19 September 2002

I am exceedingly glad that you are holding the Second National Congress of the National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates-Youth Sector. I am in solidarity with your patriotic and progressive aims and purposes.

Your thematic call is of urgent necessity: youth and students, with all your might, pour your talents and capabilities for the struggle of the peasantry in the whole country and against foreign aggression!

The crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of the big compradors and landlord is inflicting the terrible and the most intolerable forms of oppression and exploitation. Resolute and militant struggle is the order of the day.

It is of decisive importance that you succeed in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the youth to support the struggle of the peasantry for agrarian reform and to oppose the escalating foreign aggression.

The more youth there are who can integrate with the peasant masses and participate in their struggles the stronger and more effective would be both the peasant and youth movements.

The peasant struggle for land is the main content of the democratic revolution. In the course of this struggle, all other national and democratic struggles can advance. The countryside opens as the widest possible area of maneuver for all the patriotic and progressive forces.

The fulfilment of the demand for land reform results not only in the all-round liberation of the peasantry but also the national liberation and democratic advance of the entire Filipino people.

Under the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, the success of land reform can propel national industrialization, including the collectivization and mechanization of agriculture, along the line of socialist progress.

You have gained so much knowledge from your experience of ups and downs and twists and turns since your founding in 1995. You made some advances from 1995 to 1997. Then, you were adversely affected by factionalism in 1997 and 1998. But since 1999, you have recovered strength and have revitalized your ranks.

I am confident that, with an honest summing up of your experience and correct evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses, you can clearly set forth your tasks and raise your political and organizational strength to a new and higher level. I am sure that consequently you can also reach a higher level of coordination and synergy with all other forces in the national democratic movement. #