ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 11 May) — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is now the chair of the reorganized National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), National Security Adviser Sec. Eduardo Año announced during the virtual media briefing Wednesday following the agency’s executive committee meeting held on the same day.
Año serves as vice chair while Vice President Sara Duterte was designated as co-vice chair.
Año said Duterte’s new position will boost her efforts as concurrent Education secretary to reopen and support basic education institutions that have been closed in the past years due to insurgency.
He said Duterte’s presence is an “invigorating” move to the organization vis-a-vis the weakening of New People’s Army (NPA) forces across the country and the new direction of the NTF-ELCAC “towards sustained development” and the realization of the barangay development program.
He said there is no conflict between his tasks as vice chair and Duterte’s as co-vice chair, as they have worked together in the past.
Año said schools that have been earlier closed due to insurgency were replaced through DepEd’s Last Mile School Program.
He further said that the Vice President’s past experience as Davao City mayor, along with the “best practices” of other agencies, is of big help in supervising the representatives of the 12 clusters of NTF-ELCAC.
General Andres Centeno, Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff said that following then-president Rodrigo Duterte’s issuance of Executive Order No. 70 creating the NTF-ELCAC, only 22 of the 89 NPA guerrilla fronts in 2019 have remained.
Centeno added that out of the 22 remaining guerrilla fronts, 20 have already weakened and no longer enjoy mass base support.
The two guerrilla fronts that still have fighters and mass bases are in Northern Samar, he said.
He said that while the AFP has sufficient forces to confront the rebels, their surrender is still being urged.
Military units from Western Mindanao have been deployed in Northern Samar to dismantle or at least weaken those two active guerrilla fronts, he said.
The other weakened fronts are in Bicol, Caraga, Masbate, Negros, and Panay, Centeno said.
Año said the President’s “marching orders to the NTF ELCAC is clear: Sustain the whole-of-nation approach to peace and development to prevent communist terrorists, their front organizations, and other lawless elements from recruiting, regrouping, and regaining power.”
In the same briefing, Assistant Solicitor-General Angelina Miranda said red-tagging is “legally (a) non-existent” word.
Miranda said that under the present administration, “We truth-tag, not ‘red-tag’. We bring you the truth.”
“I call on the people, the 115 million Filipinos, and a special call to the members of the media to help us being bearers of truth as we are truth-taggers We are always here to protect the Republic and its body politic,” Miranda, who belongs to the NTF-ELCAC Legal Cooperation Cluster, said.
Red-tagging refers to an act of State actors, mostly law enforcement agencies, publicly branding individuals, groups, or institutions as affiliated with the communist underground movement.
NTF-ELCAC has been accused of red-tagging groups and personalities belonging to Left-leaning groups, as well as journalists and other individuals deemed critical of the government.
Secretary Isidro Purisima, chief of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity said the NTF-ELCAC is a “framework of peace.”
He said the way forward for the peace process is “localized peace engagement, nationally directed and centrally supervised, but locally implemented to be led by the local government units.”
The briefing organized by NTF-ELCAC Secretariat was held at the PCO press briefing room in Manila. Other reporters, including MindaNews, joined the event via Zoom. (Frencie Carreon/MindaNews)
