In the context of the principle of revolutionary democracy, to which we have already referred several times, each responsible worker must ‘bear his responsibility bravely, must demand respect from others for his activities and must show respect for the activities of others.

However we must not hide anything from our people, we must not deceive our people. Deceiving our people is to build a foundation for calamity for our party. We must combat this in some comrades vigorously. We cannot allow the population to come to the frontier to fetch merchandise for the people's stores, for example, and once they have arrived find themselves obliged to load up with war material. Doing this is behaving worse than the colonialists, it is abusing our authority, abusing the good faith and good will of our people. It is preferable to say frankly to elements of the population that they should prepare themselves to go and fetch war material, because the war is for our land, and that if they do not want to go, they will be arrested and taken by force. If necessary they can be arrested, but they must know where they are going. This is better than lying, cheating and looking small in the people's eyes, for they, however wretched and suffering, are like any people, and they know the difference between the truth and a lie, justice and injustice, good and evil, and they are wise enough to lose respect for anyone who has lied to them.

We must put an end to lying, we must be able not to deceive anyone about the difficulties of struggle, about the mistakes we make, the defeats we may suffer, and we cannot believe that victory is easy. Nor can we believe in evasions like ‘it seems that’ or ‘I thought that’. This is one of the great defects of some comrades. ‘Comrade, how did this happen?’ – ‘It seems that …’ This is no use for those who are making a revolution, who seek the progress and happiness of their people through a liberation struggle. We must be aware of this.

There are comrades who are not able to make a clear report on what is happening in the area where they are. Happily there are others who are capable. I am focusing on the negative aspects, but you all know that there are many positive aspects.