EDITORIAL - Two more years of money wasted
If the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) gets two more years to operate it will end the insurgency, or so President Rodrigo Duterte claims.
During a meeting with some officials in Davao City last Monday, President Duterte said the NTF-ELCAC can really help solve the country’s insurgency problem.
“With the way ELCAC is running, give it another two years, (the insurgency) would almost be wiped out," were the president’s exact words.
We beg to disagree. Letting it operate won’t matter much in the war against the insurgency. Aside from being redundant, the NTF-ELCAC tends to get sidetracked in its duties.
The task force may have some things to show for when it comes to delivering basic services to deter people in far-flung areas from joining the insurgency, but what they are doing is already being done, and being done better, by other government agencies. They also have the tendency to be distracted by other pursuits. These include looking for enemies that don’t exist, red-tagging activists who just want genuine change, and glorifying convicted criminals.
By the last activity we refer to their pointless interview of jailed former general Jovito Palparan, already incarcerated at the New Bilibid Prisons with several other soldiers for kidnapping two students of University of the Philippines who have yet to be found, dead or alive.
While it is true that Palparan can still bring his case to the Supreme Court, and he may not be a convicted criminal forever, bringing attention to his plight in an interview clearly skewed to paint him as an innocent victim who should be exonerated is not exactly serving the public’s interest.
If this isn’t a waste of taxpayers money --and the task force has a budget even bigger than more important government agencies-- we don’t know what is.
As we said before, money spent for this task force is better off spent on other and more important government agencies. The war against the insurgency can do without its efforts. Two more years of this task force means two more years of money wasted.
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