CAMP ALLEN, Baguio -- Politicians in Abra province and nearby Ilocos Sur have reportedly started giving guns and money to communist guerillas to gain access to rebel-controlled areas once campaign period starts.
Lieutenant Col. Elias Escarcha, Civil Relations Service (CRS) group commander for the Cordilleras and Ilocos Region, reported on Saturday that the mainstream New Peoples Army (NPA) under Jovencio Balweg allegedly started collecting P1,000 to P3,000 from politicians in the towns of Malibcong and Bangilo.
Campaign period for national candidates will start on Tuesday while local candidates will start campaigning next month.
Balweg is one of the primary suspects in the assassination of his brother and former renegade priest Conrado "Ka Ambo" Balweg in Malibcong, Abra on Dec. 31, 1999.
Escarcha reported that the rebels were collecting money from mayors and councilors on a monthly basis. He claimed that some of the money even came from the towns' Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) share.
In Ilocos Sur, Escarcha said one of the barangay captains in Bananayo town allegedly gave two M-16A1 riffles to the rebels purportedly to gain the support of other barangay chairmen whose areas of jurisdiction are reportedly controlled by the rebels.
Escarcha said the giving of money and guns to the rebels is "simply a form of extortion," chiding the rebels for taking advantage of the May 2004 polls to promote their vested interest in the guise of sourcing out funds to finance livelihood projects in government-neglected areas.
"The rebels have managed to steal blood money from the people and development funds intended for the barangays," Escarcha said.
On Wednesday, communist guerrillas in the Cordilleras announced they would be charging a maximum of P500,000 as permit-to-campaign (PTC) fee from each congressional candidate who wants to woo voters in areas that the former controls.
The Agustin Begnalen Command of the mainstream Communist Party of the Philippines-New Peoples Army (CPP-NPA) also clarified that only congressional and other local candidates who have no anti-revolutionary records would be allowed to conduct campaign sorties in NPA-controlled areas.
Diego Wadagan, the command's spokesman, also said the P500,000 PTC fee is also negotiable, depending on the economic status of the candidate.
By JAIME ESPINA
BACOLOD CITY - Communist rebels rejected President Arroyo’s call for them to stop issuing permits to campaign (PTCs) to candidates in the May elections, saying this was “part and parcel of the CCP-NPA [Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army]’s revolutionary government function.”
President Arroyo’s call was made immediately following the signing of the Oslo Accord between the government and National Democratic Front following last week’s formal round of peace talks in the Norwegian capital.
The talks, resumed after more than two years in limbo, almost collapsed again over the issue of the continued inclusion of the CCP-NPA and CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison on the terrorist list.
However, differences were ironed out after both parties agreed to undertake joint efforts to work for the rebels’ delisting.
The President said stopping the exaction of the PTC would show the rebels’ “good faith” after the signing of the agreement.
But in a statement reacting to the President’s call, CPP spokesman Gregorio Rosal said, “The resolution of socioeconomic- and political-reform agenda in the peace talks are matters that should be settled first and with dispatch and should not precede the question of the CCP-NPA’s PTC policy.”
Rosal also called on the President “to desist from needlessly distressing the peace negotiations by prematurely raising issues which should be tackled at the proper time.”
“In the spirit of the peace talks,” he said, the President should “refrain from issuing derogatory statements that criminalizes legitimate state functions of the revolutionary government.”
Without any substantial agreements on socioeconomic and political reforms, Rosal said the President had “no business asking the CCP-NPA to stop making its own policies and formulating remedies in the interest of the revolutionary movement and people.”
The CPP spokesman claimed that although the rebels have yet to win and establish their government, there nevertheless “exist two parallel governments in the country -- the moribund reactionary government and the ascendant autonomous revolutionary government, led by the CPP.”
Rosal claimed that “revolutionary authorities have as much right to implement and collect fees and taxes as the reactionary government has.”
“The main difference is that the PTC fees and other revolutionary taxes and collections serve the interests of the people, while the tax and other collections of the Philippine government are pocketed by the ruling class and corrupt big bureaucrats,” he said.
Rosal claimed: “It is almost always the candidates who seek out the revolutionary authorities to ask permission to conduct their campaigns in the revolutionary [movement-controlled] areas,” and that the permits issued by the rebels were “also necessary to define the candidates’ conduct inside territories of the revolutionary government.”
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