LUCENA CITY -- Despite the military's trumpeting of the near demise of the communist-led rebellion that has been raging in the countryside for the past four decades, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison congratulated his comrades and the New People’s Army rebels for keeping the flames of the revolution burning.

In his founding anniversary message, Sison, hailed the revolutionary movement for all the victories won not only in the war fronts but also in its arousal of millions of Filipinos to embrace the ideology behind the protracted guerilla warfare that aims to overhaul the rotten society ruled by reactionary clique.

"I share your joy in celebrating all the struggles waged and all the victories won by the CPP and the Filipino people in the last four decades of the new democratic revolution," Sison told CPP cadres and members in his message, a copy of which was received by the Philippine Daily Inquirer Tuesday.

Sison now introduces himself as chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front, the political arm of the revolutionary movement. He is living in self-exile in Utrecht, The Netherlands, along with other top officials of the revolutionary movement.

He claimed that the NPA rebels now have more than 100 guerrilla fronts in the country's 70 provinces and 800 municipalities.

"Close to 100 per cent of the weapons in the hands of the NPA have come [from] its enemy through tactical offensives," he said.

After an ideological split with the old pro-Soviet communist party that was defeated by the government in the 1950s, Sison, former state university professor set up in Dec. 26, 1968 the revitalized CPP with Maoist-oriented ideology.

Four months later, the new CPP established the NPA in a remote village in Central Luzon. The first rag-tag guerilla unit was armed with automatic rifles, single-shot rifles and handguns.

By carrying out tactical offensives particularly through ambuscades and raids against remote police stations, the rebels were able to accumulate arms for its recruits mostly from among the ranks of farmers, workers and student activists.

Sison said the different units of NPA rebels have been carrying out intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare supported by a widening and deepening mass base in pursuit of the people's war blueprint of defensive, stalemate and offensive strategic stages.

"All three integral components are meant to contribute to the realization of the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside until the people's army is strong enough to seize the cities and other strongholds of the enemy on a nationwide scale," he explained.

Sison said the CPP has successfully integrated the theory of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism with the concrete conditions and concrete practice of the Philippine revolution.

The CPP, Sison said, has tens of thousands of members, mainly from the workers and peasants.

"It has drawn the most advanced elements from the mass movement of workers, peasants, women, youth and cultural activists. It has admitted to its ranks the educated youth, who come mainly from the urban petty bourgeoisie but who are willing to remold themselves into proletarian revolutionaries through revolutionary study and practice in the service of the people," he said.

Sison predicted that with the continuous advance of the revolution, the CPP would need to recruit tens of thousands of cadres and hundreds of thousands of members.

"There are gigantic tasks ahead for the CPP," he said.

The NPA rebels have been holding First Lieutenant Vicente Cammayo, commander of the Army Special Forces, after he was captured last November 19 in an encounter in Monkayo, Compostela Valley.

Police Officer 3 Eduardo Tumol was also seized by NPA rebels last November 5 in Caraga town, Davao Oriental.

The military and police have been demanding for the release of the government men but made it clear that negotiation for their freedom was not an option.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has given security forces until 2010 to defeat the NPA, which, according to military estimates, had 5,700 fighters at the end of 2007, its weakest in terms of manpower in 20 years.

At its peak in the early 1980s, the military said there were over 25,000 communist guerillas.

The protracted communist guerilla war, according to government figures, had claimed more than 40,000 lives and billions of pesos worth of properties destroyed and despite a series of peace talks by successive presidents, peace remains elusive.

Peace talks with the communists have been stalled since August 2004 when Malacañang refused to help persuade the United States and some Western European states to remove the NPA from their terrorism blacklists.

Two weeks ago, government and National Democratic Front negotiators met for an informal meeting in Oslo, Norway to pave the way for the resumption of peace negotiations.

But the attempt bogged down after the NDF, the political arm of the rebel movement, accused government negotiators of imposing a prolonged ceasefire as precondition to the resumption of any formal peace talks.