. [43]
What happened between the KT-KS and the MR-KR is well known in general outline, if not in detail. Briefly, when the Central Committee released its memo (dated March 3,1978) calling for Party-led forces to boycott the elections, the Manila committee was already involved in the Laban campaign. The national leadership insisted that the boycott policy be adhered to, but the MR-KR voted to disregard the KT-KS directive, claiming that abandonment of the campaign at that stage would mean “chaos and confusion in our ranks, not to mention among our allies.” [44] Faced with its first serious case of insubordination, the KT-KS was determined to act decisively, but not without at least a show of democracy. After a special conference lasting weeks, in which the two sides debated the matter but resolved nothing of any substance, the central leadership charged the MR-KR head and other members of the committee of “factionalism.” “Disciplinary actions” were meted out. [45]
The entire process created a lot of bitterness within the Manila ranks and organizing work in the region suffered for some time. [46] However, the fallout, so to speak, was related not to ideological difference, but to the central leadership’s method of dealing with dissidence. The most significant issue seems to have been that of regional control over tactics. None of the Party members interviewed in 1992 (including ex-MR-KR members) considered the dispute to have been about strategy. One former “united front cadre” said:
the theoretical arguments of MR were not really deviating from [the] protracted people’s war [line] . . . Even if participation [had been] the correct tactical approach, it would not necessarily mean that the MR analysis was correct. And perhaps because of the incorrectness, in a manner of speaking, of the MR position (i.e. the analysis), a lot of the key cadres were not convinced and therefore, adopted the position taken by the center.
He went on to say that, at that time however, a substantial deviation from the strategy could not have come from inside the Party anyway:
One becomes a member of the CPP because of [a] belief .. . in the primacy of the armed struggle, to achieve power. The CPP was founded on armed struggle; that was the cutting edge. .. . In ’78, the CPP was just in its ninth year, and not mature enough to detach itself from the original sin, as it were. No-one in the CPP, not even the most avant-garde . . . could have seen things in a qualitatively different way. [47]
In the light of this reality, Gregg Jones’s conclusion that in 1978, “an opportunity to carefully redefine CPP policies toward the prickly question of participation in elections and alliances ... was allowed to pass,” [48] is overstated. At that early stage, it was difficult for cadres even to think outside the protracted people’s war framework. Any articulate bid to challenge that theory would have failed, perhaps less spectacularly but just as finally as the Manila-Rizal group’s attempted “adjustment.”
SHAPING THE “SHIELD”—DISCUSSIONS ABOUT UNITED FRONT WORK
The controversial 1991 “Reaffirm” document states that the “1978 boycott had more damaging consequences [for the Party] than the 1986 boycott error,” but it is difficult to find any CPP cadre member who agrees with that assessment. [49] The 1986 boycott policy and the consequent marginalization of the national democratic movement is generally seen as having been “disastrous.” [50] But the period between the 1978 dispute and the beginnings of the serious splits in the broad “anti-fascist” fronts in 1984 is described by Party cadres now as a time of relative harmony and unity for the Party, despite the severe shock of the 1978 clash. [51] Although there was certainly a great deal of debate, especially about the question of the balance between armed struggle in the countryside and urban mass movements, it seems that we cannot characterize the debate about strategy simply in terms of growing tensions that eventually “blew up.”
Some months after (but not simply as a result of) the 1978 dispute between MRKR and the central leadership, the Party restructured its work in the national capital. The armed struggle in the countryside was forging ahead and the leadership wanted to ensure the effective development of the urban, legal movement. [52] From 1979 to 1982, a relatively rancor-free series of discussions about the legal mass movement, especially united front work, seem to have been conducted, involving both the “basic sectors” and the “middle forces.” One of those centrally placed in the mass movement work circles at the time recalled that:
there were some key issues raised. One was the role of the middle forces in the Philippines, the students and intellectuals, the petit-bourgeoisie. If you compare the size of this class [in the Philippines] at that time with, say, the Chinese or Vietnamese revolutions, the [latter] were much smaller. We [were] in a situation where we have a bigger intelligentsia, and it became obvious that they [were] playing a very important role in the movement. So, [we thought], maybe we should review this dimension. [53]
What came out of this “review” was a number of proposals for mass movement work based on a more realistic view of the “hegemonial [sic] influence of bourgeois democracy in Philippines.” [54]
Limited space makes it impossible to explain in detail all the debates and proposals, but, briefly, in 1979 a group of top Party cadres ran some discussion groups to thrash out new ideas for the non-military aspects of the revolution and to draft plans to be taken to the eighth plenum of the Central Committee. There were two special groups to deal with the two different “blocs” within united front work: the first, headed by Isagani Serrano, covered the trade unions, peasants, urban poor—the “basic forces.” At the 1980 plenum, this group was formalized as the National Commission for Mass Movements. (It later became the National Urban Commission.) [55] One of the most important proposals to come out of the original group was for a national trade union center; the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) was set up in 1980. There was also a proposal to build up a national federation of legal peasant organizations. However, it took a few more years for some cadres to convince a majority of the leaders that such an organization was necessary, that it was not merely a “reformist” move liable to weaken the peasants’ commitment to the revolutionary armed struggle. The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Peasant Movement of the Philippines) was not established until mid-1985. [56]
