Last update: May 1, 2008
STATEMENT ON THE OCCASION OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE RPM-M
RPM-M YOUTH COMMISSION
May 1, 2008
The Youth Movement is generally an integral part of the mass movement that aims to achieve revolutionary change of the society. With the defensive status of the over-all revolutionary movement and the offensives of capitalism through its neo-liberal policies, the revolutionary youth movement needs to strengthen its ranks and intensify its struggle of achieving genuine reforms and revolution, along with the over-all revolutionary movement of the society.
In this historic occasion of the Party’s anniversary, the Young Cadres Conference and the Youth Commission re-affirms with enthusiasm its commitment and conviction in performing its revolutionary tasks in implementing the Party’s Socialist Project. Despite the challenges, apart from the capitalists and the state, like the hostile policies of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army – National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) and the Revolutionary Workers Party of the Philippines – Revolutionary Proletariat Army – Alex Bongcayao Brigade (RWPP-RPA-ABB) and the opportunists, liquidationists and ideologically-bankrupt former comrades who corrupted the Party’s Electoral Machinery, the Party remained intact, deeply rooted with the tri-people masses’ struggles and conscious of the present condition.
The Young Cadres salute the leadership, the membership, the party’s supporters and sympathizers and the toiling masses for all the concrete victories that we collectively achieve and for standing-by our revolutionary principles and for continuing our struggle towards genuine societal change.
This struggle is not as easy one but history, the present situation, the commitment of the revolutionaries all-over the world and the support of the masses manifests that we can collectively topple down an oppressive social structure, end up oppression and build an alternative society – a society defined by justice, freedom, human dignity and peace.
May the blood offered by our fallen comrades continue to give warmth to all of us! Ever onward to Victory!
MODELLING THE TRANSITION FROM VIOLENCE TO PEACE
The RPM-M Experience
GTZ Partner’s Forum
Waterfront Hotel, Davao City
December 6, 2007
INTRODUCTION
Initiatives and methods to transform violence to less violent and to peace are as varied as the diversities of circumstances and contexts they find themselves in. The creativities of the peacebuilders with the stakeholders have added beauty to these initiatives and peacebuilding activities.
The poverty reduction, conflict resolution and transformation which the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa – Mindanao (RPM-M) have been evolving with its current peace talks with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) are just part of these initiatives. The RPMM shares this experience as its small contribution to the peace building efforts in Mindanao and in the country.
The RPM-M was founded on May 1, 2001. It has been a product of global context and the internal dynamics of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Both these external and internal factors have positively influenced and radically changed the RPMM concepts of war and peace, belief and ideology. In fact, the dynamics brought about by the rethinking and reinvisioning have greatly resulted and provided reason for RPMM’s being.
The significant changes in the geopolitics after the cold war have caused the disappearance of the bi-polar world order. It can be observed for instance that most of the wars have been fought not anymore between nation-states but rather internal and civil wars where most of the victims are civilians and non-combatants.
This trend can be attributed to the disappearance of the cold war conflicts which had been mainly based on class conflicts (micro and macro levels). There had also been a resurgence of wars caused by issues on nationalism and ethnicity especially during those times. Today, the situation has been changed and made complicated by the post 9/11 event and the eventual launching of war on terror when wars have been declared and waged on global scale and without borders.
The total collapse of the Soviet Socialist sphere and the significant change of the socialist outlook of China have caused not only confusion on socialist paradigm among revolutionary groups but also resulted in an unrestrained expansion of globalization of the neo-liberal led capitalism that has had a great impact on efforts and struggles for nationalist and democratic societies and economies.
The unlimited opening-up of poor countries (like the Philippines) of their economies to the dictates of the global market has fuelled and intensified tensions and conflicts between and among the peoples and their governments and those responsible for these oppressive policies but safely hiding behind the multi-lateral and international institutions.,
International financial and multi-lateral bodies like the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have had more influence and played decisive role in the poor countries’ economy, political and cultural lives of their people and perspectives. There have been obviously increased of globalized conflicts and tensions beyond the control of the governments of nation-states and yet the causes of such tensions remain faceless and hidden behind the international institutions and their policies.
