NPA claims ‘growing’ Negros base

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines – The New People’s Army assailed the statement of the Philippine Army that its number is decreasing.

Ka Estrella Banagbanag, spokesperson of the NPA’s Rachelle Mae Palang Command of the Southeast Front, said in a statement that the army is “dreaming in broad daylight in claiming that they have decisively weakened and reduced to being insignificant or inconsequential the revolutionary forces in southeast Negros.”

The units of NPA in the guerilla front of southeast Negros have successfully preserved themselves and gradually but surely increased the numbers of its fighters from the ranks of struggling peasant masses, workers and educated youth, the statement said.

They are the new sprout of the revolution who will continue the fight of the fallen comrades martyred in the battlefield and other circumstances, the statement added.

Revolt on

As the NPA marked its 46th founding anniversary on Sunday, they reiterated “our commitment to persevere in waging the armed struggle and bringing it to a new and higher level in consonance with the party’s strategic plan to achieve strategic stalemate from the current strategic defensive of the people’s war.”

Despite the onslaught of Oplan Bayanihan, with fascist troops forcibly embedded in peasant communities in the countryside masquerading as “peace and development teams” doing “community organizing” work, the revolutionary movement’s mass base remains intact and expanded, the statement said.

It added that the enemy's duplicity and deception could not hoodwink the masses into submission who are for decades tempered in the struggle of building a truly democratic people's government along socialist line and orientation.

The objective situation in southeast Negros in waging and intensifying the revolutionary struggle is more favorable than ever, the statement said.

No To One-Island

Further, the NPA reiterated its call against the proposed one-island region, which was championed by Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr.

“The bid has further depressed the already miserable condition of the masses under the semi-feudal and semi-colonial social order. Whenever there is oppression and exploitation, resistance is inevitable. It is only a matter of time that the social volcano of Negros will erupt and sweep away the exploiters and their cohorts,” the statement said.

The NPA called on the Negrenses “to unite against the Machiavellian One Island, One Region scheme of Marañon, who is neoliberal and anti-people to core.”

“For the sake of people’s welfare and interest, it must be stopped,” the NPA stressed, adding that they will do its share by waging selective and fastidious campaigns and actions against Marañon’s plan. – /JMD