IF history teaches us a lesson, it was the erroneous policies of the administrations of Presidents Corazon C. Aquino and her successor Fidel V. Ramos that gave life to the world’s longest-running communist insurgency in the Philippines.
On one hand, Mrs. Aquino ignored then-Defense Secretary and now senatorial candidate Juan Ponce Enrile who advised her against arbitrarily releasing ranking members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, including CPP Chairman Jose Maria Sison, who were then serving prison sentences.
Sison and Dante Buscayno, New People’s Army commander, were respectively placed in the custody of Joker Arroyo, President Aquino’s first Executive Secretary, and Doña Aurora Aquino, the president’s mother-in-law.
Sison subsequently escaped to Eastern Europe and then settled in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on a passport issued by the Aquino administration, where he relentlessly directed the armed and political struggle against the Philippine government with other members of the CPP Central Committee, who later joined him there.
Sison and other key CPP members were convicted by the courts for waging an insurgent war for more than two decades. Their top-ranked left-of-center socialist democratic (Socdem) allies were, likewise, imprisoned for exploding bombs and burning shopping malls and hotels that killed innocent people, including American nationals.
Worse, the Aquino administration, after issuing Proclamation No. 2 that granted general amnesty to Communist rebels and their socialist democrat allies employed many of them in her government, compromised national security and triggered a spate of rebellion in the police and military organizations. Hundreds of these leftist allies later went back to the hills and resumed fighting against the government.
On the other hand, President Ramos naively repealed on September 22, 1992, the country’s only national security law, Republic Act (RA) 1700 enacted by Congress on June 20, 1957. As a result, the repeal created a serious security vacuum.
RA 1700 was specifically designed to outlaw the Communist Party of the Philippines and other subversive organizations, including terrorists of the Abu Sayyaf, Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Moro National Liberation Front, penalizing membership therein and for other purposes.
Ironically, both Aquino and Ramos wanted but failed to win the coveted Nobel Peace Prize. In short, they sacrificed national security and the safety of the people for their own personal glory.
In Marcos’s time, the New People’s Army (NPA), the guerrilla arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) , had only 16,500 regulars. And none of them could operate at will in Metro Manila.
By 1988, the NPA had an armed strength of 25,200, including 2,500 operating in Metro Manila. Worse, 20 percent of the country’s 42,000 barangays or villages were under CPP-NPA’s influence.
Oddly, this was the same year that President Aquino announced in her second State of the Nation Address that “the insurgency was broken.”
Broken? Look at this: between 1988 and early 1992, 78 policemen and military men were systematically assassinated by the NPAs in Metro Manila alone.
Only Enrile, now running under the Pwersa ng Masa, and the reformist officers questioned President Aquino’s unilateral release from prison of the Communists and their allies at the height of the Edsa euphoria.
Enrile told President Aquino and her then Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo that releasing the leftists from prison without first requiring them to renounce armed struggle and pledging allegiance to the flag and the Constitution would be a dangerous move.
This is so because for the insurgents, the most important battlefield is not the military one but the political, social and economic fronts where they built their foundation and have made tremendous gains over the past five decades.
For instance, from 26 leftist front organizations at the end of the Marcos regime, they have expanded to more than 200 organizations with headquarters in Utretch, the Netherlands, a network in other countries similar to al-Qaeda, and many of their members are already sharing power with the then Aquino and Ramos administrations after having successfully infiltrated Malacañang, Congress, labor, church, media, schools and universities and other sectors of society.
The job to eradicate the root causes of insurgency belongs largely to the civilian authority, but it often received only lip service from the policy-makers although they are at the frontlines of the guerrilla war.
Because the functions and responsibilities of the police and military are not clearly defined and prioritized, there is no agreed means by which the people can gauge the military overall capabilities and performance.
Clearly, those who anticipated spectacular battlefield victories were, and still are, not familiar with the way the enemies operate, and will undoubtedly be disappointed at the outcome of the war. For instance, the classic guerrilla tactic of the NPA make it an elusive and difficult target even for an armed forces not suffering from a serious intelligence failure, leadership and expensive multilayered command and control structure.
The enemies do not operate in a vacuum. Their operations are inextricably linked to the above ground organizations and this is so because for them, the military is not the most important battleground but the political, social and economic fronts where the major causes of rebellion are rooted.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.