Conflicts and tensions within the poor countries have intensified because of widespread practices of graft and corruption and absence of moral values and ascendancies by governments to continue to govern and to lead their peoples freely and democratically.
The failure to significantly address such changes in the global order and the shift in paradigm of Socialism by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has caused tensions and conflicts within the Party which eventually led to its splits in the early ‘90’s.
THE RPMM’S VISION OF PEACE
The significant changes brought about the globalized tensions and conflicts have influenced the outlook and frameworks of various institutions, groups, and revolutionary parties to review and rethink their strategies and methodologies in conflict transformation and peace building works.
The RPMM strongly believes that effective methods to transform conflict and build infrastructure for peace is to understand the nature and causes of conflicts in their historical and current contexts. It has fully understood that the conflicts, violence and war in the Philippines had been caused by the globalized greed and exploitation of the more than 50% of its population by the few whose claim is enshrined in the neo-liberal led capitalist policies and in direct connivance of the big and local capitalists and implemented by government machineries.
This kind of set-up has historically evolved and intensified in the current period. It has fortified the system of effectively blocking or even stifling the all-sided development of the people to freely determine their economic, political and cultural lives. This is the system that has directly caused the extreme poverty and violence in the country today. It has continuously created the development and intensification of the militarist and terrorist framework within the opposite pole of the divide.
This kind of conflict and violence as perpetuated by a system in the country that the RPMM anchors its conflict transformation and peace building works today.
RPMM has launched a revolutionary struggle to address and help resolve the exploitative and oppressive system and to help achieve a radical change in the country. It clearly understands that revolutionary struggle to achieve radical change is not only done through the armed revolution. In the current context such change can effectively be achieved mainly thru non-war options.
The operationalization of the radical and peaceful options has been translated into struggles for concrete reforms with its strategic contents of democracy and anti-capitalist globalization. The gains and victories of the struggles for reforms will eventually weakened the system that breeds conflicts and violence and nurture the growth of the seed of genuine and sustainable peace.
The concept of peace for the RPMM is the process of struggling and achieving the democratic and nationalist aspirations of the peoples of Mindanao together with the people of the country and in unity of all the peoples of the world.
The conflict transformation and peace building for the RPMM is the intertwining of the process and their goals. It is decisively important for the RPMM that the manner in which the stakeholders and interest groups participate in the conflict transformation and peace building process for it will determine the nature of what it wants to achieve.
The paradigm shift helps the RPMM to understand violence and conflicts in the light of its concept of peace and work to change the system and the infrastructure which have caused and perpetrated them.
Building peace is building opportunities and creating situation where the poverty of the people is concretely addressed mainly by the people themselves working for a better economic situation and at the same time strengthening and empowering them to work for the resolution of the conflicts and sustain efforts in the eradication of reasons for their poverty.
For the RPMM, working and building peace is achieving concrete development of the economic, political and cultural well being of the people by themselves and for themselves.
In the current situation this means democratic and economic reforms in government policies and programs which have been dictated by capitalist led globalization. Engaging in armed and violent confrontations to attain these reforms and gains are counter productive because aside from the lives and properties which will be lost and destroyed such option under the current context, would surely add and even prolong the agony and miseries of the already suffering people.
The situation can even be taken advantage by armed military opportunists to agitate the people to fight the government or promote their own interest by using war to prolong the system. But again under the current context, war option will aggravate the violent and confrontative situation where the people, usually the poor civilians, will always be the losers.
The RPMM strongly believes that its existence and survival do not always mean the elimination of its armed opponents in fact in the present context, it has realized that its life is interdependent to its identified enemies.
