Duterte asks CPP: Don't interfere with COVID-19 vaccine delivery
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday appealed to communist rebels not to sabotage the delivery of vaccines to far-flung areas once the much-awaited doses finally arrive in the country.
Duterte issued the plea in his weekly address after meeting the coronavirus task force, where he sought for transporting the jabs "freely and safely" as the administration anticipates its arrival this month.
"The Communist Party of the Philippines must guarantee that the vaccines, in the course of their being transported to areas with no city health officers or medical persons, would be left untouched," he said in mixed English and Filipino. "I am asking you now to observe that rule."
The country has had a decades-long communist insurgency that has carried into Duterte's years in office, with peace talks breaking down and the president declaring late last year that such efforts would no longer take place until he steps down in 2022.
He has gone so far as calling the insurgency as the number one threat in the country despite the pandemic still raging to infect more than 538,000 and result in over 11,200 deaths to date.
But in his first address before the United Nations General Assembly in September, the president backed UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' call for a global ceasefire on armed conflicts to focus on responding to the health crisis.
"You know, it's abhorrent, but you can redeem it by just seeing to it that there is a fair atmosphere or environment [in] obtaining in the places where you are," Duterte said, referring to reported attacks by the New People's Army on deliveries of relief goods.
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Tensions between communist rebels and government took on another level when the administration designated the CPP along with its armed wing, the New People's Army, as a terrorist group in late 2020.
The move came with the newly formed Anti-Terrorism Council under the highly contested anti-terror law which faces 37 petitions for the Supreme Court to declare it as unconstitutional.
Government said the earliest COVID-19 vaccines may arrive in the Philippines by mid-February through the COVAX facility, a global effort to ensure fair and equitable access to the jabs.
And while it is targetting to inoculate 50 to 70 million in 2021 alone, it has yet to complete negotiations with foreign drugmakers on vaccine purchase with progress so far still at signing term sheets and the final price yet to be disclosed. — Christian Deiparine
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