THIS coming December 26, 2020, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) would be celebrating its 52nd anniversary.
Much earlier, last December 4, its main “protagonist,” the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), just turned two years old.
And despite being a “babe in the woods,” so to speak, the NTF-ELCAC is already on its way into dismantling everything that the CPP and its front organizations have painstakingly—and bloodily—created in the last 5 decades.
Call it arrogance and “over self-confidence,” the CPP clearly has not seen what a “whole-of-nation” (WON) approach versus insurgency can do.
We say ‘arrogance and self-confidence’ because having been able to “defeat” all the anti-insurgency campaign plans created by successive governments, from Marcos to Aquino covering some 48 years (from 1968 to 2016), the CPP, in its internal documents, likes to assure its membership and followers that at the end of the day, the NTF-ELCAC, would just be another “fanciful” creation of the government and which would soon be relegated to the dustbin of history while its “armed struggle” would continue to gather strength.
And we say ‘arrogance and self-confidence’ because its continuing exposure—and that of its front organizations—as fraudsters is also brought about by its persistent accusations of ‘red-tagging’ by the government.
In other words, unbeknownst to it, the CPP, by creating this fiction of ‘red-tagging,’ has in fact created a “hammer” or a “sickle” pointed at itself.
And yes, we say ‘arrogance and self-confidence’ because it is not farfetched to think that in dealing with the NTF-ELCAC, the CPP must have thought that, with the help of their Liberal Party allies and given the previously notorious, disjointed and uncoordinated approach to every problem by the government, they would not have a hard time in discrediting and disparaging the NTF-ELCAC as another monstrosity created by the “fascist regime” of Pres. Duterte.
But as it turned out in the last three hearings on the issue of ‘red-tagging’ conducted by the Senate, the government is speaking with one voice and one singular purpose.
On the other hand, it is the party’s front organizations—the Makabayan Bloc in Congress that are “singing different tunes,” so to speak.
And yes, despite just being two years old and operating on a shoe-string budget too—it is only next year that the NTF-ELCAC would be given a hefty budget— the task force has created sufficient “noise” and has created a positive impression in the public’s mind.
As such, other previously apathetic and unmindful instruments of the government—Congress, the Senate and yes, the Comelec—are now doing their share of work to eliminate the threat to our national security posed by the CPP under the WON concept.
On this, the decision by the Comelec’s Second Division to proceed with the process of expunging the GABRIELA from the partylist roster is worth watching.
For if successful, the rest “automatically follows,” so to speak—the similar expulsion from the partylist system of all CPP-created front organizations.
The last two years of the Duterte administration may prove to be the “most decisive” insofar as the communist insurgency is concerned.
Events are worth watching and as we like to say… ABANGAN!