CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines – Because of the Duterte administration’s continuous efforts to wipe out insurgency in the country, it has become the “recruiter” of potential New People’s Army (NPA) fighters, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said Friday.
“With his anti-people and anti-poor policies, Duterte is actually helping the Party and the NPA by creating conditions favorable for widespread recruitment,” the CPP said.
The group’s statement was in reaction to the pronouncement of National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. Thursday (Oct. 10) during the Mindanao summit of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) this city.
The NTF-ELCAC, created through an Executive Order issued on Dec. 4, 2018, aims “to provide an efficient mechanism and structure for the implementation of the Whole-of-Nation approach to aid in the realization of the collective aspirations for inclusive and sustainable peace.”
Esperon said by the time Duterte steps down from office in 2022, the Communist movement would have been weakened and would no longer pose a threat to the country’s peace and order situation through the so-called whole-of-nation approach.
But the CPP said the government’s ongoing anti-insurgency campaign has pushed “more and more people to join or support the revolutionary underground and the armed struggle.”
The President and the defense and security establishments under him, according to CPP, “are succeeding only in inciting more resistance in their overzealous drive to tag all opposition as communists, communist recruiters, sympathizers or collaborators.”
‘Corrupt, anti-people’
The CPP also criticized the current administration for “inflicting greater sufferings on the people” because of Duterte’s “corruption and anti-people policies”.
It noted the government’s “lust for high-style travel” through the recent purchase of two luxury jets worth P2 billion and spending billions on Duterte’s “whims in the form of so-called discretionary funds” while millions of Filipinos suffer daily.
The CPP said Duterte has failed to address the breakdown of public transportation; ignored the clamor for salary increases of public school teachers, nurses, and government employees; dismissed the widespread opposition of drivers and operators and other transport workers to the jeepney phaseout plan; and has been indifferent to widespread problems of joblessness, low wages, high prices, lack of access to education and health services”.
“Duterte’s reign of undeclared martial rule, widespread violation of democratic rights, and political repression,” the CPP added, are “rationale of the need for the people to wage national democratic revolution”.
Since it was founded on December 26, 1968, past administrations have tried to wipe out the Communist insurgency. The CPP, however, will be celebrating its 51st founding anniversary this year. (davaotoday.com)
