Bulatlatan
Written by: Waya-waya
Published: Bulatlatan, August 5, 2009;
Source: Bulatlatan snapshot at the Internet Archive;
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
Inspite of all the pretensions of solidity and unprecedented strength of the CPP in official statements, new cracks in the Philippine Maoist party have started to manifest in various ways. The main point of conflict is on the current strategy being employed by the party in waging their four-decade old people’s war.
Jose Ma. Sison the founding Chairman of the Maoist CPP, but who never led guerilla warfare in jungle fastnesses, is being charged by his Philippine-based comrades to have started to veer away from the classic strategy of seizing power through wave-upon-wave advance from rural red bases.
The new trend towards left engagement in electoral-political struggles and “tactical alliances” with reactionary parties were initiated by quarters under the Utrecht “mafia” of Joema Sison. It was Sison who proposed for CPP’s participation in electoral and parliamentary arena through the leftist partylist organization Bayan Muna.
To secure partylist seats in the 2001 polls, Sison entered into an “unholy alliance” with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo against the Estrada presidency in year 2000. Known CPP personalities, Vicente Ladlad and Rafael Baylosis were seen waiting in line for appointment with political king-maker and financier Pastor “Boy” Saycon in the eve of the EDSA-2 uprising. Bayan Muna stalwarts Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casino graced the political rallies of LAKAS-KAMPI coalition in the succeeding national polls.
The same deal was repeated in the 2004 Presidential elections where the CPP’s partylist organizations (with the addition of Gabriela and Anakpawis) also benefitted from Garci’s “electoral magic.” Sison’s group earned millions of pesos from these horsetrading with the ‘graft czar’ of Philippine politics. It could be remembered that Joema issued statements meant against presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. by denouncing movie stars who run for election on the basis of their “popularity rather than on their competence and qualifications.”
But after the expose’ on the “Hello Garci” Tapes in 2005, Joema dropped his tactical alliance with GMA ‘like a hot potato.’ His operatives in the leftist partylists sought new alignment with the United Opposition (UNO) and the Estradas, a complete turn around against GMA and establishment of ties with Erap. In the revolutionary political jargon, it is called “opportunism,” but to Sison it is merely playing the same game of the “Trapos.”
Sison’s frivolous dealings with the reactionaries have caught the ire of the home-based Supremo, Benito Tiamzon and wife, Secretary General Wilma Tiamzon. The tactical deals have put the home-based CPP leadership in an awkward position before its own party cadres, members and allies who despise GMA as the reactionary archenemy and Estrada as a deposed corrupt president.
Secondary, although equally serious, are issues and grumblings from rural based party cadres who ‘raise eyebrows’ on the Party chairman’s life of luxury and sexual liberalism with different women in his Utrecht enclave. The expensive operational costs of the Utrecht “mafia” deprived the rural cadres of resources that could provide much needed logistics for guerilla war.
Sison on the other hand took issues against the Tiamzons on their political conservatism and their unpopular revolutionary taxations.
For almost a decade from 1993 to 2000, the Tiamzon leadership ‘painted themselves’ in a remote corner in the hinterlands and failed to recover the CPP’s leadership in political mass movements. It was Sison’s Machiavellian electoral dealings that helped re-energize the fossilized Bayan and recover lost areas in 2001 under the banner of Bayan Muna.
The Utrecht Party czar washed his hands as well on the unpopular revolutionary taxation practiced by the Tiamzons. The tax collections by the Tiamzon leadership did not spare small farmers who had to pay 15% of their annual farm income as taxes to the NDF. Filipino enterprises who refused the NDF’s exorbitant tax demands found their properties and important equipment burned by NPAs, as in the case of Victory Liner buses and Globe Telecom cell sites. The NDF taxation later became indefensible against claims that it is plain and simple “extortion.”
Sison was quoted in Utrecht to have commented that “revolutionary taxation although a right of the NDF as a revolutionary government should not be coercive, punitive or imposed.”
The seething rivalry between Sison and the Tiamzons has started to polarize the CPP organization. Underground sources say that comrades in Luzon regions especially the National Capital Region gravitate towards the Utrecht mafia. The CPP regional organizations in the Visayas and Mindanao support the Tiamzon leadership. Observers see the Tiamzons as followers of the strategy of the defeated “Shining Path” Peruvian guerillas, while the Sison group is entertaining a modification in strategy as employed by the victorious Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
The ‘final straw’ came when the Netherlands government cracked down on the NDF lairs in Utrecht where unsecured voluminous CPP documents were captured with a roster of CPP-NDF personalities embedded in their legal front organizations. This major breach of CPP security policies has placed Sison in a bad light with his home-based comrades.
Rumors are rife, that the CPP has selected a new Chairman who is a compromise choice and who could at least liaison if not facilitate reconciliation between the Sison and Tiamzon groups. The new party chief, Alan Jasmines, was a direct recruit of the Sison group in the 70s and became the overseer of the CPP investments and treasury. He spent time with the Tiamzons in their rural bases in Luzon making himself one of their trusted leading cadres.
The possibility of resolving the new rift in the CPP remains to be seen. The Jasmines factor could only be a temporary solution to the widening gap between Sison and the Tiamzons. But the problem on revolutionary strategy in the CPP had been a lingering issue that caused minor and major splits in the organization since its reestablishment.
As long as dogmatists rule the CPP who blindly copy the Chinese revolution model, it will continue to divide into fragments like a splitting atom. ###