The founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) 50 years ago by the young Red Turks who deemed the old and now nearly-defunct Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930) dysfunctional and on the verge of collapse was not indefensible.

History proved right the local Left movement, along with the people, was to suffer more attacks from the State after the PKP-1930 had lost its moral ascendancy when it cooperated with Ferdinand Marcos. It gained support from the equally persecuted masses with majority of its recruits harboring grievances against the state and government, their employers, landlords and anyone supporting the abusive order.

In three years, the country was to be placed under martial rule and for 14 more years it would not be able to escape the firm grip of a dictator who was ousted by a mostly middle class-led revolution in 1986.

EDSA — now known as a clogged artery of a dilapidated infrastructure than the revolution once sparked by a demand for change — sidestepped the Maoist communists, who in their heydays had almost equaled the nation’s military strength.

The Reds did not see the strength of the middle forces. They failed to maximize their influence on the “other” peoples’ movements. The Maoist group and its legal fronts have even antagonized the leading forces and leaders of those “other movements.”

“Vanguardism,” or so it was called, isolated the groups from each other.

The CPP-NPA was that strong at that time.

But as Maoism and its Asian flavor were aberrations to the Marxist-Leninist theory of communism, Edsa had also abruptly halted the gains of the CPP and its military arm — the New People’s Army (NPA) — which quickly went on a decline, a large part of it due its own mistakes and paranoia.

In not a few books written by former members of the CPP-NPA themselves, they described how the Maoist party had killed its own children to feed its own persecution complex. It became a political Kronus, devouring its own after it castrated its father, the old Marxist-Leninist party.

Two massive purging campaigns had devastating effects on the CPP. Activists working in its legal fronts had been invited to meetings in the backwoods, never to come back.

Top officials suspected of working with the military as spies have been tortured, many of them killed in more ways that violated human rights the Maoist legal fronts have been championing to fodder populist calls.

The Cory government also initially welcomed the martyred Ninoy Aquino’s former communist partners back into the mainstream fold. Many of them stayed and more were lured by the lucrative shine of government service, business and NGO work.

From an estimated army force of 26,000, the NPA is now said to number just around a fifth of that.

Those who survived the harsh guerilla life, those who did not perish in battles, those who did not fall into the military dragnet and got jailed, have grown older. Many of them have retired from the fronts. Imagine, 50 years in the battlefront.

Last month after Christmas and coinciding with the 126th birth anniversary of Mao Tse Tung, the CPP celebrated five decades of its struggle to lead the Philippines to a national democratic government, a jump off point to socialism based on the Maoist blueprint. In March, the NPA will also mark its 50th anniversary. They have the longest communist revolution on record, truly a protracted war but one they have wasted winning long ago when the CPP and the NPA failed to advance the war further and concentrated on killing their own.

Division was evident among its leaders was highlighted by their opposing support to two candidates in the past presidential elections — Rodrigo Duterte and Grace Poe — proved this aside from conflicting stands on the peace process at the fronts. The result was expected, the CPP-NPA remained where it was after 1986.

Its legal fronts, however, had won back support from the mostly young masses. The NPA had managed to recruit quite a good sum from the universities and the factories to boost the army somehow. But it could not bring back its old strength.

The CPP-NPA had also lost what was once a massive support from the Communist Party of China after its top cadres, led by Deng Xiaoping who succeeded Mao after his death. It was Deng who swerved the Maoist path towards the kind of capitalism now being practiced by China, now also being described as an imperialist superpower, like the United States, by the CPP-NPA and the various organizations under its sphere.

The CPP-NPA’s protracted war had also taken this long, its call to “surround the city” to seize power had come to it in reverse that cities and development are fast coming to them, denying them of the hills and forests that once provided them with cover.

Roads were built to the communities that were once theirs, or at least were under Maoist influence. These same roads give the military easy access to conduct raids which were mostly triggered by tips from the same communities which informed authorities about NPA presence through texts and cellular phone calls. Technology had also taken over the once awaited revolution.

It is so because it has taken that long.

It is so because of lost opportunities — for them and those who should have taken over its leadership.

It is so because the CPP-NPA denied its youth of growth even within the party.

Jose Maria Sison, founding chairman of the CPP long based in The Netherlands, should know.

He’s been on top of the party for 50 years now.