The Friends of the Filipino people in Struggle (FFPS) call for a globally coordinated campaign to project the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) as the representative of the Filipino people, and highlight it’s importance in the Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace through national and democratic liberation. The campaign will run for a year until April 2024.
Project and celebrate the NDF as representative of the Filipino people and their aspirations for national liberation and democracy! #NDF50
Background: The Filipino people are continuously suffering under a social system dominated by US hegemony, and its class cohorts – the landlords and the big-compradors. Under these conditions, the majority of the Philippine populace – the farmers and the workers – suffer from the landlessness and squeezing super profit from labor.
The worsening exploitation and intensifying oppression under a semi-feudal and semi-colonial system in the Philippines lays the very foundation of the Filipino people’s resistance. In their pursuit for their aspirations for national and social liberation, they have established a people’s movement under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, a growing people’s army, the New People’s Army, and the broadest united front of the revolutionary people of the country under the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
The current president, Bongbong Marcos, has continued the structural basis of the suffering of the Filipino people. The socioeconomic crisis continues to intensify so that the majority of the Filipinos are living in poverty. Furthermore, the Marcos presidency has tightened it’s military ties with the US through expanding the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and reaffirming the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, while continuously using the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and all its armed elements to kill and violate the rights of the people.
Moreover, the previous Duterte regime through its Anti-terrorism Council arbitrarily designated Louie Jalandoni and the NDFP as terrorists to try and discredit the national democratic movement – which the current government retains. This coincides with the storyline that the US wants to portray by designating the CPP and the NPA as terrorists since 2002.
In this light, a campaign to project the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) as the representative of the Filipino people is of the essence. It is the NDFP, it’s allied revolutionary forces and the many hero martyrs of the Filipino people’s movement, that for 50 years have been waging a brave and militant struggle for a just and lasting peace. A peace that does not simply mean the absence of hostilities, but the realization of genuine national and democratic liberation. History has proven that as long as there is inequality and as long as the root causes of the problems of the Filipino people are not addressed, all forms of resistance will continue.
As Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle we call on all our members to join the campaign, implement activities in line with it and enjoin all our networks.
Objectives and activities
- To promote and heighten the projection of the NDFP as the representative of the Filipino people and their aspiration for national liberation and democracy.
- Hold study groups, meet-ups, fora, lecture series, conferences on the NDFP and the Filipino people’s national democratic struggle
- Propagate NDFP publications such as Updates Philippines and Liberation. Maximize different (social) media platforms to promote and heighten the projection of the NDFP.
- Create and distribute widely, propaganda materials that promote and celebrate the NDFP, it’s 50 years of representing the Filipino people in struggle, and the necessity of a just and lasting peace for the people of the Philippines. People’s war is for people’s peace!
- Project the NDFP in broad media campaigns through news articles, podcasts, conventional and new media; and in all other spheres of influence, including in schools, universities, workplaces, government hallways, etc.
- Conduct militant mass actions such as demonstrations in support of the NDFP and the national democratic revolution in the Philippines.
- Take part in exposures trips to the Philippines and organize report-backs.
- To continue the campaign against the terrorist designation of Louie Jalandoni and the NDFP to expose and oppose the US-Marcos regime
- Develop access to mainstream and alternative print and broadcast media
- Expose and oppose the designation of Louie Jalandoni and the NDF as a way to discredit the justness of the Filipino people’s national democratic struggle through tit-4-tat, statements, media engagements, fora etc.
- To heighten the mass campaign against the terrorist listing of the CPP and NPA
- Conduct lobby efforts in countries to delist these entities
- Continue legal efforts in close coordination with the NDFP
- Conduct mass actions to call for the delisting of the CPP and NPA through arousing, organizing and mobilizing our members and networks on the issue
- Conduct appropriate forms of dedicated actions to promote the revolutionary forces, such as protest actions calling for the delisting of the CPP-NPA, including on March 29.
Ideas for slogans
“Long live the militant struggle of the Filipino people!”
“We support the Filipino people’s aspiration for a just and lasting peace!”
“Support genuine democracy, support the NDF!”
“People’s war is for people’s peace!”