Launching a revolution to attain radical change and a sustainable one is not only thru violent war but more often today it is most appropriate to struggle for non-war option. The gauge which it uses to measure the effectiveness and rightness of such options is the active participation of the people because they identified with it and the positive result it has impacted on them.
The peoples’ claim of ownership of the peace and the non-war option has helped the RPMM stay the course of peace in the GRP and RPMM peace talks.
In the early stage of the peace process, the RPMM has experienced difficulties in convincing and rallying many of its armed combatants to adapt this new model because they were (strong ideology orientations of the old paradigm) committed and convinced that to achieve genuine peace, a violent war, no matter how difficult and long it will take, is needed. The determination of the peoples in the communities and the positive results of the process have slowly but deeply softened the old framework and the hard line position of the armed combatants.
At present a revolutionary synergy has evolved among the ranks and file of the RPMM and the peoples in the communities. They now fully understand that the struggle for concrete reforms for the betterment of peoples’ lives and their communities should be an integral part of the struggle for structural change. Efforts in transforming conflicts caused by oppressive system are always intertwined with the works for social transformation.
PEACE BUILDING – RPMM’S WORK IN PROGRESS
Conflict transformation in order to be effective need a proactive and holistic efforts not only to stop the violence and destruction but more so to build and strengthen infrastructure that is sensitive and responsible to the needs of the broadest possible section of the people. It is a continuous progression of curative, preventive and proactive activities of all the stakeholders involve in the transformation process. The whole process creates a some kind of social bonding which will lead to a social covenant among the stakeholders including the government representatives and the revolutionary groups. As the process develops a silent change in steadily evolving into a visible social transformation activities among and between the abovementioned stakeholders.
The process of changing the situation from bad to a better one has helped in making possible the internal changes in the frameworks and values of the armed combatants in the particular and the whole organization of the RPMM in general. The process of continuously engaging in conflict resolutions and transformation helps in ensuring the sustainability of peace building works.
Community-based and people centered peacebuilding initiatives seek to strengthen the quality and further develop the capacities and resources of the people to make their actions effective and sustainable. The process make the people not only the object of development but the subject of the development of their own lives. Its short term objectives of answering their basic and daily needs become the stepping stones for achieving their long term aspiration of living peacefully and achieving their aspiration as a people.
The RPMM’s role is to facilitate that the process should be peacefully possible and sustainably viable which can only be done thru its healthy relationship with the communities and becoming co-owner of the peace process with the people. The changes which had effected the peoples and their communities have been internalized and changed the ranks and file of the RPMM as well.
This kind of symbiotic relationship can only be completed if it creates impact and change within the government machineries from the level of local and policy makers. Positive change should be manifested in making priority the needs of the poor and deprived people rather that the globalized greed of the few. It can also be expressed by concrete programs of reducing poverty through sustainable and often times silent methods rather than spectacularly giving daily bread to the poor and the needy. And it should be seen by reducing if not totally eliminate the existing conflicts and violence through changing and eliminating the structure and system which breed them rather than making and reviving policies and laws which aim to stop violence and conflicts using more violence and creating more conflicts.
Positive changes have created situation and opportunities to attain positive peace.
The initiatives on community-based and people centered peace works have caused situations and opportunities for peace railroaders and war auctioneers to inflict damage and conflict to the rank file of the RPMM. The transparency and the accountability aspects which are integral in these initiatives can be taken advantage of those people who want to discredit and destroyed the RPMM. They identify and expose the personalities of the RPMM sow intrigues to destroy if not to eliminate the machineries and personalities of RPMM in the communities.
These peace railroaders and war auctioneers are coming from the militarist group within the government and from the proponents of protracted war option.
