Duterte gives away P20-M ‘reward’ each to NPA-free barangays

President Rodrigo Duterte has started the distribution of P20 million worth of projects to barangays which have been rid of New People's Army presence.

Duterte flew to Cagayan de Oro City on Friday to attend the meeting of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), which has received P19 billion under the 2021 budget.

Under the allocation, a total of 822 barangays are expected to get P20 million each in development assistance, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon said. 

“We have 822 barangays under NPA influence cleared from 2016 to 2019. One hundred nineteen of these are in Region 10, iyong mga barangay captain, they are here to symbolically receive," Esperon said.

"These barangays will have P20 million each. This is for farm-to-market roads, classrooms, electricity, health station, water system, irrigation…pag hindi kayo pumalakpak, hindi ko titigilan ito,” he added then prodding the audience to clap.

The armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the NPA rebels have been consistently tagged by Duterte as terrorists.

The government’s petition to declare the communists as terrorists is still pending before the Manila Regional Trial Court.

Esperon said the Department of Budget and Management already had come up with a circular for the release of the budget, and that the Department of Interior and Local Government would submit the requirements as soon as possible.

“We are ready to start on March 15, or upon your orders,” Esperon said.

Duterte called on the rebels fighting the government to lay down their arms and abandon their cause.

“You want to fight me, the government? I have plenty of tanks, I have many policemen, and I have many soldiers. You’re just trying to hold on to this war. In one of the encounters, maybe you will get shot and die for nothing,” Duterte said.

The NTF-ELCAC’s mandate is to fight communism through “prioritizing and harmonizing the delivery of basic services and social development packages by the government”.

The NTF-ELCAC’s over P19 billion budget under the 2021 national budget dwarfs the national budget’s allocation for buying COVID-19 vaccines at P2.5 billion.

Critics have vowed to seek an audit of the multi-billion anti-insurgency fund. 

"These are very large sums of money that we cannot afford to waste on potentially partisan political spending,” Bayan Muna party-list Representative Ferdinand Gaite had said.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon during the budget deliberations warned that the funds earmarked for the barangay development program of an anti-insurgency task force may be used to advance political interests in the 2022 elections.

"Next year is an election year and here is a secretariat who would be playing God to the requests of the barangays. I am being candid with you. I am not new in this bureaucracy," Drilon said in a Senate budget hearing.

Senator Panfilo Lacson, the chairman of the Senate Committee on National Defense, said the NTF-ELCAC fund was justifiable.

"Sa NTF-ELCAC na pondo, something like P19 billion, hindi ito mapupunta sa military. Ang pondong ito is for development programs consisting of farm-to-market roads, livelihood. Ito 'yung confidence-building," Lacson said. —Llanesca Panti/LDF/NB, GMA News