The CPP should award Sen. Angara

IN A congressional week thick with hypocrisy, Senate Finance Committee chair, Sen. Edgardo ‘Sonny’ Angara, his father’s namesake but not necessarily a cut from the latter’s cloth, decided to cut by more than 7 times, the 2022 barangay development budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), from P28.1 billion to a measly P4.11 billion.

According to Angara, the huge cut was necessary because of the “unexplained spending” by the task force of its current budget of P16.4 billion for its highly-successful, ‘Barangay Development Program’ (BDP).

The BDP has proved successful in convincing thousands of members, officials and sympathizers of the terrorist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) among the country’s poorest communities to return to the fold of the law and again pledge support and allegiance to our Republic.

The accusation against the task force is totally unfair but we doubt if any explanation would make a dent on Angara’s position. At this late hour when the 2022 national budget is as good as approved, he would find further explanation, well, boring.

Too, Angara claimed the chamber is already scoffing at this “huge” P16.4 billion allocated for this year for the BDP and seeing it as a “waste” of public money, he agreed that it should be slashed down to the barest minimum amount he could think of, a little over P4 billion. If he is smirking while doing so, we should not be surprised. It’s in his character.

In the same breadth, Angara said he is not (yet) in favor of “dissolving” the NTF-ELCAC, which is why he probably decides to leave it with its P2.3 billion in administrative and operational funds.

But with its BDP grandly shafted by Angara and his like-minded senators (read: the Liberal Party allies of the CPP personified by Sen. Frank Drilon), this leaves the task force practically useless, ineffective.

Indeed, that this is the intention he and Drilon wanted all along to happen can be gleaned from his “suggestion” that the NTF-ELCAC can best make use of the paltry sum now available for the BDP by allocating just P5 million for each barangay wanting to be free from CPP exactions and terrorism.

Just how far can P5 million go in correcting decades of government neglect and mistakes—Congress and the Senate included– that helped fuel the CPP’s growth, he did not say. Why would he when he simply does not care. Blame it on his elitist and trapo upbringing.

And so, last week we saw the hypocrisy of a lawmaker assigned to play ‘God’ with the people’s money.

On the one hand, Angara wants to turn the NTF-ELCAC into a cripple. On the other hand, he still wants to give it life support that is just sufficient to maintain its offices.

With this situation that Angara created, we would not be surprised if by next year, the country’s poor are again made to believe by the CPP of the inutility of the government in making good of its promise of a “comfortable life for all.”

CPP founder Jose Maria Sison and his gangmates are probably laughing their hearts out these days as Angara made the job much easier for them with a stroke of his pen.

The CPP should give Angara a medal.