Communist insurgency: Waning in Central Visayas

No doubt the communist insurgency is waning in Central Visayas because in the more than a year and a half since Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia made her declaration of all-out war on the communist insurgency in Cebu province, there has been no attacks or encounters in Cebu. An additional information that I gathered from Lt. Col. Oscar Lasangue of the 3rd Civil Relations Group is that areas like the island of Bohol have experienced, too, a huge drop in the insurgency activities, thanks to Bohol Gov. Erico Aumentado’s anti-poverty campaign that has really helped the grassroots.

I was in Ubay, Bohol last month to look at the Ubay Stock Farm run by the Department of Agriculture under regional director Eduardo Lecciones and I couldn’t help but appreciate the beauty of the dam that collected all the rainwater which is being distributed to many farmers whose lands were far from rivers. The presence of many irrigation dams in Bohol has given the farmers all the water they need, thus greatly increasing their production and income. Thanks to the determination of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap who is also the presidential adviser on job creation, who believes that agricultural development can also bring good jobs to the poor.

In Ubay, I met several people in many small barangays and sitios and they confirmed that there are no more armed people roaming around there. Even in my mother’s farm in Barangay Candumayao, Catigbian in Central Bohol (18 kms from Tubigon) used to be a hotbed for the communist insurgency, but that was a couple of years ago. I called up Barangay Candumayao captain Teofilo Patolilic (he also works in our farm) who is the ABC president in the town of Catigbian and he confirmed to me that even the small military detachment beside our land has already left.

Frankly speaking I was once scared to visit our mother’s farm because of my being a staunch anti-communist crusader, I have to take care of my own security. But ever since Capt. Robert Salinas, a retired Philippine Navy captain, won as mayor of Catigbian, his military experience has helped restore peace in that area, of course, with the support of Gov. Aumentado’s anti-poverty programs. This means that the communist insurgency can be stopped. All it needs is a determined governor or mayor with the help and cooperation of the military and police. It has happened in Cebu and Bohol and this should be replicated in NPA-infested areas.

This also clearly shows that the militarization of Bohol was the result of the communist insurgency. So if we can get rid of the NPAs in a locality, it would also mean that we would no longer find any need for any military presence in the area. But while the NPAs may have been lying low in Cebu or Bohol, it doesn’t mean that they’re not there. In fact the communist propaganda machine is still very much at it, trying to discredit our soldiers.

A case in point was an article that came out in the Inquirer last Nov. 1 about the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and Karapatan claiming that an eight-year-old girl in Tuburan whose parents were accused as members of the NPA “was abducted and subjected to inhuman interrogation.” Wow! Now the military is into kidnapping little children? Call it another media coup by the CPP/NPA, which until now has easy media access. But this story turned out to be another kuryente for PDI!

In a dramatic twist of events, a throng of witnesses trooped to the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) bewailing the PDI report to be one-sided and did not contain the truth of what really happened! As the story turned out, the girl’s father, Lyndon Botilla, left his daughter to the custody of Rogelio Barcenal. Apparently Botilla had been tagged by CPPO director Carmelo Valmoria as a squad leader of the NPA’s Front 2 Committee based in Cebu’s mid-north sector.

With the girl in his custody, Barcenal (he didn’t know that Botilla had an arrest warrant for the killing of three soldiers in October 2005) voluntarily brought the girl to the 78th Infantry Battalion’s detachment where he was told that Botilla was an NPA rebel. He then turned the girl over to Myrna Romero (a former NPA member), an administrative staffer of Tuburan municipal councilor Reymelio Delote to verify the reports that the NPA rebel virtually abandoned his daughter. She would have turned her over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development, but the girl refused and instead was taken by her aunt Liza Baldespiñosa.

Now the NPA rebel Botilla has to face a child abandonment charge under Republic Act 7610. Supposedly, the communists are fighting for human rights, yet they abandon their own children as if they don’t have any rights. This is why communism is fast waning, especially in Central Visayas.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.