MANILA, Philippines — An official of the presidential palace on Friday said that President Rodrigo Duterte was “serious” about the bounty offer he gave for every Maoist rebel killed, explaining that this was just part of a “psy-war” and mean to “incentivize” indigenous people.
In separate media interviews, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar reiterated that Duterte was serious when he offered government militias P25,000 for every communist rebel they would kill.
Andanar said that this was also a way for the president to engage the rebels in a “psy-war” following the pronouncement of Communist Party of the Philippines leader Jose Maria Sison that their 50 guerilla fronts would kill one soldier a day.
When asked if the president was serious about his offer, Andanar said in Filipino, “Yes, all the president said to defeat the New People’s Army and CPP-NPA-NDF was serious, the president was serious here.”
The Philippine government and communist rebels tried to end the decades-long insurgency through peace talks during Duterte’s more than one and a half years in office but they failed after they accused each other of staging armed attacks.
The Philippines has recently classified the New People’s Army as a terrorist organization, a tag that its leaders have denied.
Andanar said that Duterte was trying “incentivize” Lumads who were part of government paramilitary forces to perform their duty by offering them money for every rebel killed.
“So what the president is really saying is that, the campaign of the government against the NPA is continuing. Now it (bounty offer) is just a way of incentivizing the Lumad,” he said. “So I think that it’s really psy-war game also.”
Andanar explained that this could just be the president’s way of matching Sison’s threat to kill a soldier a day.
He also explained that the bounty would not be given to soldiers as the salaries of their lowest-ranked personnel had already been doubled at the start of the year.
Andanar also doused fears that this could lead to abuses by the military and paramilitary troops, saying that the country’s security personnel are trained and the order “not unconstitutional.”
The president’s bounty offer came just days after Duterte got involved in controversies over his crass remarks in public.
He first told soldiers to shoot female rebels in their private parts to make them “useless,” a remark condemned by rights groups as misogynist.
Then, he told returning overseas Filipino workers, most likely in jest, not to use condoms as these reduced the pleasure of a sexual intercourse.
Government officials have regularly brushed aside concerns over the president’s language and said that his words should not be taken literally.
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