The RPMM understands the nature and objectives of these peace railroaders and war auctioneers as necessary reality and risks of those involved in peacebuilding works. But positive developments can even be observed because of the non-peace option of these people have effected the strengthening of the resolve and commitment of the RPMM’s rank and file to pursue more vigorously and thoroughly the non-war option. But most importantly the positive effects of actions of the war profiteers and protracted war proponents on the people and their communities. Their commitment and resoluteness to strengthen their ownership of this type of peace process naturally excluded the war profiteers and war auctioneers. The people concept of war and their actual experience of violence it had caused make them to love and protect the peace they are building. No amount of intrigues and personal assassinations can change and conquer the positive change and the positive peace they have built themselves.
But the most important change that is taking place is within the ranks and files of the RPMM. It is the realization of the change of their role from armed combatants to non-war option initiators and peace builders. The peace process between the GRP and the RPMM which has considered community consultations as integral part of the process in both confidence building stage and substantive level of the process has impacted in the nature and role of the RPMM’s armed combatants. They become development activists and peace collective organizers. Their weapons have been replaced by development books and peace documents as well as production tools. Their bullets and arm paraphernalia are becoming heavier by the day and have ceased to be considered as their spouses but they are for defensive actions and to protect their gains and victories with the communities. Peace has been internalized and expressed in positive transformative actions.
Much has still to be done with less time and resources for the RPMM peace warriors.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE RPMM
ON THE PROBLEM OF AMIN PARTY-LIST
The Party-List Anak Mindanao, or AMIN, has been affected by problems which manifested themselves fully after its proclamation as winner in the May 2007 elections for the third term (2007-2010). The core problem identified in the Circular 01-07 issued by a few individuals and signed by the 2001-2004 President of AMIN is the so called infiltration of the RPMM into the AMIN structure. Their goal is to purge the Party-List of those they identified as RPMM officials and members. And their mission is to liquidate the Party in all the identified areas and machineries, even outside the Party-List. The immediate target is to declare the Fourth Congress of AMIN (2007-2010) as bogus, unconstitutional and illegal because the 2004-2007 President did not call for it. While they were trying to confuse everybody with this very shallow reason, they began to campaign against the RPMM leadership by raising issues, sowing intrigues and spreading lies that undermine the credibility of the Party leadership. Using funds from both the Congress and a multi-million NGO, they have infiltrated the armed group - the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army or RPA - and they made moves to confuse one of the tribal governance and justice centres of a tribe.
These overt and covert moves started since June 2007, or even during the period of the 2007 election campaign, when everybody was concentrating on campaigning to win in the local and national elections.
The RPMM leadership fully understood the problem in July 2007 and immediately created a Special Committee to study and manage the problem.
The problem can be traced back as early as one year before the 2007 May elections. The leadership of RPMM had tried to check the lopsided allocation of the Countrywide Development Fund, or CDF, by the then RPMM cadre who was also the Secretary General of the Party-List. Complaints had already reached the leadership regarding the extraordinary lifestyle of this individual who has also been involved in multi-million transactions in development projects in one of the areas where the RPMM is present. It has now been proven that this lifestyle check hit the core issue and gave just a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg.
This opportunist had immediately resigned his position in the Party-List but had maintained his clandestine relationship with the Party-List nominee of AMIN, and since then they plotted to take over the big development institution and the Party-List for themselves. They both have skeletons to hide in their closets. Making the leadership of the Third Congress (2004-2007) non-functional was part of their plan to paralyze the National Council’s ability to institute the system of check and balance, because it was last year also that another very big discrepancy in the allocation of funds was discovered, in favour of the nominee’s province and other favoured provinces. The amount involved was more than a hundred million pesos.
The two (the former Secretary General and the Party-List nominee) and the few who are identified as being anti-RPMM plotted to purge the Party from their declared properties. They used squid tactics, using millions of money to sow intrigues and confusion to weaken the Party and its Army (RPA). But they have failed.
The Party leadership, as well as the membership, with its allies, had exposed the scheme of these opportunists and Party liquidationists. Their lifestyle and their shameless unending greed for more millions of pesos have betrayed their intentions so clearly that the RPMM does not have to elaborate further.
