Interview with Marco L. Valbuena, Chief Information Officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)
The following is an interview I am pleased to have conducted with Marco L. Valbuena, the Chief Information Officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The CPP is one of the largest and most successful communist parties actively waging revolution today. It has built a strong mass base and mass organizations in the countryside and the cities, has carried out land reforms in its areas to the benefit of millions and has an armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) which is growing ever-stronger by the day. We discussed all these matters and many more related to the Philippine Revolution in this interview.
Q: With the increased intensity of the people’s war in the Philippines in recent years, what stage would you say the people’s war is in currently; strategic defensive, strategic equilibrium or strategic offensive? And why?
A: The people’s war in the Philippines remains in the strategic defensive stage. The present balance of power is still overwhelmingly in favor of the enemy–the US imperialists and its client-state. The New People’s Army (NPA) must continue to wage widespread and extensive guerrilla warfare and strike at the enemy part by part. While it enjoys deep and wide mass support, the NPA’s mass support cannot yet sustain building regular companies that can carry out regular mobile warfare. The Party has recently called on the NPA to stir and scatter the flames of guerrilla warfare nationwide, further deepen and widen the mass base and carry out big and small annihilative tactical offensives.
Q: In the CPP’s statement to the NPA’s 53rd anniversary in 2022, the CPP called on the NPA to continue the intensification of “partisan operations” in urban areas. What is the current situation and tasks of the urban campaign, and has the urban campaign experienced success and growth of late? For instance, I am aware there were some NPA operations near the Metro Manila area for the first time in a while.
A: The deployment of special partisan units in the urban areas has long been part of the tactics of the NPA in waging protracted people’s war along the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside. The call to carry out partisan operations in the enemy’s rear, i.e. cities and town centers, is a reminder to the NPA to employ its whole range of tactics in order to frustrate and defeat the enemy’s campaign of encirclement and suppression. Thus, there is no urban campaign as such. However, some NPA units have responded well to the directive of the Central Committee, by deploying special units to carry out strikes against detached enemy units or personnel, supply lines and so on, outside the scope of NPA fronts. We anticipate more of such operations to be carried out in the future, and deeper into the enemy’s rear.
There have long been NPA units just outside Metro Manila, as the national center is surrounded by rural areas where guerrilla units of the NPA operate. Recently, an NPA unit carried out a tactical offensive against the military unit assigned to secure the construction of a dam that will inundate a wide area and dislocate thousands of families, especially, indigenous minority peoples in the area. The successful NPA operation was warmly welcomed by people in the area.
Q: On a similar note, in recent years there have been some reports that the NPA plans to revive, or has revived, its Special Partisan Units, also known as “Sparrow Units”. Are you able to say whether or not there is any truth to these reports, and if there is, how generally successful have the Sparrow Units been of late?
A: I have already mentioned above that the Party has reminded the NPA to form special partisan units by way of heeding the demand of the broad masses of the people to carry out punitive actions against enemy units and personnel responsible for gross violations of human rights. The NPA has largely carried out this directive, and we expect this to be implemented more intensively in the coming period.
Q: Since Ferdinand Marcos Jr became president last year, the Philippine ruling class has positioned itself once again as very close to US imperialism. Can you explain in what ways this is the case, and in what ways the Marcos regime is making the Philippines a client state of the USA, just as his father did before him?
A: The Philippine ruling class has remained largely loyal and firmly controlled by US imperialism. Even under Duterte, the Philippine ruling state remained solidly in the hands, despite Duterte’s declarations of “separating” with the US, and threats to do away with the Visiting Forces Agreement. All these were, in fact, mere posturings to seek more military aid and funds to purchase jet fighters, helicopters, drones, bombs, artillery and so on. Indeed, the US brags of having extended more than $1.2 billion in military aid and purchases in the period 2017–2022 under Duterte.
Compared to Duterte or his father, Marcos Jr is a no-frills puppet of the US. He likely does not want to risk antagonizing the US-zealots in the AFP who are bent on serving US military and geopolitical interests in exchange for US military financing. He claims to uphold a “enemy of none” foreign policy, which is a thin veil that fails to conceal his subservience to the US.
