Peace Talks to Save Gov’t P56-B a Year 

Peace, instead of war, can save government P55.840 billion every year. The amount can be used instead to house 500,000 homeless families and generate some one million jobs, the fisherfolk group Pamalakaya says. 

BY Gerry Albert-Corpuz
Bulatlat.com  

The national government can save at least P55.8 billion a year if it revives peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). And the amount can be used instead for employment and housing projects.

This was raised by leaders of militant fisherfolk group Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) days after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the Armed Forces to step up military offensives against the New People’s Army (NPA).

The president’s order, which also directed U.S.-trained elite Philippine forces to be deployed in known NPA-lairs, virtually scuttled peace talks with the NPA’s umbrella organization, the NDFP, despite calls for their resumption.

Pamalakaya national chair Fernando Hicap said the resumption of peace talks can help government save some P56 billion in tax payers money. The amount, he said, could be used to build more than 500,000 units of modest houses for millions of homeless Filipinos or finance a job-generating project that could employ over a million jobless folks in the country.

"Why settle for a stupid war project that could endanger lives and livelihood of millions of people?,” Hicap said. “Ms Macapagal, a certified triple platinum U.S. puppet and stooge of Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes should drop her fatal attraction to unjust war and attend to people's legitimate needs instead."

The militant fisherfolk leader asked the president to renounce her "U.S.-directed war against the CPP-NPA-NDF," continue the peace talks with the NDFP and stop draining national coffers at the behest of the Washington government, the U.S. military and the local armed forces which are expected to benefit from this "war against the Filipino people."

Junk war budget

This year’s defense budget is P65.3 billion, which includes P13.5 billion for salaries and benefits of Armed Forces personnel and P50 billion for operations . For next year’s budget, the defense department has proposed an additional P5 billion for the Armed Forces modernization program and P840 million for the recruitment of 7,000 soldiers and 15,000 paramilitary men in response for government’s renewed drive against terrorism and leftist rebellion.

Pamalakaya secretary general Noli Serrano said that an earnest resumption of peace talks with the NDFP would make budget allocations for operations, modernization and recruitment unnecessary – or a total saving of P55.840 billion.

Aside from these items, Serrano urged Congress to scrap from the proposed 2003 budget the 40% automatic appropriation for debt servicing as well as the P29.5-billion budget allocation for the salary increases of top military officials and personnel.

"President Macapagal-Arroyo is setting the biggest theater for war next year,” Serrano said. “It is going spend over P50 billion in tax payers money for state terror and U.S. armed intervention and aggression in the country."

The Malacañang Palace submitted a proposed P804-billion national budget for 2003 to Congress but solons vowed to scrutinize it and keep the government's target deficit of P130 billion.

"All in all, we can save over P370 billion in renouncing Ms Macapagal's all-out war and non-payment of onerous foreign loans for 2003 and this would solve our problem on budget deficit. But Congress should exercise great amount of courage to defy Palace-based disciples of the IMF-WB," the militant leader said.

Peasant youth advocates from Nnara-Youth likewise asked Congress to shoot down the national budget next year if Palace officials insist in having "undesirable and anti-people budget allocations” inimical to people's interest approved.

Nnara-Youth spokesperson Reggie Vellejos said "Congress should not entertain second thoughts of pulling a major upset against the Malacañang budget bill. The 2003 national budget is a heavily inclined war budget that would bring in chaos rather than peace and progress to the people."

Describing the 2003 budget as U.S.-instigated, war-oriented and grossly anti-Filipino people, the youth leader said the "war budget" is being pushed by Malacañang for next year ‘unleashing of all-out war against the communist guerillas and aboveground leftist groups whom Ms Macapagal branded as principal obstacles to her ambition to rule beyond 2004 and to U.S. interests in the country.

Mad against NAD

Pamalakaya and Nnara-Youth took turns in lambasting the anti-communist group National Alliance for Democracy (NAD), calling it a group of political zombies and a resurrected clique of demons courtesy of the Macapagal-Arroyo military and “stalwarts of state terror.”

The militant groups said "an undisclosed sum of state funds" has been used to finance the anti-left activities and propaganda assaults of NAD against militant groups and personalities associated with the Left.

NAD, which claimed to be an indigent group, was able to pay series of political paid ads maliciously incriminating militant and other progressive groups as “fronts of CPP-NPA-NDF.” The paid ads, which appeared in several national broadsheets, cost not less than P1million.

The groups hit NAD for maliciously tagging party list Bayan Muna and the militant alliance Bayan ( New Patriotic Alliance) as communist fronts, criminal and terrorist groups.

"This group which specializes in character assassination, psy-war operations and even criminal activities was revived by the military to demonize leaders and members of cause-oriented groups exposing the anti-people and puppet regime," they said.

NAD first gained prominence during the Aquino presidency as an anti-communist crusade group. In Cebu, reports said the anti-communist group was responsible for the killings of trade union organizers affiliated with KMU. Notorious members of NAD, the reports said, got P5,000 from employers' and big business groups for every KMU organizer they killed.

Human rights reports show that in 1989, the Department of National Defense (DND) recruited 20,000 people for the Civilian Volunteer Organizations (CVOs). The CVOs, which included NAD and religious cults, were used for the government's anti-insurgency campaign.

Thousands of suspected sympathizers of the NPA were victimized by the groups ranging from unwarranted arrests to rapes and killings. The military atrocities prompted Congress and international human rights groups to intervene and investigate.

The Senate also called for the disbandment of the Citizens Armed Force Geographic Unit (Cafgu), the paramilitary-arm of the AFP.

"NAD obviously is a military pet group. It is tasked to help the military in carrying out state terror against groups critical and opposed to anti-people government policies," the groups said.

NAD lost the party list elections last May 2001. It only got 49,147 votes as against Bayan Muna's 1.7 million votes. Bayan Muna topped the elections with three seats in Congress. Bulatlat.com

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