The second of the 1979 special groups, headed by Horacio “Boy” Morales, dealt with the “special forces”—the nationalist opposition, the anti-Marcos opposition, the “bourgeois liberals,” and “the various wings of the social democrats.” [57] Out of this group’s discussions, among other things, came a proposal for a very broad united front formation within which the National Democratic Front (of Party-led groups) would be only one force. The original proposal was not adopted, but later the Party developed some plans for a National Revolutionary Council which, in the long-term, would form the basis of a national coalition government. Other elements of the proposals for this kind of united front work also appeared later, with the institution of the Nationalist Alliance for Justice, Freedom, and Democracy (NAJFD) which had its own specific plan for a national democratic coalition government. [58] It should perhaps be noted here that these legal organizations did not function simply as “fronts” for the CPP over the following ten or more years. Even tightly organized but at least nominally independent institutions will acquire some autonomy and can be very difficult to control completely. However, the closeness of the relationships between the Communist Party and both the KMU and the KMP, for example, is evidenced by the impact of the 1992-93 CPP disputes on those organizations: both the KMP and the KMU suffered splits along ideological and organizational fault lines very similar to those that occurred between Party members and units. [59]
The innovations arising out of these special united front groups were based, as Porter notes, on some novel ideas about the Party’s legal work. [60] However, it is not clear that Serrano, Morales, et al. were “argu(ing) for a strategy that would put primary emphasis on a combination of ... urban mass movements and united fronts with liberal democrats and reformists.” [61] They did not see their ideas for this new work as a direct challenge to the strategy of a protracted people’s war, but rather as a vehicle for incorporating a greater emphasis on both legal and underground urban struggles within the existing strategic framework. Such ideas very likely sowed some seeds of doubt about the adequacy of that framework, but they were not to be articulated fully or clearly until some years later. The current central Party leadership has criticized the turn taken by the leadership at the beginning of the 1980s towards “city-centered alliance work and political movement.” [62] However, it is important to remember that the decisions made then were not being somehow forced or manipulated by a disenchanted fraction of the Party, but were made and acted upon by the leadership as a whole. Serrano, at least, insists that it was not a time of great frustration and conflict:
I consider ’79 to ’82 as really a time of creation and imagination about all these possibilities in the united front arrangements. I have been checking with people about how they look at those times—we were all happy. (There were) some little organizational dynamics between some guys (which) we were able to manage at the time, some hard feelings about who’s (heading) what (but) that’s very normal. [63]
Something was certainly going right for the revolutionary movement in the national capital at that time. When Marcos called a presidential election in 1981, the national democrats were able to convince all the Marcos oppositionists, including Salvador “Doy” Laurel, to join a boycott campaign. It was a highly successful campaign. The coalition for this campaign, known as the “People’s MIND” (Movement for Independent National Democracy) was the brain-child of the ND united front cadres. There was not to be another such campaign that would unite almost all the “traditional opposition” politicians and revolutionary activists against the dictatorship. By the time of the next election, the political environment was changing and the NDs’ united front work was suffering from lack of that creative, experienced leadership. [64]
Unfortunately almost the whole core group of cadres working on re-shaping the revolutionary movement in Manila was arrested in 1982 and not released until 1986, after Cory Aquino came to power. This was a very heavy blow to the Party’s united front work. The chairman of the Party was not among those captured, so he was able to provide the continuity of ideas required to keep the projects going. However, there was a severe lack of personnel just at a time when more was needed. The top people were in prison and others had been sent to Mindanao, because the Party’s project of advancing the revolution on that island was also considered of great strategic importance. Edgar Jopson, for instance, had been assigned to help the movement develop there, as had Serrano’s deputy in the National Commission for Mass Movements, Ric Reyes. [65]
THE “UPSURGE” AGAINST MARCOS BEGINS AND THE CPP’S ISOLATION LOOMS
According to plan, the Party and the New People’s Army (NPA) had made great headway on many fronts. The revolutionary movement had become truly national, with around sixty guerrilla fronts in place throughout the archipelago. The NPA consisted of at least ten thousand regulars and thousands more part-time “red fighters,” and the “mass base” of supporters numbered hundreds of thousands. [66] At its eighth plenum, in September-October 1980, the Central Committee had decided that the revolution was moving out of the “early sub-stage of the strategic defensive.” [67] The Party would launch the “strategic counter-offensive” (SCO) “to develop further the intensity of the people’s war” and move into the “advanced substage.” [68] Then came the assassination of Marcos’s old rival, former senator Benigno Aquino, on August 21,1983.
