Without seeing dawn

The title of Stevan Javellana's only novel in English, 'Without Seeing the Dawn' could very well describe the plight of Jose Maria Sison, Communist Party of the Philippines founder who died in exile over the weekend in The Netherlands at the age of 83.

Sison, despite being away from home the last few years, is still regarded as the spiritual and thought leader of a revolutionary movement that seeks to overthrow the government through armed revolution and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in the Philippines.

Along with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the terrorist New People's Army, the rebel movement sought inspiration from the unfinished revolution of Andres Bonifacio in establishing the communist front in 1968.

In four days, the CPP will celebrate its 54th anniversary under a pall of gloom with the passing of Sison, a former youth leader and university professor described as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thinker and revolutionary leader.

The movement's armed wing, the New People's Army has been waging the longest-running insurgency in Asia under the leadership of Sison who was arrested in 1977 and held in solitary confinement for most of his years in detention. He was released in 1986 after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

When the peace talks with the administration of President Corazon Aquino collapsed in 1987, Sison fled to Europe in self-exile where he remained until his death. He was unable to return home after his passport was canceled by the government.

Peace negotiations, however, went on and off during the ensuing administrations after Aquino but suffered the same fate over accusations of ceasefire violations. In 2020, the Anti-Terrorism Council designated the CPP and the NPA as terrorist organizations while the NDF was declared such in 2021.

At the time of his death, Sison was chief political consultant of the NDF and chairperson emeritus of the International League of People's Struggles.

At the height of his leadership of the Left, Sison cited as essential to complementing his so-called armed revolution the coalition of legal fronts that include the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan ("New Nationalist Alliance" or "BAYAN"), Gabriela, the "women's alliance", the League of Filipino Students and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers among others.

Various media organizations also operate with impunity within Sison's revolutionary umbrella which had helped advance the cause of the movement.

While the people's war continued, Sison faced repeated attempts at legal harassment and repression during his forced exile: he has battled and was defeated in the Dutch court system over alleged trumped-up charges of multiple murders that were filed against him in 2007.

Sison later won a separate case before the European Court of Justice to have his name removed from the EU terrorist list, where it was placed in 2009.

Despite these small victories, Sison, for all his eruditeness as a writer and his alleged solid grounding on Marxism, may have grievously misread the development of world events. His errors, according to analysts, have undercut the theoretical foundations of his arguments and thus doomed their armed struggle.

First, he failed to anticipate that after giving them material support in 1970, Mao could turn around and dump the CPP in favor of a diplomatic relationship with the Philippine government in 1975. The peaceful coexistence policy of Mao was adopted by his successor Deng Xiaoping, leaving the CPP with no solid backer.

Observers believe Sison's death is a "symbol of the crumbling hierarchy" of his movement which has caused so much anguish and cries of injustice from innocent civilians, soldiers, police, and young combatants — all for a cause that seemingly is impossible to achieve.

Just like Carding in that classic Javellana book, Sison may have left this world without even seeing the dawn.

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