But this does not solve the Party’s glaring weakness in not detecting the problem earlier. The opportunistic tendencies of these people were covered up due to the internal weakness of the Party cadres and machineries working within the Party-List machineries. The Party machineries did not function: collective discussion and decision were forgotten and “clique groups” replaced them. Party discipline was joked upon while a bourgeois lifestyle was promoted.
The RPMM respects the independent organizational principles and legal dynamism of the Party-List or any other legal machineries and therefore it could not check and influence directly in these machineries. The RPMM cadres and allies within these machineries are tasked to work within this organizational principle and dynamism.
The weakness of the Party in linking the mass movements in the main urban centre to the issues and struggles of the three peoples in Mindanao led to less understanding of the impact and role of the Party-List in the mass movement and the latter’s role in giving guidance to the cadres assigned to electoral/parliamentary work.
The setting up of a basic system as check and balance, as well as the institutionalization of methods of transparency and accountability, should not be disregarded at any time. The perks and privileges which are the trademark of all bourgeois politics and machineries where they control the playing field should be considered by the Party cadres assigned to this kind of work, else or they will easily be co-opted into traditional politics.
The ideological framework of the new paradigm of electoral and parliamentary work should be matched by the organizational principles and discipline of the Party and should be sharpened by the daily political work of all the cadres and allies.
The improper combination of these ideological and political aspects over a long period has extremely weakened the Party machineries in electoral and parliamentary work. It has led to the ideological bankruptcy of right opportunism and its political work has been directed towards right adventurism. Lies and creating more lies have sustained them from day to day. They have confused principles and financial gains and are selling themselves to the highest bidders. Power and money have completely blinded them, so that they can no longer differentiate between revolutionary and reactionary work.
The RPMM’s leadership calls for all its cadres and members as well as its allies to expose these opportunists and liquidationists. Their reactionary scheme has been so obvious that at any time their true colour will come out shamelessly.
The RPMM’s leadership calls for all its cadres and members to maintain and consolidate the ranks, make our ideological framework of the new paradigm march in step with our organizational capacity and maintain a well balanced implementation of our work within and without the bourgeois political milieu.
The RPMM calls on those who have been confused and influenced by the liquidationists and opportunists to stop sowing the seeds of intrigues against the Party and the Party-List. You can be enlightened if you ask any RPMM units.
The RPMM leadership calls on all its political and military cadres to stay the course and continue our proletarian tasks to advance the interests of the toiling masses of the three people in Mindanao, the Philippines and the world.
The RPMM leadership calls for all progressive and revolutionary groups and parties inside and outside the country to work with us in building and strengthening efforts towards socialism in the world.
Executive Committee of
the Central Committee of
RPMM-RPA
OFFICIAL VIEW AND ANALYSIS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY
WORKERS PARTY-MINDANAO OR RPMM ON THE CURRENT
PROBLEM OF THE PARTY-LIST ANAK MINDANAO OR AMIN
Brief Background
After the debates within the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in the early nineties, those who have rejected the paradigm of the Maoist protracted peoples’ war and the Stalinist concept of organizational principles of the CPP in the current revolutionary project in the Philippines, have evolved a new paradigm. This paradigm shows that the revolutionary mass movement and its intensification is an effective and appropriate way of building socialism in a country like the Philippines today. It also defines that this kind of revolutionary struggle, led by the proletariat, does not only mean the armed struggle but is inclusive of other appropriate forms, as it principally bases its various types of struggles on the objective development of neo-liberal capitalism in the country as well as on the subjective capacity and potential of the working class to lead.
The Revolutionary Workers’ Party-Mindanao or Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Mindanao (RPMM) has been engaged in launching the revolutionary mass movement, which is democratic and anti-imperialist, using both armed and unarmed, legal and underground, domestic and international means of struggle in fulfilling its socialist tasks in the current context of capitalist offensive in the world and in the country.
The RPMM has maximized different kinds of development work, peace talks and peace-building work, social movements and electoral and parliamentary forms of struggle in effecting concrete reforms and social transformation in different areas in Mindanao.
