Senate panel retains P19-B anti-insurgency budget

The Senate finance panel has opted to retain the P19-billion budget of the government’s controversial anti-insurgency task force in the 2021 general appropriations bill (GAB), describing it as “one of President Duterte’s flagship programs.”

“We didn’t touch the budget” of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara said, spurning calls by his colleagues in the opposition to realign the fund to disaster or pandemic response.

The finance chair said his committee did not take out any part of the NTF-Elcac fund, including the P16 billion earmarked for the Barangay Development Program in 842 villages that had supposedly been cleared of communist influence.

Senators Risa Hontiveros and Francis Pangilinan and Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon each sought the realignment of the entire budget of the NTF-Elcac, which figured in a controversy after its spokesperson, Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., branded progressive lawmakers, activists and administration critics as communists.

“We didn’t move it because it’s one of the flagship programs of President Duterte,” Angara told reporters in an online press briefing.

“The DBM (Department of Budget and Management) asked us if possible not to touch it, because the President wants to solve the problem of insurgency, which is not only political and ideological but also a development issue,” he said.

But Angara said his panel heeded the recommendations of his colleagues in the minority to increase the budget of, among other programs, the calamity and disaster response fund and the purchase of coronavirus vaccines.

But “we funded it from other sources,” he added. INQ