“Ka Bok is no Hero!”

As all humans do, Menandro Villanueva a.k.a. Bok/Jude/Gipo, supposed to be, deserved to live, but instead, he opted to die for the CPP’s futile and lost cause, the national democratic revolution. What Ka Bok did was not an act of heroism, as Mr. Marco Valbuena’s CPP information bureau claimed, but an act of stupidity and stubbornness.

It is not true that all Ka Bok’s life was dedicated to the cause of the oppressed and exploited masses, but rather to the terroristic cause of the CPP-NPA-NDF which is the violent overthrow of our duly constituted government.

In the guise of nationalism and democracy, Ka Bok led their movement in Mindanao in the previous decades, and five years ago the entire NPA, in sowing terror across the country. They murdered civilians, burned properties and equipment, extorted money, destroyed families, deceived and killed the youth and the indigenous peoples, robbed government coffers through their operatives within the house of representatives, and stunted the country’s economy.

Menandro Villanueva should be held responsible for the death of more or less 60,000 people since their so-called national democratic revolution started five decades back. Moreso, he should pay his share of debts from the Filipino people by robbing, extorting, and wasting billions of pesos for their terrorism.

He wasn’t serving the Filipino people at all, instead, he sowed fear and terror within our midst.

His death on January 5, 2022, was long overdue! The people of region 11 and its neighboring regions long wanted his captivity and even death. Ka Bok’s death is a manifestation of CPP’s losing grip, control, and influence over their so-called “revolutionary mass base”. His neutralization is not mainly an issue of how intelligent is the intelligence of the AFP and how effective is its focused military operation but it is a question of how cooperative are the masses in the area to the campaign of the government of putting an end to more than five decades of the communist scourge in the country.

It may be true that in the previous decades, Ka Bok and his comrades won the hearts and minds of the masses in the remote areas of region 11 because said masses were being blinded by deception, brainwashing, radicalization, and indoctrination made to them by the CPP operatives. But the situation now has changed in those areas, the masses were awakened and were able to see the true intention of the CPP-NPA-NDF. They already understand fully well that the CPP-NPA-NDF is just using them to advance further their terrorism. The masses already rejected CPP’s terrorism and one manifestation of it is their participation in neutralizing Ka Bok, the most wanted communist terrorist in Mindanao.

The people of Davao de Oro and the rest of region 11, I should say, have already told their stories against the CPP-NPA-NDF. Menandro Villanueva’s neutralization is an example of the famous saying, “actions speak louder than words”.

The neutralization of Menando Villanueva is a big loss for the entire revolutionary movement in the country. Instead of inspiring the CPP-NPA’s cadres and fighters, Ka Bok’s death will surely break their morale. Demoralization within their ranks will spread like wildfires that will surely lead to more defeats on the battlefields and will break their ideological, political, and organizational resoluteness, coherence, and firmness that may result in the surrender of the remaining cadres and fighters of the CPP-NPA-NDF. Ka Bok's demise is tantamount to the CPP-NPA-NDF’s final doom in Mindanao if not in the whole country.

For Mr. Marco Valbuena of the CPP information bureau, I urge you not to misrepresent yourself as the spokesperson of the people of Mindanao if you don’t want to be ridiculed. Yours is the old-fashioned way of spreading lies and fake news which the Filipino people had long been aware of. You can’t fool the people anymore.

Instead of trying hard to consolidate and force to remain intact the morale of your forces, you may take this unsolicited advice from a former CPP-NPA-NDF cadre, Mr. Valbuena: stop fooling people and spreading lies; stop your terrorism; find time and space to negotiate with the government for a political settlement before all of you will be captured or killed. It’s the only option left for you to redeem yourselves.

Pity yourselves and don’t let your foolishness and stupidity go back to your bodies. You have still the world to win, not by armed terrorism but by peaceful means.

Ka Noel Legaspi

Former Deputy Secretary and Spokesperson of Far South Mindanao Committee of the CPP