Joma Sison on the 33rd Anniversary of the League of Filipino Students

By Jose Maria Sison
(Founding Chairman of Kabataang Makabayan)


I wish to convey warmest greetings of solidarity to the League of Filipino Students (LFS) on the occasion of its 33rd founding anniversary. This is a time to renew your resolve to strengthen the LFS organizationally and politically, respond to the challenges posed by the worsening crisis of the ruling system and the world capitalist system and make greater contributions to the advance of the people's struggle for national democracy.

I welcome your thematic call: Mangahas, Magpalakas! Pag-aralan ang lipunan, magpalawak at lumaban! (Be daring, strengthen our ranks! Study the society, expand and fight!) I appreciate that you are emphasizing the need to strengthen your organization by accelerating the expansion and consolidation of membership. In this regard, let me share with you the experiences of Kabataang Makabayan in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the student masses in various universities, colleges and high schools.

In arousing the student masses, we engaged in propaganda and agitation on the basis of the KM Program of Action and the analysis of whichever concrete issue was raging. We issued and published manifestos or statements on the issue. We undertook meetings and buildup rallies on various campuses in order to discuss the issue and call on the students to participate in the forthcoming big mobilization of the masses.

In organizing the student masses, we urged the existing members of the KM to recruit rapidly more members from their classmates, friends and co-members in other campus organizations. Each KM member sought to brief and recruit at least five members within every three months. It was sufficient for an applicant or recruit to qualify and be sworn in as KM member by reading and accepting the KM Constitution and Program of Action.

The task of expansion was necessary before there could be any KM members to consolidate through political education higher than a basic understanding of the KM Constitution and Program of Action and through conscientious participation in the activities of the KM. All KM members were required to ventilate and spread the KM position on issues, recruit more members and call on the student masses to join the mass campaigns.

The more members the KM was able to recruit the greater was its capability to engage in bigger mass actions of high significance. The more outstanding was the role of the KM in the mass campaigns and big rallies the more they attracted students to become KM members and build or strengthen their KM chapters. By the time that the KM had at least 10,000 members in 1969, it was ready to become the spearhead of the First Quarter Storm of 1970 in the national capital region and in many provincial cities.

In mobilizing the student masses before and during the FQS, the KM typically used at least six major starting points in various parts of Metro Manila in order to rally the students and other youth and then march them to the central converging point, either in front of Congress, the US embassy or the presidential palace. Along the way the marchers called the attention of the people to the issue and urged them to join the march. Either the people joined the march or manifested their support by applauding the marchers and giving them food and water.
 

The League of Filipino Students is a mass organization and is committed to developing the mass movement along the line of the people's struggle for national freedom and democracy. It must always measure its level of achievement by counting the extent of its informative and educational materials and number of the participants in protest meetings, the number of members it has newly recruited and accumulated and the number of student masses it has attracted to the mass actions of the campaign.


The LFS is the largest and most militant student organization of the national democratic movement. It has been outstanding in taking a patriotic and progressive position on issues, in building an organization on a nationwide scale and in holding mass actions on student issues and participating in multisectoral mass actions. The most prominent of these mass actions resulted in the overthrow of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the Estrada regime and frustrated the schemes of Ramos and Arroyo to amend the 1987 constitution in order to prolong their rule.

The mass campaigns to arouse and mobilize the students and the rest of the people are supposed to make the students more ready to join the LFS and should have stimulated solid mass organizing through the rapid recruitment of LFS members. But there have been obviously shortcomings in this regard. LFS has not been able to bring about and sustain a high level of membership that should be commensurate to the high prestige of the LFS and responsive to the well-recognized need for more members to carry out the gigantic tasks of the student movement.

Attention must be paid to the task of solid mass organizing. This means recruiting new members rapidly in the process of expansion on the basis of the LFS Constitution and Program and subsequently consolidating them through further political education. You must trust and rely on your members by giving full play to their initiative in recruiting new members. Without solid mass organizing at a rapid pace by the members themselves, the ability of a mass organization to hold large and significant mass actions is undermined and becomes diminished.

I hope that during your current anniversary celebration you can sum up your experience, take stock of your strengths, seek solutions to problems and lay down the tasks for bringing your current level of strength to a new and higher one within the next year and in further years. I urge you to pay serious attention to making an organization plan to accelerate recruitment and establish new chapters. Of course, you must co-relate such plan to your education and campaign plans.

Mabuhay ang League of Filipino Students!
Mabuhay ang pakikibaka para sa pambansang demokrasya!
Mabuhay ang sambayanang Pilipino!


