THE DISILLUSSIONMENT OF THE MASSES
Agnes Lopez Reaño

Thirty nine (39) years had passed, thirty nine years of false promises and false hopes dangled by the Communist Party of the Philippines led by Jose Maria Sison and his cohorts. Almost four (4) decades of dreaming a better life, better future, better jobs, of a better society and most of all a better government. But it seems all of these are all bogus, a sham which made the Filipino people disillussioned and finally realized that they were only used as pawn by JOMA and the movement.

Before, the local communist have incessantly projected that the miserable conditions of the masses in the country is an excellent condition ripe for waging a national democratic revolution under the leadership of a Proletarian party whose main force in the countryside would be the peasants and their allies.

The Communist forgot that revolution brought about by the miserable conditions alone is far too simple a view since if this is the case, we should have social upheavals over the greater part of the earth. Misery does not automatically create discontent, nor is the degree of discontent proportionate to that degree of misery.

A revolution, to use the MARXIST definition, is the toppling down of the power of the ruling class i.e., the bourgeoisie, by the exploited class - the proletariat - that would eventually set up its dictatorship to ensure the complete overhaul of the system and class relationship. It would eventually lead to the dissolution of private property and elimination of the property owning class.

However, many factors have to be considered such a man's inherent independent will and individuality which the communist have always sought to destroy. Numerous social, political, cultural and economic components must have to be confronted and resolved in the process of waging a bloody class conflict. In the process of imposing a radical transformation and remolding of a decadent society, the Communist party is hard put in avoiding the pitfall of devouring its own children to exorcise itself of whatever remnants of a decadent and polluted cultural environment, they think we have.

Hence, the process of ideological indoctrination ought to be thorough and encompassing. However, for the leaders of the Communist movement this thoroughness that brings about individual and collective discipline does not apply. The Communist leaders like Jose Maria Sison are liberal on themselves when it comes to iron discipline and proletarian values they themselves have to strictly adhere to. This is the common grievances of the likes of Victor Corpus a.k.a. Ka EMING when he cited the reasons why he surrendered on January 14, 1976. While Sison and the rest of the party leadership kept on admonishing the party members and the NPA guerillas to maintain simple living and hard strugglle to keep their political consciousness and ideological purity high, the CPP leaders enjoy bourgeois lifestyles. 

No wonder, the Communist movement has been wracked by a series of factional struggles because of the grave injustices it continually commits against its own kind. This is a by-product of the psychological infirmity of individual party members shown by the constant demonstration of distrust and enmity against those who have manifested even the slightest disagreement to their political views and outlook particularly in conducting a parliamentary struggle that seeks to change the material social, cultural, political and economic bases of a semi-colonial and semi-feudal milieu.

Unarguably, injustice and social inequity, political depravity and corruption as well as economic disparity are apparent in Philippine society , and yet the prospects of success for the Communist movement to overthrow the ruling class and seized political power remained elusive and far beyond the grasp of the utrecht-based Communist leaders. What the National Democratic revolution has achieved, so far, for the past 40 years is the continuing miseries in the countryside and further polarization of a society that exist amidst prevalent hatred and political conflict.

Although the broad masses are wallowing in poverty, there is no widespread clamor or conscious moves to join the insurgents in the countryside much more in the cities. The prospects of success and survival in a long drawn out armed struggle appear much to be lesser than what the insurgent propagandists have promised just to arouse, mobilize and organize the masses.