Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte has been named as the co-vice chairperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) during its latest executive committee meeting on Wednesday.
In a press conference, National Security Adviser and NTF-ELCAC vice chairperon Eduardo Año said the addition of Duterte would reinvigorate the task force.
“Her unstinting commitment to the cause of NTF-ELCAC will undoubtedly be very valuable to the task force and we thank her for accepting the challenge,” he said.
According to the task force, 75 percent of New People’s Army guerilla fronts have been dismantled and only 22 out of 89 original fronts are still existing.
Meanwhile, of the 22 left, 20 are weakened, and the remaining two active groups are the subject of focused military operations and development efforts by NTF-ELCAC agencies.
“We redeployed forces from cleared areas in Western Mindanao and added battalions of infantry units to Samar to help out our campaign there, as of the timeline, within the year we will be able to address these active fronts,” said Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff Gen. Andres Centino.
“We are inviting them (CPP-NPA-NDF) to join us in the localized peace engagements. We’ve seen that our interventions should be community-driven and that is our objective,” said acting Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity head Sec. Isidro Purisima.