PRESIDENT Duterte is backing the call of local government units (LGUs) for a ‘zero-vote’ campaign against lawmakers running in next year’s polls but who are behind the drastic reduction the proposed 2022 budget of the Barangay Development Program (BDP) being supervised by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
In his speech last December 3, 2021 in Zamboanga during the regional meeting of the task force, Pres. Duterte added one of the reasons he has decided to run for the Senate is over the shabby manner most senators treated the NTF-ELCAC and the BDP.
“Now Congress, I don’t understand it. Pwede ba palitan ninyo ‘yung mga senador?
Wala talaga eh. Sila ‘yung mga naga…. Ito gituli nila,” (they cut the budget),” Pres. Duterte said.
“So kailangan ma-restore ‘yan,” he added.
“Ako nagadalawang isip ako, gusto ko talagang mag-retire. Pero the things evolving now, if we go with the same people (in the Senate) whose mindset is… nothing will happen,” the President said.
“You have to elect new leaders high time. Replace them. This is true because if you elect the same, nothing will happen. It’s all just empty promises, pointless investigations, basta lang kumaklak diyan,” he added.
“Ako, ayaw ko. Pero they’re trying to derail the, itong ELCAC… Kung ganito ang takbo, I’ll be forced really to run for senator, maski number 10 ako,” President Duterte continued.
The Chief Executive has decided to run for the Senate, after foregoing his earlier decision to run as vice president.
For 2022, the NTF-ELCAC, which is chaired by Pres. Duterte, proposed a budget of P28.1 billion that is intended to benefit 1,406 poor villages in the country.
These hard-to-reach and isolated communities are previously strongholds of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).
This year, 822 villages that were also previous terrorist strongholds, became beneficiaries of direct government developmental intervention thru the BDP after rejecting further involvement with the CPP-NPA and their terrorist activities.
But Senate Finance Committee chair, Sen. Edgardo ‘Sonny’ Angara, agreeing to the call for the defunding and even abolition of the BDP and the NTF-ELCAC by his colleagues from the Liberal Party, in particular, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, decided to reduce the BDP and the NTF-ELCAC’s budgets to a mere P4.11 billion, more than half of which are for the task force’s operational and administrative expenses.
The LP has long been a political ally of the CPP, dating back to the latter’s founding in 1968 thru the late Sen. Benigno ‘Ninoy Aquino, Jr.
Angara’s decision can prove debilitating to the BDP’s lined-up projects next year and raises the potential revival of CPP influence and control of villages already identified as beneficiaries by the task force and thus prolonging further the more than 5-decades of violence, lawlessness and terrorism being waged by the CPP that national security officials expect to effectively end by the end of the Duterte administration.
Pres. Duterte’s urging the Filipinos not to re-elect senators who are in favor of the CPP position to defund and abolish the NTF-ELCAC and its programs echoes the warning of the League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP) and other local government units (LGUs) that they would campaign for zero votes against them (see also Pinoy Exposé Volume 2, Issue No. 44 and 46).
Although Angara is not a re-electionist, having won his second term in 2019, LP senators are again running next year, namely: Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan and Leila de Lima.
Hontiveros and de Lima are seeking re-election while Pangilinan is the running mate of VP Leni Robredo. Drilon, for his part, is seeking a congressional seat.
Other senators who sided with the CPP position are Sen. Panfilo Lacson and Senate President
Vicente Sotto III, who have teamed up for president and vice president, respectively and, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who is also seeking re-election.