INSTEAD of a plenum to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), Jose Maria Sison, as ever driven by characteristic arrogance, caused to be organized an online forum participated in by various groups comprising the National Democratic Front (NDF), representing the masses, the Church, migrant workers and even his foreign network.

President Duterte, in not declaring a yuletide ceasefire, had forced the hand of Sison in red-tagging his otherwise legal fronts one more time. Leading the pack red-tagged by the CPP website was Compatriots, the underground mass organization of the CPP that runs Migrante, an open mass organization of Filipino migrants. The Christians for National Liberation (CNL), which is the underground organization running all church-based organizations like Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) etc., co-hosted the forum with the following speakers: bogus professor Jose Ma Sison (bogus because he does not have any credentials to show he is a professor, according to DepEd); and bogus senior adviser of the peace panel Luis Jalandoni and Sister Coni Ledesma (both bogus peace panelists as there are no peace talks to speak of). Surprisingly, none of the Makabayan’s political wannabes spoke, careful of course of being dragged deeper into CPP red net.