Joma: Reds campaigning VS Duterte’s senatorial bets

LUCENA CITY, QUEZON, Philippines — The communist revolutionary forces are opposed to election as a tool of the ruling system but they have been campaigning against the administration senatorial candidates in the May 13 polls, exiled rebel leader Jose Maria “Joma” Sison said.

Sison said the Communist Party of the Philippines, its armed wing the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines “are prohibited from participating in the elections staged by the ruling system.”

“But they can clarify and disseminate to the people why it is wrong to vote for the parties and candidates that support the tyrannical, treasonous, mass murdering, plundering and swindling crimes of the Duterte regime,” Sison said in an online interview from his base in Utrecht in the Netherlands Friday night.

No more support

He said the revolutionary forces “can also allow and encourage their revolutionary mass base to vote for parties and candidates that stand for national sovereignty, democracy, social justice, economic development through genuine land reform and national industrialization, job tenure and fair wages, expanded social services, patriotic and progressive culture and independent foreign policy.”

Unlike the rebels’ tacit support for Duterte’s presidential candidacy in 2016, Sison himself now urged the electorate to vote against the candidates of the Duterte regime, especially in the senatorial race.