The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) condemned the Marcos regime for recently issuing Memorandum Circular No. 83 which institutionalized the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD) 2025–2028.

According to the groups, this plan merely maintains the already repressive methods to “achieve peace.” Marcos designated the NTF-Elcac as the “lead agency” for this plan, in line with the “whole-of-nation approach.”

“What they call the ‘whole-of-nation approach,’ in reality, is a recycled counterinsurgency strategy that was tried, failed, and is now repackaged,” according to the NUPL.

“It sidesteps the root causes of armed conflict and instead relies on trumped-up charges, perjured testimonies, staged reintegration, and coordinated red-tagging of human rights defenders and dissenters.”

The regime and NTF-Elcac boast of the NAP-UPD as a “blueprint” to “defeat the armed struggle of the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army” by 2028.

Under the NAP-UPD, the NTF-Elcac will “shut down” the supposed “faucets” it accuses of fueling the armed struggle. This means nothing but the continuation of what the NTF-Elcac is already doing–widespread filing of fabricated “financing terrorism” cases against cause-oriented organizations and development workers.

The NAP-UPD closes the door to peace negotiations.

“The memorandum says that this plan is a blueprint to ‘end the CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency and the armed conflict,’ but it does not mention resolving the root causes of the armed conflict and it also has no commitment to reopen peace talks,” Bayan president Renato Reyes said. “In fact, the MC and NAP-UPD are virtually closing the door to peace talks and paving the way for failed fascist measures every past administration has repeated.”

“It closes the prospect of negotiation and avoids the conditions that give rise to armed conflict: landlessness, unemployment, repression, and systemic exclusion,” according to the NUPL.

“The NAP-UPD will ultimately fail for not recognizing that the armed conflict is a historical result of social injustice and inequality, and that this conflict will persist until meaningful socio-economic and political reforms are implemented,” Reyes said.