As is well known by now, Aquino’s assassination sparked off, among other things, a flight of capital from Manila and the beginnings of active protest against the Marcos regime by the middle classes. Protest rallies and marches grew in frequency and size, providing the spirit and experience for what eventually culminated in the huge gatherings on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in February 1986. For the national democratic movement, however, the period between the Aquino assassination and the “People Power” revolution at EDSA was not one of a smooth strategic or even tactical integration with other anti-dictatorship forces.
From the end of 1983 until February 1985, national-democratic mass organizations of students, workers, and peasants, along with the previously largely acquiescent middle classes, took to the streets under the banners of a number of loose alliances, to demand political changes. First came “JAJA” (Justice for Aquino, Justice for All). Although ND forces were centrally involved in organizing this formation, it was not considered a priority by the CPP leadership. A top cadre member in urban mass movement work at the time states that, at first, this kind of coalition work was officially left to the national youth and student wing. However, the Party’s united front people in Manila at the time decided to involve themselves anyway, [69] and, as the protest movement grew bigger, the CPP leadership took it more seriously. Along with that serious interest, however, came the desire to shape or keep the protests in line with the revolutionary agenda. At the same time, the non-revolutionary groups were concerned to keep the anti-dictatorship movement out of the hands of the communists. As one former CPP cadre put it, while
the Party is very protective of its own integrity, its own position and line; the others are also guarding their own agenda and are very jealous or suspicious of the Party and Party elements. [70]
Large parts of the social democratic movement in the Philippines have long been strongly anti-communist. [71] It was a difficult battle, particularly since the national democratic organizations provided so much of the “critical mass” in the street demonstrations.
None of these coalitions lasted long, so great were the strains of alliance work involving representatives from an ideological spectrum ranging from revolutionary communists to “anti-fascist” Makati business people. While the national-democrats’ penchant for sectarianism was not the only obstacle to a tighter, more effective anti-dictatorship front, it was, by all accounts, an important contributor. The hard-line positions taken by some of the legal organizations closely associated with the CPP in the run-up to and during the 1986 election have been criticized since by major Party figures. Debilitating arguments about, for example, whether the slogan for the marches and rallies should be “Marcos Resign!” or “Overthrow the US-Marcos Dictatorship!” reflected not only ideological and political differences, but also a deep-seated resistance on the part of the national-democratic forces to participate in what they saw as “non-revolutionary” politics.
Tensions between the different political forces came to a head at the founding congress of the national-democrat-initiated BAY AN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan. New Nationalist Alliance) in September 1985, shortly before Marcos called the “snap” presidential election. BAYAN was to be the most advanced “anti-fascist” alliance ever established in the Philippines, but it ended up as another coalition of national-democratic mass organizations after the Independent Caucus (of socialists, which later became BISIG [Bakluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa]), social-democrats, and most of the liberal-democrats walked out of the founding congress. They charged the national-democrats with reneging on agreements about how the leadership of BAYAN would be constituted and of “stacking” the congress with their supporters in order to push through the changes. Later, when BAYAN followed the CPP line of “boycott” of the “snap” presidential election, remaining united front ties between the national democrats and other progressive anti-Marcos activists were all but severed. The mistrust generated within the Philippine progressive ranks by the BAYAN affair lasted for years and some degree of suspicion still lingers.
As the protest movement against him grew in both numbers and determination, and as the economy worsened, Marcos came under increasing pressure from the Reagan administration to find a way to silence his critics. With an overconfidence that was to prove disastrous, on November 3, 1985, Marcos announced (on a US current affairs television program) that he was calling an early presidential election for February 1986. [72] Like the US State Department at the time, the Executive Committee of the CPP assumed that Marcos could not (would not) lose the election. The Committee decided on a boycott policy, thereby relegating the CPP-led legal organizations to the sidelines as the movement to replace the dictator with the widow of his long-time political rival grew. Believing that Marcos would cheat his way to victory yet again while still retaining the support of the US, the Executive Committee declared that,
the February election is ... meaningless to the broad masses of our people. No candidate of consequence is upholding their fundamental interests. If at all, there is the mere possibility that exploitation and oppression may not be as intense under a new regime. In exchange for this are the illusions which aim to delay the attainment of genuine national freedom and democracy . . . The Party vigorously exposes and firmly opposes the snap election as a blatant swindle and evil scheme of the US-Marcos clique. And the Party’s stand is that a boycott is the correct response of the people to an election that avails them nothing .. . As long as we are creative, patient and resolute in carrying the boycott campaign forward through our persuasive arguments, whatever negative effects some comrades and friends think would emerge will be temporary in nature. [73]
This was not to be, unfortunately. Friends would be alienated and many comrades deeply disheartened by the decision, despite the “self-criticism” made by the Party in 1986.