The RPMM continues to provide ideological leadership to the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army or RPA, which conducts its political work within and among the working class of the three peoples in Mindanao, namely; the Indigenous Peoples or Lumads, the Moro and the majority nationality or Christians in Mindanao.
The RPMM has been one of the leading revolutionary parties which has engaged into electoral struggles, maximizing the democratic spaces opened up by bourgeois politics to lead the working and marginalized classes to struggle and win concrete reforms within the framework of the state of the ruling class. It has been doing its political work within and without the bourgeois electoral machineries, while simultaneously it provides political leadership in development work and social movements, engages the government of the Republic of the Philippines in peace talks while maintaining its ideological guidance to the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army, and fulfills its proletarian tasks in building world socialism.
It was in this context that in the last quarter of 1997, the RPMM led the launching of the first national electoral consultation on the party-list of all revolutionary and progressive groups in the country except the CPP. This consultation gave rise to the formation of the first party-list groups by different civil society, as well as progressive and revolutionary groups in the country, which engaged in the 1998 elections.
The RPMM was then also engaged in the unification of all territorial bodies which had rejected the CPP for the formation of a national party of the workers in the Philippines, the RPMP, whose first Congress was held in Mindanao on May 1, 1998.
It was also during the last part of 1997 that the party-list AMIN or Anak Mindanao was formed through the launching of its first Congress. Among its elected officials and nominees, some came from the revolutionary groups like the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF and from the RPMM. But it also had officers and members from different civil society and marginalized groups from the three peoples of Mindanao.
The concept evolved through the years, gaining a seat in the House of Representatives. In fact AMIN has now won a seat in Congress for the third time.
AMIN-Ten Years After
The RPMM has engaged in electoral and parliamentary struggle in different fields and on different levels. It believes that to effect electoral reforms in the country one has to engage in supporting and influencing national candidates, as in the Senate. Concrete reforms in peace and development work are easily facilitated if you have supporters and allies in the local government units (from the village to the province). And if you have an electoral party and machinery for the marginalized sectors of society then their interests can be given special attention by the progressive Party-List in the bourgeois politic arena, and concrete reforms can be gained.
The RPMM’s engagement in electoral and parliamentary struggles has been part of its paradigm shift, where it has continued to learn and relearn new fields and new methods. Working within and without the formal bourgeois state machineries where the ground rules are laid down and parameters are fixed is not only very dangerous, but can be destructive for a revolutionary group, which has to adjust its methods and set new rules to guide those who are directly and indirectly engaged in bourgeois politics.
We have very limited experiences and lessons to learn from and in our very short period of engagement with bourgeois politics. In the past it influenced more our ranks than we made our influence felt in the bourgeois field.
Giving political leadership in the electoral and parliamentary struggles in the initial stages of the paradigm shift of the RPMM was assigned to a select group of young cadres who had learned the ropes while actually doing the work. This group had focused their political work on the newly introduced party-list system, while the territorial cadres of the RPMM had focused on the local elections and the Executive Committee of the leadership body focused on the national elections. All these efforts were unified in a regular Party Electoral Conference. It was at one of these conferences that it was decided that the current member of the Philippine Congress from the Anak Mindanao should be candidate. At that time he was a member of the Party Electoral Committee. In the electoral engagements during this period we were able to place hundreds of comrades and allies in local elected posts and also in the Congress. We had relatively succeeded in combining the development of electoral work with that of social movements and the building and strengthening of the organ of political power in both the urban and rural areas. The role of the RPA and its command has been that of defensive actions, mainly for the protection and hastening of the consolidation work of the RPMM.
Through the years (it is now the third term of Anak Mindanao in Congress) the concept of our electoral and parliamentary work has developed. It has broadened itself among the three peoples of Mindanao. It has been observed however that comrades tend to give more emphasis to the form rather than the substance of the composition of the (three- people) party-list.
