Not only did the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) rebuke public clamor to remove Gen. Antonio Parlade and Lorraine Badoy as its spokespersons, it even appointed six other people to serve as mouthpieces. Not satisfied, the NTF-ELCAC announced it will appoint more.

By appointing more and more spokespersons to push the bellicose viewpoint of the NTF-ELCAC, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon is actually causing the further polarization of the country. Led by General Parlade, the NTF-ELCAC’s spokespersons are publicly known to be toxic, aggressive and antagonistic against people who take the opposing views, who almost always are considered communists or sympathizers of the CPP.

This bellicosity stems from the NTF-ELCAC’s basic framework demanding that everyone uphold the government’s militarist line of counterinsurgency, or else be lumped together with the communists, and with the Anti-Terror Law, be designated or suspected of “terrorism.” The NTF-ELCAC’s bigotry is shutting down all avenues of criticism and dissent.

This is the NTF-ELCAC’s perverted concept of “whole of nation approach” wherein all government agencies be made to serve counterinsurgency, as determined by the NTF-ELCAC itself and Duterte’s inner circle of generals led by Esperon, Delfin Lorenzana and Eduardo Año.

Duterte is using the NTF-ELCAC to make everyone bow to his tyranny. The Filipino people must raise their vigilance and guard against the NTF-ELCAC and the role it will play in perpetuating the fascist Duterte regime in power beyond 2022.