To date, it is not clear why the Executive Committee’s decision to proceed with a boycott decision was sustained despite the opposition of two out of the five KT-KS members and, it appears, opposition from so many other ranking cadres in the Party. At least one person who was a Central Committee member at the time is convinced that, had a Central Committee meeting been held, the decision would have been different. And he believes that the likelihood of such an outcome was probably “one of the considerations for the staunch pro-boycott people [in] the KTKS” when they chose not to call a meeting of a wider body to make such an important decision. He explained that the KT-KS decision can be understood in the context of the imperatives of the “strategic counter-offensive”:
If you believe that the situation is going fast, [that it is] a revolutionary situation, rapidly developing towards an insurrectionary moment . . . you believe it is combustible, [then] you know that this parliamentary intervention has to be counteracted. [But] not by participation, because the momentum is for the people to fight the regime, outside of [those parliamentary processes] .. . It would be contradictory to your reading of the situation and your big plan, to participate. [74]
When the Politburo later assessed the boycott policy, it criticized the way in which the decision was arrived at as well as the policy itself.
At its 1985 plenum, the Central Committee had declared that the major task was the overthrow of the US-Marcos dictatorship, which could catapult the revolution into a strategic shift, to the “stalemate” stage. [75] This prospect was, of course, interrupted by the snap election call. The Party leadership was unprepared to make the decisions necessary to position itself in the front ranks of the anti-dictatorship forces. Although the CPP-led legal organizations’ united front work with antiMarcos allies had been foundering for the last twelve months at least, the continuing growth of the armed struggle and the masses on the streets encouraged the CPP leadership’s perception of the Strategic Counter Offensive rolling inexorably on towards “strategic shift.” As in 1978, but unlike events in 1981, the leadership refused to compromise its revolutionary principles for the sake of a broad united front. The difference was that, this time, they were completely on their own. And the historical events would leave the revolutionary movement on the political sidelines—a new and debilitating experience for the national democrats.
DIFFERENCES EMERGE FROM THE CRACKS
Among CPP cadres and rank and file, the boycott policy was the most controversial position taken by the Party leadership to that date; debates on the policy were contentious from the start. Those former united front cadre members in prison during this period were, no doubt, very disappointed with how the coalition tasks were being managed. And they certainly made their views known to the Party leadership about the boycott vs. participation question. Serrano says,
they [the central leadership] consulted individuals on what position to take . . . They consulted all around the prisons; all the top guys, the key guys were [incarcerated! in Metro Manila, so they were accessible. I don’t remember anyone agreeing to the boycott decision. We wrote notes, to follow up our positions.... We were not simply observers inside prison. [76]
Other high-ranking cadres also remember that there were many voices raised against the boycott decision. Those voices, Joma Sison claims, included his own. (He had been in prison since 1977). Sison states firmly that the question of whether or not to boycott the election should never have divided the revolutionary movement because the Communist Party will necessarily boycott such a bourgeois farce anyway, since aside from anything else, the Party declares itself to be outside that bourgeois system. But, the CPP-led legal movements should play whatever role is most appropriate to their “arena of struggle” and in this case, some kind of “critical participation” was most appropriate. [77]
Given its own historical conditions of theoretical and cultural rigidity, as well as a political environment in which “moderate” anti-Marcos forces were dominant for the first time in years, it is not clear to what extent the CPP could have affected or influenced the events during and following the People Power revolution had they decided to participate in the election process. Probably, the Party would need to have been much better prepared, theoretically and organizationally, to keep its momentum more or less intact after the EDSA revolution. That is, even if the national democratic forces had participated in the campaign to have Cory Aquino elected and thereby won some right to greater input into decision-making after her inauguration, they probably would not have gained much more as a revolutionary force (in the way that the Party defines “revolution,” at least). On the other hand, they might, at least, have begun a reconsideration of the Party’s role earlier and with less bitterness and confusion:
[Participation] wouldn’t have catapulted the movement into power, or into a position near power. The benefit of an anti-boycott position mainly would have been to trigger a process of re-thinking strategy and tactics. In turn, this would have minimized the political losses between 1986 and the present. [78]
In documents criticizing the boycott policy, leading cadres—especially in Manila—had pointed out that the mistaken decision reflected a deeper malaise in the Party’s analysis and program. The National Youth and Student Department of the Party wrote:
As a final word, we submit that our questions go far beyond the boycott policy. Behind the boycott tactics lurk the deep-rooted problems concerning the antifascist struggle, the parliamentary struggle, the united front, the urban mass movement and generally speaking, the whole strategy and tactics of the Philippine revolution. It goes without saying that the ideological roots of the multifarious problems [should] be submitted to a rigorous examination. [79]
The editorial board of Praktika (leaders in the National Urban Commission) went further, but still couched the critique in terms that avoided calling into explicit question the protracted people’s war strategy:
In retrospect, the boycott tactic [was] just the latest, and perhaps, the costliest manifestation of a tendency to ... give undue importance to the comprehensiveness of national democratic politics in formulating tactics in the open mass movement and legal democratic alliances. [80]
Both of these critiques were concerned mostly with the failures in the field of united front work, for obvious reasons. The revolutionary movement’s experience (or lack of it) in the election campaign and the popular uprising which followed prompted many Party members to raise questions about their working relations with other political forces, questions about the vanguard role of the CPP, the problem of sectarianism, and whether the Party has a monopoly on “correct” interpretations of Philippine politics. However, it was not until later, after some experience of the behavior of a non-dictatorial state, that the Party’s intellectuals began openly to question the notion of “total military victory.” The nature of the Party’s own critique of the boycott policy slowed this process.
