THE DEVIL did come back and he was not wearing Prada, rather in faded Levis 501 and a tie-dyed shirt by Om Madhu.
And no, he didn’t bring a bottle of wine but Tequila Cuervo Añejo. We smoked my stash of weed, finished that bottle of tequila while listening to the late David Bowie’s final album Blackstar.
We were so wasted that the devil couldn’t find his way home. He ended up in the gates of heaven instead, pissing off St. Peter as he insisted on going in.
Meanwhile, it seems that Iloilo province governor Arthur Defensor Jr. has nonchalantly told off or rebuked Leni Robredo;
Excerpts from a Philippine News Agency’s Nov. 13, 2021 article “NTF-ELCAC helps ease poverty at grassroots: Iloilo guv”:
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) goes deep into the grassroots to enable them to help themselves out of poverty, Iloilo governor Arthur Defensor Jr. said.
In a media interview Friday afternoon, Defensor said the task force provides solutions to the insurgency problem by “attacking the root cause.”
He made the statement in response to the planned abolition of the NTF-ELCAC by Vice President Leni Robredo should she win in the May 2022 presidential race.
In addition to its civic action and interfacing with communities, the task force also provides funds for road projects, Defensor said.
The provincial government, through its engineering office, is carrying out about PHP700 million worth of projects in various barangays, funded under the NTF-ELCAC’s Barangay Development Program (BDP).
The BDP is a hallmark program of the task force with the end goal of bringing development to former conflict-prone communities.
Under the BDP, each insurgency-cleared barangay, or those formerly established as guerilla fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), has been allocated assistance worth PHP20 million to rehabilitate and develop the area.
“We are implementing the funds that they allocated for the program. Projects that could improve the condition of remote barangays that are not accessible, where life is poor, are vulnerable to insurgency,” Defensor said in the vernacular.
He said upon the download of the fund, the provincial government sends its engineers to recipient barangays to prepare the program of work and carry out the project.
The governor said the program boosts the initiative of the whole government in bringing development to the barangays, especially in remote areas, to prevent them from becoming vulnerable.
According to Governor Defensor, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict aims to provide solutions to the insurgency problem by “attacking the root cause”. The provincial government, he said, is carrying out about P700-million worth of projects funded by the task force.
These are words straight from a Local Government Executive or LCE who is on the ground facing the insurgency problem everyday head on, not some dimwit in Manila pretending to be “hands-on” on just about anything worth a photo-op from disaster rescue to COVID-19 vaccination, i.e. Leni Robredo.
The more than 50-year insurgency problem is now on it final death throes with the successful implementation of the Barangay Development Program of the NTF-ELCAC. Simply put, this holistic program is winning the hearts and minds of the people once made cannon fodder by the New People’s Army.
The success of this hallmark program is very much evident by the relentless attack of the allies and fronts of the CCP-NDF in the House of Representatives, particular the party-list groups of the so-called Makabayan Bloc, and some senators who not only want to defund the NTF-ELCAC but abolish it as well.
Now that call to abolish the NTF-ELCAC is echoed by this dimwit who vows to do just that if by some cruel twist of fate she becomes president.
Perhaps Leni Robredo should pause for a while and stop listening to those trendy social climbers and take heed from these words of experience and wisdom from Governor Defensor:
“What is our experience? Insurgency begins where the road ends.” His suggestion is to concentrate on accessibility, saying when a place is accessible, “the problem disappears.”
But then again, Leni Robredo is too dense to appreciate this. She just wants to abolish the NTF-ELCAC because she “thinks” it’s another way to attack and bring President Rodrigo Duterte down. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN
