A significant element in the message delivered by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-CC) on the 56th anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA) on Mar. 29, 2025 is a call for guerrillas to intensify political work within the military ranks and recruit “progressive and patriotic officers and men into the Crispin Tagamolila Movement (CTM.)”
CTM originally stood for Corpus-Tagamolila Movement until then Lt. Victor Corpus returned to military service after raiding the PMA armory in Dec. 1970 in the company of NPA leaders Juanito Rivera and Eduardo Lingat, both deceased and both closely associated with Bernabe “Ka Dante” Buscayno, the first NPA chief, and spending some years in Isabela teaching guerrillas how to handle explosives and wage tactical offensives. Tagamolila was killed in an encounter in Isabela, leaving a rural lass a widow who grieved his death while detained during martial law.
In its expanded message to the NPA, the central committee instructed NPA national, regional and front organizations “to conduct political work within the enemy’s ranks. We must systematically gather information about the internal situation, grievances and contradictions within enemy platoons, companies, battalions and higher command structures. Expose the abuses against rank-and-file military personnel and paramilitary conscripts.” Guerrillas were also urged to expose the corruption among officers in payroll system and delayed release of salaries and allowances, mulcting funds for so-called “rebel returnees,” collection of kickbacks in local projects, especially under the Support to Barangay Development Program (SBDP) of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and so on.
Moreover, the CPP leadership stressed that the revolutionary army should reveal how both the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) continue to be used by the US military as proxy and instrument for its geopolitical aims, especially in provoking armed conflict with its imperialist rival, China. In the past, the NPA had succeeded in winning over lower ranking soldiers and paramilitary elements, but as yet, the revitalized CTM will act as a shield against violent AFP-PNP counterattacks by raising doubts on the loyalty of troops in the field. It is an open secret within soldiers in the field that their superiors have been cashing in on the SBDP as well as the rewards for alleged NPA and CPP leaders slain in the field or “captured.” In a weird turn, the military arrested “Prudencio Calubid” two decades after he and his companions were arrested in Bicol, while another man was also nabbed and told that has been wanted in the Southern Tagalog region despite his not being the wanted man.
Since graft is baked into the military finance system just as corruption is wired into the operations of the government bureaucracy, there is hardly any chance for well-meaning soldiers to escape the stain except to resign, go on AWOL or simply desert and join the revolutionary movement. “The moribund semicolonial and semifeudal system continues to deteriorate, as the US-Marcos regime aggravates the economic crisis with anti-people and anti-national policies, worsens the political crisis with Marcos’ drive to tighten his grip on power, and further undermines national sovereignty with its subservience to US imperialism,” CPP explained. Amid rising protectionism of leading industrial capitalist powers, the Marcos regime continues to pursue the same neoliberal policies which have resulted in unprecedented destruction of local productive forces during the past four decades. These policies have benefited monopoly capitalist corporations and financial institutions and enriched the local big bourgeois compradors to the detriment of the broad toiling masses of workers and middle classes.
These policies have deepened the country’s backward, agrarian and non-industrial economy, and intensified joblessness, poverty and oppression. The country has become even more dependent on imports and deeper into debt. The chronic trade deficit is the worst in Southeast Asia and the billions of pesos in debt incurred monthly from domestic and foreign institutions has made it impossible to balance the national budget, leaving Filipinos highly indebted because of the incompetence of the Marcos Jr. regime. Marcos keeps opening-up the economy even as the centers of global capitalism led by the US are pursuing opposite protectionist policies to protect and revive their local industries, which heighten trade conflicts and sharpen economic rivalries. “In this context, the regime’s neoliberal policies and dependence on the US becomes more counterproductive than ever. It exposes the country to greater exploitation and unequal trade conditions.
These will further deepen the country’s economic subservience, and exacerbate the people’s situation, as Philippine export markets slump and the regime economy becomes increasingly desperate to attract foreign capital,” CPP warned. Poverty is pushing more and more Filipinos to take the path of armed struggle, the party said, and this should prompt the NPA to wage more tactical offensives to weaken dispersed military units. The sharp rise in the daily cost of living under Marcos Jr. is pushing millions of people into financial distress and intensifying poverty and hunger. Over 20 million families (up to 80%) are poor or in vulnerable financial circumstances, including millions of families misleadingly portrayed as middle-class. Since Marcos assumed power in 2022, the number of families in extreme poverty and going hungry had more than doubled from 3 million to 7.2 million. Joblessness, poor incomes and inadequate social services are steadily pulling down the quality of life of the vast majority of the Filipino people.
The broad masses of the Filipino people are suffering ever worsening socioeconomic conditions. Widespread joblessness is disguised by official statistics but worsening. Wages and income remain low, precarious and grossly unable to keep pace with soaring prices of food, fuel, basic commodities, utilities and services. The sharp rise in the daily cost of living under Marcos Jr. is pushing millions of people into financial distress and intensifying poverty and hunger. The Marcos regime keeps workers’ minimum wages way below decent living standards (but has ordered the doubling of allowances of his fascist soldiers). Workers, professionals and rank-and-file employees are forced to work additional jobs. Millions upon millions of Filipinos are jobless or without regular jobs. Nearly four-fifths (78%) of those officially reported as employed are in fact part-time, temporary and contractual, or informal workers. The acute crisis of unemployment in the Philippines forced close to 2.5 million Filipinos to seek employment overseas last year, increasing the number of overseas Filipinos to more than 11.5 million. (DIEGO MORRA)
