Ruination of the Sun

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Somewhere in Northern Mayari| 15 Zechyr 1584

The Communist Party of Mayari had always been an enigma to the governments of the Democratic Republic that have been in power for the past couple of decades. Whether it was because of the validity of the CPM's call that these governments were "anti-people" was debatable, but in a sense this rang true for the CPM's survival and even their continued growth in these contemporary times.

As a revolutionary organization steeped in both Perovist thought and homegrown stratagems developed by its foremost theoretician Armando Liwanag, the CPM was by all means unrelenting in pursuit of its goal of toppling Mayari's government - which had been hijacked by both the conservative and liberal elite as it claimed - and completely rebuilding society. It began its "protracted people's war" in the year 1473 well-equipped and surging with volunteers. During the first ten years of its existence, the CPM would claim a membership in its armed wing, the Mayari Peasants Revolutionary Army or MPRA, approaching a hundred thousand. No less impressive was their geographical distribution and the number of small arms they possessed.

The CPM-MPRA's great strength during the inception of Mayari would have taken anyone who never had even a basic understanding of the country's pre-independence history by surprise. It was 1469 when the CPM saw the light of day, as its founder Armando Liwanag had returned from the newly-established Union of Socialist Republics in Marzanna to lead the vanguard against the then primary enemy of the Mayari people; the reactionary Oslan conquerors. Liwanag was one of the forefathers not only of Mayar socialism but also of its independence movement - a fact well-known by her citizens and glorified by the CPM as a mark of their dedication to liberating the nation and the people from the grip of oppression, both foreign and at home.

Liwanag identified himself quite keenly as a radical ever since his days as a student. He was from an upper middle class family, capable enough to send their only son to study in the mother country Oslanburg and to tour Brigidna and Marzanna. Through these foreign incursions his radicalism not only for freedom for his homeland but for reshaping it only grew, as he was first exposed to the seminal work of Perovism - the World on the Yoke of the Worker - in the 1450s. He would return to Mayari in 1460 armed with a burning desire and an ideological basis to see the creation of a new Mayari. The next five years would be spent agitating against an increasingly strict Oslan colonial government, laying down the ground for his vision, and organizing his colleagues - themselves radicalized but middle class and educated - into a coherent independence movement.

His efforts would fail for a number of reasons, the most important of which was the treachery of a recognized Mayar national hero Teobaldo Santa Catalina. Santa Catalina was a fellow agitator for independence, but unlike Liwanag his advocacy was kept secret and he remained content writing blistering attacks on the colonial administration under a pen name. By day he was a common citizen dutifully obeying the Oslan overlords, but by night he was a prolific writer exposing their atrocities. He was, however, virulently anti-communist and was abhorred upon being contacted by the Perovist Liwanag. Needless to say, Armando Liwanag would be made aware of these developments by his stalwart friends, and he would be able to flee Mayari even as these friends of his would be shot by the Oslans.

He would spend the next couple of years back in the USR, self-exiled, and critical of his failures. But Liwanag would not possess his tremendously favorable reputation in Mayari today, even among non-leftists, had he confined himself to self-criticism. He was a persistent man, and while in the USR he would develop a politico-military strand of thought better suited to Mayari's condition as an agrarian nation and as a colonial possession of a foreign master. The peasantry would lead the Mayari war of independence and the subsequent people's revolution against the landlords, his works would proclaim.

He returned in 1469 with his fundamental thesis - by then, the war of independence had already exploded in full. But it was a stalemate that slowly seemed to favor the Oslans with the passing of each month. Liwanag would not tolerate the deplorable situation and quickly adapted his stratagems into practice. This time around, Liwanag did more than agitate and connect with his fellow thinkers; he established the CPM-MPRA in the north of the country and led his army of farmers to battle himself. His land distribution efforts attracted popular support and the ranks of the MPRA swelled greatly.

