Former rebels highlight lessons from dismantling of Southern Mindanao’s communist armed insurgency

DAVAO CITY — Four former high-ranking leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and New People’s Army (NPA) urged reflection and reform as the communist armed insurgency in Southern Mindanao.

Ida Marie Montero, known in the underground as “Ka Mandy,” formerly secretary of the NPA’s Sub-Regional Committee 5 (SRC 5), pointed to ideological failures and the erosion of public support as key factors behind the defeat of the armed struggle in the region.

“The comrades have given countless sacrifices just to contribute to the revolution,” Montero told Kontra Kwento. “But many are simply waiting for the right moment to rest.”

She was candid in her assessment of the CPP's regional organ, which she said has lost its ideological “correctness.” “The downtrend of the Southern Mindanao Region has been noted since 2017,” she declared. “The Party’s failure will continue to repeat. Even the former rebels and the masses are now the ones proving how wrong armed struggle has become.”

Montero appealed for society to maximize the current opportunity for peace: “We must shift away from violence and find real freedom in peaceful means.”

Echoing her sentiments was another former NPA commander Joey Billones or  "Ka Yoyong", who reflected on the movement’s growing detachment from the masses. “It’s difficult to act without a mass base. Fish cannot survive without water—and the NPA cannot survive without the mass base,” he said.

Billones noted that the insurgency’s decline was not just strategic but moral and psychological. He cited the recent arrest of the Jaguar 8 unit as inevitable: “Their endurance had waned, and only pride kept them going.”

He named former comrades—including Ronnie “Gideon” Igloria, Erika “Pam” Espina, Larry “Laloy” Montero, and Daryl “Tonton” Man-Inday—as among those who bore the weight of a fading revolution.

In a heartfelt appeal, Billones urged remaining NPA members to think of their families: “Serving the interest and welfare of our family is also serving the people. Reconnecting with them is not betrayal—it’s healing.”

courtesy of Kalinaw News Network

Insight and action

Meanwhile, in separate posts in social media, former CPP cadres and NPA political officers Arian Jane Ramos and Joy James Saguino, who once mentored some of the movement’s young recruits, called on the nation to respond not with vengeance but with insight.

"Let this not be a moment of vengeance, but of reflection," Ramos said. “Let the stories of Nikki and Dalia stir us—not into anger, not into fear, but into action.”

courtesy of Kalinaw News Network

“Nikki” refers to Charisse Bernadine “Chaba” Bañez, a former student regent of the University of the Philippines who joined the NPA and was arrested in Bunawan, Agusan del Sur on June 13. “Dalia” refers to John Isidore Supelanas, a Kabataan Partylist spokesperson in Cebu who was recently killed in an encounter.

“We need to understand why brilliant young leaders like Nikki chose the mountains over the city,” Ramos said. “Until we fix the gaps they tried to fill with bullets, this cycle will repeat.”

Saguino, for her part, likewise spoke with candor about her past and the fall of Southern Mindanao’s armed revolution.

"I met Charisse Bernadine Bañez—Chaba, as we called her—back in April 2009. We were young, idealistic, and fully immersed in the turbulent political currents of the University of the Philippines," Saguino recalled.

But Saguino said Bañez’s arrest came as no surprise. “The tide in Southern Mindanao had long turned. The NPA was running out of safe ground, safe faces, and safe lies,” she said.

"I still remember the fire in Chaba’s eyes. But fire, when left unchecked, can burn everything down—including the person who carries it,” she warned. “Don’t let another life be lost to the lies of an armed revolution that has long since failed the people it claims to serve.”

Ramos urged Congress to dismantle what she described as legal-political networks used by the CPP to sustain its armed wing. She named League of Filipino Students, Anakbayan, Gabriela, and Kabataan Partylist as groups that have served as recruitment pipelines.

“Let us not meet the idealism of the youth with silence or suspicion, but with systems that listen, respond, and empower,” she said. “The war may be over in the mountains, but if we fail to act, the next battlefield will be in the minds of our youth.”

For Ramos, Saguino, Montero, and Billones, the fall of the insurgency is not merely a victory for the state, but a chance for national introspection and renewal—where systems of support, not seduction to violence, await the youth.