Bongbong Marcos: NTF-Elcac budget cuts may undermine anti-insurgency efforts

Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / LYN RILLON

MANILA, Philippines — Presidential aspirant and former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said he was “saddened” by the Senate’s decision to slash the budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), which he said may put to waste the government efforts to curb insurgency.

The Senate finance committee recently reduced the 2022 budget of the government’s anti-insurgency task force from P24 billion to P4 billion.

“Nakapanghihinayang na baka mabalewala at masayang lamang ang magandang nasimulan ng ahensya. Batid natin na kailangan ng sapat na pondo para masugpo ang insurgency na limang dekada na nating nilalabanan,” Marcos said in a statement on Thursday.

(It is regrettable that the good things that the agency started may be put to waste. We need enough funds to suppress insurgency which we have been fighting for 50 decades.)

Aside from using government funds to curb the COVID-19, the country must prioritize its “fight against any government threat and insurgency led by the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’s Army, and National Democratic Front,” he added.

Citing data from the NTF-Elcac, Marcos said a total of 882 barangays across the country were reported as cleared from the NPA between 2016 to 2019.

Senator Sonny Angara, who chairs the upper house’s finance committee, has previously said that one of the reasons why they decided to cut the task force’s budget was because it failed to report on how it spent its P19 billion budget this year.

Despite the budget cut, some 850 barangays are set to receive P5 million each for their respective development programs, he added.

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JPV