1. The Snap Election Boycott
Boycotting the February 7, 1986 Snap Election isolated
the CPP politically. By boycotting the Snap Election, the CPP divorced itself
from the broad population, who favored participation. Filipinos saw it as an
opportunity to remove Marcos from power peacefully.
The CPP’s ill-conceived clarion call of “Rebolusyon
Hindi Eleksyon” certainly did not reflect the mood of the populace, who were
convinced that an election could be a vehicle for change, especially in the
context of the broad mass movement against President Marcos engendered by public
anger over the brazen Aquino assassination.
This isolation was aggravated when CPP led
organizations like JAJA (Justice for Aquino Justice for All) failed to seize
the initiative in the wake of wanton manipulation of election returns by Marcos’
Comelec, which led to the historic walk-out of its canvassers at the PICC, and which
culminated in its shameless proclamation of Marcos as the winner. The CPP’s
isolation was complete when, as the EDSA crowd surpassed 2 million, its forces
found themselves utterly clueless at the fringes of the multitude.
The CPP has not yet recovered from this strategic
blunder, 34 years from the event. Bayan, the CPP’s legal expression in the
electoral front, has not garnered respectable support from the voters.
The purges had the effect of sapping the strength of
the CPP, both in terms of morale, and perhaps more importantly, the skills of
the party cadres lost. As far as cadre skills are concerned, the effect of the
purges is very much akin to the cadre skills lost by the CPSU in the 1938
purges, which it paid for dearly during the Second World War.
The interrogation, torture, and executions that
characterized the purges generated panic within the CPP and among its
supporters. In the chaos, several hundred party members were tortured and/or
killed. The Mindanao party organization, in
particular, suffered severe demoralization, disunity and diminution.
In Mindanao, alone, under Operation Zombie and Oplan
Ahos, over 1500 cadres were arrested and tortured, and over 800 killed. CPP
membership decreased from nine to three thousand; NPA forces declined from
fifteen companies and thirty platoons to two companies and seven platoons; and
the mass base was cut in half.
Here is a partial inventory for the purges in other
regions: Kadena de Amor, Quezon-Bicol Region, 30 dead; Oplan Takipsilim,
Southern Quezon, 30 dead; Oplan Missing Link, Southern Tagalog, Quezon Laguna,
Cavite, and Batangas, 66 killed; Oplan Olympia, Metro-Manila, 20 killed; and
Cagayan Valley Region, 300 killed.
While the CPP was busy decimating its membership, a decisive
period in Philippine history was transpiring: the Marcos dictatorship was in
the process of rapid decline. Warranted or not, the killings distracted the CPP
from giving 100 % attention to this opportune occasion, when it could have
improved its political position in anticipation of a Marcos collapse.
This decline began in 1981 when the Philippine economy met
disaster as the US economy went into recession, forcing the Reagan
administration to increase interest rates. The Philippines was highly debt
dependent, and as export earnings could not keep up with the increased debt
servicing, the economy went into decline.
In 1984 and 1985, the worst recession in Philippine
history occurred. The economy shrank by 7.3% in these years. The
Philippines, already in dire straits, agonized further as foreign capital
migrated to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Add to this economic crisis a succession crisis
brought about by reports of Marcos’ deteriorating health. News of Marcos
impending death convinces Benigno S. Aquino Jr. to try his luck and come home. Ninoy’s ensuing assassination generates the
tumultuous anti-dictatorship rallies of 1984 and 1985, and the historic EDSA upheaval.
All told, the CPP could have devoted its best energies
to riding the crest of this historically unparalleled convergence. Instead, it
engulfed itself in a debilitating internal bloodbath whose antecedents could
have been handled better.
Instead of frenziedly and haphazardly hunting down,
prosecuting, and executing deep penetration agents, in the process killing many
innocent cadres, the CPP could have discerned the changing conditions,
determined the prospects, and devised appropriate plans and tactics.
The demoralization is hard to quantify, although this
writer has talked to quite a few disheartened CPP members. The wastage of
cadres is certainly another strategic loss for the CPP, because it takes time
to develop the skills and commitment of the cadres lost in the mass
liquidations. And think about the opportunity costs: how many prospective
cadre-quality activists and allies were dissuaded from joining the CPP upon
learning of the purges?
