Bulatlatan
Written by: Ka. Rosendo Monteroso
Published: Bulatlatan, March 9, 2010;
Source: Bulatlatan snapshot at the Internet Archive;
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
The right opportunists in the revolutionary movement are using all the ‘tricks under their sleeves’ to convince comrades that their participation in reactionary elections are consistent in strengthening the revolutionary forces and in weakening the reactionary rule.
They prattle radical analyses of the prevalent ruling system and pay lip service to the “people’s democratic revolution” only to use them as premise for their reformist scheme.
Ka. Rubi Del Mundo writing in behalf of comrades in the NDF-Southern Mindanao correctly stated: “that the Filipino masses should bear no illusion that the elections will bring about thoroughgoing change in our semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and that only the People’s Democratic Revolution is our way to genuine liberation and national development.”
Ka Rubi lamented that “majority of the Filipinos wallow in utter destitution with 65.89 million belonging to the poorest of the poor by the end of 2006 alone. In 2009, 3,891 Filipinos go out of the country everyday..” if only to emphasize and dramatize the anguish and sufferings of our countrymen under the unjust economic-political system lorded by big landowners and big comprador bourgeoisie.
Ka. Rubi further underscored that, “The country’s current political and economic situation calls for a need of sweeping and thoroughgoing structural changes that favor the masses. “She implied that palliative solutions and reforms could not change the downtrodden plight of the masses, with her emphasis on “sweeping and thoroughgoing structural changes” in the prevailing system. Ka Rubi espouses radicalism in uprooting the people’s socio-economic problems.
Ka Rubi and NDF-Southern Mindanao could have sufficiently convinced me that they are bannering the revolutionary line. However, their later statements obscured their earlier conclusions:
“…while there can be no fundamental pro-people political, economic, and social changes that the people can expect from the traditional electoral exercises…. the revolutionary movement recognizes the important role of a progressive mass movement that engages in parliamentary struggle and electoral struggle as one of its forms in bringing to the fore the basic issues and the need for meaningful structural reforms.”
Ka Rubi’s final call to the people of Southern Mindanao struck a completely dissonant note from her earlier “radicalism” or pretensions at it:
“to raise the basic issues of economic exploitation, national sovereignty and patrimony and human rights….so that their participation in the electoral struggle will be meaningful.”
How can participation in a political exercise that has been part of an oppressive system, be “meaningful” when it could not bring about “thoroughgoing changes…that favor the masses?” How can it be politically significant if the people could not expect fundamental changes in the end?
The same is true with the crooked logic of Banda Kathmandu in “Criticize Dogmatism, Build the Broadest United Front and Mobilize the Masses in their Millions in the 2010 Elections.”
Banda pointed out that, “The long history of corrupt elitist rule in the country have finally broken the Filipinos’ patience.… The people want change. The people want to end the rule of the TRAPOS.”
Since the 1930’s, from the time of the Philippine Assembly, up to the postwar puppet republic and the present post-EDSA elitist rule, the people’s accumulated experience have finally crystallized into the realization of the bankruptcy and futility of traditional elitist elections.
Yet Banda’s statement stepped backward by calling on comrades to participate in the reactionary elections, only because it is the way to “mobilize the masses in tens of thousands” and “to build tactical alliances” even among the reactionaries themselves!
Comrade Banda, the EDSA uprising of 1986 mobilized the masses in millions and forged broad alliances between rich and poor, between oppressed and oppressors, between the people and fascists, but nothing revolutionary ever came out of it.
Up to the present our people’s war is still in the strategic defensive stage. We have consistently ‘tailed’ behind the endless reformism offered by the ruling class. The masses are fed up with the reactionary elitist elections. Yet here we are, reinforcing the false hopes being dangled by the trapos and demagogues. Our comrades in the united front should seriously consider this. We can never develop revolutionaries from bourgeois reactionary processes. Revolutionary consciousness and revolutionaries are developed “from without, not from within” the reactionary processes.
Finally, our comrades should also know that Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza will spend P52M in their senatorial campaign. These will be spent on posters, radio-tv ads, campaign sorties, etc. It would be a crime to the people to squander all those funds on activities that will not significantly contribute to people’s war.
Our comrades in the united front should realize that P52M could sustain a basic load (of 300 rounds of ammunition per rifle) for our 4,500 rifles for two years. It could provide us with 433 M4 latest rifles to fully equip12 NPA platoons, or it could arm a bigger number of 44 NPA platoons that combine old and brand new rifles. The P52M could also completely arm 321 six-man-teams of urban partisans with brand new pistols or machine pistols. Or it could provide the basic logistics for all party organs and army units in all 120 guerilla fronts for one year or more.
Any revolutionary with the right mind will see the big difference between the “significance” of participating in a losing electoral struggle, compared to the gains in the people’s war that could be generated with the same resources. We should stop the right opportunists from their reformist and futile scheme and shift all efforts and resources to achieve the qualitative leap in our people’s war.