The National Democratic Front – Eastern Visayas exposed today the election agenda of counterinsurgency operations in the barrios whereby operating soldiers and police actively campaign for the Marcos-Duterte presidential and vice-presidential tandem tandem.

“In several barangays in Northern Samar, fascist troops conducting Retooled Community Support Program called barrio folks for a meeting where they campaigned to vote for Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. as president and Sara Duterte-Carpio as vice-president in the upcoming reactionary elections. They also told barangay councils that they will camp within the barrios until May 2022,” Fr. Santiago “Ka Sanny” Salas, spokesperson for the NDF-EV, exposed.

“This illustrates how the suppression of the people is integrated and mutually beneficial with Duterte’s agenda to rig the elections and perpetuate himself in power. The Marcos-Duterte fascist tandem benefits from the military’s harassment and psywar operations. Also, under the pretense of ‘securing peace and order of the elections’, the AFP-PNP have another excuse to heavily militarize communities and suppress the masses’ resistance against the Duterte regime.”

Traditionally, Fr. Salas noted, elections in the Philippines are won through guns, goons, and gold. The mercenary tradition of the AFP-PNP makes it unsurprising for them to serve as goons of local political dynasties and the Duterte regime.

Fr. Salas said Duterte uses taxpayers’ money and the reactionary government’s resources to suppress the people and rig the elections. Since early last year, the military has been making rounds in Eastern Visayas communities for the “Barangayanihan: Duterte Legacy” wherein the Duterte regime’s hollow “accomplishments,” including corruption-ridden infrastructure projects, were showcased to the barrios. In militarized communities, anti-Duterte forces whom they tag as supporters of the revolutionary movement, are subjected to extrajudicial killings, torture, surveillance, political persecution, and other rights violations.

Fr. Salas stressed that the Duterte government terrorizes peasant communities as it seeks to suppress all forms of the people’s dissent, both open forms of mass protest and the armed struggle waged principally by the New People’s Army.

“But the people have previously brought down the Marcos fascist dictatorship, to which the NPA in Samar and Leyte significantly contributed through resounding and widespread tactical offensives. Duterte is a fool for sending more of his troops to the Eastern Visayas countryside, as he is only consigning them to become targets of the NPA’s ambuscades and raids while earning public disdain for wiping the public coffers clean through costly and anti-people military operations,” NDF-EV ended.