Gain strength and expand to advance the people's war
Editorial,
Ang Bayan,
21 December 2010
The current call to raise the level of people's war in the coming years to the stage of strategic stalemate is a huge inspiration to the Party, the people's army and the revolutionary movement. They are determined to meet the new challenges, fulfill the new tasks, invigorate and raise the quality of mass struggles and further advance the people's war in an all-sided way.
The call is founded on the gains achieved in more than four decades of advancing people's war in the stage of strategic defensive, and on the successes in overcoming the enemy's vicious campaigns of suppression. Of particular note is the defeat of Oplan Bantay Laya, the most brutal and bloodiest counterrevolutionary campaign unleashed by the fascist state that caused many hardships and trials in the past decade.
The worsening crisis of the international capitalist system and the moribund semicolonial and semifeudal system in the country that has inflicted more suffering on the people is pushing them to fight for their patriotic and democratic interests and advance the revolution.
In order to raise revolutionary warfare to a higher the stage, we need to be more daring and persevering in the fulfillment of the tasks that the Party has underscored in the face of the new challenges and relatively newer and more complicated conditions.
It is important for the entire Party and the revolutionary forces to study, grasp and unite on the bases, correctness, requisites and tasks in advancing people's war towards the stage of strategic stalemate within the first half of the decade.
Most important of all is to all-sidedly strengthen the Party in the ideological, organizational, political and military fields.
This will mean further stepping up recruitment into the Party, ensuring its expansion in factories, schools, offices, villages, communities, organizations and wherever we operate in the countryside and cities. The deepest wellsprings for the recruitment and development of cadres and members of the Party are the mass organizations and mass movement, both open and underground. These organizations and movements must be further expanded, invigorated and strengthened through assiduous and tireless propaganda work, arousing, recruiting and mobilizing the masses.
Daringly win over and mobilize the various sectors of the people, especially the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie in mass struggles to fight for their immediate and basic interests. Raise the level of their political consciousness and militancy through vigorous propaganda and painstakingly explaining the burning issues of the day in accordanc with Marxist-Leninist and national-democratic analyses. This can be effectively done by addressing their problems and issues that demonstrate the rottenness of the prevailing system and push them to wage resistance. Make sure that they are promptly given political education particular to their sector or organization and general national-democratic courses. We must make sure that those qualified to be recruited into the Party are provided basic Party education.
We must ensure that the Party is deeply rooted among the masses. We must rapidly and continuously expand, develop and harvest new recruits into the Party. In order for the people's war to make the leap towards the stage of strategic stalemate, we must be able to generate thousands more cadres and more than 200,000 additional Party members. We must be good at deploying Party members and cadres where they are most needed.
The fields that need the most number of additional Party cadres and forces, mass activists and good national-democratic revolutionary elements are the people's army and the armed struggle, agrarian struggles and revolutionary base building. These cadres, activists and elements are the key to further advancing people's war throughout the country. We must establish various formations of the New People's Army en masse and advance armed struggle nationwide. Guerrilla fronts must encompass the more than 170 rural congressional districts. Each municipality in most areas of the countryside must have an NPA platoon. Bigger revolutionary bases must be established.
Tens of thousands of Party and NPA cadres and forces must be developed and trained. We must raise their ability to lead guerrilla forces at various levels, people's militia and self-defense corps and partisan units in cities within guerrilla fronts. We must raise their ability to lead higher vertical formations and combinations thereof from time to time for big military actions. We need people who can lead small to big tactical offensives against enemy military forces and build and consolide sections and guerrilla fronts, inter-front subregional military areas as well as other military work.
Asside from deploying Party cadres, activists and forces of the national-democratic movement to advance the mass movement and armed struggle, we must also deploy forces to advance alliance and united front work. This enables us to expand greatly in various revolutionary endeavors such as armed struggle and the mass movements. It broadens our unity, divides the enemy and helps accelerate and facilitate the attainment of revolutionary victory in the various arenas of struggle.
Especially in a situation where the current clique in power is severely dominated by imperialist, comprador and landlord interests and is thoroughly servile to them, we must give priority to, and persevere in, the allout advance of the broadest and most vigorous anti-imperialist and antifeudal mass movement and alliance. This can contribute a lot to the advance of the revolutionary movement and people's struggles.
These are but some of the requirements for preparing, raising the capability and fulfilling the requisites and tasks of advancing the people's war to a higher level. The Party will continue to identify and disseminate the many other requirements while preparing for and advancing the various tasks and meeting the requisites for accomplishing these.
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