MIM Notes 189 July 1 1999

PUPPET PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT WELCOMES RETURN OF AMERIKAN OCCUPYING 
TROOPS: COMMUNIST PARTY OF PHILIPPINES, NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FRONT 
VOW TO INTENSIFY STRUGGLE

On 28 May 1999, the bourgeois Philippine senate voted 20 to 5 to 
ratify the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United $tates. 
As we reported in earlier MIM Notes, the VFA allows U.$. military 
forces to occupy the Philippines for any length of time, makes 
U.$. soldiers immune to criminal prosecution and gives them 
license to bring nuclear and other weapons into the 
Philippines.(1)

In response to the ratification of the VFA, the Communist Party of 
the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Front of the 
Philippines (NDFP) declared peace negotiations with puppet 
government of the Philippines dead. The CPP and the NDFP are 
currently waging a protracted people's war against the reactionary 
government and for the liberation of the Philippines.

In several statements, the NDFP took formal "cognizance of the 
termination of the peace negotiations by the Government of the 
Republic of the Philippines (GRP).

"The VFA violates the principle of national sovereignty as guiding 
principle in the peace negotiations

"The NDFP refuses to negotiate with a puppet government consisting 
of unmitigated traitors who collaborate with the US imperialists 
in further making the Philippines a base of US hegemony and 
aggression against the Filipino people and all other peoples of 
the world."(2)

The NDFP also promised to intensify all forms of struggle against 
the Manila government. It noted that, "in accordance with the 
directives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the 
Philippines, the people's army can intensify the people's war by 
launching tactical offensives from 81 guerrilla fronts in order to 
defend the people, to capture weapons and deal blows against the 
enemy."(3) The CPP and NDFP never laid down their guns or 
capitulated to the puppet government while they were engaged in 
peace negotiations.

Revolutionaries here must also vigilantly struggle against U.$. 
imperialism and its meddling in the Philippines. Amerikan 
imperialists--directly or through the economic policies dictated 
by the U.$.-led organizations like the International Monetary Fund 
and World Bank--drive Filipino peasants off of their land, 
ruthlessly exploit Filipino workers, and ravage the environment in 
the Philippines. On top of all that, the United $tates is the main 
prop of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which has one of the 
worst humyn rights records in Asia.

MIM has reprinted photos of Filipino student activists carrying 
banners which read: "American bullets kill Filipinos." Proletarian 
revolutionaries and others here in the belly of the beast who 
sympathize with the plight of the oppressed have a duty to change 
the world so that those words are no longer true.

Notes:
1. See e.g. MIM Notes 179, 185.
2. "NDFP negotiating panel to issue NDFP decision taking 
cognizance of GRP termination of peace negotiations," at 
www.geocities.com/~cpp-ndf/index.htm.
3. "NDFP receives GRP notice of termination," at 
www.geocities.com/~cpp-ndf/index.htm.