The
New People’s Army (NPA) started out as a band of armed peasants led
by Bernabe Buscayno better known as Kumander Dante. This group
emerged from the past Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP)-Huk
actions in the late 1960s. The residuals of the old Hukbalahap
guerillas played significant roles in the establishment of this
peasant armed group. Meanwhile, the communist party experienced a
problem during its inception, it has no peasant base to complement
its supposed peasant-led and Maoist inspired revolution. After a few
months, the CPP found an ally in the Tarlac-based peasant armed group
and what followed was the birth of the CPP-NPA.
After
over forty years of armed struggle, the NPA has slowly lost its
significance as its numbers are slowly dwindling from a peak of more
than 20 thousand fighters in the mid 1980s to its present strength of
just over 4,000 regular fighters, mostly new recruits. In their 2009
year-end assessment, the CPP leadership acknowledged the lack of
potential political cadres as one of the major factors that led to
the decline in the recruitment of regular members. Added to this, the
issues that triggered the mass exodus of members and political cadres
in the countryside during the Marcos regime already became
non-existent in the present political situation. The general public’s
awareness about the deceptive strategy of the CPP-NPA has also been
more pronounced more than ever. Thanks to our soldiers, the
anti-communist party-list groups and non-government organizations who
continue to educate and inform the public about the communist party’s
ulterior motive which is to destroy our democratic way of life and
seize political power.
And
to ensure the survival of its guerilla units, the NPA has been
engaged in atrocious criminal acts like arson, extortion (a.k.a.
revolutionary taxation), and bombing of important establishments.
These are done under their party line of “advancing the
revolutionary struggle”. Many hardcore NPA cadres have made a
profitable business and money-making scheme out of the so called
“revolutionary taxation”. While the ordinary red fighters
sacrifice their lives and limbs in miserable daily conditions in the
countryside, their top cadres are enriching themselves while living
in luxury and comfort in the cities and a few top CPP leaders abroad.
Today, the CPP-NPA is no different from other syndicated crime groups
who prey on big businessmen and innocent civilians to raise the
needed funds and sustain their illegal criminal activities. To
whether the present day NPA can still be considered an insurgent
group or not is already out of the question. What is clear now is
that the NPA has already mastered the art of banditry.
So what is your take people?
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