Red fighters pay tribute to Luis Jalandoni on Thursday, June 12, 2025. — Photo from CPP Information Bureau
OZAMIZ CITY — Red fighters on Thursday paid tribute to Luis Jalandoni, a ranking leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) who died in exile in Utrecht, the Netherlands at the age of 90 last June 7.
Known to his comrades as Ka Louie, Jalandoni was born to a rich family in Negros who, as a Catholic priest, worked to uplift the plight of the poor. He would later leave the priesthood to join the CPP-led national democratic revolution, convinced that it was the effective way to dismantle the social structures that underpin poverty.
READ: Former NDFP chair Luis Jalandoni; 90
Upon orders of the CPP central committee, units of the New People’s Army (NPA), its armed wing, assembled at the break of dawn on Thursday to hold the tribute ceremony, according to CPP chief information officer Marco Valbuena.
In Southern Tagalog, Valbuena said that the “Parangal at Panata kay Ka Louie” was led by the NPA’s Melito Glor Command, after a silent 21-gun salute.
“Ka Louie showed unwavering commitment to the people’s revolutionary aspirations. To his last breath, he marched with the people in their struggles for national and social liberation. Comrade Louie sacrificed all personal and material interests and gave everything to the welfare of the masses,” the CPP said.
“Ka Louie rejected the reactionary government’s schemes to divide the people and make them surrender their ideals with appeals to personal interests or ambitions. Let us emulate Comrade Louie for his unending revolutionary commitment,” it added.
After years of work organizing support for the communist rebellion, Jalandoni was designated in 1977 as international representative of the National Democratic Front, the CPP’s political front, and later served as its chief peace negotiator, from 1989 to 2016.
“In recognition of Ka Louie’s exemplary and great contributions to the Filipino people’s revolutionary struggle, let us give him our firmest Red salute, and celebrate his extraordinary life,” the CPP said. /das