The threat of the underground Left overthrowing the established government began when his father was president, can now be considered officially ended, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said over the weekend.
In a video message over Facebook, the President said the military reported that there was no longer any active communist guerilla front. That the fight to end local terrorism can now be considered a success.
According to Marcos, “Now, we can report that there are no more active NPA (New People’s Army) guerilla fronts as of December 2023.”
He, however, added that his administration “will continue to fight for this.”
Presidential Communications Sec. Cheloy Garafil clarified that having neutralized all of the NPA’s guerilla fronts does not mean that there are no longer any communist rebels. There are still strongholds of the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines, according to Garafil.
Previously considered as the longest continuously active Maoist insurgency movement in the world, the Philippine communist movement lost ground when the national government was able to have them declared as terrorists, rather than rebels.
This caused them to lose legitimate financial support from communist parties in other parts of the world.
Prior to Marcos’s announcement, the Armed Forces of the Philippines earlier this month similarly reported that there were no longer any NPA fronts due to their intense and focused military operations.
The AFP said they were able to dismantle eight and weakened 14 communist guerilla groups in 2023.
Recently, National Security Council Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya stated that the NPA was now at its weakest in its 55 years of existence. He said the number of armed combatants has gone down to less than 1,500.
Although the Marcos administration was claiming victory after victory in the field, it still offered to revive talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the umbrella organization which includes the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as its political arm and the NPA as its armed wing.
The President said the decision to revive peace talks was a “bold” and “meaningful” step towards national reconciliation.
The CPP/NPA/NDF can be considered a continuation of the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon or Hukbalahap movement, a guerilla force that fought the Japanese invaders during World War ll.
Headed by peasant leader Luis Taruc, the Huks as they later became known, rejected the US support for the Philippine government that had been re-established after the war.
The movement gained enough strength that it had surrounded the capital city of Manila by the 1950s.
The government, however, had a hero in then Defense Sec. Ramon Magsaysay, who is credited with breaking the movement’s back. Magsaysay was later elected president but was killed in a plane crash before the end of his first term.
During the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos senior, the communist movement was reborn under the leadership of UP professor Jose Ma. Sison in tandem with Bernabe Buscayno (AKA Commander Dante), who formed the New People’s Army.
It is worth noting that Taruc famously said that “he who rides the tiger by the tail eventually gets devoured by it.”
Like Taruc, Buscayno also eventually rejected the underground movement, spending his post-revolutionary days organizing enterprises for the rural poor in Central Luzon.
Sison, however, continued to fight the government after going into exile in the Netherlands, where he passed away on December 19, 2022. The movement was also weakened by a schism that occurred in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. A group in the Visayas severed its ties with the CPP but continued to operate as a separate rebel movement.