The option for Filipinos to work abroad to improve
their quality of living was never foreseen, much less seriously considered, by
the CPP. The spectre of worsening economic conditions in the
Philippines, something essential to a successful revolution, was standard fare
in practically all CPP internal documents and propaganda releases.
The CPP did not anticipate that, assuming its dire
projections were true, the Filipino working and middle classes would find a way
out of the economic morass: by becoming Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).
Worse for the CPP, overseas employment has
considerably enlarged the Filipino middle class, whose reasonably comfortable
life have rendered them less predisposed to CPP propaganda.
According to the Family Income and Expenditure Survey
(FIES), conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2015, about 2
in every 5 Filipinos (40.2%) belong to the middle-income class.
OFW remittances have enabled Filipinos to buy what
matters most in their lives: food, housing, utilities, clothes, and education.
Many have set up small businesses, and paid off debts. Many have thronged the
malls for leisure and entertainment. It does
not stop there. The money has trickled down to relatives and friends.
In turn, the incomes of the OFWs have sustained the
Philippine economy and have prevented it from nosediving particularly during
uncertain times. In a big way, OFW remittances are better than foreign aid as
an economic booster, because they have no strings attached. In 2018, OFWs sent home PhP 36.4 billion in
remittances, or 11% of total Philippine GDP. It was ranked by the World Bank as
the 4th biggest remittance, by country, of migrant laborers in the
world.
How does foreign employment lessen the likelihood of a
communist victory in the Philippines? It’s a no brainer. Countries with
burgeoning middle classes are by and large stable communities, certainly not
the social volcanoes that breed communist insurgencies, which the CPP pines for.
4. The Survival and Consolidation of the Liberal
Democratic EDSA State
After several coup attempts by the Right
during the first three years of the Aquino administration, the
extra-constitutional removal of Joseph Estrada which fortunately respected the
succession order provided by the 1987 Constitution, and one coup attempt by
Trillanes et al during the Arroyo administration, the liberal-democratic state ushered
in by the EDSA Revolution has weathered it all and has sunk deep institutional roots
in Philippine society. It is here to stay.
It has attained a large degree of
stability, if we consider the lack of extra-constitutional threats for the
greater part of the 9-year Arroyo administration, the entire Aquino III dispensation,
and so far under the 4 year-old Duterte government.
The Filipino people, especially those in
Metro-Manila, seem to have grown weary of coup d’ etats and people-power
inspired movements. At this point in Philippine history, they most certainly
would not support a communist bid for power in whatever form.
Against the most ardent wishes of the
CPP, the Filipino people have decided to cast their lot with this EDSA
installed state. It has been around for 34 years as of this writing, and shows nary
a hint of signing off. On the other
hand, the failed post-war republic defined by the 1935 Constitution lasted only
26 years: from July 4, 1946, to September 21, 1972, when it was supplanted by
the martial law regime.
5. The Steady Growth of The Philippine Economy Since the EDSA
Revolution
The post EDSA Philippine economy has
thrived under the Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, Aquino III, and Duterte administrations. It stabilized
under Cory, expanded under FVR, grew despite Erap , surged under GMA, expanded under
Pinoy, and is booming under Rodrigo Duterte. The splendid performance of the
Philippine economy is the key determining factor for the continued failure of
the CPP to grab state power.
In the years after EDSA, the Philippine
economy had its share of serious trials but otherwise overcame them. It got
back on track after the crippling power crisis of the early Nineties. It steadied
itself during the wild 2008 Financial Crisis.
Otherwise, it has ignored the occasional hiccups of the world economy,
maintaining its health and resilience throughout the process.
Credit agencies like Moody’s , S&P,
and Fitch have consistently given the Philippine economy a good credit rating, and
the World Bank itself has cited it as “one of the most dynamic economies in the
East Asia Pacific region.”
In the six administrations since EDSA, sound
economic planning and wise financial policies have always stood the Philippines
in good stead. No small credit goes to capable finance department officials, the
NEDA, and astute Central Bank governors.
