Duterte to NPA: You are about to end

President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday considered the New People's Army (NPA) a spent force, saying its five-decade old existence was "about to end."

Speaking before agrarian reform beneficiaries in General Santos City, Duterte claimed the communist rebels have already run out of arms, bullets and food.

"Whether you agree to it or not, you NPAs, the communists, you are about to end. You don’t have guns, you don’t have bullets, you don’t even have food. All you have are sores and you are being bitten by leeches," the President said in his native Cebuano.

Duterte promised to provide housing and skills training to NPA rebels who surrender, as he lamented the "social dysfunction" supposedly caused by the communist insurgency. 

"What I really didn’t like was the social dysfunction in the whole Philippines. Just like drugs. There are many children who have not seen their own parents because their mom and dad have joined the armed movement," he said.

On April 13, Duterte said he might create a new peace negotiating panel, weeks after he terminated the peace talks, including the appointments of government negotiators led by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, and told the rebels to just talk with the next administration.

The President said the new panel will be composed of three members from the military and two civilians. He also said he abolished the former peace panel because the talks in the last three years did not yield positive results.

Apart from the communist insurgency, the President discussed in his speech in General Santos City the trash from Canada, climate change and investment scams as well as his security and critics.

Duterte did not talk about the sinking of a Filipino fishing boat as a result of a collision with a Chinese vessel at the disputed Recto Bank in the West Philippine Sea on June 9. — BM, GMA News