PTC Fees Fund NPA’s Social Services – Ka Roger

Permit-to-campaign (PTC) fees collected by the armed revolutionary movement is extortion, so say government and a number of legislators. Not so, the Communist Party spokesperson retorts, because the fees go to social services and guerrilla operations in the countryside.

By Alexander Martin Remollino 
Bulatlat.com

“It is to such services for the masses that the funds we collect from revolutionary taxes including PTCs go,” he said. The NPA, which operates in some 110 guerrilla zones across the country, says it has increased its mass base to several millions mostly peasants. It has been waging a protracted guerrilla war against the government and what it claims its imperialist master since 1969.

Newspaper accounts have reported that especially in remote upland areas, the government machinery is practically nil or even if present hardly provides basic services for the poor. Poverty which affects nearly eight out of 10 Filipinos (government says only three out of 10) is most felt in these areas. It is particularly under such conditions that many of the poor support the NPA, the accounts said.

NPA operations

Together with other revolutionary taxes, mostly from big businessmen and big landlords operating in the guerrilla zones, PTC collections also go to the NPA’s operational expenses.

“It’s not easy to wage a revolution in a country with an 80-million population,” Rosal said. “Financing the needs of the people’s army is also a difficult task since its size is equal to 27 battalions all over the country today—the fighters have to eat and be clothed and need medicine. It is quite a big financial need.”

Rosal also said the PTC is a manifestation of the political authority of the people’s revolutionary government.

“Much as they would want to, the government and the AFP cannot stop the collection of permit-to-campaign fees,” he said. “They should realize that there are two governments in the country today: that of the traditional government which serves the tiny elite and the revolutionary government of the poor in the rural countryside.”

Military authorities have admitted the existence of a clandestine revolutionary government which, they said, is also supported by local officials. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of barrio (village) activists serve in clandestine revolutionary committees – including defense militias, peasant organizing committees, women’s as well as health and literacy campaign committees.

Rosal said that even as the Macapagal-Arroyo administration has been threatening to put a stop to the collection of such fees and arresting those engaged in it with criminal charges, candidates from the administration party have been going into negotiations on payments.

“In fact, it is easier to talk to major political parties because they have much money,” the CPP spokesperson said. “While Macapagal-Arroyo tells them not to enter into such negotiations, talks go on with representatives of guerrilla fronts and regions just the same.”

“Not extortion”

Asked how the underground Left addresses charges by the administration and some legislators that the collection of fees for the permit to campaign is a form of “extortion,” Rosal said: “Of course, it hurts the reactionary government very much to realize that there is another government that imposes taxation. Aside from calling us revolutionaries as ‘terrorists,’ they are very mad about our collection of taxes and permit-to-campaign fees and call it ‘extortion.’”

“But it is they (government) that extorts the people by exacting from them more and more taxes that do not go back to them as services. This is also aside from extortions from businessmen, gambling lords and jueteng lords who are in cahoots with many government, military and police officials,” he said.

Rosal said that the underground revolutionary movement’s purpose for imposing taxation is much different from that of the reactionary government. “How we spend the funds we collect from revolutionary taxes is as different from how the reactionary government spends its tax revenues as earth is with heaven,” he pointed out. “The funds of the reactionary government go to the pockets of government officials.”

A standard practice

Rosal also said that among politicians, the payment of PTC fees can be considered as a standard practice. He said that politicians intending to campaign in areas influenced by the CPP-NPA-NDF usually approach the underground movement’s local leaders as early as three months before the campaign period and negotiate on how much they would pay.

Simon “Ka Filiw” Naogsan, spokesperson of the Cordillera People’s Democratic Front (CPDF), who was a public official in the martial law years before joining the underground revolutionary movement, said that the rates usually vary depending on the socio-economic status of candidates.

“It also depends on assessments of their economic status,” Naogsan, who also spoke at the Jan. 6 news conference, said. “The guerrilla fronts make adjustments.”

Rosal did not give exact rates for PTC fees. “All I can say right now is that the rates have increased following the decline of the peso’s value,” he said. “The rates are also affected by the economy.”

The CPP spokesperson also said that permit-to-campaign fees are not too much of a burden on the major political parties anayway. “The fees do not drain their big campaign funds,” he said.

Instead of cash, some politicians give in kind such as arms and ammunitio, Rosal said. He declined to mention names of politicians who have paid for the PTC. Bulatlat.com

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