The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today scoffed at Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s appointment yesterday of retired general Jose Faustino Jr as new secretary of the Department of National Defense (DND). The CPP said that the newly-installed secretary will only further cultivate military corruption and bring his dirty war in Mindanao to the national scale.

Upon Faustino’s assumption to the post, CPP Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena said that the “Filipino people can anticipate the dirty war in Mindanao to be expanded and intensified across the country.”

Valbuena called Faustino as “among the worst of the fascist generals” of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) responsible for the brutal campaign of aerial bombings, extrajudicial killings and gross abuses of human rights in Mindanao, since it was placed under martial law in 2017.

The CPP Information Bureau has documented not less than 223 cases of aerial bombing, strafing and shelling by the AFP since 2017, 128 or 60% of which were carried out in various parts of Mindanao not including the five-month long bombardment of Marawi City in 2017 that left it in ruins.

“Under US indoctrination and direction, and as Duterte stooge, General Faustino is responsible for the dirty war against the Lumad people and peasant masses of Mindanao,” Valbuena emphasized.

Under Faustino’s command, the AFP launched large campaigns of suppression and pacification against the masses, hamletting entire villages and placing them under military rule, red-tagging and dismantling people’s organizations, and breaking up of their programs including the Lumad community schools.

Apart from commanding the brutal war, Faustino has benefited much from the hundreds of millions of pesos of corruption-ridden “Barangay Development Program” involving infrastructure building. Of the ₱1.6 billion NTF-Elcac BDP budget for 2021, more than ₱1.2 billion (or 75%) went to five regions alone which were all under Faustino’s command in 2021. (CPP Information Bureau)