Philippines - ys13.en

The Philippines and the Revolutionary Workers Party-Mindanao Revolutionary Peoples’ Army (RPM-M-RPA)

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands with a total land area of 300, 000 square kilometres and an exploding population of 98 million as of May 6, 2013. It posted a 6.6% economic growth in 2012 but poverty incidence stood at 27.9% in the first semester of the same year. Moreover, the January 2013 jobless rate stood at 7.1%, with a further 20.9% underemployed, or working fewer than 40 hours a week. About 41.8% of the underemployed are in the farming sector.

Philippines’ economic model depended on consumption, strong remittances from its large overseas workforce and the business process outsourcing industry, which employs college graduates. However, three out of every five Filipinos are highly dependent on agriculture but landlordism, insurgencies, entry of multinational corporations and improper implementation of comprehensive agrarian reform program of land redistribution and agricultural support and subsidies created problems of landlessness, precariousness of jobs and hunger in the rural and the urban areas.

Of the five poorest provinces in the country, three belongs to Mindanao with 68.9 percent poverty incidence. And this is where the Revolutionary Workers Party-Mindanao/Revolutionary Peoples’ Army is currently launching its revolutionary struggle.

Guided by the Marxist and Leninist principles, RPM-M/RPA conducts the open, democratic and anti-imperialist struggles as concrete expressions and integral part of the revolutionary mass movement to achieve concrete reforms and gains as well as comprehensive reforms to raise the level of consciousness of the toiling masses in the following:

1. genuine peace and development process with the government of the Philippines as well as in other peace processes such as that of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)-Government of the Philippines (GPH);

2. electoral reforms and parliamentary struggle to gain concrete reforms against the current and prevailing traditional and elitist system of politics;

3. struggle of the Bangsamoro (Muslim Filipinos) and the Lumad (indigenous peoples) to manage their own territories and their resources , practice their traditional justice system and governance and freely practice their religion and beliefs;

4. struggle of women and lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people (LGBT) for gender equality and the rights of people to express and practice their gender preferences;

5. struggle for food security and sovereignty.