INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. instructed the military to shift its focus on supporting the peace process to put a stop to armed conflict in the country, Defense Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Thursday.
“I’m very fortunate that I came from peace process perspective,” Galvez, who concurrently sits as the chief of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU), said in a press briefing in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
“His guidance … is that the military should refocus now its mission on supporting the peace process,” Galvez added.
The OPAPRU is the lead agency in the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict’s localized peace engagements with communists.
Under localized peace engagements, the government would talk to local communist commanders instead of the Communist Party of the Philippines’s (CPP) leaders. The CPP, however, rejected this arrangement.
Also, the OPAPRU is the lead agency in the decommissioning process of former Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) fighters.