Esperon inspires

IT fattens the heart that Secretary Hermogenes Esperon Jr., national security adviser and vice chairman of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), has come out expressing unflagging com- mitment to succeed in his mandate to carry out the objectives of the task force. Lesser souls would have buckled down to pressure from no less than 15 senators seemingly gone passionate in seeing the government anti-insurgency campaign crumble. The latest development is that the task force has come under fire from a good majority of the senators, who are smarting from having been called “stupid” by NTF-Elcac spokesman Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. for threatening to defund the task force if he is not removed from his post.

General Parlade has taken pains to explain the context in which he issued that word. He pointed out that his use of the word had a qualifier: “If the senators made good their threat to defund the task force.” How stupid indeed would it be if the senators made good their threat. Not only would that act squander the great gains already had by the task force, but worse, it would frustrate the final collapse of the communist terrorist insurgency envisaged by General Parlade to take place before the year ends. To use the general’s phraseology, for the longest time that insurgency has stunted the growth of the country. Now that the government has already seen the light of day in crushing the communists, here are the nation’s top senators ganging up on the body gone resolved to make that crushing succeed as programmed.

Of late, the task force vice chairman issued an update on the transpirations in the government’s anti-insurgency campaign.

“As of 11 May 2021, 73 percent of the Barangay Development Program (BDP) has been in place in barangay (villages) cleared of CPPNPA (Communist Party of the PhilippinesNew People’s Army) influence,” Secretary Esperon said in a statement released to the media. “This has the equivalent of P12 billion. All in all, there have been a total of 1730 BDP projects approved all over the archipelago.”

According to Esperon’s report, the leading regions where the CPP-NPA influence has been effectively neutralized, meaning rebel combatants decimated or surrendered, are the Bicol Region, Visayas and Mindanao.

According to latest data, there are 782 barangay that have been endorsed to avail of BDP