Several weeks after the EDSA “People Power” revolution, and, no doubt, following some intense discussions among the Party’s central leadership, the Politburo vindicated the many critics of the KT-KS. It declared that the boycott policy had been a “tactical error” and a “major political blunder,” arrived at through a hasty decision-making process and a flawed political assessment. The political assessment had:
- Overestimated US capacity to impose its subjective will on local politics.
- Underestimated the bourgeois reformists’ capabilities and determination to engage the Marcos regime in a decisive contest for state power.
- Ignored the fact that the Marcos clique had become extremely isolated and its capacity to rule was fast eroding.
- Misread the people’s deep anti-fascist sentiments and readiness to go beyond the confines of the electoral process in their determination to end the fascist dictatorship.
To help the Party revive itself after the demoralization which resulted from its failure to assist in the ousting of Marcos, the Politburo further declared that:
the Party leadership is now encouraging leading Party organs .. . to sum up their experiences regarding the boycott policy. . . . Steps are being taken to encourage and develop the democratic spirit and democratic way of doing things in the Party. [81]
The terms of the Politburo’s judgment portended what would be the limitations of this new democratic debate; it suggested the error was merely tactical, rather than strategic. An ex-united front cadre member, now involved in legal movement work, believes that this assessment “resulted in a lot of damage” because it was not critical enough.
It would have been different if the center [had] acknowledged that the boycott led to strategic problems, and [that] therefore, we had to address those strategic problems. That would have provided a larger framework for rethinking. [Instead], it was reduced to a simple tactical error, [so] it was but logical that the policies would be more of the same. [82]
Gareth Porter states that, after the events of February 1986, “dissident cadres campaigned openly for an alternative to the people’s war strategy” and goes on to cite Marty Villalobos’ papers outlining the “insurrectionary” line and where the Party had gone wrong. [83] But this is an overstatement of the situation. Indeed, Villalobos wrote what were then very radical critiques; however, he was the only one to do so, and they were not greatly admired within the party, even among the most critical cadres. Villalobos himself says that virtually nobody got to read them [84] and those who did were less than comfortable with the strength of his critique. The following view was typical among leading dissident cadres (and ex-cadres) in Manila at the end of 1992:
Marty articulated his position[s] [but] it had no immediate result of provoking debate and convincing people to his side. .. . It is quite possible that his style turned off some people. .. . He made some definitive statements and he openly challenged Joma. Well, maybe what he did contributed to the whole process of rethinking, but in the immediate term, he was not able to get the support. . . . What I’m saying is that, the style of your debate, the rhetoric, should also be calibrated; at that time, it would have been better if the approach was more polite, more diplomatic. The situation now is different; Joma is accusing people [in public], so they have a right to defend themselves. [85]
The reality of the situation was that, although many people had many questions about the tactics pursued over the last couple of years, especially in the urban areas, even those who had been the most critical were shy of stating explicitly that the Party’s basic strategy should be abandoned or of formulating alternative policies. Some did, of course, assert that the protracted people’s war strategy was no longer appropriate now that an elected civilian government was in place. But the ways in which they explained their criticisms or their breaks from the movement undermined any potential for their actions or words to have a larger effect on Party policy.
