Calizo warns against NPA recruitments in Oro, Talakag

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent .

COUNCILOR Romeo Calizo on Monday warned about what he said was the ongoing recruitment of villagers to the New People’s Army near the boundaries of Cagayan de Oro and Talakag town in Bukidnon.

The recruitment targets, he said, are members of youth organizations and out-of-school youth. The rebels, according to the councilor, have been capitalizing on the education problem.

Calizo said the NPA would then offer an option.

“They are telling people about the weakness of the education system, and offer them alternative way of educating a person,” he said.

Calizo, chairman of the city council’s committee on police, fire and public safety, said the NPA has also been trying to win the support of barangay officials.

“NPA gyud ng klaro nga nagpadayon sa ilang recruitment activities sa kabukiran. Pero galisod sila diri sa sentro nga bahin sa dakbayan,” he said.

He said many rural barangay officials confirmed the ongoing recruitment activities.

But he said the NPA has not been successful so far, adding that many of those subjected to recruitment turned it down.

The councilor said this even as the military alleged that communist rebels are using the lull in the peace negotiations to regroup, recruit new members and acquire new weapons for their offensive against the government.

Armed Forces spokesperson Col. Edgard Arevalo said the information was culled from NPA documents found by the military.

Arevalo said the findings only show the NPA’s true motive in demanding for peace negotiations.

“They resort to peace negotiations as another form of legal struggle… to advance their revolutionary mass movement,” he added.

While the rebels are negotiating for peace, they are using this as an opportunity to strengthen their combat forces, Arevalo said.

Bye, Norway?

Malacanang earlier said the peace talks must be held in the country and that there may no longer be a need for a third-party facilitator once it resumes.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the President has maintained that since the concerns Filipinos it should be resolved in the country.

The Royal Norwegian Government has been mediating the peace negotiations since 2001.

Roque said the government panel can arrange the talks, claiming “they have the authority to fix the logistics” but added any party who has been involved in the peace process is welcome to help.

“He (Duterte) does not understand why we should continue talking in Norway. We are all Filipinos. We can talk it here in the Philippines. Why do we have to leave?” he said.

In a statement, Communist Party founding chair Jose Maria Sison said the President is “willfully and maliciously killing” the peace negotiations by breaking the standing agreement on a foreign neutral venue and dismissing the third-party facilitator.

“He is inflaming the civil war in the Philippines to justify his fascist dictatorship. He really does not want to have the peace negotiations,” said Sison, also the NDF’s chief political consultant.

Sison said Duterte knows very well that the NDF would never submit itself to “surveillance, control and duress by his bloody regime and his military and police butchers and death squads.”

“He is hell-bent on scapegoating the CPP and NPA to justify his methods of fake surrenders and mass murders and enable him to impose on the people martial law nationwide and fascist dictatorship,” he added.

Roque said Duterte has guaranteed the safety of Sison, his professor in Political Thought, and even vowed to shoulder the self-exiled CPP leader’s expenses if he comes home to talk peace.

Duterte has also promised to personally take Sison to the airport if the negotiations would fail, he said.

The resumption of the 5th round of peace talks will no longer push through on June 28 as scheduled earlier, after Duterte instructed the government peace panel to engage the “bigger table” first before they would work out agreements with the communist leaders.

“It was the President alone who wanted to review certain matters in connection with the peace talks,” Roque said.

He said the President assured “the nation that he has always given top priority to peace talks with both the Muslim insurgents and the populists’ insurgents and he has not given up on the process at all.”

He said any peace agreement, especially with the CPP-NPA must be inclusive and must pass the test of both legal and political scrutiny.

“The delay thus in the talks with the CPP-NPA is indispensable if we have, if we are to have an agreement that will pass these tests. It would help if Mr. Joma Sison would allow the government to be the one to brief the nation on any future developments,” he said. (with reports from antonio colina iv of mindanews, and pna)