Holy Week gave me a brief respite to think about the news, often with a cup of coffee, sometimes after watering the plants or, much as I would like to avoid, while doing simple household chores like cooking, washing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom.
These are menial tasks, by the way, for most Communist cadres I know, the most entitled bunch of dotard (lazy that is, you idiot Communist reading this is) intellectual dimwits if there is such a term that is completely an oxymoron.
But I digress.
The recent declaration on 8 March 2024 of the Regional Peace and Order Council that the province has been placed under the Stable Internal Peace and Order and Security classification (SIPS) is an event worthy of celebration, a historical day that even deserves a civic-military parade in the streets, in fact, such a day should be marked. Perhaps an Otso De Marso day when Negros freed itself from Communist terror, similar to Cinco de Noviembre when the province was freed from Spain through a ruse.
There is no ruse in this case, however. Real blood was spilt for Negrenses to have seen this day of freedom from terror.
They include the sodiers who died in battle, brave civilians who stood up against the rebels – from the 24 people in northern Negros Occidental to the Fausto family whose patriarch, Rolly, helped the Army against the rebels.
He, his wife, and two sons were massacred inside their ramshackle hut in Kangkiling, the upland village in Himamaylan City where rebels used to run free like wild boars, ruining lives and those of future generations.
The Army has done its part in destroying the Communist apparatus that kills and intimidates. There is no reason anymore for Negrense seeking peace and progress for their families and themselves to be afraid of being killed or being harassed.
Our soldiers have done their jobs of clearing those who want to visit violence upon us.
These once boastful and arrogant killers were once daring the Army to a fight by killing and intimidating civilians. Chased by warfighters of the country’s armed forces, however, they hid behind the cassocks of their defenders in the church.
The events related to the killing spree of the terrorist remnants in northern Negros Occidental province point to a sobering fact that the critical phase has started after the clearing operations: the revival attempts of the Communist Party that has unveiled its Third Rectification Movement that is being portrayed as an “ideological undertaking” to rebuild its Party.
This is laughable to say the least because the ideological movement the CPP is pretending to carry out does not have any intellectual base to speak of.
In a way, to paraphrase what a dead CPP cadre one said: how can they when they have not?
It does have a few activists among truant, mentally feeble students but these are not even ND level activists or Prospective Candidate Members of the CPP. These whining, whimpering youngsters could not even fix their beds or launder their underwear.
Military officials admit that there will be remnants even after the declaration of an SIPS status. These remnants are seeds of another problem on several aspects.
They can become roving rebels and a purely criminal band devoid of control or leadership, however twisted it may be in the past.
And, most crucial of all, these remnants could be the seeds of future unrest for that is where the Communists are good at: riding out the rough times to recover again. They rode out the rough times in 1972 and in the 1990s and sought refuge in other less militant sections of the Left, like social democratic organizations or those socdems in government or in Church-based groups or institutions.
Frank Fernandez said so during the last plenum I attended in 2001 in Umas, Sipalay City where I was sworn in as a full Party member by Fernandez himself prior to my deployment as the youngest member then of the Regional Urban-While Area Committee or RUWAC that directs the CPP’s urban or “white area” operations.
Fernandez, known as Ka Kanor and Ka Ibay, the former priest said some Party elements sought refuge under the Church, the Bacolod Diocese to be specific under then Bishop Antonio Fortich, when the wave of “white terror” began then during the Marcos I administration.
The Army has done its share of clearing the island of those who are sworn to destroy us and our way of life. There is no more reason to be afraid of being killed easily by the Communist armed partisans. It is heartening to take note that their last assassination mission in Bacolod City was sometime in the 90s.
Clearly, the doctrinal shift in the Army and the reorientation and technological advancements in weapons and improvements in tactics have bred warfighters that are hard for the ragtag Communist fighters to match.
The stories from the battlefields of Carabalan in Himamaylan to the northern Negros clashes that ended with the death of three rebels in Pinapugasan, Escalante City all tell a common story: the outcome of groundfighting is dictated by logistics and superiority in numbers, and tactics and technology, no longer by the romantic notions of people’s support or the morality of the cause.
The sons and daughters of Marx, Lenin and Mao, who pride themselves as scientific thinkers guided by the thoughts of their dead ideological forebears, have been exposed as nothing more than charlatans or snake oil peddlers whose verbal mumbo jumbo cannot arrest the decline of their mass base and whose deluded sense of materialism failed them in the face of incessant and systematic offensives from State security forces.
It is time to ask ourselves on this holy day if we want to fight for ourselves and our way of life.
The total defeat of the Communist insurgency cannot be had by strength of arms alone. It cannot be won by our soldiers alone.
We can, however, look to what the Army has done for us and as clearly pointed out by former general Innocencio Pasaporte when he defended the use of airstrikes in the Pinapugasan battles.
He said: “Commanders employ overwhelming force to subdue the enemy and create a psychological effect that resistance is futile. That it is best to surrender.”
Our conviction and resolve must be overwhelming, so overwhelming that it creates the psychological effect for the enemy that there is no other option but to surrender.
How? We shall explore in the next article how citizens can actively take part in the decisive defeat of Communism in the island.
Happy Easter!
