FERDINAND MARCOS (Ika-Anim na Bahagi)

NOONG nakaraang buwan, ginunita ng bansa ang ika-50 anibersaryo ng makasaysayang deklarasyon ng batas militar sa bansa. Ito ang simula ng diktadurya ni Ferdinand Marcos. Tumagal ang diktadurya ng 13 taon hanggang sinipa si Marcos ng sambayanan sa isang mapayapang himagsikan noong 1986. Mahalagang maintindihan ang diktadurya. Kinakatawan nito ang madilim na kahapon ng bansa kung saan lampas $10 bilyon, o P600 bilyon, ang ninakaw ni Marcos mula sa kaban ng bayan, pagsakmal ng mga kroni ni Marcos sa kabuhayan ng bansa, at malawakang paglabag sa karapatang pantao ng libo-libong mamamayan na mga ikinulong ng walang sakdal, ginulpi, at dinukot na hanggang ngayon hindi malaman kung nasaan.

May isinusulat akong aklat tungkol sa diktadurya ni Marcos. Wala pa akong desisyon sa pamagat ng aking aklat. Kasalukuyan ko pa itong tinatapos. Narito ang ilang halaw:

COMMUNIST INSURGENCY UNDER MARTIAL LAW

Contrary to what Ferdinand Marcos postulated on nationwide television on the fateful night of September 23, 1972, the issue of communist insurgency was not big enough to threaten national security. But he exaggerated the communist insurgency to justify martial law. The reorganized Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was not big during those days. It had a hundred cadres scattered nationwide mostly in rural areas. Its military arm, the New People’s Army, (NPA) had few guerilla squads armed with about 60 firearms, mostly outmoded handguns. Marcos effectively used the CPP-NPA as the proverbial bogeyman to declare martial law, take the authoritarian route, and prolong his presidency into a dictatorship beyond 1973, the year it was supposed to end under the colonial 1935 Constitution.

The anti-Marcos forces of varying political persuasions unilaterally suffered decreased activity triggered by the restrictions and repression of the martial law declaration. They could not launch protest movements, mass actions, or labor strikes without mass arrests, indefinite imprisonment, and torture in the hands of the military or arresting police officers. But it did not mean the anti-Marcos forces were down and out. On the contrary, many qualitative changes occurred unexpectedly. Aside from the national democrats, who have their reorganized CPP-NPA with thousands of cadres, social democratic groups, for instance, merged in reaction to the repression triggered by martial law.

By May, 1973, a major faction of the social democrats appeared to have metamorphosed into the Partido Demokratiko-Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (PDSP). They formed their bands of guerillas, who trained in the jungles of Sabah with guerillas of the MNLF’s Bangsa Moro Army. Certain social democrats joined the armed struggle being waged by the national democrats. They went to the hills, joined the NPA, and were killed in action.

Threatened by arrests and imprisonment, activists belonging to the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK) and their proletarian counterparts went out of their operational bases in the cities and transferred to the rural areas. In many instances, they joined the NPA to boost its ranks with new warm bodies. Three years since its establishment, the CPP underwent a perceptible change to reshape into a national security threat against the Marcos authoritarian government. Moreover, it was no longer limited to the Greater Manila-Rizal area and Tarlac, where it was founded. It settled in the provinces of Isabela and the mountainous Cordillera, where the terrain favored their Maoist doctrine of a peasant-based protracted people’s war. By 1975, it had opened guerilla fronts in several provinces and fully embraced armed struggle to gain political power.

In his 1974 essay, “Specific Characteristics of our People’s War,” CPP chair Jose Ma. Sison reaffirmed armed struggle as the primary means to obtain political power to pursue what he billed the “national democratic revolution” in preparation for the ensuing “socialist revolution.” Sison identified the two main weapons of the revolutionary forces: armed struggle and national united front. It did not discount the use of parliamentary, but stressed that between armed and parliamentary struggle, armed struggle is principal, while parliamentary struggle is secondary.