THE PARTY SPLITS
In 1987, in Negros, one of the best-known guerrilla leaders (and a former Secretary of the Negros south-east sub-regional Party Committee), Nemesio Dimafiles, led a break away from the CPP of fifteen to twenty members/guerrilla fighters. Among other things, Dimafiles was opposed to the Party’s policy of “waging full-scale war against the Aquino government.” [86] After he had left the CPP, he explained in interviews run by the Negros newsmagazine Viewpoints (published by the brother of one of Dimafiles’s fellow resignees) that he no longer believed the armed struggle was appropriate: “Where the light of peace, no matter how dim, shines through, the argument for war is lost.” [87] Dimafiles had doubts about Communist Party policies often during his many years in the movement (and as a member of the Party), [88] but they did not amount to a coherent critique of strategy, and certainly do not seem ever to have been presented to the Party as such. He was in no sense an intellectual of the movement, which made it easier for the Party to dismiss his actions as those of a renegade and a traitor. The fact that the Dimafiles group itself later split, amid stories of financial and other corruption, only confirmed this characterization in the eyes of CPP members. [89]
A more dramatic departure from the people’s war project in the Aquino era was that of the founding head of the NPA, “Ka Dante.” He too believed that the moment for armed struggle against the government had passed, at least for now, and that the Party should turn its attention to legal political struggles in order to further the cause of improving life for impoverished Filipinos. He was particularly critical of the urban guerrilla campaigns involving the assassination of police officers and military men, etc., claiming that this kind of action provoked rebel right-wing military men to murder a certain number of legal left personalities. Dante, too, was no intellectual who could methodically present his arguments in coherent form so that the ideas could be disseminated and discussed in detail. Even if he had been, however, his public criticism of those choosing to continue with the armed struggle—rather than merely saying, for example, that it was no longer his chosen way—ensured that the national democrats would dismiss him as a traitor to the cause, as someone no longer qualified to speak about the revolutionary struggle. Dante had further undermined his continued right to speak as a revolutionary by accepting government funding in order to set up agricultural cooperatives—he was seen to have been co-opted by the regime. [90]
Other critiques of the strategy in the post-Marcos era were implied rather than stated. For example, the “pop-dems” (“popular-democrats”) were a small group of formerly high-ranking CPP intellectuals who, while critical of the Party leadership’s lack of imagination, still believed to change the way the national-democratic movement approached its political tasks by encouraging the party to put more emphasis on the “democratic” aspect of the national-democratic struggle. [91] They knew, however, that to question the basic strategy would be to render their critique illegitimate; the suggestions had to be presented as tactical, or as adjustments to the traditional national democratic strategy. But while their ideas were not condemned outright by the CPP, neither were they tackled seriously. The “pop-dem” organizations gradually established a quite distant (though non-antagonistic) relationship to CPP forces, and failed to have any real impact on the national democratic discourse. [92]
While these more or less overt, albeit rather ineffective, challenges were troubling the CPP, more disturbing during the Aquino years were other internal problems and altered political conditions. The Politburo’s self-criticism policy had opened a period of debate in the CPP, but by mid-1987 the Party leadership had closed off that opening and denounced the Aquino regime as “fascist with a liberal facade.” While it was deemed by many to be a premature and ill-considered decision, it should be noted that serious government provocation played a part in the situation. Influential sections of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, including the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) were already dismayed by the progressive tint of Aquino’s first cabinet and were fighting hard to have all vestiges of left influence removed from the administrative apparatuses. [93] Some of the most audacious assassinations of left-wing figures took place during Aquino’s term, mostly apparently carried out by the rebel military elements bent on destabilizing her regime. Those murdered included KMU leader, Rolando Olalia, and young BAYAN leader Leandro Alejandro. Nor were the assassinations restricted to known radical figures. Amnesty International reported that human rights abuses overall increased under the Aquino regime. Killings included one of the worst state massacres in contemporary Philippine history, when twenty-one peasants were shot dead while demonstrating for land reform on Mendiola bridge next to Malacanang Palace, in January 1987. [94]
What became known as the “Mendiola massacre” was the last straw for the failing peace talks then taking place between the NDF and the government of the Republic. Although the cease-fire of December 1986-January 1987 had been reasonably well observed by both sides, negotiations on the substantive issues—for the NDF, the “root causes” of the civil war—never really started. The government insisted on using the newly ratified Constitution as the framework, but the NDF had already declared the 1986 Constitution “pro-imperialist and anti-people.” Just a few months earlier, the CPP had called for a boycott of the plebiscite to ratify the new Constitution. Despite this call, and reflecting the confusion and lack of order among the national-democratic ranks at the time, many CPP-led organizations went instead for a “critical ‘yes’ vote.” The boycott failed and the “Yes” vote won convincingly.
The NDF withdrew from the peace negotiations, accusing the government of being insincere about tackling the “unjust socio-economic and political structures causing the widespread poverty and oppression of our people.” Aquino then dropped all pretense of forging a negotiated settlement with the rebels and instead, declared that she would unsheathe her “sword of war”; she then embarked upon the “total war” against the revolutionary forces. [95] The next few years were difficult ones for the NPA. The “total war” policy, involving a “low-intensity conflict” strategy (whereby the military tried to deprive the NPA of their mass base support) took a great toll on the guerrilla forces in many regions. One of its nastiest components was the use of fanatical anti-communist “vigilante squads” such as the Alsa Masa (Masses Arise). [96] The savage exploits of these Filipino death squads are well documented by now, as is the Aquino government’s complicity in their activities. Sometimes trained and usually manipulated by the armed forces, the vigilante squads helped to destroy many formerly strong bases of support for the NPA [97]
The collapse of the peace talks and the renewed intense fighting between the NPA and the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) did not mean the end of the CPP-led legal organizations’ participation in the “democratic space” of the early Aquino years, however. In the 1987 Congressional elections, the new national democratic political party, the Partido ng Bayan (PnB), ran a number of candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate. Among them were well-known personalities of the revolutionary movement, including Bernabe Buscayno (“Ka Dante”) and “Boy” Morales. Despite the visibility of the left candidates, only two of them won their seats. It was a demoralizing experience for the legal left, but was partly explained by the lack of unity surrounding the very idea of participating in “bourgeois” elections. Some argue that such a political party should not have been so clearly associated with the Communists (Jose Maria Sison, released from prison under Aquino’s early move to release all political prisoners, was the first President of PnB), but others did not support the idea of a parliamentary party at all. [98] PnB all but collapsed after its losses in 1987 and was only revived again in 1992—too late to be of much impact in the 1992 synchronized national elections.
