Recto tells NTF-ELCAC: ‘Real enemy’ are in WPS, not the pantry organizer

Ana Patricia Non refills the Maginhawa Community Pantry on Thursday, April 15, 2021, which she set up to help people who are badly affected by the pandemic and have difficulty finding food to serve on their tables. The pantry accepts donations like canned goods, vegetables, vitamins, and face masks, among others, from kindhearted individuals as those are essential for sustenance and survival.  INQUIRER/GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

MANILA, Philippines — After the alleged red-tagging of organizers of community pantries, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto on Friday reminded the country’s counter-insurgency agency to focus on the real “adversary” roaming Philippine waters, instead of targeting the woman who brought to life the Filipino’s bayanihan spirit through her community pantry.

Recto was referring to Ana Patricia Non, the organizer of the Maginhawa community pantry in Quezon City, who was likened by Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), to Satan after saying that she is being probed for her links to the communist movement.

“Something is terribly wrong when a general berates a millennial because she fed her neighbors. There is no valor in that,” said Recto in a statement.

He noted that Non’s initiative launched a thousand more community pantries nationwide, which, he said, is not a crime.

The “real lawbreakers,” he further said, were those who “empty our seas of food that should have been ours,” apparently referring to the Chinese incursions in the West Philippine Sea.

“The enemy is not this petite woman who pushed a kariton of vegetables. If there’s one adversary that requires our generals’ attention, then these are the foreign gunboats pushing deeper into our territory and shooing our fishermen away,” the senator said.

Non was forced to temporarily halt operations of her community pantry after several media posts, including that NTF-ELCAC, linked her to communist groups.

Recto reminded that the task force was funded to run after the communist parties, not the community pantries.

“The P16 billion in taxes paid by the people was given to that body so it can run after the Communist Party, not community pantries,” Recto said.

Rector said that while Parlade had likened Non to Satan, millions who believed in her cause have began calling her as “Patreng, Saint of Maginhawa.”

“Community pantries are the civic spaces which are not only stations of compassion but also showcase the best in the Filipino. Bawal ang haters doon (Haters are not allowed). But on second thought, the more they hate, the more the people give,” he concluded. – Liezelle Soriano Roy, Trainee

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