Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison was supposed to have died last February 2022. As it turned out, rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain. A few days ago, he finally died at 83, in self-exile in the Netherlands.

The "movement" he founded in our country, based on an ideology now largely discredited all over the world (even where it started), has been floundering for some time now in the face of the relentless combined-arms assault of a well-organized and nationwide National Task Force to End Local Communist Insurgency and the democratization of information via social media where information on the moral and political bankruptness of his organization became readily available to all.

It did not help his cause that recent photos of him revealed that he spent his twilight years partying with pretty young things; it seems that in the Netherlands, he made a different kind of movement to satisfy his nether parts.

As expected, the usual suspects (who, if the Philippines were truly the oppressive country its critics say it is, would have long ago been rounded up and kept in a cold, dark dungeon till kingdom come) sang halleluiahs.

Fortunately, they are a tiny minority, a lunatic fringe really, their remaining potent above-ground political base — party-list representatives in Congress — steadily being decimated. In sum, they only succeeded in looking like someone who, in this day and age, would still shrilly assert that the Earth is flat.

Judging, however, from the reaction of the general populace, the reaction to Sison's death was one of relief, if not joy and outright jubilation. While some would say that it is in bad form to rejoice at someone's death (and it is), a huge segment of the Filipino population made an exception in the case of Sison.

The majority of posts on social media ranged from respectful to vicious. Those progressives who protest against this appear not to have realized that their romanticization of their armed struggle has lost its narrative luster: the CPP-NPA is no longer widely viewed as idealists who took arms against the government for the good of the masa, but as goons, extortionists and terrorists hiding behind the mantle of a decayed political philosophy. In a word in Tagalog, ulalo.

The death of Sison comes in the wake of serious reverses in the dying Communist movement that saw a huge diminution in their ranks of armed cadres, as casualties in encounters with the military and police and, more frequently, through surrenders. This has caused a serious leadership crisis that may never be solved, as possible successors are either dead, in jail, or unqualified.

Now should be the time for the government to deal the knock-out punch to one of the longest-running armed insurgencies in the world. An estimated 58,000 people have already died since its start in the 1960s, and its continued existence has been the boulder that this nation has been dragging along that has prevented it from becoming as successful as its neighbors.

The constant ambush of state forces, the killing of innocent civilians, the harassment of businesses and the recruitment of young people from campuses to become cannon fodder for a withered revolution, has to be stopped once and for all. Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. will cement his legacy and achieve what he obviously intends to accomplish — the redemption of the family name — by doing this during his incumbency.

Sison may have died only a few days ago, but his dark dream of overthrowing a democratic government to replace it with a godless socialist state has been dying for years ago. It is time to put it out of its misery. Like Joma, who has, at long last, given the country some real service by becoming a good communist.