Finally, trade reform, improvements in exported oriented industries, and
favorable regional developments have benefited the Philippine economy since
EDSA.
The above picture is a great departure
from the grim crisis painted by the CPP in its pronouncements, which has been forced
ad nauseam on its membership, and on an increasingly incredulous general public.
6. The Fall of Socialism in Eastern Europe, the Collapse
of the Soviet Union, and the Implementation of Capitalism by the Chinese
Communist Party
The fall of socialism in Eastern Europe and in the
Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, and the unabashed adoption of
capitalism in China could not but have had serious negative consequences on the
efforts of the CPP to sell its name and political program to the Filipino public,
who had been, for decades, unsympathetic to the communist cause to begin with.
Internally, this epic event created doubts in the
minds of the CPP leadership and rank and file. Many questioned the merits of the communist
outlook and system, and also its survivability in the long and short term.
Externally, the fall of communism has been nothing
less than a PR catastrophe for the CPP. The National Democratic Front 12-Point
Program, which does not hide its socialist slant, gradually became a hot potato
from the perspective of nationalist businessmen, allies in government, and
other middle-class sectors.
Globally, socialism would become passé in the
succeeding years, especially in the light of the successful market economies of
former socialist countries like Poland, the Slovak Republic, Estonia ,
Lithuania , Romania and the Czech Republic.
All of a sudden, the allure of communism had been diminished
in no small measure, both inside and outside the CPP. Not even the most vigorous
rationalizations by the leading cadres, now rendered that much less
ideologically self-assured, could stave off the doubts spawned against an
erstwhile sacrosanct ideology.
7. The Persistence of Capitalism Worldwide
Capitalism is an economic system in
which the means of production of goods and services are privately owned and
operated for a profit. The important elements of capitalism are private
property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange of goods and
services, a price system for goods and services, and competitive markets.
Capitalism emerged in Florence, Italy in the form of mercantilism
in the early 15th century, and as agrarian capitalism in England and the
Netherlands in the 16th to 17th centuries. Capitalism
then took the form of the laissez-faire
economic system in Western Europe and America in the mid-18th century,
when it was popularized by Adam Smith through his book The Wealth of Nations. Laissez-faire advocated minimum governmental interference in the economic
affairs of society, which for its time consisted generally of small shops
called guilds.
In the 19th
century capitalism matured into the Industrial Revolution, which began in
England, when the small shops gave way to large factories, ushering in the era
of large-scale production using heavy machinery and the massive hiring of
laborers.
Capitalism would become a global system in the 20th
century, and would take the form of imperialism, whereby the capitalist
countries of Western Europe and the United States acquired colonial possessions
in Asia and Africa.
However, capitalism would, in the 20th century,
come under serious challenge by Marxist socialism, whose centrally planned
economies would be established in in such countries as Russia, China, Vietnam,
Korea, Laos, and Cambodia. Internally,
capitalism would be threatened by the Great Depression, which generated a lot
of critics who questioned its viability.
The Great Depression would be solved and ended by WW2.
In yet another stage of the evolution of capitalism, now guided by Keynesianism,
the United States emerged, after the war, as the leading industrial and
military superpower, a status it still holds today.
In the Fifties and Sixties, new analytical tools from
the academe were expounded to explain the social and economic trends set by
capitalism, including the concepts of the post-industrial society, and the
welfare state.
In the Seventies, after the 1973 oil crisis which
caused a "stagflation," many economists like Friedrich Hayek and
Milton Friedman began to formulate market-inspired policy prescriptions
inspired by the laissez-faire and classical capitalism of the 19th century.
They espoused a theoretical substitute to Keynesianism
which emphasized rapid expansion of the economy using the energy of the market.
Market-oriented solutions gained increasing support in the capitalist world, especially
under leadership of Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in the UK
in the 1980s.
In the last decade of the 20th century, (as
mentioned earlier) capitalism would be vindicated with the collapse of the
socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which became,
overnight, fully fledged capitalist economies.
