FOR THE moment we won’t be talking about “Le Affair Duterte” at length save for a few comments on social media. For sure we will but all in good time.
However, just to keep you titillated, here’s a bit of a striptease: The International Criminal Court (ICC) was born out of inputs provided by leftist and progressive nongovernment organizations under the umbrella organization of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. The clue there is “leftists and progressive NGOs”.
In the meantime, we will focus on those hypocrites and drifters, the usual suspects, meaning the pseudo-communists who ostensibly espouse a completely irrelevant and obsolete ideology.
These folks want us to believe if you’re gullible enough that they’re doing this for their ideology and social change and not their ulterior and true motive which is power and profit, not necessarily in that order but definitely both.
And why are we talking about these pseudo-communists and their party-lists fronts in Congress? Because the midterm elections are just around the corner.
For decades, the CPP/NPA/NDF have always looked forward to the elections as a windfall, an opportunity for fund raising, expand their control and influence, but mainly to raise money.
Fortunately for us, that’s not the case today as the relentless operations of the Armed Forces in tandem with the NTF-ELCAC are winning the hearts and minds of the people in the hinterlands with their very successful Barangay Development Programs (BDP) and the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-Clip).
The CPP’s New People’s Army (NPA) has been reduced to an insignificant number of dispirited, disorganized and desperate armed bandits, with 88 out of its 89 guerilla fronts dismantled. The once-feared armed group now exists as a literal paper tiger, its roar limited to social media and propaganda.
The CPP/NPA/NDF mantra is that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” And this is what they use to justify extortion from gullible politicians seeking to campaign in rural areas, with the NPA demanding exorbitant sums in exchange for “safe passage” in territories they falsely claim to control.
However, the foundation of these extortion tactics — their supposed armed might — no longer exists. They no longer have significant firepower. And they definitely no longer enjoy the support of the masses, especially in communities that have seen the benefits of government efforts to deliver peace and development.
Ostensibly, the CPP/NPA/NDF have always made a lot of pronouncements supposedly rejecting electoral participation. The AFP, however, recovered internal memoranda revealing that as early as 2023, the CPP/NPA/NDF has already directed its legal fronts and party-list groups to recoup their lost seats in the House of Representatives and use the elections to recover lost bases and raise resources to revive the dying NPA. Hence, the Makabayan bloc, unsurprisingly, received a not-so-subtle nod in the CPP’s 56th anniversary statement.
Reality wise, since the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communists Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) through Executive Order No. 70, the CPP/NPA/NDF has become an irrelevant and obsolete nuisance in the Filipino people’s exercise of democracy i.e. free elections. Its extortion calls are now nothing more than empty threats to feign relevance, despite the resounding reality that no one is listening.
The NPA is dying with its so-called armed fighters queuing up to surrender because their ideology can no longer sustain them. The NPA is a quaint memory of the surviving octogenarians who still dream of that romantic adventure of their youth – the 1st Quarter Storm.
Take note, any gullible politician who still succumbs to this empty threat by the CPP/NPA/NDF and pays their so-called permit to campaign fee is in direct violation of Republic Act (RA) 11479 or The Anti-Terrorism Law, and RA 10168 or The Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Law.
Pure imagination indeed, as the NPA no longer exists as an army but a motley crew of hungry and sickly losers who turned to banditry as their ideology can no longer sustain them./PN
