It used to be that the revolutionary Left (the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army or CPP-NPA) had a mythic place in people’s imaginations, especially among the activist youth. The NPA was considered “Nice People Around.” The youth looked up to the late CPP Founder and Chairman, Jose Ma. Sison, whose nom de guerre was “Amado Guerrero” or “Beloved Warrior” and the former NPA Chief, Bernabe Buscayno, aka “Ka Dante,” as revolutionary gods on the altar of activism and patriotism.
Even in upper and middle-class households, the Left was respected and revered. Ed Jopson, the Jesuit-educated former Ateneo Student Council president and son of a prosperous supermarket owner, turned his back on his moderate roots and joined the revolutionary underground. He died as a high-ranking leader of the CPP-NPA in Mindanao on a raid in his house in Davao in 1982.
The attraction of the Left was such that priests, nuns, and convent schoolgirls could cite Guerrero’s Philippine Society and Revolution as much as the Bible, and some even joined the NPA in the hills.
That was then. Fast forward 50 years later. Last May, the Economist magazine wrote what could probably be an obituary of the CPP-NPA. In the article titled “The Philippines Once Proud Insurgents are Out of Ammo,” the Economist declared that the CPP-NPA guerrillas had become a relic. It had ceased to be an internal security threat, dwindling to about 2,000 fighters from about 25,000 at its height during the anti-Marcos struggle. As its ranks dwindled, according to the article, the CPP-NPA became lost in arcane ideological debate and turned to extorting “revolutionary taxes.” The old man Sison died in exile in December 2022 while its Chairman and Secretary General, the revolutionary couple Benito and Wilma Tiamzon, perished in a boat explosion while being pursued by Philippine government armed forces. The revolution didn’t work out, the Economist cynically declared.
How did it come to this? Putting it in their own dialectical terms, how could heroes transform into its opposite, and become heels? There are many reasons. I will attempt to cite them all.
Geopolitics suddenly put the CPP-NPA backward in history. In other words, geopolitics made the CPP-NPA ideology irrelevant. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Communist China, which Sison et. al. regarded as the revolutionary utopia, ceased being communist under Deng. Ideology was ditched in favor of capitalist practicality. “I don’t care whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” Under capitalism — euphemistically called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” — China transformed from being a poor Third World country into a global economic superpower.
Also, driven by its quest for revolutionary purity at all costs, the CPP-NPA tarnished its brand. Under its Operation Ahos, it committed involuntary disappearances and executions of its own members and red fighters in the 1980s on suspicions that they were DPAs or Deep Penetration Agents. Its commitment to human rights proved to be a sham.
It was also shown that the CPP-NPA was behind the Plaza Miranda bombing in 1971. According to sources and witnesses, Sison ordered the bombing of the Liberal Party rally in Plaza Miranda, believing that it would be blamed on Marcos Sr. and the ensuing repression would radicalize the moderate opposition, generating more fighters and cadres for the revolution. No less than Lt. Victor Corpus, former PMA graduate and former defector to the NPA, and journalist and Manila Times columnist Rigoberto Tiglao, a former leading official of the CPP, have attested to the truth of Sison being behind this terrorist incident.
However, the Philippine government’s programs also succeeded in taking the oxygen out of the insurgency. One was the agrarian reform program that started in 1987. Although there were flaws in its design and execution so that the comprehensive land reform program failed to raise agricultural productivity and deliver the farmers out of poverty, it was a success as a land distribution program. The World Bank has declared the country’s land reform program the most successful land distribution program in the world, attaining 70% of its target.
With former tenants owning a tiny piece of land, the revolutionary Left could no longer cry “land to the landless.” Its analysis of the country being “semi-feudal” became bereft of reality. This is why the CPP-NPA moved its operations to the uplands and tried recruiting disaffected lumads and other indigenous peoples.
The other program was the 4Ps or the Conditional Cash Transfer Program, which directly distributes cash aid to the poorest of the poor and marginalized families. It was started under former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, expanded under former President Benigno Aquino III, and was codified into law under former President Rodrigo Duterte. The program counts more than 4 million beneficiary households.
Why did it also help to take the oxygen out of the insurgency? Because the program enabled the government to be felt in poor households, whereas before, it was absent or non-existent. Because the program was a threat to the insurgency, former Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Judy Tagiwalo, a leftist in Duterte’s Cabinet, opposed it.
However, more than external events, the revolutionary Left was a victim of its own ideological dogmatism. It wasn’t only its political blunder of boycotting the 1986 elections when Cory Aquino was elected that presaged the Left’s demise. Rather, due to its nationalist, anti-foreign ideology, it became allies of domestic monopolists as it continued to oppose opening the economy to more competition from foreign corporations. (Alliance with the oligarchy is rationalized in their ideology as forging a united front with the “nationalist bourgeoisie.”)
Its political and economic program verged on the ridiculous. For example, its program called for the nationalization of industries. A government that can’t even run an MRT well is expected to run steel and telecommunications companies just because Jose Ma Sison has taken over the government?! The people who daily experience the state’s incompetence and corruption saw through the bankruptcy of the Left’s vision for the country.
The election to the presidency of the son of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., under which the CPP grew, is an exclamation point to the demise of the revolutionary Left. So pathetic has the Left become that it has suffered politically in the aboveground. The Socialist candidate for President in the last elections, Leody de Guzman, got a mere 0.2% of the vote. The leftist parties got three seats under the party-list system (pasang awa by the Comelec) where they used to get nine or more seats.
Hail to the death of the old Left, but a new Left needs to be reborn. To infuse political dynamism and creative change in Philippine society, a new Left is needed to struggle with the Right. It’s not only about human rights that the voice of the Left must be heard, but also on social issues like divorce, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights, and on economic issues of inequality, rent-seeking, inclusion, competition, consumer welfare, poverty alleviation, and market failures. Instead of siding with the monopolists as the old Left has done, the new Left must be progressive and be on the side of consumers.
In the meantime, the dying of the Left gives President Bongbong Marcos, Jr. the historic opportunity to pursue development under favorable political conditions and without dealing with internal security threats to the state. The other internal security threat, the Moro rebellion, has largely been defused with the signing of a Bangsamoro Autonomous Peace Agreement. Further, the dying of the revolutionary Left means less political support for anti-foreign, anti-capitalist, anti-market ideas. The political environment has never been more hospitable to development and pro-market reforms.
Calixto V. Chikiamco is a member of the board of IDEA (Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis).