First of three parts
Two years after the turn of the century, in 2002, many urban Communist cadres were slapping each other’s backs as word spread that the “lords,” the higher organs of the CPP, from the Central Committee to the regional organs, have assessed the revolutionary situation to be at the advance substage of strategic stalemate, the first level of the protracted people’s war revered by diehard cadres, supposed members and weekend warrior Communists who fancy revolution in between stroking puppies and drinking latte with soya milk in high-priced cafes.
That revolutionary goobledygook, a “delusional” term to some former cadres, was invented by dead CPP founder Jose Maria Sison and was meant to shore up flagging morale of CPP cadres as the movement appeared to have hit a plateau in that year eight years after the “Ikalawang Dakilang Pagwawasto” or the “Second Great Rectification Movement.”
That year, a former priest, Frank Fernandez then the secretary of the Regional Party Committee in Negros island, led a plenum or a gathering of leading cadres in the island.
The urban cadres from Bacolod City were flushed with victory as Bayan Muna (Nation First), the CPP’s partylist got 1.7 million votes nationwide in the 2001 polls and secured three seats in the 12th Congress.
Bayan Muna’s entry into the traditional political fray signalled the fourth “form of struggle” in its national democratic revolution with armed striggle or the violent overthrow of the Philippine government as its “main form of struggle.”
In that year, the Negros Communista declared the Rectification Movement “completed” in Negros as its “IPO” work had been “completed” – in so many fancy words, it meant the Party was “back in business.”
To be continued
