NDF
Urges Nur, Followers To Return to Armed Struggle
SURIGAO
DEL SUR – Nur Misuari still has a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the
Moro people, and he can only do that if he goes back to the “revolutionary
path,” meaning armed struggle.
By
Carlos H. Conde
Bulatlat.com
This
is the advice of the National Democratic Front in Mindanao (NDF-Mindanao), who
urged Misuari, founding chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF),
“to establish and strengthen linkages with other legitimate revolutionary
groups that aspire for the interests of the Bangsamoro and the Filipino
people.”
If
Misuari takes up the challenge, this could mean a possible tactical alliance
between his group and the NDF – similar to what the latter has with the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which they formalized in the late 1990s.
Ka
Oris, the spokesman of NDF-Mindanao, said in a statement that the NDF, “under
its 12-point program, explicitly and consistently supports the struggle of the
Bangsamoro for the right to self-determination.” The statement was released in
the mountains of this province on December 26, the 34th anniversary
of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which leads the NDF and the New
People’s Army (NPA). The NDF invited about 20 journalists from Davao City,
General Santos City and Butuan City to cover the celebration.
Ka
Oris said that the MNLF “under the leadership of Misuari” should once and
for all repudiate the 1996 peace agreement Misuari signed with the Ramos
administration. The agreement, according to Ka Oris, “did not help the Moro
people in achieving their aspirations for self-determination.”
He
bewailed the present and previous administration for allegedly reneging on their
promise to the Moro people. He also lambasted what he called the “Moro
elite” for collaborating with these regimes “to further disenfranchise the
Moro people.”
If
anything, Ka Oris said, the 1996 peace agreement “extinguished the MNLF’s
revolutionary fervor. As a result, the agreement facilitated the entry of big
and multinational corporations and consolidated the land monopoly of the local
landlord class.”
These,
in turn, “perpetuated the decades-old problems that beset the Bangsamoro
homeland — problems that are rooted in economic exploitation, political
oppression and cultural prejudice.”
Ka
Oris urged Misuari and his followers to “look back at the heroic history of
the Moro people’s struggle and return to the revolutionary path. They should
reject the 1996 agreement and continue asserting the Bangsamoro’s right to
self-determination.”
Although
Misuari never really consummated the Marxist and Maoist principles that he
imbibed during his days at the University of the Philippines, he was said to
have been a member of the underground Kabataang Makabayan, which was founded by
Jose Maria Sison, the founding chairman of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP).
But
after Misuari founded the MNLF in 1969, he had shown wariness toward the
CPP-NPA-NDF. Sison, in his book The Philippine Revolution: The Leader’s
View, recounted how Misuari came to Luzon in August 1972, “to get in touch
with the central committee of the CPP.” The meeting, however, was more of a
declaration of independence from the Communists by the then nascent MNLF.
“He
came only to declare that the CPP and NPA should keep out of Mindanao even as
comrades presented to him the demographic facts of Mindanao,” Sison said. The
next year, Sison and company talked to Misuari’s wife, the late Desdemona,
about “strengthening unity, cooperation and coordination” but never received
a reply from the MNLF about this proposal.
Despite
Misuari’s coldness toward his former comrade at the KM and at Communists in
general, his exposure to Marxism and Maoism played a role in the rift within the
MNLF that eventually drove Hashim Salamat, who had been Misuari’s vice
chairman in the MNLF’s Central Committee, to form the breakaway MILF. In the
book, A Nation Under Endless Tyranny, author Salah Jubair noted that the
differences between Misuari and Salamat was basic: “Secular-educated, Misuari
was nationalistic and Hashim, Islamic oriented, was Islamic.”
In
fact, according to Jubair, Salamat and his group broke away from Misuari in 1977
because, among other reasons, “the MNLF leadership was being manipulated away
from Islamic basis, methodologies and objectives and was fast evolving toward a
Marxist-Maoist orientation.”
This
assessment is somewhat ironic, especially in light of the CPP’s criticism of
the MNLF’s decision to agree to the 1976 Tripoli Agreement. This agreement,
according to Sison in his book, “bound (the MNLF) within the framework of
Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity… That agreement would cause
breakaways from the MNLF and the cooptation of quite a number of MNLF leaders
and groups by Marcos.” Bulatlat.com
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