The appointment of Camilo Cascolan, a PNP general, as one of the Department of Health (DOH)’s top officials is a huge insult for medical professionals and workers. Above all, Cascolan has no qualification for the said position. He knows nothing about saving lives and upholding the masses’ welfare. During his whole career as a police official, he has become an expert only on a single matter – in ways of killing and suppression.

Cascolan is one of the brains behind the Double Barrel Strategy. This concept became the logic behind Duterte’s bloody and brutal anti-drug war wherein more than 30,000 have been slain. He is also among those who crafted the Enhanced Managing Police Operations (EMPO) that resulted to controversial police operations. Cascolan’s brainchild EMPO left a long list of massacres and killings in its wake. Some of the cases were the incident in Negros Oriental where PNP units killed 27 individuals including a child last December 2018, the Bloody Sunday in Southern Tagalog where the police killed nine activists during their simultaneous operations in 2021 and the successive killings in Bikol under the guise of the murderous police’s nanlaban-patay scheme.

With this kind of bloodied record, it is clear that the Filipino nation cannot expect sufficient and apt health program under Marcos Jr.’s reign. He only replicates the style of his predecessor, the tyrant Duterte, who ensured that his cabinet was swarmed with military and police officials. These positions are rewards for their dogged allegiance to the doctrone of violence and are a measure of insurance that government agencies are governed by military power and will oblige their fascist and suppressive goals.

But just like Duterte, the Filipino nation will surely frustrate any maneuver of the government to suppress their struggles and rob them of their rights. NDF-Bikol is one with the Bikolano masses and the whole nation in condemning, exposing and battling Marcos Jr.’s fascist leadership. No matter how many fascist masterminds such as Cascolan he appoints to power, the people will remain steadfast in their all-out struggle in every way possible.