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[6] Excerpts from the historical works of academic Joseph Paul Scalice (currently assistant professor of history at the Hong Kong Baptist University) on the history of the two Communist Parties in the Philippines, particularly on their Front Organizations
One sample academic historical discussion of the front organization of the old Lava family-led Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) and its successor Sison-led Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is found in the following passages of Chapter 18 “Split in the Front Organizations” of Joseph Paul Scalice, Crisis of Revolutionary Leadership:Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines, 1959-1974, A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction ofthe requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies in the Graduate School of the University of California, Berkeley, Summer 2017:(underscorings supplied)
As the 1967-68 school year opened, the split which had taken place in the PKP exploded the campus front organizations of the Communist Party, beginning with the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation [BRPF]. The split in the PKP was the expression of the Sino-Soviet split; the split in the BRPF of that in the PKP. The intractable fault lines running through the front organizations of the Communist Party were never probed, however; they were depicted exclusively as the result of the personal perfidy of individual rival leaders. These tensions reft the movement and by late November they exploded the Kabataang Makabayan [KM] into multiple opposed organizations, each denouncing the other in language that was both strident and vague.(pp. 320-21)
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At the beginning of the first semester of the new school year – in late July 1967 – the expulsion of the Sison group from the PKP and the imported politics of the Cultural Revolution found open expression in an explosion of political conflict at UP Diliman.[1] A strained calm hung over the campus as the semester convened; the expelled and the expellers both had their hands on the reins of the party’s front organizations, and they eyed each other nervously, waiting to see who would make the first move. On July 13, Joma Sison chaired a meeting at up Town Hall to plan a joint seminar on nationalism which was to be held at the end of the month. The meeting involved the Plebeians – who were sponsoring the seminar; Sanduguang Kayumanggi [Brown Blood Brotherhood] (SK); BRPF; SCAUP [Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines]; Humanist Association; and KM. The article announcing the meeting concluded “Observers anticipate the formation of a federation among the six groups. According to one of the leaders, it is high time that nationalist organizations unite to thwart the anti-nationalist elements in the University.”[2] This move toward federation, which involved bringing loosely nationalist organizations such as the Plebeians and Sanduguang Kayumanggi into an alliance with the front organizations of the PKP, precipitated a fierce battle for control of the BRPF, SCAUP and KM.
Over the coming semester the pages of each week’s Collegian carried the allegations, counter-allegations and denunciations made by the rival parties within the various Stalinist front organizations in a battle which would culminate in the explosion of the KM into a host of rival groups. Throughout this period, the one unmentionable yet all determining feature of the struggle within the front organizations of the PKP was that their internal factions were shaped by the split within the party itself. Despite its centrality, no one discussed the PKP or its split. When the PKP expelled the Sison group in April 1967, the rival sections did not openly discuss within the Philippines the question of loyalty to Moscow or Beijing, but in a deliberately subjective manner focused on the personal treachery of their rivals which manifested itself seemingly without any political basis. So too now, as the various front organizations of the PKP fell upon each other in a vicious faction fight, they focused on personal treachery and subterfuge, never once mentioning that the fault lines in the various front groups corresponded to the fault lines within the party, and that these, in turn, followed the fault lines of Stalinist geopolitics. The leadership of these organizations were aware that the roots of this dispute rested in the split within the PKP, and the highest echelons of leadership knew that it was rooted in the Sino-Soviet split. The majority of the membership, however, were told that what was at stake was not a political dispute whose roots and logic could be analyzed and assessed, but rather the individual rottenness of certain leaders. All told, the manner in which both the PKP and Sison’s group handled the split ensured that the students, youth and workers were systematically politically miseducated.(pp. 325-26)
Surely, this historical exposition publicly naming certain front organizations of the PKP and naming Jose Maria Sison for his key role there and later the breakaway CPP does not pass for red-tagging. This is clearly a legitimate exercise of academic freedom, just like in the previous sample from Quimpo. Besides, there is clearly no use of threats, no malicious purpose to impede constitutional rights and liberties, and no unfounded information.
In the book version of the above-cited Scalice dissertation, i.e., Joseph Scalice, The Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 2023), the narrative from the above-quoted historical account is continued in the following p. 108 passage:(underscoring supplied)
The CPP and its front organizations aggressively accosted the PKP in their publications, denouncing them as tools of the Soviet Union. Its back pressed to the wall, the PKP responded, decrying the KM and its allies for “splittism,” “left extremism,” and “anarchism;”Moscow had nothing to do with the matter, they claimed.The initial salvo in the increasingly vicious war of words were fired by the CPP. In May 1970, the NPA released a leaflet denouncing the “Monkees-Armeng Bayan-MASAKA (Lava) Gang.”[3] The NPA claimed that Lava’s group had “degenerated into a handful of out and out agents of the reactionary government,” and then proceeded to name the lot of them.[4] From the perspective of the PKP, the CPP had just publicly named almost the entire membership of the Central Committee.[5]In July the Diliman election statement of the KM attacked the PKP as “relics of the Old Left” now defending Marcos.
