The CPP has also followed the CPRF in being the only major communist parties in the world to take a reactionary libertarian anti-vax stance that harms the working class most:

The Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has attacked the half-measures of the Duterte administration from the right. They do not demand more effective mandatory vaccination, the closure of employment as the essential activity loophole, closure of all non-essential businesses, and cash aid to the working population. Rather, the CPP denounces mandatory vaccination as “fascist,” demands the full reopening of schools and an end to all lockdowns.

On January 8, Marco Valbuena, chief information officer of the CPP, issued a statement denouncing the vaccine mandate as “patently discriminatory, unlawful, fascist, burdensome, and above all, useless and stupid.” The CPP did not simply argue that the mandate could not be enforced until vaccines were fully available, but went further and adopted the argument of far-right and libertarian forces that vaccination was “a choice of every individual,” and should not be imposed. The CPP issued a second statement that declared “Requiring or mandating people to get vaccinated is discriminatory, oppressive and burdensome.”

The concern of the CPP, however, is not public health or the mass infection of workers, but the continued profits of corporations. Valbuena wrote “Prohibiting more than half the population from becoming economically productive will only further collapse the economy marked by business closures and bankruptcies, widespread unemployment, loss of income, dislocations, supply disruptions and cause the further deterioration of the people’s overall socioeconomic conditions.”

The CPP articulates the economic interests of the capitalist class, who are hostile to any public health measure that will limit their business activity and the production of profit. Vaccine mandates, lockdowns, school closures—all necessary measures to save human lives and put an end to the spread of the pandemic—are opposed by the elite and their allies in the CPP.

The positions adopted by the CPP are often indistinguishable from those of the far-right. Founder and ideological leader of the CPP, Jose Ma. Sison has on multiple occasions shared material on Facebook originating with the far-right, decrying vaccines as part of a campaign of “global genocide” staged by the “Vatican’s UN.”

Sison promoted material from Afshine Emrani, a Los Angeles based physician and right-wing Zionist, who has been trumpeting the lie that Omicron was “nothing more than a seasonal cold virus” and would produce global immunity to COVID. Sison wrote on January 6, that “people can welcome Omicron as the effective vaccine developed by mass herd immunity.”

Whatever vaccine hesitancy exists in the Philippines, the CPP has been instrumental in cultivating it.

Not only does the party oppose mandatory vaccination, it is the spearhead of the drive to re-open schools.

The CPP has similarly opposed all lockdown measures implemented by the government.

The CPP did not demand aid to the working class and poor communities, but the lifting of lockdown.

Just as the opportunist leaders of the CPRF often try to uncritically appeal to the Orthodox Church, there are leaders in the CPP that do the same with the Catholic Church:

On February 18, Julieta de Lima, long-time leading member of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and head of the party’s peace negotiating team, delivered a speech to a summit of major church leaders in which she articulated the CPP’s open embrace of the Catholic Church and its legacy of medieval barbarism in the country.

The CPP enthusiastically supported Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte during his rise to power. They sought to integrate themselves into his administration, while he oversaw a war on drugs that killed thousands of poor Filipinos. When the talks finally broke down, the party denounced him as a fascist. De Lima publicly admitted at the religious gathering that the party was now resuming “backchannel discussions” with the Duterte administration, and was relying on the “miraculous” power of “prayer” that Duterte might have a conversion.