BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – Soldiers of the 79th Infantry Battalion seized not only firearms and ordnance but also found Party documents, literature vital to what cadres call “ideological building” in the trinity of the IPO or the “Ideological-Political-Organizational” or IPO work of the CPP.
Former Party instructors told DNX the books they have seen at the encounter site in Escalante City based on Army photos showed a book on health, a book on the Basic Party Course or Batayang Kurso ng Partido (BKP), codenamed in the 1990s by youth cadres as Buko Pie, and the Ang Sining Militar ng Digmang Bayan (The Military Art of People’s War) military manual of selected works by Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.
To seasoned observers of the Communist insurgency in Negros, especially former Communists instructors, the 79th IB scored a significant win in the series of skirmishes in northern Negros Occidental province, a military action that practically “nipped in the bud” the efforts of the CPP to mount a Third Rectification Movement in the hopes of bouncing back from a steady decline since then President Rodrigo Duterte unleashed the whole of nation approach against them.
“This is the bulakbol’s (truant’s) idea of education that will practically earn the supposed graduates of the Basic Party Course a degree in extortion and deception,” Jeffrey Celiz told DNX when sought for comment.
Celiz, former staff of the New People’s Army’s National Operations after his deployment to the Communist Front Organization Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Panay island, said the supposed start of the Third Rectification in northern Negros is mere propaganda.
“It is a farce, a pathetic attempt to show to foreign funders that the CPP has started supposed recovery efforts,” another former cadre who asked to be called Pong Pagong added.
Armed Forces Visayas Command chief, Lieutenant General Benedict Arevalo, said the 79th’s focused military operations has practically nipped the CPP” s attempt to revive its dying movement as the island as the Army’s Third Infantry Division declared that the Joint Peace and Security Coordinating Committee in the island had recommended to national bodies placing the island under Stable Internal Peace and Security.
And being lovers of symbols, the CPP has decided to do the launch of their Panadlong in the area they once imagined was controlled by the Northern Negros Front, a ragtag collection of armed men basing itself in upland areas where they once could easily coerce and scare people with “their guns and trick them into believing they are their saviors,” another former instructor who wanted to be called Kiko Matsing said.
Celiz, however, and Ka Nestor both notrd that the choice of the place and the time is interesting because of the following:
- the collapse of the Northern Negros Front has deprived the Communist terrorists between an estimated P40 to P60 million a year in extortion money that accounts for roughly 60 percent of the “dirty money” collected by the tgen Komite Rehiyonal Negros-Cebu-Bohol-Siquijor (KR-NCBS) based in Negros island.;
- Escalante City is the home of the Escalante Massacre, an incident in the 1980s that the Communist legal fronts have been exploting for more than several decades as an example State brutality and fascism;
- Bisaya-speaking areas in the province have long been considered as easier to exploit by Hiligaynon-speaking cadres and members of the Party who think themselves as ‘superior’ to the Cebuano-speaking (degoratively called Odong and Odang) Negrosanons;
- The CPP wants to be in the news once again as their guerrilla fronts are being dismantled and as the island is nearing SIPS declaration or an area where guerrilla fronts have been dismantled and only remnants remain; and
- The founding anniversary on March 29 of the New People’s Army is fast approaching.
“Think of them as the first bloggers before Facebook who would only take advantsge of a popular issue to make themselves popular,”a former education deputy of an urban-based collective who used the codename ‘Kuya Bodjie’ for this interview.
In short, the three said, it’s all about money, propaganda, and desperation.
