NATIONAL Security Adviser Eduardo Año is confident the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will stamp out the local communist insurgency movement by December this year.
Año said as of this month, the “weakened” guerilla fronts of the New People’s Army (NPA) has been reduced to five from seven as of the first semester of the year.
“We are confident the military can end the armed component (of the Communist Party of the Philippines), The AFP’s target is December 2024, it is only August now,” Año said.
Addressing media executives last Tuesday, Año invited the journalists to be government partners for peace and development efforts.
“The media bear such a hefty responsibility, but we're more than willing to help you come up with fair and informed reportage. And I hope too that you are willing to join hands with us.
Keeping the citizenry abreast of these issues and propelling them to take action should be a shared commitment between the government and the media,” the security adviser said.
He underscored the significance of such partnership amid relentless national and international vilification campaigns by the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA-National Democratic Front and its front organizations against the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) using as cover the “red-tagging” issue, which the government constantly denied.
Año said the task force has been a “unifying institution” that has corrected lapses in the past in the government’s fight against terrorism and communist insurgency.
“We’ve poured so much in this campaign – so much that we’re afraid that our efforts will just be tarnished or will just be put into vain by controversies of any wrongdoing or lapse on our part.
As such, we’ve been as sincere as ever in our drive, always setting our sights on what could give rise to a lasting and widespread peace and development across the archipelago,” Año said.
According to the NTF-ELCAC, the NPA, organized on March 29, 1969 by the late Jose Maria Sison, is the armed component of the CPP. The violent Maoist-inspired insurgents advocating for a bloody overthrow of the government once had a formidable fighting force of more or less 25,000 in the 1980s.
But since the NTF-ELCAC was established five years ago 89, active NPA fronts in 2018 had been rendered inconsequential and therefore weakened with only five remaining.
Año pointed out that the elimination of the NPA is not the ultimate end of the conflict.
“We expect that there would be more things to do, such as preventing recruitment. This is hard to address but we can hold dialogues and consultation efforts with concerned sectors.,” Año said.
“What is important though is the elimination of the armed struggle and that the CPP will abandon it which is the real intent of the November 2023 Oslo Communique signed between the government and NDF negotiating panel,” he added.