(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Joma Sison)


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Source:

Sison, Jose Maria. Message of Solidarity to the League of Filipino Students. 11 September 2010. http://www.facebook.com/notes/joma-sison/message-of-solidarity-to-the-league-of-filipino-students/491496573065



Reposts are licensed to the respective authors. Otherwise, posts by Jesusa Bernardo are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines.

Joma Sison slams continuing slander linking him to the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing

Press Release


WE wish to remind the public and the mass media that in 1994 the office of the Manila prosecutor's office approved and issued a resolution dated March 2, 1994 dismissing as based on sheer speculation the charge of multiple murder against Prof. JoseMaria Sison and others in connection with the Plaza Miranda bombing of August 21, 1971.

August 21, 1971 Plaza Miranda Bombing Montage

The full resolution is annexed hereto and is also available at http://www.josemariasison.org/legalcases/CaseFiles.html (Part XIV, No. 2 Resolution of Manila Prosecutors Dismissing 1991 Plaza Miranda Bombing Charge, March 2,1994).

The resolution reads as follows:

"This refers to the infamous Plaza Miranda bombing which occurred in the evening of August 21, 1971 wherein several persons were killed and others severely injured.

"At the instance of the PNP- CISC, the leaders of the CPP-NPA led by respondent Jose Ma. Sison were charged of Multiple Murder in connection with the same.

"Based on the report of the PNP- CISC, earlier that day, Jose Ma. Sison called for a conference, attended by the party's top officers and among them were respondents Monico Atienza, Herminigildo Garcia IV,Manuel Collantes, Roque Magtanggol, John Doe alias Ka Donald, and Robert Doe alias KaDaniel. Accordingly, the prime purpose of the meeting was to discuss a scheme to bring chaos between the two politicalparties (Liberal Party and Nacionalista Party) and in effect increase the sympathizers for the CPP/NPA and its manpower. Presumably this was the bombing of the Liberal Party's political rally which would create a showdown between the Liberal Party and the Nacionalista Party. The actual bombing was allegedly implemented by Danny Cordero, alias KaDanny or Ka Kris.

"In support of the foregoing, the PNP- CISC submitted sworn statements of former members of the party who claimed to have knowledge of the bombing and further implicated the above respondents as the supposed plannersof the bombing incident.

"Nothing shows clearly however, that the aforestated meeting delved on the planning of the Plaza Miranda Bombing. If at all only inferences were made in the statements. In other words the supposed participations of the respondents as planners or masterminds are sheer speculations. And if the only evidence against them consist, merely of the said statements, the same is not sufficientto charge them of multiple murder. Moreover, the implicated persons who supposedly have carried out the carnage are no longer around or nowhere to be found in order to shed light on the incident or dispute them.

"To indict the respondents, therefore based solely on the submitted sworn statements is tantamount to a hasty, malicious and oppressive prosecution which is precisely what is being avoided through a preliminary investigation. There has to be more than what was submitted to establish probable cause.

"The undersigned therefore recommends the DISMISSAL ofthe instant case against all the respondents for lack of sufficient basis."(Bold ours.)

Since the approval of the resolution in 1994, it has closed the false charge against Prof. Jose Maria Sison with complete finality. But it has become an annual ritual on or about August 21 for some detractors to repeat the false charge in the mass media. We condemn the slander against Prof. Sison as a malicious act of injustice and a violation of his rights.

Recently, one columnist has insinuated that Prof. Sison ordered the Plaza Miranda bombing. His mere innuendo does not deserve to be answered. But another columnist Gemma Cruz Araneta has blatantly written, "The unspeakable crime was attributed to President Ferdinand Marcos but years later, to everyone's horror, Jose Ma.Sison, chairman of the Communist Party, revealed that he had ordered the bombing."

The columnist makes a big lie by claiming that Prof. Sison "revealed that he had ordered the bombing". She does not say when, where and to whom Prof. Sison has made the revelation. The fact is that he has always denied the false charge originally made by Ferdinand Marcos against Prof. Sison andSenator Benigno Aquino in order to justify the immediate suspension of the writ of habeas corpus on August 21, 1971.

