Ang Bayan is the official news organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines issued by the CPP Central Committee. It provides news about the work of the Party as well as its analysis of and standpoint on current issues.

AB comes out fortnightly. It is published originally in Pilipino and translated into Bisaya, Ilokano, Waray, Hiligaynon and English.

Acrobat PDF files of AB are available online for downloading and offline reading printing. If you wish to receive copies of AB via email, click here.

Editorial

Fight till the end of the Arroyo regime!

After close to a decade of suffering under her despicable regime, the Filipino people ardently wish to put an end to Gloria Arroyo's puppet, corrupt and repressive rule and hold her accountable for all her grave crimes against the people.

The people know that if Arroyo had her way, she would never voluntarily and peacefully relinquish power. Her maneuvers to remain in power are in fact shifting into high gear as she nears the end of her term in June 2010. It has become clearer to the people that they must act decisively to oust her from power. Like the turbulence that presaged the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and the EDSA uprisings of 1986 and 2001, there is a gathering tempest as the people move determinedly to end the hated US-Arroyo regime.

Whatever means Arroyo employs to extend her rule, one thing is clear: that her mercenary, corrupt, lying and brutal reign can only be put to an end if the people seize power and force Arroyo to step down.

It is totally unacceptable to the people for Arroyo to remain in power. It is unacceptable for them to continue suffering the terrible hardships and oppression they have endured under her rotten, avaricious and brutal regime.

The people must therefore forge ranks, muster their anger and turn it into a powerful storm that will put an end to Arroyo's rule. Efforts to arouse, organize and mobilize the people to end all the sufferings that the US-Arroyo regime has put them through must be stepped up and broadened.

We must show the people that their sufferings stem from no other than the ruling regime's pro-imperialist and antipeople policies and programs -- among them the policy to freeze wages at very low levels, to neglect social services in favor of allotting a huge portion of the budget to debt service, to export workers instead of creating jobs inside the country, and to block genuine land reform.

We must tirelessly expose the fact that Arroyo has plundered the nation of at least P7.3 billion, and that she is accountable for the extrajudicial executions of more than a thousand activists and critics and for many more cases of military abuse that have victimized up to a million people because of her efforts to cow and silence a people in struggle. We must expose the Arroyo regime's outrageous puppetry and obsequiousness to the dictates of its imperialist master and its plans to give free rein to US imperialist intervention in the Philippines' internal affairs and the plunder of the nation's economy and resources by foreign interests.

The revolutionary and progressive forces must, in the coming months up to the crucial year ahead intensify their efforts to arouse, organize and mobilize the Filipino people in their broadest numbers to fight "cha-cha" and all of Arroyo's other schemes to prolong power. Success in all these undertakings rests on how much strength and power the people can infuse into the various forms of resistance.

We must stoke the fires of protest and resistance. Let them spread like a prairie fire across the land to enable the people in their numbers to play a part in this historic struggle. In the final analysis, the breadth and size of street demonstrations and the vigorous advance of armed revolution are the keys to winning this battle. The people must be mobilized in their millions in various provinces and cities across the country in the face of the Arroyo regime's vicious suppression of protest actions especially in its jealously guarded center of power, until the fascist forces are rendered inutile to stop the emergence of a new uprising in the national capital.

Workers and peasants, the urban poor and the vast army of the unemployed, teachers and employees, the youth, students and other sectors must broadly and vigorously mobilize against "cha-cha" side by side with fighting for their political and socio-economic rights and interests. Their sectoral struggles must be linked to the struggle to put an end to the regime that has made them suffer for so long. Parallel to the struggle to end the US-Arroyo regime, we must intensify the people's struggle to end the ruling system that is fraught with crisis, corruption, poverty and repression.

The current conditions are exceedingly favorable for advancing the people's democratic revolution and intensifying tactical offensives nationwide. We must take advantage of the political and socio-economic crisis under the ruling regime and government to propagate and intensify people's war. We must place the armed revolutionary movement at the forefront of the broad masses of the people actively waging resistance. We must wave the red banner of armed revolution amid the economic crisis that has sent shockwaves to the semicolonial and semifeudal system and the political crisis that has put the reactionary classes in turmoil.

Campaigns to intensify tactical offensives of the New People's Army in the second half of 2009 until the entirety of 2010 must be planned at the regional and front levels. We must give full rein to guerrilla fronts and guerrilla platoons to exercise their initiative, daringness and momentum to launch winnable tactical offensives according to their capabilities.

The struggle to put an end to the US-Arroyo regime is sure to intensify in the coming months and the year ahead. The revolutionary forces must consciously seize all current opportunities to step up their efforts to enhance their organized and armed strength so as to raise both mass struggles and guerrilla warfare to a new and higher level.