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.