Q: Similarly, has the US military presence and intervention in the Philippines against the CPP and NPA increased since Marcos Jr became president?
A: US involvement in counterguerrilla operations against the NPA has steadily risen over the past decades, but has been constantly kept under wraps for fear of rousing the Filipino people’s patriotic outrage. They have been operating drones conducting surveillance, carried out support operations including medical evacuation, as well as deployed boots on the ground. American military officers have been repeatedly sighted in tactical command posts. US operations will likely continue to intensify under Marcos as they vainly seek to crush the people’s armed resistance.
Q: There has also been discussion of the US’s plans to use the Philippines as a chess piece in its inter-imperialist competition with China. Is this correct? If so, what other implications does the US-China rivalry have for the Philippines?
A: The US imperialists has long used the Philippines in its wars of aggression and intervention. The Philippines served as launching pad for US wars in Vietnam, Korea, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently, the commander of the US Third Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. James Bierman, describe that heightened US military presence in the Philippines, as well as in Japan and other countries comprising the so-called First Island Chain, are part of US preparations to preposition weapons and troops, comparing it to the long years of US preparations of the war in Ukraine against Russia.
By using the Philippines as a pawn in its war to encircle China, specifically, serving as rear for US military intervention in Taiwan or host for long-range missile systems, the country can become a target of Chinese military action and counteraction.
Q: How do the CPP and NPA plan to react to the increase in US imperialism’s presence in the Philippines? I know, for example, there have been revolutionary actions against US targets in the Philippines in the past, can you say whether or not the NPA plans to revive this strategy?
A: The Party has called on all revolutionary and democratic forces to build the broadest patriotic united front against US military intervention in the Philippines, specifically urging the people to oppose the plan to establish four or more military bases and facilities in the country, as well as put a stop to US military aid to the campaign of state terrorism, including US-directed aerial bombing campaigns.
American military troops engaged in counterguerrilla operations are legitimate targets of the NPA. The more they deploy in the battlefields of the Philippines, the higher the risk they face of suffering casualties in the course of the NPA’s tactical offensives.
Q: Coming to the international sphere, what are the CPP’s relations like currently with other revolutionary parties and movements globally? I am aware, for instance, that the CPP maintains good relations with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Free Papua Movement. How are these relations currently? Also, there has been some discussion about the possibility of the CPP aiding the formation of a national democratic movement in Indonesia, are you able to confirm or deny these rumours?
A: The CPP has long worked to establish friendly and productive relations with other communist parties and revolutionary movements, as a way of sharing and learning from each other’s experiences, and supporting each other’s revolutionary cause. Naturally, there is strong affinity between the revolutionary forces in the Philippines and those waging armed revolution in their own countries. The revolutionary forces in the Philippines and the national democratic forces in Indonesia have had years of close relations.
Q: Finally, a common retort I see used by revisionists and other opponents of the Philippine Revolution is that the people’s war has been “ongoing for 5 decades and has accomplished nothing”. How do you respond to this allegation?
A: That the people’s war was initiated and developed in an archipelagic country such as the Philippines, and that guerrilla forces have been able to persevere and grow from a few scores to a few thousands through more than five decades of fighting a far superior enemy supported by the biggest imperialist power, is a marked accomplishment of the revolutionary forces in the Philippines. The people’s war would not have lasted a few years without the deep and wide support of the broad masses of the Filipino people. The revolutionary forces have carried out the land reform in line with the Party’s revolutionary guide, benefiting millions of poor peasants and farm-workers. Organs of political power serving as embryo of the future democratic state have been established in thousands of villages across the country supported by the revolutionary mass organizations.
The enemy’s all-out nationwide offensives supported by the US since 2017 have been largely frustrated. It is, of course, inevitable that losses will be incurred in some parts, but through guerrilla perseverance, these losses will ultimately be outweighed by gains in other parts.
Always keeping their sights on attaining complete victory in the future, the Party, the NPA and all revolutionary forces are determined to carry out the urgent tasks of intensifying the revolutionary mass movement in both the cities and rural areas, and carrying out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare in order to continue accumulating big and small achievements and victories.