His guerrilla tactics and directive of starving the major urban centers made him the foe of both the Oslan colonial authorities and the other independence movement, the Alyansang Makabayan or National Alliance - itself the precursor of Independiente y Progreso and today's National Party. But in the long run this directive deprived the colonial authorities and their native soldiers the will to continue bearing arms. Independence had been achieved by 1471.

The road to the people's democratic dictatorship would be long since that point. The CPM would be banned immediately after by the new government dominated by the conservative nationalists led by the first President of Mayari, Abelarde Muñoz. Now, Muñoz was a business magnate who believed the CPM-MPRA and Liwanag would simply step aside quietly and let him and the rest of the wealthy "fathers of the nation" engage in the tasks of running Mayari - but he was mistaken. The CPM-MPRA would not have done so, as it had been in control of many major areas in the north part of the country. They were supported by the people of the areas they liberated, and Liwanag himself had a different vision for his motherland.

In the next year, the CPM-MPRA decided to withdraw and reorganize themselves - rumors of internal splits that splintered the party leadership on their next course of action now that independence had been achieved were widespread among the political elites, which gleefully believed they would not have to contend further with the communists on who would hold the reins of power.

These hopes were dashed in 1473, when Armando Liwanag resurfaced with a still dominant position and a revitalized army. Proclaiming the beginning of the second phase of the "People's War", the formal communist revolution began with a loud bang - the assassination of Muñoz' Vice President and innumerable and surprisingly effective mass risings by CPM cells in several provinces throughout Mayari. It was also during this time that Liwanag clarified the hiatus between 1471 and 1473; a year was given to celebrate the newfound freedom from foreign hegemony, but a year would be enough. The struggle would continue to free Mayari itself from bourgeois hegemony.

The story of Mayari's revolution from that point on could be likened to a typical business cycle, with peaks and troughs. The first two decades of the CPM-MPRA were its most successful and could almost be termed more a civil war than a revolution against an established government. The CPM-MPRA pitted its army of the masses against successive governments of the Independence & Progress Party. Because of their strength and the fact its cadres were battle-hardened veterans of the war for independence, the party chose a confrontational and open warfare strategy instead of a guerrilla one. It worked to great effect in cutting down swathes of their former fellow independence fighters coming from the National Alliance and who were recruited to join Mayari's armed forces, culminating in 1486 with the highly-publicized capture and execution of Mayari's third head of state, President Bartolome Herrera.

Conflict after Herrera's demise would considerably lower, not because the CPM-MPRA was no longer capable of brandishing force, but because Liwanag had achieved his strategic ploy; Herrera's Vice President who succeeded him was an agent of the CPM-MPRA and one of its founders' longest-serving deputies since the last days of Oslan control, a man who went by the name Paulino Andreas Escalante Bjergsen. A spy within the Independence & Progress Party, Bjergsen in collusion with the CPM-MPRA worked out a ceasefire hinged on promises of land reform between them. There was of course, the explicit understanding that hostilities would commence once more if land reform was not sufficient to alleviate the "social cancer" brought about by the landowning class.

The ceasefire was a remarkable event beheld by the people of Mayari and a fantastic instrument used by the CPM-MPRA. For the former, the ceasefire represented the first time that there was truly peace and order in their country and was a sign of better things to come. For the latter, it guaranteed either a complete political victory with Bjergsen working within Mayari's government to pave the way for the CPM seizing the state or a justification to continue the revolution if Bjergsen was removed from the picture before he could engineer the political mechanism into the CPM's favor.

Four years passed and perhaps the greatest twist of fate in the party's history shook not only them but also the nation. In the 1490 General Election, Bjergsen in meeting with the CPM's Politburo renounced his comrades and their extremism and then pursued a second term as the country's president, under the banner of the "revisionist" Socialist Action Party - a legal political organization representing the non-radical left.

