MANILA, Philippines —Senator Panfilo Lacson on Thursday asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to follow up on its court petition seeking to declare the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) as terrorists.
Lacson, a former chief of the Philippine National Police, issued the statement after CPP exiled founding chair Jose Maria Sison said that the overthrow of the administration remains their top priority this 2019.
“I urge the executive branch, particularly the DOJ to follow up with the judiciary the case that they filed calling for the prescription of the NPA as a terrorist group which is provided under Sec. 2 of the Human Security Act of 2007,” Lacson told reporters in a text message.
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The senator was referring to the petition filed by the DOJ before the Manila Regional Trial Court in March last year seeking to declare the communist group as a terrorist organization.
The DOJ also submitted to the court a list of over 600 personalities, which includes Sison and other CPP leaders and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultants.
The petition was filed following the termination of the peace talks between the government and the CPP in November 2017.
Since its inception in 1968, the CPP has been aiming to overthrow the government and replace it with a “national democratic” state.
Lacson also downplayed Sison’s latest threat to the administration, citing how the group failed to topple any government in the past five decades.
Right now, he said, the CPP and NPA “are reduced to a band of extortionists, arsonists and robbers, even a terrorist group.”
“Sison and the CPP/NPA have been attempting to overthrow the government, past and present and take over government fir the past 50 years, by all means possible, mostly violent through armed struggle, even through peace talks aimed at having a coalition government but still aimed at a take over, violent or otherwise,” Lacson said.
“They have not succeeded for the past five decades so I don’t see how they can,” he added. /muf