Sison: Gov’t anti-insurgency programs milking cows of corrupt officials

Jose Maria Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines. File photo from the Philippine Daily Inquirer

LUCENA CITY –– Exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria “Joma” Sison, said the government’s counter-insurgency programs have become milking cows for corrupt military and civilian officials.

“The corrupt military and civilian officials would rather make money on fake development and fake community support projects and fake surrenders, and fake casualties for pure psywar, thus further bankrupting the reactionary government,” Sison said in a statement from in Utrecht in the Netherlands on Wednesday.

He said the alleged “fakeries” have also reduced the number of military and police personnel for the battlefield.

“But even if these were increased in the so-called focus areas, they are kept blind and deaf by the people’s support for their own people’s army,” Sison said referring to CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels.

To escape the continuous government anti-insurgency attacks and civil-military operations, Sison said the Maoist-inspired Red fighters have also “skillfully used the tactics of shifting from areas under concentrated enemy attack, concentrating elsewhere to attack the weak points of the enemy and dispersing to do mass work.”

He scoffed at Duterte’s publicly declared goal to crush the communist insurgency calling it “pipe dreaming with fentanyl.”

Duterte had been taking “fentanyl,” believed to be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, for recurring pain caused by a spinal injury suffered from a motorcycle accident in the past.

“Absurdly, he (Duterte) keeps on decreeing the impossible extermination of the CPP, NPA and the oppressed and exploited people who support the CPP and NPA,” Sison said.

On Monday, during a joint command conference with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, President Duterte stressed the need to focus on conflict-prone communities to ensure that the roots of the communist insurgency would be addressed through enhanced programs and harmonized efforts in providing for basic needs such as housing, water, education, and health.

Edited by Lzb