• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which marked its 57th founding anniversary on December 26, is no longer an occasion for celebration but a moment of reckoning, as decades of armed struggle have failed to deliver genuine progress and have instead left a trail of violence, displacement, and broken promises, disclosed National Security Adviser Eduardo Año on Friday.
For more than half a century, the CPP–New People’s Army (NPA) has pursued an armed campaign that has exacted a heavy toll on the Filipino people, particularly in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas. Recent armed encounters—including incidents during the holiday period that resulted in fatalities—demonstrate that violence remains an active and deliberate method employed by the group, said Año, who is also the vice chairman of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
This persistent reliance on violence exposes the emptiness of the CPP’s rhetoric, he added.
“Declarations of temporary ceasefires, when coupled with calls for continued armed readiness, merely show insincerity toward genuine public safety and community welfare,” he stressed.
Año also noted that while democratic dissent and advocacy for reform are protected in a constitutional democracy, the use of armed violence to pursue political objectives is not.
“Resorting to force undermines lawful political processes and marginalizes communities by imposing agendas through coercion rather than consent,” he pointed out.
For his part, NTF-ELCAC Executive Director Ernesto C. Torres Jr. said the reality on the ground stands in sharp contrast to the CPP’s claims of resurgence.
“Fifty-seven years on, what remains is not a mass movement but a sunken organization clinging to an outdated ideology,” Torres said.
“Militarily and politically, the NPA is now fragmented and depleted. Its remaining units are isolated, undersupplied, and increasingly reduced to acts of extortion, intimidation, and punitive violence against civilians,” he added.
Torres said loud claims of “rectification and recovery” cannot hide what he described as the plain truth: the NPA has “ceased to become an organized armed group but a band of isolated bandits in survival mode.”
Both Año and Torres noted that communities once caught in the crossfire of insurgency have increasingly rejected the presence of armed groups—not out of fear, but because peace and development are finally taking root.
Roads are being built, livelihoods restored, and basic services delivered to long-neglected areas.
These gains, they said, explain why the CPP-NPA has steadily lost its mass base.
Torres warned that, unable to rebuild support in the countryside through the NPA, the CPP has turned to what he called its “one remaining lifeline”: urban-based operations.
“Universities, urban poor communities, and other vulnerable groups have become prime targets for ideological grooming. The youth are bombarded with romantic narratives of struggle, even as organizers deliberately obscure the grim realities of hunger, fear, disillusion, and death in the mountains,” the official further stressed.
He added that even in tragic deaths, families’ mourning is weaponized and monetized to sustain recruitment.
“This is not genuine activism. This is pure exploitation,” Torres emphasized.
Alongside this, Torres said the CPP now relies heavily on its legal democratic organizations—whom he described as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”—to maintain relevance, weaponized narratives, and squeeze out financing to keep the armed movement alive.
“Every exposure is met with cries of repression, every factual disclosure is branded as harassment, and demands to condemn the CPP-NPA’s armed violence are carefully avoided. This reflexive response only reinforces the truth that these formations function as life support for a failing armed movement,” he said.
The most telling development, Torres added, is the growing number of former CPP cadres, NPA fighters, and community organizers who have chosen to speak out and embrace peace and development.
“They do not speak as outsiders, but as people who lived inside the system, saw its contradictions firsthand, and chose a different path,” he said. “That is why they are vilified, harassed online, and in some unfortunate cases, summarily killed—as a chilling reminder of the cost of speaking the truth.”
“Truth from within,” Torres further emphasized, “is far more dangerous to a failing ideology than any military setback.”
Año, meanwhile, underscored that the government’s response has evolved beyond a purely security-driven approach. Under the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD) and the whole-of-nation framework, efforts now prioritize governance reforms, social services, infrastructure, reintegration, and amnesty—while upholding human rights and the rule of law.
“We continue to extend amnesty to qualified former rebels and offer a clear, humane pathway back to peaceful civilian life,” Año said. “Ending this conflict requires collective resolve—to deny violence legitimacy and to advance solutions that deliver security, accountability, and tangible development.”
The officials renewed their call on remaining NPA fighters and CPP cadres to abandon armed violence and return to the folds of the law. They also urged the public, particularly the youth, to exercise critical judgment and reject narratives that glorify armed struggle.
After 57 years of bloodshed, they said, the armed struggle has reached its end. The task before the nation now is the work of peace, healing, development, and nation-building—a struggle the Filipino people, they stressed, have already chosen, they added.*
