Reds promoting violence not Duterte – Palace

It is the communist rebels who are promoting violence and not President Rodrigo Duterte, Malacañang said Friday, following fresh calls from left-leaning groups for the Chief Executive to resign due to the increasing rights abuses in the country.

“There is nothing new and surprising about the leftist group’s latest call for the President to step down. It has called for the very government’s ouster since time immemorial anyway,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement.

Panelo said the renewed call for the President to resign was “merely part of the continuing propaganda war waged by Jose Maria Sison and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) against the present administration, comparable to its wayward actions which are also resistant to past ones.”

He said it was Sison’s “armed comrades who are inflicting violence throughout the country and threatening the safety of our people.”

The Palace official cited recent attacks conducted by the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) against state forces, “including ambushing a government convoy in Camarines Sur that killed three policemen, attacking a municipal police station in Northern Samar, torching heavy equipment in three barangays in Davao City, burning a logging company’s equipment in Isabela province over refusal to pay revolutionary taxes, among other more deplorable crimes.”

“It is very clear to us and to our people who the adversaries of this nation are,” Panelo said.

This administration, he added “is firmly devoted to protecting the security of all Filipinos and ensuring peace and order in our communities.”

“If someone should be blamed for promoting violence in the country, perhaps the CPP-NPA should point the finger at themselves,” Panelo said.  /muf