The political leadership of the Party in this particular line of work has been manifested and implemented by the comrades working within the Party-List. Democratic pluralism, with democratic consultations and discussions within and among the three peoples has been strictly observed and encouraged. The Political Council of the Party-List, which is a constitutional body, tries to unite different tendencies and establish a consensus of all the constituencies of the Party-List. It has been observed that the Political Council was given the task of maintaining the unity of the Party while the National Council of AMIN from 2004 to February 2007 had not been active. But the former could not be the latter in terms of tasks and role as policy maker. And therefore the Party-List was weak during this period. Weaknesses of comrades and allies were manifested during this term. Collective methods of implementation of political tasks were replaced by individualism. Systems and methods of checks and balances became rare and have actually disappeared. Democratic pluralism has been misconstrued as anarchism. Opportunism was manifested by the nominee, which was fully discovered in the later part of 2006. The principle of accountability and transparency was set aside. Nobody was consulted or informed within the Party-List and even in the RPMM about the status and methods of distribution of the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF), except the Party-List representative. The Project Committee of the Party-List which was to be the body in charge of such tasks was just informed and not consulted with regards to how much and where the projects were allocated. The Party leadership learned later on that a very lopsided distribution of such funds was done by the Party-List representative, favouring his province with more than f40 per cent of the total amount received in four years. The worst is that the initial findings of the Party investigation showed that most of the projects were not implemented but had been reported as completed.
Some leading cadres of RPMM were alarmed and tried to find out what was really happening, but the person concerned repeatedly refused and evaded sitting down to discuss, giving all kinds of alibis. Later on the big discrepancy in the allocation of funds was revealed. Plans to correct such weaknesses and opportunistic tendencies in finances have been initiated within the Party-List and in its own organizational dynamism. The RPMM has never intervened directly in the legal dynamism of the Party-List. Since its split with the CPP the RPMM has respected the independent and autonomous functioning of legal machineries, and the Party cadres who work within the organization or institution have to work within the structure and organizational dynamism of these machineries. The RPMM has rejected the idea that the legal machineries are transmission belts of the Party, not only in the Party-List but in all the legal machineries it involves itself in.
In the last Congress of Anak Mindanao all the cadres and allies who have been involved in electoral work participated, from its preparation to its actual launching and the preparations for the May 2007 elections. Everybody had their eyes fixed on winning in these elections, while being conscious of the need to seriously institute corrections to the past errors and weaknesses. The leadership of the RPMM had painfully decided to allow the current Party-List nominee to be its representative in Congress, even after knowing the opportunistic tendencies of the person. The decision was based on the consideration that the elections were fast approaching and we wanted to focus on the campaigns, but at the same time preparing to correct these weaknesses. In fact there was already a resolution on transparency and accountability ta the first council meeting after the Fourth Congress, just before the elections of May 2007.
And as we expected we won a seat for another term in the 2007-10 Congress (17 Party-Lists won seats out of 95 who participated) .
However hardly anyone expected that the nominee would unite with all the former AMIN officers and members who were anti-AMIN and anti-RPMM elements to unleash their attacks on the Congress which had been attentive to the correction of the past weaknesses. But ultimately their concerted attacks have been against the RPMM. At first it was incoherent as to what issues they imputed against RPMM, but their attacks on the legitimacy of the Fourth Congress of the Party-List were certainly very weak. They could not just attack the work which they had been part of, from its planning up to its actual launching, and which even gave the nominees their legitimacy. And the timing of the attack was so malicious, because they did it after the proclamation of the Party-List as winner.
On September 7, 2007 a Circular was issued, allegedly by the previous Party-List President, who had been inactive throughout his term. One could see more clearly that their issue against RPMM was its presence, which they termed as infiltration into the Party-List. How can you infiltrate machineries that you have created? They even used terms like “Maoist” and “Stalinist” to describe the RPMM. It should be noted that those who were involved in writing the Circular had been anti-Party elements, we even call them liquidationists. They were once members of RPMM but have been expelled, mainly because of financial opportunism and careerism.
