Fifty-two years ago today, the Communist Party of the Philippines was founded by Jose Maria Sison with the avowed mission of supplanting our democratic government with a communist one. Sison then established a military arm he called the New People’s Army (NPA) to wage an armed struggle against the government to achieve their goal.
In those five decades, the CPP/NPA never came close to achieving its goal and has instead left a trail of death and destruction all over the country that continues to this day — killings of civilians and government troops, recruitment of young kids to their ranks, destruction of properties, and massive extortion of businesses.
To this day, the CPP/NPA continues to champion a discredited and bankrupt ideology that has long been eschewed by former communist countries. If you, the CPP/NPA, are truly fighting for and are with the Filipino people, I urge you to abandon your destructive ideologies and peacefully work with the government. I also call on all Filipinos to continue to denounce the propaganda and rhetoric of this terrorist group. It is time for this long-running insurgency to end and for the nation to unite to move forward as one.