On armed struggle, Sison said: “In carrying out a people’s war, the Party builds the people’s army as its main form of organization. It is not only an organization where the Party membership is most concentrated. It is also an organization for uniting the proletarian revolutionaries and the peasant masses both within the army and in the localities. In this way, the basic alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry so necessary in a national united front takes the most effective concrete form.”

On the national united front, Sison explained: “The basic alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry is the foundation of the national united front. The stronger this alliance is in the course of people’s war, the stronger is the desire of the urban petty bourgeoisie to join the national united front and take active part in revolutionary work. Likewise, the national bourgeoisie is encouraged to bring its support to such basic forces of the revolution as the proletariat, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie. At this stage of the revolution, the leadership of the Party and the proletariat is best proven by its ability to build a people’s army and realize the basic alliance of the toiling masses.”

Five years after its establishment, the CPP created 20 guerilla fronts in seven regions outside the Manila-Rizal area, he said. Sison said: “These fronts continue to thrive in the countryside even in the face of the unprecedentedly harsh fascist counter-measures. When the enemy advances in strong force against our small and weak forces, he is made to exhaust himself by punching the air and he merely allows his prey to hit weaker enemy units elsewhere or expand on new ground. The massive and prolonged enemy campaign of ‘encirclement and suppression’ has failed to destroy our small and weak forces in Cagayan Valley.”

Aside from being a revolutionary and CPP chair since its inception in 1968, Jose Maria C. Sison was a prolific writer, who wrote two influential books, “Struggle for National Democracy” and “Philippine Society and Revolution.” He wrote a number of essays and poems, many of which were award-winning. He was born on February 8, 1939. He was a scion of a father, who belonged to the land-owning class in the idyllic town of Cabugao in Ilocos Sur.

He went to Manila for his high school; first, at Ateneo University, but he transferred to Letran College. He took his college education in the secular University of the Philippines, finishing the four-year course in English in three years, majoring in creative writing and journalism. He founded the UP Student Cultural Association (SCAUP), which called for reformist mass actions and changes in reaction to the communist hysteria against prominent Filipinos.

Ninotschka Rosca, a Filipino literary writer and Sison’s contemporary at UP, described him a “self-made Marxist,” who devoured Marxist writings at the UP Library. At UP, he met his wife, Juliet de Lima, who belongs to the prominent de Lima clan in Camarines del Sur. In 1962, he joined as a youth leader the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), which was then headed by the Lava siblings. In 1964, Sison founded the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) to become the vanguard youth organization to oppose Vietnam War and U.S. presence in East Asia. In 1968, he founded the CPP and went underground and sported the alias Amado Guerrero.

In 1968, Sison met Bernabe Buscayno, who originally belonged to the moribund Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB), PKP’s military arm. Buscayno carried the code-name “Dante” in HMB, a moniker which he used in the underground. He became disillusioned after the faction to which he belonged degenerated into a band engaged in criminal activity like protection racket and hired killing. Buscayno joined Sison to form the NPA, becoming its founder and first commander. The NPA was officially formed on March 29, 1969.

Buscayno was the seventh of eight children of a poor peasant couple in the town of Capas in Tarlac province. He was a high school drop-out, who became a cane cutter (sacada), earning P18 for five days of work per week. Although the NPA started with about 50 or 60 fighters and a few firearms, it grew under Buscayno’s leadership to become a potent force. The intellectual ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s attracted many middle-class students to join the NPA. Joining the NPA was something that became fashionable those days because it stressed protest. It was romantic to become an anti-establishment revolutionary.

The CPP-NPA suffered reverses when Bernabe Buscayno was first arrested in 1976 under “Oplan Scorpio,” a military plan to capture high ranking CPP-NPA leaders. Jose Ma. Sison was captured too in late 1977. A young activist and UP college dropout named Rodolfo Salas, aka Kumander Bilog, replaced Buscayno. When Sison was captured, Salas was reported to have become CPP chair in a concurrent capacity as NPA commander. By 1973, the CPP completed the creation of the National Democratic Front (NDF) as CPP’s political arm. It sought to embrace non-party members under its umbrella and help CPP in its international works. (Itutuloy)