Replacing Joma

JOSE Maria (Joma) Sison, longtime Philippine communist chief, died at 83 in Utrecht last week where he had been living in self-exile for more than 30 years, after leading one of the longest communist insurgencies in the world. His communist rebellion came nowhere close to turning the Philippines into a satellite communist state, but in 1972, it forced President Ferdinand E. Marcos to declare martial law all over the country and rule by decree without regular elections or Congress. Critics blasted Marcos for declaring martial law but spared Sison for launching the rebellion that provoked it. Sison spent the martial…