The detractors against Prof. Jose Maria Sison as well as the late Senator Aquino are of at least four kinds:

1. Those who wish to justify the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in 1971 and the declaration of martial law in 1972 and wish to rehabilitate the reputation of the fascist dictator who scapegoated Sison and Aquino immediately after the incident and who benefited most from the incident;

2. Those who wish to denigrate the memory of the martyred Aquino and who go so far as to whisper around that as a matter of karma he waskilled by Galman on the same date of August 21, 1983;

3. Those who are so rabidly anti-communist that they wish to destroy the Communist Party of the Philippines and the revolutionary movement by merely discrediting the founding chairman of the CPP; and

4. Those who are simply mischievous or malicious by inventing lies or by echoing mere rumors and hearsay.

Atty. Romeo T.Capulong of the Public Interest Law Center successfully defended Prof. Jose Maria Sison in 1989 against the false charge of masterminding the Plaza Miranda in joint hearings by the Senate blue ribbon and justice committees and debunked the false testimonies of the military and the professional witnesses against him. He pursued the defense of Prof. Sison before the Commission on Human Rights and before the Manila prosecutor's office. He is an indispensable source of information for any journalist who wishes to make any report, article or column about the long disproven charge against Prof. Sison.

After being roundly beaten in the Senate hearings, the military and police accusers of Sison went to the Commission on Human Rights, demanding that it reverse its 1986 decision clearing Prof. Sison and the CPP from the false charge of perpetrating the Plaza Miranda bombing. But the commission advised the military and police to go to the Manila court before the prescription of the case in 1991. Finally the Manila prosecutors made the resolution to dismiss the case in 1994. ###


Contact:

Email:defenddemrights@yahoo.com Website:www.defendsison.be Telephone:00-31-30-8895306
Fax:00-31-847589930 Address: Amsterdamsestraatweg 50, 3513 AG Utrecht, The Netherlands


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International Defend Ommittee Condemns Yearly Slander against Prof. Jose Maria Sison. 20 August 2010. (Press Release). http://www.facebook.com/notes/joma-sison/international-defend-committee-condemns-yearly-slander-against-prof-jose-maria-s/480894763065


Photo credit:

http://riia.pinoyexchange.com/forums/showthread.php?t=456024&page=6

The Incubation of Activism in the University of the Philippines

by Prof. Jose Maria Sison

The waves of mass protest actions that followed the murder of Benigno Aquino in 1983 and culminated in the overthrow of the Marcos facsist dictatorship in 1986 would not have been possible without the incubation of student activists of the national democratic movement through the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines (SCAUP), starting in 1959.

UP Oblation
(Photo: Liezl Buenaventura)

The student activists originating from the UP stirred up the masses of youth and working people to conduct concerted protest actions, shaking the entire country in the entire 1960s, from the demonstration of 5000 UP student demonstrators that literally scuttled the anti-communist witchhunt of the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA) in March 1961 to the First Quarter Storm of 1970 which rocked the national capital region with almost weekly marches and rallies of 50,000 to 100, 000 people against the Marcos regime.

In my undergraduate years in UP from 1956 to 1959, there was already a certain amount of intellectual and political ferment. The controversies arose mainly from the contradictions between the religio-sectarians and the liberal secularists. But it was often the rhetorical device of the latter to complain about the apathy of the students in order to arouse and range them against conservatism and the desire of the religio-sectarians to hark back to medieval and theocratic times.

 
The religio-sectarians of the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) and Iota Eta Sigma were pleased with the UP presidency of the church militant Dr. Vidal Tan. They were riding high in campus politics by harping on some fatal cases of fraternity hazing in the recent past, justifying the need for more religion in the state university and running counter to the separation of church and state. They were opposed among others to the Noli-Fili law and Prof. Teodoro Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses. Emboldened by the Anti-Subversion Law of 1957, they accused the logical positivist Prof. Ricardo Pascual of being a communist organizing communist cells.

The liberal secularists upheld the separation of church and state, the freedom of thought and belief and academic freedom. They had engaged in mass protests against the interference of the Philippine president in university affairs. After the resignation of Dr. Vidal Tan, who was known as a placeman of the dominant church, Dr. Vicente G. Sinco eventually became UP president and tilted the situation in favor of the liberal secularists by suspending the UP Student Council under the presidency of the UPSCAN Fernando Lagua, by giving full professorial tenure to progressive lecturers like Hernando Abaya, Armando Malay I.P. Soliongco and by launching the Colloqium on Nationalism.

In my personal case, I believe that I matured in 1958 as a progressive liberal under the influence of my liberal professors and as a result of reading the scholarly works on the Philippine revolution by Professors Teodoro Agoncillo and Cesar Adib Majul. I considered myself as a Jacobin rather than as a Girondist or a conservative Burkean liberal and I became strongly critical of the pro-imperialist conservative liberal that was bred in the UP by the unceasing ovewhelming influence of the US. Within 1958, I became an exceedingly devoted student of Marxism by gaining access to the forbidden Marxist books in the cellar of the UP Main library and borrowing books from the private collection of some friends.