Earlier, in the mid-Seventies, China would take the
first steps towards a large capitalist economic sector with the expansion of
private ownership and the use of “market economics” under the post-Mao administration of Deng Hsiao Ping.
Thus we have “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, a thinly veiled
euphemism for Chinese capitalism.
Despite the trials and criticisms, capitalism would
enter the stage of the 21st century as the preeminent economic and
financial system of a now globalized world. Most of the nation-states of the
intensely interconnected world are capitalist in one version or another, and
the global economy is of necessity capitalist. Capitalism has persisted.
8. The Endurance of Liberal Democracy Worldwide
In the face of unending dangers to
liberal democratic systems worldwide, liberal democratic countries continue to
grow in number. For instance, Armenia, Gambia,
Malaysia, Myanmar and Tunisia, which did not qualify as democracies just a few
years ago, are now thriving representative republics.
The fact is that there are more people
today who participate in peaceful elections than in armed revolutions, and more
people today live in democratic polities than 40 years ago. And while it has
been a slow process, gender equality in government and industry has never been more
real than it is now.
We are inspired to read news of
activists demanding for democracy in such authoritarian states as Algeria, Hong
Kong and Sudan. In democratic countries, meanwhile, citizens have launched
movements for increased representation, clean government, accountability, and a
better life. This democratic wave that
is occurring around the world bodes well for the future of mankind.
Concern has been growing for the past
several years about the future of democracy, and there is considerable
dissatisfaction in many countries with how democracy is working in practice. Despite
considerable dissatisfaction in not a few countries, popular support for
liberal democracy has remained strong. Consider the following data.
According to the Center for Systemic
Peace’s Polity IV dataset, as of the end
of 2017, 96 out of 167 countries with populations of at least 500,000 (57%)
were democracies of one kind or other, and just 21 (13%) were dictatorships.
Moreover, Polity says nearly four dozen
other countries showed elements of both democracy and autocracy. Generally
speaking, the portion of democracies among the world’s governments (58% in
2016) has been increasing since the mid-1970s, and is very near its post-World
War II high.
In 2017, 33 countries were considered
fully consolidated democracies, with a Polity rating of +10. The peak postwar
year for consolidated democracies was 2006, when there were 35; since then, two
(Belgium and the United States) have slipped from the top tier.
9. The Continued Veneration of the US by Most Filipinos
The CPP has consistently pointed to the US, or “US
imperialism” as the root cause of Philippine poverty and underdevelopment.
According to CPP orthodoxy, this poverty and underdevelopment is perpetuated
when US imperialism extracts “cheap” Philippine raw materials and hires “cheap”
Filipino labor, while making the country a market for its manufactured products.
The Philippine government composed of “bureaucrat
capitalists,” on the one hand, and the local “ruling classes” of landlords, on
the other, are allies or tools of US imperialism, in maintaining this state of
affairs.
In this scheme of things, so the CPP’s argument goes,
feudalism exists side-by-side with a small manufacturing sector which processes
the raw materials, an arrangement which it calls “semi-feudal”, while US
imperialism exercises control over a nominally independent Philippine government,
a circumstance which the CPP calls “semi-colonial.”
The solution to the above problem, prescribes the CPP,
is to overthrow US imperialism and its local allies through an armed and
protracted “national-democratic revolution”. This victory will then usher in a
“national-democratic” government which will implement a comprehensive program
of “nationalist industrialization” which will solve, once and for all, poverty
and underdevelopment in the Philippines.
The main target, therefore, of the revolution which
the CPP is leading, is US imperialism, because it is the US which is the cause
of the Filipino people’s never-ending destitution, and it is the US which
preserves and sustains the government that is this system’s caretaker.
In its internal writings and propaganda, consequently,
the CPP has, ad nauseam, harped on US imperialism as the enemy of the Filipino
people, the root cause if you will, which must be the object of their unrelenting
hatred and scorn.
More to the point, the CPP believes that it cannot
successfully “arouse and mobilize” the Filipino people if it does not appeal to
their innate abhorrence for the US. Only
by raising the anti-US imperialism banner, it has repeatedly declared, will it
be able to recruit the rural folk into the New People’s Army, and make them
participate in the “mass movement” in Metro- Manila and other urban areas in
the country.