Bjergsen had amassed popularity with the Mayar electorate because of the ceasefire and easily defeated his counterpart from the Independence & Progress Party, which itself shattered that year and began its own process of reformation. This move and abuse of the agreement by Bjergsen greatly angered the CPM-MPRA leadership, which called for an immediate resumption of aggression. But perhaps because out of respect for an old comrade or something else entirely, Liwanag - as CPM Chairman - decreed that the ceasefire would hold until they "see what Bjergsen can still do for the Mayar people".

For many historians, this was the straw that would break the camel's back. Liwanag's de facto sanction allowed Bjergsen to proceed with a comprehensive land reform and distribution program, which threatened not only the wealthy families that owed these vast tracts of land but also the revolutionary movement itself; the program managed to entice up to a 15% of the Mayari Peasant's Revolutionary Army to lay down arms, come out of hiding, and be given land. The dreadful state of affairs for the CPM-MPRA was further complicated by their inability to break the ceasefire, as Bjergsen kept his end of the bargain. Liwanag's acclamation of these land reforms were denounced by his fellows in the Politburo, claiming that Liwanag had "grown soft" and was "no longer fit to lead the people's struggle". He was ousted in 1494 and replaced by a close confidant who remained "loyal" to the revolution, Rogelio Infante Kruse.

Having been abandoned by Bjergsen and unable to restart the revolution without incurring a disparaging blow to their image, the CPM under Kruse opted to wait for 1496's election. The traitorous former cadre was well-known in his desire to seek a final and second term (his tenure from 1486-1490 as Herrera's successor not counted), and this was what the CPM targeted. Using their resources and manpower, the CPM succeeded, clandestinely, in discrediting the Socialist Action Party among the working and middle class and giving the win to the inept and immensely unpopular Felix Morayta of the newly-inaugurated National Party.

The MPRA was also responsible for distorting votes in the rural provinces and their other bulwarks, leading the way for Felix Morayta and his party to take the subsequent accusations of vote rigging after their victory.

In 1494, the revolution would fire up again and openly under its new leadership, and in the closing months of 1495 the fragile government of Morayta seemed as if it was about to collapse to the CPM-MPRA's multi-pronged offensives on numerous fronts. Yet when victory seemed nearest would also prove to be the point where it would be even further away from the hands of the party.

The military fortunes of the CPM would be reversed come 1496. Morayta's government did collapse, but not to the forces expected, but to a military coup. Headed by the effective general and anti-communist Lt. General Esteban Coreos Brams, a military junta known as the Council for the Defense of the Motherland was established following the suspension of all branches of government and the constitution. Claiming to gear Mayari into fighting the scourge of revolution, Brams centralized power in the hands of the ten-man council and especially in himself.

Abuses of human rights and nepotism became prevalent in the twenty two years of rule by the Council for the Defense of the Motherland, but credit was due where credit was due; Brams committed himself and his armed forces to destroying the CPM, and he was almost able to during his time as the country's dictator. With physical, logistical, and financial support from foreign powers, Brams became the only leader of the country who came very near to putting out the flames of revolution.

Yet the party was a persistent force embedded in the nation's history. Like its founder, the CPM-MPRA did not concern itself with unnecessary self-criticism; it simply fled and hid again as it licked its wounds, aided by the people it fought for, with a vow to return one day.

---

"And so did we return in 1563, when that comprador fool Lucas Montejo obtained the highest office of the land. We were revitalized after many decades of inactivity. Though hidden and having suffered many leadership changes, our cause was never lost in our minds and hearts and our people never wayward in their belief of achieving our final success. You joined in the middle of that period after you dropped high school, remember?"

Lahud Akijal Kiram shared a moment of recollection and a laugh with Senator Crisanto Cortes Jansen - an unusual sight for many of the young cadres-in-training and soldiers of the MPRA around them. Why a senator of the Democratic Republic was in one of the hidden camps of the CPM was certainly odd, but only for those who have not been with the party for long enough, or those who were uninformed of the diverse roster of individuals who called (and who still call) the CPM their home.

