Reds frown on Leni’s NTF-ELCAC funding cut turnaround

November 27, 2021 JUST IN

BAGUIO CITY (November 27, 2021)—- Vice president and presidential aspirant Leni Robredo has once again earned condemnation by underground Left, after her seeming 180 degrees shift of support to the National Task Force (NTF)-ELCAC.
Robredo after being given a “security briefing” by the top leadership of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) seems to have succumbed, Marco Valbuena, information officer of the CPP Central Committee said, “ to fascist tyranny and US security dictates.”
Robredo the other day declared support for the “mandate” of the NTF-Elcac and called its Barangay Development Program (BDP) “the best part of everything.”
Unhappy, the CPP denounced Robredo, “she seem(ed) to have accepted the erroneous analysis of the roots of the armed conflict that the military is presenting to justify the billions upon billions of pesos of funds placed in the hands of corrupt military officers.”
Valbuena reminded Robredo, “contrary to the false picture being painted by the NTF-Elcac, it is not the lack of roads, school buildings or clinics that condemn the vast majority of people in the countryside to poverty; rather the lack of land to till, low farm wages, high costs of fertilizers, low farmgate prices, liberalized importation and smuggling of agricultural products.”
According to the CPP,  the NTF-Elcac’s BDP ‘is the generals’ version of “infrastructure building” that has been the hallmark of corruption of the (present administration).   It is being used by the NTF-Elcac as military pork barrel to enhance the political influence and power of the AFP, it added.
By giving her full support to the NTF-Elcac, “Robredo appears to ignore the widespread human rights violations that have accompanied the BDP and the AFP’s counterinsurgency. Drooling over the ₱20 million for each barangay, military commanders on the ground have ordered their men to go on a rampage in rural villages (in the guise of “community service”), hamletting communities and restricting people’s movements, intimidating civilians and murdering peasant leaders and activists, to force them to “surrender” as NPA members, blurring the line between combatant and civilians, in violation of their legal rights and without being charged in court,” the CPP pointed out.
By supporting the NTF-Elcac, Robredo herself is practically shutting the doors to peace negotiations,  Valbuena added. “By declaring support for the NTF-Elcac and the AFP’s counterinsurgency, is Robredo also endorsing the campaign of aerial bombardment, strafing and artillery shelling that has terrorized and endangered civilian communities, and destroyed their farms and forests which serve as source of their food, water and medicines?”
Robredo,  the CPP said, “is ignoring the fact that the NTF-ELCAC and the AFP have declared villages as “cleared of NPA” which in the first place had no NPA presence. Billions of pesos are being poured into AFP and the NTF-Elcac based on the mere word of the AFP and its generals who are notorious for lying and issuing false information.
She has also ignored the fact that the NTF-Elcac has listed school building projects where there are already schools, which the DepEd itself complained about, and that road projects are being listed twice.”  It further denounced, “did she ignore reports that money supposedly meant for barangays have been handed over in bulk to town mayors or provincial governors? It is no wonder that some local officials, especially the most corrupt, are supportive of the BDP since they can get their dirty hands on hundreds of millions of pesos.”
“And if Robredo wins in the elections, she might as well turn out to be an Aung San Suu Kyi, hostage to the dictates of the military,” Valbuena posed.
The CPP earlier also called out Robredo and Manila mayor and also presidential aspirant Francisco Domagoso for calling for localized peace talks with communist rebels instead of the resumption of the stalled peace negotiations between the NDF and the government.
Artemio A. Dumlao