MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY TO THE NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS (NUSP)

By Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman, Kabataang Makabayan

22 January 2001

I am elated to convey to you warmest greetings of solidarity on the occasion of your national congress, as you celebrate the anniversary of the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and your fresh victory in the struggle to oust Estrada from power.

I am aware that the NUSP is a convenor of the Estrada Resign Youth Movement (ERYM) and, together with the League of Filipino Students, Anakbayan and other youth organizations, has been responsible for mobilizing the student councils and the student masses to participate in this movement. The success of your work is splendid and resounding. You performed a crucial role in bringing a great number of students to mass actions at Edsa and Mendiola and in cities nationwide.

You have excelled in united front work among the students, the youth and the entire people. With wisdom and courage, you have achieved a major historic victory by linking with the toiling masses, the middle social strata and the anti-Estrada section of the reactionary classes in order to overthrow a corrupt and repressive regime of the worst reactionaries who are the most servile to US imperialism.

I commend and congratulate you for your heroic struggle and for the victory that you and the entire people have achieved. You have proven again that in times of crisis, as during the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and in the struggle against the Marcos fascist dictatorship from 1983 to 1986, the students can rise up in large numbers to fight for the people’s rights and interests.

The latent power possessed by the student masses is always significant. They can at any time walk out of their classrooms and march to the nearby edifices of power in order to denounce any unjust regime or even to overthrow it when they act in concert with the rest of the people.

We have overthrown the Estrada regime but the rotten ruling system of big compradors and landlords remains. The struggle for national liberation and democracy continues. We must continue to fight foreign monopoly capitalism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism until we succeed in eradicating these in our country and establish a truly independent, democratic, just, prosperous and progressive society.

We need to fight one reactionary ruling clique after another and thereby we gain strength and experience to overthrow the ruling system and win complete victory in the new-democratic revolution. We must remain ever vigilant and ready to act in unison against any policy or action of the new regime that violates the rights and interests of the people.

The crisis of the domestic ruling system and that of the world capitalist system are daily worsening. The new regime is preconditioned by its reactionary character to shift the burden of the crisis to the people. Oppression and exploitation continue to intensify under the policy of "free market" globalization.

You must relentlessly strengthen your organization. You must prepare yourselves for greater battles ahead. You must consolidate and expand your organization. You must strive to raise the level of your consciousness and militancy to a new and higher level.

To carry out consolidation, you must engage in political education along the line of the national-democratic movement. You must do so within the student councils, within and among the campus organizations and among the student masses. You must muster the personnel, study materials and other means for the purpose.

To carry out expansion, you must bring in more student councils within your fold. Normally, these enjoy the support of the majority of the student masses who have elected them and are provided with the resources which can be put to good use. Whenever student mass actions on campus, national and international issues are needed, employ the united front policy to mobilize all possible campus organizations and the broad masses of students.

I am confident that you will win ever greater victories in the struggle for your own sectoral benefit and for the entire people’s cause of national liberation and democracy. I am certain that you will make further advances as you pursue your national-democratic commitment, base yourselves on your accumulated achievements and experience and carry out well-defined tasks.