The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today rebuked Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana’s “advise” to Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to continue focusing on the government’s counterinsurgency plan which certainly will heighten human rights abuses against civilians in the course of the pacification campaign of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

CPP Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena said Lorenzana “wants Marcos to continue his failed counterinsurgency plan in order to ensure expanded powers for the military and police and continue the campaign of state terror in order to suppress the people’s demands for national freedom and genuine democracy.”

“Lorenzana also wants the Marcos government to pour billions upon billions of pesos to the so-called modernization program of the AFP which serves as milking cow of military generals,” Valbuena said.

Valbuena pointed out that this renewed target will surely fail as what happened under the Duterte regime. “This only intends to once again keep the counterinsurgency war as the center policy of the incoming illegitimate regime to source out funds for corruption and silence legal democratic dissent,” he said.

He also pointed out that Lorenzana’s advise “is clearly an admission of failure of the Duterte regime in its declared objective of crushing, later downgraded to weakening the Party and the New People’s Army (NPA) before the end of its 6-year term.”

Valbuena also pointed out that this declared objective has been adjusted several times under Duterte when military generals annually declared they will end the NPA by the year’s end.

Valbuena pointed out that the NPA remains a solid defense of the Filipino people after years of brutal attacks against civilians and relentless focused military operations against NPA units. “The number of NPA fighters continue to multiply, its territories continue to expand to new and old areas, even as they enjoy a mass base of millions of people, which provide support for their army.

He scoffed at the military’s claims that the NPA has only 300 active fighters left.