THE country’s anti-terrorism effort targeting the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its apparatus embedded in local communities is expected to stall and worse, fail to take off effectively this year and the next after ‘pro-terrorist’ elements and fund-hungry lawmakers succeeded in trimming down the development budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) to the smallest amount possible.
Based on the data of the NTF-ELCAC Secretariat, 959 more villages/barangays formerly considered as “haven” of the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) have been designated as next year’s beneficiaries of the ‘Support to Barangay Development Program’ (SBDP).
To be effective, each beneficiary-community are given the minimum amount of P20 million each in order to sustain community development and strengthen their faith on the sincerity of the government, instead of them continuing to believe in the blandishment and propaganda of CPP-NPA cadres.
But funding for the SBDP has always been a “struggle” for the NTF-ELCAC in the face of stiff opposition from lawmakers, especially those from the Liberal Party (LP) and their like-minded colleagues in the Senate and the House of Representatives, who want the fund “diverted” to their own constituencies, regardless of whether or not their “favorite” constituents are hotbeds of the CPP-NPA.
The LP has a long history of association with the CPP and its front organizations, dating back to the time when former Sen. Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino Jr., helped in founding the CPP in December 1968 and the NPA some months later, on March 29, 1969.
Significantly, in the May 9, 2022 elections, the CPP supported the presidential candidacy of Vice President Leni Robredo, a leading stalwart of the LP.
Except for the 2021 budget cycle when the SBDP received P16.44 billion that enabled the NTF-ELCAC to implement 2,319 projects benefiting 822 formerly “CPP infested” communities (see related article in this issue), official data showed Congress succeeded in trimming the amount to a miserable P4 billion for the current year.
The assault to “defang” and turn the NTF-ELCAC and the SBDP into a “paper tiger” under the 18th Congress was led by Sen. Edgardo ‘Sonny’Angara, chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Finance and, Senate Minority Leader, Franklin Drilon, a stalwart of the LP.
The allocated amount of P4 billion is not expected to make any dent in improving the targeted communities as for this year, the task force hoped to implement 1,724 projects for the benefit of 1,406 villages.
At the minimum amount of the “ideal” P20 million for every community, Congress should have instead allocated P28.12 billion.
And the prospect for 2023 remains grim with Angara retaining his stranglehold of the Senate Finance Committee.
For next year, the SBDP aims to benefit another 959 communities but Congress merely agreed to provide it with just P5 billion, way below its “ideal” budget of P19.18 billion.
A source at the NTF-ELCAC said some “overeager” lawmakers in Congress had slashed and transferred to their “pet projects” half or P5 billion, of the already “emaciated” P10 billion proposed budget of the NTF-ELCAC for the SBDP next year.
Under the circumstances, the task force would be left with no choice but to massively scale down the SBDP for this year and next year, and become “selective” in project implementation—sure to earn the ire and envy of communities that would be “left behind.”
This development is expected to be “music to the ears” of CPP cadres who can point out again on the purported inability of the government to make true of its promises of development for their far-clung communities.
Expect CPP-instigated terrorism not to end soon as hope for by most Filipinos.