ours before Gloria
Arroyo was scheduled to talk in Negros yesterday about her campaign to crush the
communist rebellion by 2010, suspected New People’s Army rebels raided the
terminal of a major Luzon transport company in Cubao, Quezon City, and burned
five buses, presumably over the firm’s refusal to pay "revolutionary taxes."
Is this – a daring attack right in the metropolis – the kind
of undertaking rebels in full retreat could mount with contemptuous ease? The
attack mocks Gloria and her generals who have been claiming victory after
victory against the rebels.
It is indeed true that balance of forces have never been more
stacked against the rebels. The AFP, for example, has been able to shift most of
its combat units to NPA-infested areas after the declaration of the truce with
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front immediately after Gloria grabbed power. The
military does not lack for resources. Far from it. On the contrary, the budget
of the AFP has consistently been on the rise in line with its modernization
program.
So why is it that the government could not make a dent on the
anachronistic NPA, the only surviving rebellion of the Mao Zedong-type during
the first decade of the 21st century?
The last time the AFP announced the launching of a
revitalized campaign to go after the rebels, it miserably failed to make contact
with rebel armed formations. It turned its wrath instead on unarmed,
above-ground people suspected of maintaining the political infrastructure to the
rebellion’s armed wing.
The campaign’s poster boy was Maj. Gen. (ret.) Jovito
Palparan. The tactics were assassination, food blockades and mass arrests and
interrogation. The predictable result was deeper alienation of the people whose
support and loyalty the government was supposed to win over.
During Gloria’s Negros appearance she again belabored the
obvious that the country cannot move forward, let alone achieve First World
status in 2020 (another Gloria delusion), with the continuing "low level threat"
posed by the communist rebels.
But Gloria is begging the question. What precisely are the
reasons the NPA has proven itself resilient and continues to pose a threat – low
level or otherwise?
Gloria is probably the only one who is oblivious to the link
between rebellion and people’s disenchantment with government. Rebellion cannot
flourish in a society ruled by justice, where people sleep with a full stomach
and where the leadership does not steal with rapacity.
Victory over the NPA by 2010? Gloria should stop dreaming.
