Money comes between communist rebels

While it seeks to forge peace with all rebel groups, the government may unwittingly be further driving a wedge between communist rebels over a P31-million grant to a group of former insurgents.

The Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas (RPM-P) on Thursday came out publicly to distance itself from Veronica Tabara and Stephen Paduano and their group who were purportedly facilitating the grant to former rebels in the name of the party.

RPM-P chairman Nilo de la Cruz disputed news reports that said Tabara and Paduano were members of the party and its armed group, the Revolutionary Army-Alex Boncayao Brigade (RPA-ABB), and that the grant had the blessings of the party.

“We’re being dragged into this mess, which is unfortunate and unfair,” De la Cruz told reporters in a news briefing in Quezon City, calling Tabara and Paduano “scoundrels” for tying the party’s name to the fund. “We have nothing to do with the P31-million offer.”

The RPM-P said it expelled Tabara and Paduano in 2007 after they threw their support behind then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo while majority of the members led by De la Cruz joined the campaign to oust Arroyo.

De la Cruz advised the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, headed by Secretary Teresita Deles, to “deal carefully” with the group of Tabara and Paduano, as well as to “comprehensively explain” the P31-million grant to the public.

He said the RPM-P was not objecting to the grant of P31 million for a housing project in Barangay Silang, Don Salvador Benedicto in Negros Occidental as long as “it truly benefits the masses.”

He said the amount was “small” compared to the P50 million a faction of the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army received.

When the RPM-P resumed peace talks with the government, it put forward an agenda that included the release of political prisoners; advancing peace and development in neglected areas; adoption of progressive taxation; purging of corrupt judges, and institution of electoral reforms.

“It is unfair to describe the peace process as a purely money affair,” it said in a statement.

After the Manila-Rizal Regional Commission and the Visayas Commission broke away from the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1993, they formed the RPM-P. Subsequently, the ABB and New People’s Army units in Negros and Panay merged to form the RPA-ABB.

Malacañang said the P31-million grant was part of the peace agreement the Estrada administration forged with the RPM-P/RPA-ABB in 2000 amid a furor over the allotment.

It said that the fund, from the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (Pamana), was to be in the form of livelihood programs, among other things, for the former insurgents and their families in their own communities.

But according to the RPM-P/RPA-ABB, the P31 million was not spelled out in the 2000 peace agreement.