Apparently, the CPP is not feeling the pulse of the
Filipino people, whose genuine interests or what it calls “the mass line” they
so earnestly profess to uphold.
Contrary to what it feels and sees as an anti-US
sentiment being held by Filipinos, the exact reverse is true: Filipinos love the US, venerate American
culture, and long to live in America.
The relationship between the United States and the
Philippines has historically been strong and has been described as a “Special
Relationship.” The Philippines is one of
the oldest Asian partners of the U.S. and a strategically major non-NATO ally.
In a recent surveys, the United States was
consistently ranked as one of the Filipinos’ favorite nations in the world,
with 90% of Filipinos viewing the U.S. favorably, and 91% viewing Americans positively
in 2002, 90% viewing U.S. influence positively in 2011, 85% of Filipinos
viewing the U.S. and Americans favorably in 2013, 92% viewing the U.S.
favorably in 2015, and 94% having confidence in former United States president
Barack Obama. The Philippines is the most pro-American country in the world.
No wonder then, that raising
the anti-US imperialism banner in such a pro American environment has gotten
the CPP and its legal organizations like Bayan, LFS, and Gabriela nowhere. I,
for one, looking back to my student activist days, can recall that it was my
hatred for the Marcos dictatorship which drew me into the anti-martial law
movement, and not my resentment for America, which came later when I was conditioned
by the CPP.
10. The Split Between “Reaffirmists” and “Rejectionists”
and the Resultant Disintegration of the CPP
The “Second Great Rectification Movement”, otherwise
known as the split between “Reaffirmists” and “Rejectionists” within the CPP
refers to a 1992 ideological campaign initiated by the leadership of the CPP
wherein an effort was made to "identify, repudiate and rectify the errors
of urban insurrectionism, premature big formations of the New People's Army and
anti-infiltration hysteria".
"Reaffirm our Basic Principles and Rectify
Errors" dated December 26, 1991, was a document written by Jose Maria
Sison to coincide with the CPP's 23rd founding anniversary. It is the launching
document of the “Second Great Rectification Movement.” It precipitated a huge gulf within the CPP;
those who agreed with it were thereafter called "reaffirmists", and
those who disagreed were categorized as "rejectionists". The
"rejectionists" considered the “reaffirmists” as
"counter-revolutionaries".
Eventually, the rectification movement resulted in the
erstwhile cohesive and united CPP disintegrating into at least eight contending
factions in the entire Nineties. Suffice it to say that this fragmentation has damaged,
perhaps fatally, the once monolithic CPP. It is the main organizational reason
for the strategic decline of the CPP.
Luis Jalandoni, a former negotiator for the CPP clone National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF), has attributed the CPP’s decline not
to the fragmentation set in motion by the ideological clean up, but to betrayal
within the CPP. He declared that from
1985 until 1991, a “renegade group within the party leadership of the CPP was
responsible for major errors that caused serious losses in the revolution's
mass base.” In short, not only were these elements renegades, they also
committed monumental blunders. In one fell swoop, Jalandoni declared a part of
the CPP leadership as traitors, and attributed the CPP’s woes to these
elements.
These errors, averred Jalandoni, included the carrying
out of a program to eradicate infiltrators which was called “Kampanyang Ahos” and
the “adoption of an erroneous political line brought about by modern
revisionism.” The loss in mass base was
estimated by Jalandoni to have been 50%-60% in Mindanao alone. The "Second
Great Rectification Movement" was meant to correct these errors, declared
Jalandoni.
It is not for this blog to delve into the respective
merits of the Reaffirmist and Rejectionist
factions, let alone explore the nuances of this esoteric ideological
debate within the now multi-factional Philippine communist movement.
Suffice it to say that we are now witness to a
movement that was enviably on the cusp of snatching state power three decades and a half ago,
but is now forlornly in disarray and rendered irrelevant. But then the history of
Philippine social movements (including the Philippine Revolution of 1896) abounds with stories of betrayal, factionalism, intrigue, defeat, and capitulation. The CPP seems to be no different from the rest.