The last footnote there copied below contains this interesting sentence: “A year later the PKP would reciprocate, naming Sison and others as members of the CPP, and Sison would denounce them for ‘red-baiting’.” Ironic. It would thus seem that the Reds both Old and New have been guilty of themselves red-tagging their intra-Left political rivals, to the extent of exposing names of rival Left leaders for government or rival Left retribution. The totality of circumstances appears to indicate threats to personal security.[6] More ironic (or moronic, for short), “subversives” are threatening and discouraging fellow “subversive” travelers.[7]
Relevant Note:
This came to the fore in more recent times when the CPP in its Ang Bayan issue of December 7, 2004 at p. 9 presented in a diagram the “Links of counterrevolutionary groups with Trotskyites and Social Democrats” which among others implicated former elements or members of certain territorial and sectoral units and special organs of the CPP that broke away from it and formed rival Marxist-Leninist party and/or political formationssuch as the RPM-P (Arturo Tabara, Nilo dela Cruz), RPM-M (Ike de los Reyes), PMP (Popoy Lagman), SPP (Sonny Melencio), PPD (Manjette Lopez, Liddy Nakpil), Padayon (Ric Reyes, Etta Rosales), and MLPP (Tito dela Cruz, Caridad Pascual).[The latter have since been more popularly referred to collectively as “rejectionist” (RJ) factions in opposition to the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist “reaffirmist” (RA) mainstream CPP of Jose Maria Sison.] But the matrix also showed related links of and with other, non-communist, political formations like PopDem and IPD (Walden Bello, Boy Morales, Gani Serrano), and Akbayan (Padayon, IPD + BISIG and Pandayan). The diagram purports to “show the links of [these] local petty-bourgeois reformist and pseudo-revolutionary groups with international Trotskyite and Social Democratic formations” like Socialist International, DSP-Australia, and the 4th International.
Most of those named “rejectionist” party formations and personalities, as well as the other, non-communist, political formations, and even some of their above-identified international links, treated the said CPP matrix as a “Hit List” of sorts. This was because some of the named (Tabara, Lagman) and other unnamed (e.g., Romulo Kintanar) “rejectionist” leaders, as well as those even of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) associated with the named other, non-communist, political formations like Akbayan were killed, either boldly claimed by the CPP-NPA to be “punitive actions” against them, or under circumstances tending to point to the CPP-NPA as the perpetrators.[8]There was of course the usual intra-Left polemical back-and-forth on this “Hit List” issue.[9]
The point of this relevant note on intra-Left red-tagging, particularly by the CPP of its rival “rejectionist” party formation leaders, is its detraction from whatever moral ascendancy the CPP may have in itself validly raising the issue of red-tagging by state forces and proxies characterized likewise by the use of threats.
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SOLIMAN M. SANTOS, JR. is a retired Judge of the RTC of Naga City, Camarines Sur, serving in the judiciary there from 2010 to 2022.He has an A.B. in History cum laude from U.P. in 1975, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nueva Caceres (UNC) in Naga City in 1982, and a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2000.He is a long-time human rights and international humanitarian lawyer; legislative consultant and legal scholar; peace advocate, researcher and writer; and author of a number of books, including on the Moro and Communist fronts of war and peace. Among his authored books are The Moro Islamic Challenge: Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process (UP Press, 2001);How do you solve a problem like the GRP-NDFP peace process? Part 2 (Sulong Peace, 2022); and his latest, Tigaon 1969: Untold Stories of the CPP-NPA, KM and SDK (Ateneo Press, 2023). He also has a trilogy of books on his court work and practice:Justice of the Peace (2015), Drug Cases (2022), and Judicial Activist (2023), all published by Central Books, Inc., Quezon City.
[1]Footnote 15 in the original:That the conflict emerged first here was an expression of the centrality of the University in the political work of the party.
[2]Footnote 16 in the original:PC, 12 Jul 1967, 2.[This article author’s note:PC refers to Philippine Collegian, official student publication of the University of the Philippines (UP) in its main campus of Diliman, Quezon City.]
[3]Footnote 210 in the original:NPA, Expose and Oppose the Vicious Crimes of the Monkees-Armeng Bayan-MASAKA (Lava) Gang, May 1970, PRP 11/15.01.This leaflet was then reprinted in AB, 1 June 1970.[[This article author’s note:PRP refers to the Philippine Radical Papers Archive in the Main Library of UP Diliman.AB refers to Ang Bayan, official publication of the CPP.]
[4]Footnote 211 in the original:They published the names of four “bureaucrats”:Francisco Nemenzo, Haydee Yorac, Ruben Torres, and Francisco Lava Jr.;three “surrenderees”:Domingo Castro, Felicisimo Macapagal, and Danny Pascual; and two “intelligence agents”:Godofredo Mallari and Antonio Santos.
[5]Footnote 212 in the original:Ken Fuller, A Movement Divided: Philippine Communism, 1957-1986 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2011), 108.A year later the PKP would reciprocate, naming Sison and others as members of the CPP, and Sison would denounce them for “red-baiting.”
[6]Deduro at p. 34:“What constitutes threats should include the totality of every individual petitioner’s circumstance.”
[7]Deduro at p. 35:“Inherent in the practice of red-baiting is the use of threats and intimidation to discourage ‘subversive’ activities.”
[8]See esp. Pierre Rousset, “In solidarity with the Filipino progressive and revolutionary movements threatened by the CPP: A letter of concern on the threat of political killings by the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed segment the New People’s Army,” January 18, 2005 (https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article70); and “The CPP-NPA-NDF ‘Hit List’ – a preliminary report,” 8 March 2005 (https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article69). Rousset identifies himself as a Fourth International execom member and manages the website of the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontiers (ESSF), www.europe-solidaire.org, where the said articles and those in the next footnote may be accessed.
[9]See e.g. Fidel V. Agcaoili, Chairperson, Human Rights Committee, National Democratic Front of the Philippines, “Rejoinder to the slanderous article of French Trotskyite Pierre Rousset,” 1 April 2005 (https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article117); and Pierre Rousset, “What can we learn from Fidel Agcaoili’s ‘Rejoinder’?,” 10 May 2005 (https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article72), both of which may be accessed in the ESSF website.
