Sustaining progress, etc.

PERHAPS the most successful government task force created with one very important focus which is ending this more than 50 years of communist insurgency nonsense is the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict a.k.a. NTF-ELCAC. This despite the opposition from the usual suspects i.e. the pseudo-communists, the wokes, and the political social climbers.

For the uninitiated, NTF-ELCAC is a taskforce organized in 2018 as part of its “whole-of-nation approach” as a response to and raise awareness about the communist armed conflict in the Philippines.

NTF-ELCAC was formed pursuant to Executive Order No. 70 issued by then President Rodrigo Duterte. The “whole-of-nation” approach is contrasted to prior policy which favored irregular peace talks with communist rebels.

The formation of the NTF-ELCAC followed the formal termination of peace talks between the government and the New People’s Army (NPA) when President Duterte issued Presidential Proclamation 360, citing continued attacks by the rebels despite the then ongoing peace negotiations. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and NPA were likewise formally designated as terrorist organizations.

Since then, the NTF-ELCAC has shown remarkable progress with the dismantling of 88 out of 89 guerrilla fronts and the transformation of 4,830 disadvantaged communities through the Barangay Development Program (BDP). Their work has eliminated CPP/NPA/NDF from their traditional bases and successfully reintegrated surrenderers into society.

Of course, that achievement is primarily due to the teamwork between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the NTF-ELCAC in winning the “hearts and minds” of the people in the hinterlands.

With this remarkable progress and success and most importantly, bragging rights as the only government entity to bring this 56-year-old communist nonsense to its death throes, it is expected that the the usual suspects i.e. the pseudo-communists, the wokes and the political social climbers would naturally want to abolish the NTF-ELCAC.

Fortunately for us and unfortunately for them they failed; perhaps the powers that be are still in their right senses and nobody had a momentary lapse of reason.

However, considering that this is an election year and politicians in the House of Representatives are all scrambling for re-election particularly the “Ayuda block”, they manage to slash and divert budgets of line agencies into unprogrammed lumps for their “pork barrels” in the form of “ayuda”, a euphemism for “you know what”.

As expected, the budget for the Barangay Development Program, a flagship initiative of NTF-ELCAC that started way back in 2021, was not exempted from the axe. Take note that this program was conceptualized and implemented to provide the much-needed infrastructure developments to geographically isolated and conflict vulnerable areas. This addresses the concerns of the people, that is usually used as propaganda by the CPP/NPA/NDF to arouse, organize and mobilize them to join their terrorist group.

This flagship initiative, together with other programs like the Amnesty Program and Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) among others, have strategically defeated the NPA and reduced its active Guerilla Fronts from 89 in 2019 to Zero in 2024.

This year, NTF ELCAC proposed P10 million each for the 780 barangay-beneficiaries in the National Expenditure Program Proposal for the BDP. Included in that proposal is the itemized list of projects identified and requested by the beneficiary barangays themselves, namely: farm- to-market roads, school buildings, health stations, electrification, and water systems.

Alas, the BDP budget was reduced from P10 million to P2.5 million per barangay;NTF-ELCAC has no choice but to return the proposal to barangay beneficiaries for modifications to fit the approved budget.

Definitely, this delays project implementation, worst it provides the CPP/NPA/NDF opportunities to exploit this to their advantage.

No worries, NTF-ELCAC will do everything to look for additional funds to augment the reduced budget for the BDP, sustaining peace and development gains despite budget challenges./PN