Within the context of Marxism-Leninism and the world era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution, I understood that the Philippine revolution needed to be resumed for the benefit of the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata under the class leadership of the proletariat and no longer under the leadership of the
bourgeoisie.

In this connection, I thought that the prevalent contradiction of the liberal secularists and religio-sectarians needed to be elevated to one between the Left and the Right not only on the issues of civil and political rights but on a comprehensive range of issues involving the contradiction between the US-dominated ruling system of big compradors and landlords and the national and democratic demands of the people.

Together with other students, both undergraduates and graduate, we formed in 1959 the Student Cultural Association of the UP. We adopted a two-level program of education for members. The national democratic program was openly promoted. The Marxist program was discreetly carried out. We recruited those students who were already leading other campus organizations, those who could write for the Philippine Collegian and could compete for the editorship and those who had academic marks of 2 or higher for the purpose of someday fielding them as candidates for the student council.

The first big opportunity of the SCAUP to organize a mass protest was in March 1961 in opposition to the congressional witchhunt by the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities against UP faculty members and students who were accused of writing or publishing Marxist materials in violation of the Ant-Subversion Law. These included the book-length Peasant War in the Philippines in Philippine Social Science and Humanities Review, the editorial Tower of Babel in the Philippinensian yearbook of 1961 and Requiem for Lumumbain the May 1, 1961 issue of Philippine Collegian, written under my pen name Andres Gregorio.

The SCAUP membership was of high quality. It included the Philippine Collegian editor Reynato Puno, key members of fraternities and sororities and graduate students like Rey Punongbayan, Jaime C. Laya, Petronilo Daroy and myself who was the chairman. But the SCAUP was too small. It needed a broad front of leadership to call on the students to join the mass protest in Congress.

The Inter-Fraternity and Sorority Conference (IFSC), which was chaired by SCAUP officer and Alpha Phi Betan Ferdinand Tinio, assumed the responsibility of calling on the students to defend academic freedom and protest against the CAFA witchhunt. Petronilo Bn Daroy, Heherson Alvarez and I signed the contract for the rent of 25 JD buses for the student ride from Diliman to Manila. We were able to muster 5000 students in the first demonstration with an anti- imperialist and anti-feudal character since more than a decade ago.

From 1961 to 1964, the SCAUP took a key role in organizing pickets, strikes and rallies of varying sizes by UP students alone or in combination with students from other universities on such issues as national independence against unequal agreements with the US (especially Laurel-Langley Agreement and the Miliitary Bases Agreement), land reform and national industrialization, workers' rights, civil and political liberties and solidarity with other peoples against US acts of aggression in various countries.

By the time that Kabataang Makabayan was formed as a comprehensive youth organization in 1964, a number of the activist alumni of the SCAUP had already moved into key positions in the Workers Party (Lapiang Manggagawa) and in worker, peasants and teachers organizations and were in a position to convene delegations of young workers, young peasants, students and young professions in order to found the KM. In UP Diliman, the SCAUP and the KM chapter co-existed, cooperated with each other and conjoined with still other organizations in mass protest actions on and off the campus.

S.P. Lopez speaks before UP students at AS steps, after Jan. 26, 1970  rally at Congress

The student activists that originated from UP Diliman played an important role in propagating the line of struggle for national liberation and democracy against the US and the local exploiting classes, in building major national organizations taking such line and in promoting mass protest actions as the instrument of the people for realizing their national and democratic demands. From year to year the youth movement spread and intensified, leading to the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and further developing nationwide up to 1972 when the Marcos regime declared martial law and imposed a fascist dictatorship on the people.

The fascist regime suppressed the urban-based mass movement and caused the detention, torture and murder of the activists. But many thousands of the activists went underground in the urban areas as well join the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside. They were responsible for protest mass actions in urban areas from time to time from 1972 to 1983.

In the 1981-83 period, the urban-based mass organizations of workers, peasants and youth were already openly resurgent despite vicious reaction from the fascist regime against the trade union leaders. But consequent to the Aquino assassination, the regime was utterly isolated and dazed by the public outrage. The mass organizations of the national democratic movement became the core of sustained protest mass actions that ultimately led to the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. ###


(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Jose Maria Sison)

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Source:

Jose Maria Sison, Bachelor of Arts in English, Class 1959. June 26, 2010. 2010 Yearbook of the University of the Philippines.


Photo credits:

(UP AS, First Quarter Storm). First Quarter Storm Library Site. http://fqslibrary.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/photo-gallery-january-30/

(Book Cover). http://www.defendsison.be/pages_php/0408122.php

(UP Oblation) Liezl Buenaventura site. http://buenaventura.carbonmade.com/projects/98014#11


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