UNPOPULAR OPINION | ND should blame itself for dwindling student militancy

National democratic youth organizations have, once again, pointed fingers outward, insisting that state policy is to blame for the dwindling militancy of their movement. The newest line of attack claims that the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD), a framework implemented by the NTF-ELCAC, is a killer of youth activism. It is an accusation that collapses under the weight of what the policy actually says.

NAP UPD’s target is explicit and narrow, the CPP-NPA-NDFP—unless, of course, they associate themselves with these groups. It is a counterterrorism effort, not a campaign against legal activism. But the narrative that the state is attacking “progressive youth” is too convenient a shield to abandon, especially for the CPP, which thrives on underground recruitment among that segment of the youth population.

The program is also being criticized for mobilizing non-coercive organs of the state to pursue a “perverted” form of peace-building after the NTF-ELCAC’s engagements with influential civil society organizations and academic institutions. This view conveniently forgets that, for years, the central critique against counterinsurgency efforts was that they were overly militaristic, lacking transparency, consultation, and community involvement. Now that reforms are happening and civilian and community actors are given space to shape policies and provide oversight, the same groups cry foul. Moving the goalpost is easier than admitting that some reforms actually address their earlier concerns.

Their frustration has recently extended to student publications, which they claim have become tools of state propaganda because of “dehistoricized coverage.” The source of frustration appears to be the reportage of open discourse. When universities host forums with government agencies or former rebels, the instant conclusion is that academic spaces are being co-opted. But what exactly is wrong with students hearing perspectives they do not agree with? If the national democratic movement prides itself on confronting contradictions in society, why does it refuse to confront ideological contradictions within the student body itself?

The answer may lie in what is happening inside their own ranks. It is easier to blame external suppression than to acknowledge the internal contradictions that are driving the decline of militant participation among students. If they were truly militant, the lone student in UST who stood up to engage with a forum would not have stood alone. Students would have flocked to the auditorium in solidarity and engaged in the forum not in moderated tit-for-tat but in a genuinely militant fashion.

The internal issues, above everything else, cause the movement’s decline. Factions quietly pulling away from each other. Student leaders laying low due to unresolved issues. Sexual harassment cases rarely resolved. Disillusionment among members who entered the movement hoping for idealism and found instead the same power dynamics they critique in the institutions they oppose. Members disaffiliating due to the hypocrisy of denying support for the armed struggle while simultaneously glorifying leaders who died as NPA fighters. These are not inventions of the state.

As we commemorate today’s Bonifacio Day and celebrate the birth of Gat Andres Bonifacio, it is expected that national democratic youth groups will use the moment to remind everyone of the youth’s role in charting the nation’s future. But it is no accident that November 30 is also the anniversary of Kabataang Makabayan (KM), the underground mass organization created to funnel young people into the CPP’s project of “radical change” through armed struggle. 

For decades, both KM and its national democratic heirs have reduced Bonifacio to a one-trick pony, remembered only for the gun he carried, never for the context that made it necessary. They choose to forget that Bonifacio took up arms because he had no other choice under colonial rule. Today, the Philippines is not a colony, and our democracy– however faulty it is– offers avenues for dissent, reform, and civic participation that do not require sacrificing young lives to a war that has long lost both its logic and its mandate.

For the ND movement, however, it is far more convenient to cast the government as the omnipresent villain than to admit that the movement’s decline is rooted in its own failures. The state did not erode students’ willingness to engage. The movement’s own controversies and unresolved contradictions did. After all, they say someone has to be bad for them to call themselves good.