In many respects then, the CPP’s fortunes went from bad to worse by the end of the 1980s. The CPP had suffered from the military losses sustained under the total war assault. It was also hurt by “self-inflicted” wounds, for the party lost legitimacy in the eyes of the “middle forces” following the election and constitutional referendum boycotts, and later, the CPP’s equivocal stand in relation to the rightwing coup attempts by “rebel” soldiers of the AFP. The greatest blow to CPP members’ morale and legitimacy resulted from the revelations concerning the disastrous “anti-DPA” (deep penetration agent) campaigns carried out in 1985 in Mindanao and 1988 in the Southern Tagalog region, which includes Metro Manila. The “hysteria” of the campaigns to rid the movement of its real and imagined enemy agents is the saddest story in the CPP’s history. [99]
The period of rapid expansion in the early 1980s left the revolutionary movement, particularly the NPA, open to infiltration by military saboteurs and informers. This was first recognized by the Mindanao Commission in mid-1985, so they instigated a campaign to investigate and solve the problem. The campaign got out of hand as it moved down and across the Party’s organizational ranks; after learning of how rampant the “investigations” had become, the regional leadership attempted to stem the flow of accusations and “punishments” but it had taken on a momentum of its own. Possibly more than five hundred party members or “red fighters” died in Mindanao alone during the “DPA” purge. More shocking is the fact that a second campaign was started in Southern Tagalog three years later, after the Mindanao Commission leadership had reported their own devastating experience. Perhaps more than one hundred died during the 1988 campaign before the national leadership demanded that it be called off. [100] These campaigns were reported in the Philippines and internationally, provoking accusations from some quarters that the CPP/NPA was indeed the “new Khmer Rouge.” [101] While this is a comparison wildly off the mark in so many ways, the revelations of comrades executing comrades, often with little evidence of wrong-doing, had a lasting demoralizing effect on the movement.
The CPP criticized itself for the mistakes, announced its adherence to the principles of international human rights laws (including Protocol 2 of the Geneva Convention) and is still in the process of making reparations to the victims’ families. [102] However, for many Party members the “anti-DPA” purges raised serious questions not only about the way in which the revolutionary movement conducts itself during the struggle, but also about how the CPP would manage matters of justice if and when it ever holds the reins of state power. [103] One experienced cadre member said:
What happened with these campaigns was a system of investigation, adjudication and punishment far worse than the bourgeoisie has put in place. It’s equally as condemnable as the Inquisitions. In certain cases, [it was] far worse than what happened [then] in some areas of Europe .. . I heard a lot of stories [about the purges]; many ordinary commanders, guerrillas, Party level cadres, were unwilling to participate but were ordered to do so. You see the Party training here—you obey; the cult of obedience is very high, it’s treasured, it’s cherished, it’s inviolate, it’s stronger than that practice inside the Catholic Church! [104]
Subsequently, people began to question some long-held tenets of Party dogma, especially the concept of “revolutionary class justice,” and the influence of Stalin on the CPP’s world-view. [105]
Those who did were greatly dismayed by the 1992 paper by “Armando Liwanag” defending the “merits” of Stalin against his detractors, the revisionists Kruschev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. [106] The question of the CPP finally repudiating Stalinist-type methods was one of the elements of the controversy in the Party during the 1992 “rectification” campaign. But again, among those critical of standing CPP policy, there was no clear or agreed alternative put forward during the “debate.” They demanded, simply, that the matter be studied carefully and discussed widely, along with the other substantial issues facing the revolutionary movement at that time. To do otherwise, they believed, would be impossible and or ill-advised for at least two reasons. First, no one felt certain enough about their own views to present a complete alternative blueprint; the dissidents claimed sincerely to want a process of debate from which coherent positions could emerge. Second, they feared that presenting already formed alternative policies, counterpoised against existing Party ones, would mean to court charges of “factionalism” from the leadership and appear, to the rank and file membership, to be deliberately creating disharmony. [107]
In the light of these remarks and as mentioned earlier at that time, the criticisms in the “Reaffirm” document relating to “petty-bourgeois” challenges to the notion of democratic centralism seem to have been overstated. In relation to other charges made in “Reaffirm,” Sison was seen to be overstating the “crime” in order to keep the Party on the theoretical and strategic straight-and-narrow path. In many of these cases, however, he may have been reading the implications of certain questions and criticisms more clearly than the critics themselves. While for so long leading cadres with doubts about aspects of the traditional strategic framework had been thinking and speaking about their new ideas in terms of “adjustments” and “improvements,” Sison’s attacks on them and their actions forced them into seeing, at least to some extent, how challenging their critiques might be. One former Central Committee member who was one of the core group of early “rejectionists” and who wrote critical commentaries on the Reaffirm document said:
