Friday, December 29, 2006 Editorial: Violence is not the way
AN ASSOCIATED Press report says that the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has called on its people to recruit thousands of new members and ordered them to punish alleged human rights violators.
The call was made on the 38th anniversary of the Maoist movement last December 26.
If the CPP needs thousands of new members with which to beef up its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), it must mean that the rebels have been losing heavily against government forces. The call to punish human rights violators must also mean that those militants who have been killed under mysterious circumstances that the CPP attributes to the government has after all been supporters of the rebel movement -- therefore enemies of the state.
Thirty-eight years of armed struggle with final victory nowhere in sight is simply too long as to raise the question of its relevance. Why have the communist rebels failed to convince the Filipino people that their ultimate destiny lies in the hands of the CPP and the NPA despite the almost four decades of struggle?
The ordinary man-on-the-street has long ago realized that there really is no rosy future under a communist regime. They realize that there is no communist regime, which is not repressive to the nth degree. There is no real freedom under authoritarian rule. The human being wants to have the power or right to act, speak, or think without hindrance or prior restraint as long as it does not violate other people's rights.
Is it any wonder then why after all these 38 years the communist rebel movement in this country has failed to attain its political goal through the violence that its armed components have perpetrated on the very people it has sworn to serve?
The original leaders of the communist insurgency are 38 years older today. Perhaps it is time that they and their junior officers take time out to rethink their strategy on how to win the people over to their side.
