CPP issues ‘guidelines’ for campaigning in Red areas
ILIGAN CITY—-Although it does believe in the democratic underpinnings of the country’s elections, the remaining communist rebels, nevertheless, have chosen to make themselves felt during this year’s political exercise.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said it ordered its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), to enforce a set of policies in the areas it claimed to control, supposedly designed to “protect people’s welfare” in the course of the electoral battle.
Among others, “politicians are prohibited from bringing armed goons and police and military escorts that usually serve to intimidate the people” when campaigning in areas supposedly influenced by the CPP-NPA, said the statement issued on Thursday by CPP information officer Marco Valbuena.
“Other forms of coercion, use of armed violence will not be tolerated, especially by bureaucrat capitalists who use public funds against the people. The NPA has standing orders to seize the weapons of candidates and their armed goons,” he added.
Only candidates and their supporters who will abide by these guidelines, according to Valbuena, will be allowed to conduct campaigns in communities within the “revolutionary areas of operation.”
In the past, the NPA had set a permit to campaign, which required some form of financial fee and recognition of its political dominance over certain geographic areas of the country.
The CPP did not say what areas in the country were still under its control.
But the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police have repeated maintained that the CPP-NPA’s influence had greatly been diminished in parts of the country where it used to hold sway, claiming the communist movement had little or no influence in key areas in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
After years of relentless campaign, the military has considered the NPA as already an insignificant force in many parts of the country.
However, in Mindanao, there are still NPA sightings in the provinces of Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental and Agusan del Norte.
