Antonio C. Abaya - Joma Speaks

But is anyone listening?

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), founder-chairman Jose Maria Sison called on his followers to exploit the global financial crisis and use it to incite rebellion against the Arroyo administration. (Manila Standard Today, Dec. 29, 2008).

Speaking in a radio interview in Utrecht, Holland, where he has been in self-exile for some 20 years, Joma urged the New People's Army (NPA), the military arm of the CPP, to arrest or liquidate politicians, military officers and even civilians who "benefit from the criminal offenses" of plunder and human rights violations.

The CPP sees no credible opposition candidate to support during the 2010 presidential elections, and will launch instead a five-year build-up of the NPA to grab state power.

"There are no good candidates from the ranks of the opposition, and I doubt if the opposition already has one candidate that will unite them…..The prevailing character of (Philippine) governments, no matter who is seated, from Marcos to Arroyo, is that they are all thieves: they deceive the people; they are traitors to the country…."

The government has always been run by thieves, Joma said, and "not even the presidential candidates from the opposition show any potential of reforming the system."

"Those who commit these grave crimes are subject to summons for investigation and arrest, and if armed and dangerous or protected by armed personnel, are subject to battle by the NPA arresting unit.

"Retirement from reactionary government service does not free the suspects from criminal liabilities, arrest or battle. Close relatives and friends…must be treated as accomplices in crime.

"The (global) crisis conditions inflict terrible suffering on the people but also incite them to wage revolutionary struggle…."

This is a rare but tacit admission from Joma that some of his pet theories and analyses have been proven wrong. In late 2006, for example, Joma admitted that "the epochal struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between capitalism and socialism, will take a long time, hundreds of years, with many ups and downs…." (See my article Hundreds of Years, of November 14, 2006, archived in www.tapatt.org.)

Joma's revolutionary ardor had obviously been doused by the largely peaceful dismantling of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the transformation of China and Vietnam into capitalist economies, starting in 1979 and 1986 respectively.

But now, with laissez-faire capitalism in disgrace and in disarray around the world, Joma's revolutionary ardor has been revived, and he now talks of a five-year build-up in the armed strength of the NPA and, presumably, the eventual victory of the Communist revolution during his lifetime, not after "hundreds of years."

And by now turning his attention to corrupt politicians and their corrupt bureaucrat partners-in-crimes and corrupt business and legal cronies, he may be veering away from his previous Maoist strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside and starving the urban centers into submission, which clearly has not worked in the past 40 years.

In 1991-92, Joma's leadership and pet Maoist strategy were challenged by Popoy Lagman who argued that Joma's countryside-based cadres were unable to grab the leadership of the urban middle-class uprising against Marcos in February 1986. Lagman split from Joma and took with him the most informed cadres in Metro Manila and Rizal Province.

Lagman chose as his model the Sandinistas of Nicagragua, which meant politicizing the urban squatters and industrial proletariat of Metro Manila, but he inexplicably allied himself with the haciendero Peping Cojuangco, whose beef with President Arroyo was her failure to appoint him (Cojuangco) to her Cabinet.

For his pains, Lagman was assassinated in 2002. Other leading anti-Joma comrades – Rolando Kintanar and Arturo Tabara – were similarly assassinated in 2002 and 2003. The murders were never solved, but the finger of suspicion inevitably pointed at Jose Maria Stalin. (In 1940, Leon Trotsky, who had challenged Josef Stalin in the 1930s for the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was assassinated in Mexico City.)

Targeting corrupt politicians and their corrupt bureaucrat allies and corrupt business and legal cronies would mean selective assassinations, mostly inside the cities. In the late 1980s, the NPA Sparrows did carry out selective assassinations in Metro Manila, but their targets were policemen directing traffic and soldiers on furlough, More than 200 of them were felled by the Sparrows, but it created a public backlash as many people felt that the victims did not deserve the revolutionary justice meted out on them.

By choosing instead to target corrupt trapos and their diabolic accomplices in the bureaucracy and the business and legal communities, a new, improved NPA could arguably win the moral support of the urban middle-classes who have despaired or are despairing that these blood-sucking parasites can ever be extirpated from our body politic by peaceful and constitutional means

Certainly, if I were leading an armed revolution against the state, I would long have looked in the direction that Joma is apparently now looking into, instead of wasting revolutionary resources toppling power and cell phone towers, or burning road-building equipment, or attacking remote police or army outposts, or staging street demonstrations that tie-up metro traffic and alienate the urban middle classes who are allergic to red flags, or churning out purple ideological prose that have long lost their power to zing.

For once I agree with Joma: there is no one in the opposition who is capable of reforming our rotten society. Which is why, since 2002, I have written several articles – all archived in www.tapatt.org - exploring the possibility of forming a revolutionary government, with the consent and participation of key sectors of society, for a fresh new start .

I realize, of course, that the most contentious issue in such a scenario would be: who would lead and make up such an unelected transition government. In a revolutionary situation that argument is usually settled, for better or for worse, in favor of the individual or group of individuals who are seen to be the best able to extirpate the unwanted parasites feasting on our putrefying body politic.

In the present Philippine context, that could only be either the military or the Communists.

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

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