Expansion teams from these MOs were spreading out among the various
colleges and universities of Metro Manila and to the provinces. To
coordinate and direct this growing number of allied organizations,
there came the Movement for a Democratic Philippines (MDP). Elsewhere in Metro Manila, activists displayed resourcefulness by boarding buses and distributing manifestoes and statements to the passengers. Or, welcoming the invitation of enlightened teachers, they went from schoolroom to schoolroom to rally the students to the Red flag of struggle.
Since it was the orientation of the youth and student movement to
deploy prospective cadres and activists to integrate with the peasant
masses, the youth who were now politically conscious – and those who
ere getting “hot” (umiinit) in the urban areas – were being
deployed to the countryside.
They went there to become political officers (Pos) of the newly
formed squads and platoons of the New People’s Army, and to organize
the peasants. In Manila at that time, it became common dialogue for a
comrade to ask another about a “missing” comrade. The reply was
that he was already in “I”. This meant he had gone to the hills in
the new expansion areas of Isabela (“I”), in Northeastern Luzon.
Or later, to the other expansion areas in Southern Tagalog or Bicol,
or farther south to the Visayas and Mindanao.
As a result of the FQS, the National Press Club (NPC) of the
Philippines, of which I was president, passed a resolution at its 1970
National Convention aligning the NPC in the movement for national
independence and democracy. This was after my first term as president, where we took the progressive course of supporting the brothers Rizal and Quintin Yuyitung of the Chinese Commercial News who were persecuted and deported to Taiwan by the Marcos regime and its Kuomintang cohorts, and supporting the young staffers of the Dumaguete Times in the Visayas who were being held incommunicado by the regime. We also opened the door of the NPC to mass leaders and activists of the national democratic movement to acquaint them with the reporters covering the surging mass movement, and to extend to them whatever physical protection the press club had at that time.
When I look back to the FQS of 1970, what stands out in my mind are
the positive contributions that that period and its political
activities contributed to the national democratic revolution as a
whole. Among the things that I remember most was the spirit of
learning that pervaded the mass activists, and their sense of courage.
If we remember, the FQS was launched in the wake of the First Great
Rectification Campaign, to repudiate the revisionism of the Lavaite
renegades and to propagate the national-democratic line. Today, we are going through the Second Great Rectification Campaign, to repudiate revisionism, splittism, capitulationism and reformism of present-day revisionists.
In the FQS, the call was for the political and theoretical education
of the young and their deployment to the countryside. Today, with the
Second Great Rectification Campaign, there is a call for education on
the rectification documents and on the varied levels of theoretical
education, especially on Mao Zedong and our own rich experiences.
I’m happy to learn that it was in the ranks of the youth and
students and workers – as in the case of the FQS – that the
rectification campaign took root, and that it was the youth and the
workers who took up the cudgels for the movement and its program, as
against the deviations of the revisionists and splittists.
I understand, too, that as in the FQS, it is again among the youth
and students and the workers that the call is being heeded for the
educated and politically conscious youth to integrate with the peasant
masses in the countryside, instead of being kept in the urban areas
for possible insurrectionist activities.
As this trend continues, and as we carry on the rest of our tasks at
the present time, we keep faith with our forebears who launched the
Katipunan Revolution of 1896, and we keep faith with present-day
Filipinos, especially the thousands of comrades who – before, during
and after the FQS – willingly sacrificed their lives against the
US-Marcos fascist dictatorship, the US-Aquino fascist regime and now
the fascist regime of the US-Ramos clique, so that our children and
our children’s children will live in national freedom, democracy,
peace, justice and prosperity. (Posted by (Bulatlat.com)