It is very ironic that what these liquidationists are accusing of being the RPMM’s strong intervention into the Party-List is actually what many comrades saw as the weakness of the Party, because of its weak political leadership within the Party-List.
The RPMM’s Problems in its Political Work within the Party-List
The process of uniting all the members and officers of the RPMM in the new ideological framework has met with difficulties, especially in translating it into concrete political actions. Doing political work within the framework of bourgeois machineries and their own terrain made double the difficulties of the RPMM cadres as well as its allies. What has happened is that a political option had been taken on a case to case basis, because the strategic direction of weakening the bourgeois state from within seemed so difficult and almost an impossible task to fulfill within the current subjective capacity of the RPMM and its machineries and the intensifying nature of bourgeois political offensives. There was the painful realization among the RPMM cadres that the collectives within the Party-List were seriously weakened and almost did not function. In such a context the strong influence of bourgeois politics and lifestyle has a field day with our comrades assigned to such tasks. The perks and the privileges went to the head of our leading person in the Party-List. In effect he has been acting as if he owns the Party-List and lately you can not identify the difference between him and other traditional politicians.
The minimal presence of the RPMM in the main urban/city centre has contributed to its weak grasp of the mass movements and the role of the Party-List in this work. Such a situation led to the difficulties in linking the struggles on different issues in the main city and Mindanao, which in effect made the nominee of the Party-List decide and act on his own.
At present, these opportunists and Party liquidationists have banded together and launched a well funded campaign against the RPMM,threatening even to expose the personalities and cadres of the Party within and without the Party-List. They do not even spare those RPMM cadres working in different fields like development work, social movements, the RPA and even those in the peace process. Their accusation of the RPMM as being Maoist and Stalinist is paving the way for their traitorous way of giving away the RPMM to the reactionary state. It is an application of the state’s anti-terror law, the Human Security Act, by these liquidationists against the RPMM and its cadres..
In fact, it is just a matter of time now until they convince their handlers in the reactionary state to use the term “terrorist” on the cadres and personalities of the RPMM.
The RPMM leadership believes that this is the only remaining option that these opportunists and liquidationists will use to seize control and monopolize the multi millions of pesos of development projects in the RPMM areas and the Party-List multi million fund, including the perks and privileges provided by the bourgeois machinery for their own selfish interests.
The RPMM’s Urgent Tasks
The RPMM’s leadership is calling on all its cadres and members to consolidate themselves in the light of the development and organized attacks initiated by the opportunists and liquidationists hiding behind the so called movement, who are shouting to save the Party while in fact they are in an all out mode of destroying the prestige of the Party and its leadership at every opportunity they have.
The Party leadership calls for the summing up of the Party’s experience in the electoral/parliamentary struggle so as to avoid similar mistakes and move forward with its aim of instituting electoral reforms within the bourgeois political system.
The Party leadership works for the balanced integration of the different fields of revolutionary engagement, in its intensification of the revolutionary mass movements and consolidation of the concrete gains and victories it has registered, and in correcting the mistakes and weaknesses it has encountered. The Party will work doubly, on the balancing of a new ideological framework and paradigm shift with that of the development of its machineries and political work and continuous organizational development.
The Party leadership is opening up itself for criticism and self-criticism and at the same time calls for those who have been confused by the fast development of the problems created by a few opportunists and liquidationists to approach any Party branch in their area or field of work and request an in-depth and thorough discussions of the situation confronting the Party.
The Party leadership calls on those who have created these problems to immediately stop their counter-revolutionary works.
The Party leadership calls for international solidarity of all the sections of the International, to give us Ideological guidance in resolving these contradictions and reaching a situation favorable to the promotion and development of the interests of the proletariat and the toiling masses in Mindanao, the Philippines and the world.
Executive Committee of the
RPMM Central Committee
October 2007