I was going through that [traditional strategic] framework in the first commentary. I tried to situate the comments within the frame and principles [of protracted people’s war], but in the process, I realized it was going beyond that. .. . It would be dishonest on our part to claim that we are still [adhering to it] when a more theoretical study will show that we have to go beyond it to relinquish past mistakes. [108]
Once he had decided to think clearly beyond the traditional framework, or the set of “basic principles,” however, this ex-CPP leader was willing to subject all the Party’s items of faith to critical study, even if that might mean rejecting “some of the thinking of Marx in the process, and of Lenin.” The problem at that time, as he saw it, was that such a step was unacceptable to many of those who were critical only of the way in which the Rectification campaign was being conducted by the Party leadership. It is worth quoting at length how this cadre member thought the process must proceed if the movement is to advance:
The problem with our forces .. . is that they have been brought up to follow what has been said by the duly constituted authority; they have not been trained to be critical [because] of the low level of theoretical development, especially in the armed forces [i.e., the NPA]. . . . We have to study in small groups and expand gradually; this moment is the testing moment. There is already a big portion of the movement that is going on towards the new thinking, although many ... are still [thinking] within the narrow framework ... . So, within the opposition, we have to conduct more theoretical discussion, to show them that [this dispute] is not only about the misuse of authority, it is an ideological conflict. . . . Some people in the middle ground are critical of both JMS [Sison] and the opposition. But that is an illusion . . . the line has been defined, the line has been drawn. ... I was telling them, you must study the basic issues, because if you are criticizing the opposition because it is going beyond the usual parameters, you should understand it in the context of an intense ideological debate. If they follow the [usual] parameters, they will not win, because they will have to follow the framework of Reaffirm. .. . It has its own logic, it’s very logical. . . . The problem is, it doesn’t correspond to what really happened [or] to the theoretical advancements worldwide... .
Unfortunately, for those “rejectionists” who most wanted to see change in the Party, this (none-too-loud) call for participation in an ideological debate came too late to have any direct positive effect on the CPP during the testing time. The dominant tendency within the leadership was able, through various means, to purge and discredit key dissident figures, and to dissolve or reorganize troublesome Party units and organizations.
CONCLUSION
There is a general view among its intellectual commentators and political supporters that the Communist Party of the Philippines is dogmatic in its theory and flexible in its practice. That is true up to a point, but it gives an overly static picture of the two elements. The relationship between words and deeds has been closer than that observation implies, but in a way that has been damaging for both. While there have been some divergences from or liberal interpretations of national Party scripture, these practices have rarely been conceived as seriously subverting the basic analysis and strategy. They have almost always been thought of and offered as “adjustments” or complements. So, local or sectoral experiences of revolutionary work have not been theorized and incorporated into, or allowed to affect in any fundamental way, the basic strategic doctrine. There was no perceived need for these alternative theories to be formulated while the original theory was assumed still to be correct (and universal) and capable of accommodating the practical adjustments that led to the revolution’s successes. It was only when the revolutionary movement’s fortunes waned sharply that the cracks widened in the Party and positions become polarized.
The history of the “debates” about strategy and tactics in the CPP shows that it has been impossible to be considered a committed revolutionary except while speaking inside the protracted people’s war discourse. The correctness of that framework has been practically an article of faith for Party members. It was not a matter for critique or review. Commitment to the revolution, or even commitment to the Party, demands commitment to the established strategy; there cannot be one without the other. If you are a Communist, a revolutionary, then you speak inside the established framework, what the Party’s founder calls the “basic principles” of the revolution. Once you begin to think outside that framework, you are beginning to think outside being a true Communist, a true revolutionary. This “rule” functioned in the CPP almost from the beginning, up until 1992. It was maintained by a combination of authority exercised by the leadership through hierarchical structures and a culture of “self-censorship.” Only when the Party went into a crisis could Party members finally begin to think, at one and the same time, that they were committed revolutionaries who considered the established strategy inadequate to the revolutionary task. Such thinking became possible only when the orthodox tendency in the top leadership itself launched stinging attacks on those who had been doing the most successful “adjusting,” and when the founder of the Party, Jose Maria Sison, had drastically undermined his own legitimacy (as leader and as chief theorist for the struggle) among other Party intellectuals. Only then did some of the latter began to think and articulate their criticisms distinctly outside the traditional strategic framework. By that time, however, they were too late to convince a sufficient number of people in the Party that their ideas had merit, too late to avoid the debilitating splits and purges that have occurred since.
Kathleen Weekley
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