"Yes. 1549, just like but not quite the same as the great chairman" said Jansen, followed by another chuckle between friends. Kiram and the senator were longtime colleagues during the CPM's longest hiatus, from 1520 to 1563. Jansen joined the MPRA as a conscript in 1549, where he met Kiram who was two years his senior and was a trainee cadre in the CPM. Although their respective paths divulged with the passing of the decades, they maintained more than respect for each other in the same vein Liwanag did for Bjergsen.

But unlike that comparison, Jansen was not considered a turncoat either by Kiram or anyone in the CPM who knew the truth. In fact, the very reason Jansen was not only allowed but also welcome within the party was because he was still part of the party - something only its leaders and military commanders, and the senator's friends within the revolution, knew.

Contrary to popular allegations, he never severed ties with the CPM upon his arrest and subsequent joining of the Socialist Action Party in 1558. He was an important component of the ongoing people's war against the neoliberal government of Kalayaan, especially given his proximity to Mayari's top leaders from all parties and his favor with the masses. In fact, this man was geared to become Mayari's President once the CPM was in power - and that moment inched closer with each passing day and with each problem that arose in Congress and the Hidalgo administration.

The two communists sat at an old rattan bench outside of a sizable bamboo cottage adorned with a flag of the hammer and sickle. Rain over the previous days had made the ground in this camp, straddling the border with Hoinom, muddy. In front of them, a platoon of recruits in their training were being drilled by their commanding officer.

The place was large, laying at the base of a hill that was prone to erosions during the monsoon season. There were many cottages and barracks, an armory and a depot for motorcycles, and even an observation post hugging the hillside itself. A store for food and other supplies and also a granary were present, mainly for the feeding program the CPM ran for the nearby Taosheg villages. Supporting local populations too isolated or simply ignored by the government was a key pillar of the CPM in getting these people to become part of the mass line.

Another remarkable fact about the camp was the composition of its resident soldiers and cadres. Northern Mayari was home to the ethnic Taoshegs, the second-largest ethnic group and the main adherents of Akhadism in the country. The Akhadist Taoshegs, long marginalized by their Salay brothers, were important supporters of the CPM.

"So what exactly are you doing here Crisanto? I hear your work in the senate has been taxing as of late." remarked Kiram, watching his soldiers as he did so.

"Indeed it has. But that's exactly my reason. Senator Sagaysay is going rogue and has approached me and the National Party with a proposal to impeach Hidalgo"

Kiram looked at his friend, brow cocked. He told Jansen a few seconds later "So they're finally cracking. And what do you and the revisionist forces in the SAP will do about it?"

Kiram, long a farmer and a revolutionary fighter and unaware of the workings of mainstream politics, was surprised to hear Jansen's answer.

"As you know, I've been made head of the SAP's group in the Senate." Jansen began. "The remaining four will vote on whatever my decision will be, although I'm obviously encouraged to support the impeachment. But I have some alternative thoughts on what could possibly be done....and I need to discuss them with the Politburo before the NP formally begins the proceedings next month".

Jansen was long-held by the people who knew his affiliation with the CPM to be an independent actor, not mandated to follow whatever orders the party leadership decrees and free to tailor his actions as part of the legal political mechanism. His only role as viewed by his communist colleagues was to be a spy, an informant, and when the revolution reaches success within this lifetime, to become the symbolic head of a state of a new Mayari.

"And what are these thoughts?" inquired Kiram. His sight darted quickly to an offroad jeepney driving at their direction. It was tailed by two trucks bearing the markings of the MPRA's elite division, the Red Brigade or Pulang Bagani in Mayar. The Politburo was here.

Jansen noticed this too,  but gave an answer first.

"We could remove Mayari's entire government in one fell swoop, comrade."

The senator smiled and bid his friend, who was left wondering in thought as to what exactly was in Jansen's mind, farewell. There were other individuals in the party that needed to be informed of what was happening, and so a decision could be made whether the revolution would finally end in Septem or would last even longer.