A House leader on Saturday expressed optimism that the Department of National Defense and the Philippine National Police can draw up an entirely new security strategy for Mindanao to prevent a repeat of the Marawi City siege elsewhere.
“We cannot afford to expose another city or large municipality in Mindanao to a crisis akin to Marawi, or to the Zamboanga City siege in 2013,” Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel, a member of the House committee on national defense and security, said.
Pimentel is supporting President Rodrigo Duterte’s plan to enlist up to 20,000 new soldiers to build up the Armed Forces.
“Actually, compared to our peers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, we really have fewer active military personnel to begin with,” Pimentel said.
At present, the lawmaker said the Armed Forces have a total active troop strength of only 125,259—with 85,825 in the Army; 22,771 in the Navy; and 16,663 in the Air Force—excluding 2,693 soldiers deployed to service support units.
“We still have pockets of insurgency in other parts of the country, so we cannot just pull out large forces from Luzon or Visayas and transfer them to Mindanao,” he said.
