NTF-ELCAC: NPA has no more active guerilla fronts

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) said Wednesday that there are no more active guerilla fronts in the NPA (New People's Army) which he said are “on their last leg.”

That's as NTF-ELCAC executive director Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr. said that there are only 14 "weakened" guerilla fronts left in the communist armed group.

“Ensuring their total dismantling will be our prerequisite for us to initiate our next steps in ensuring peace,” Torres said.

According to the NTF-ELCAC, six more guerilla fronts have been totally dismantled recently.

Torres said the total dismantling of these guerrilla fronts will help in the continuation of the task force’s localized peace engagements.

Meanwhile, National Security Council (NSC) on Wednesday slammed the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) after it came out with a statement for its 55th anniversary.

“The Party outlines tasks to strengthen the NPA and the revolutionary armed struggle, and carry forward the revolutionary mass movement, and the people's struggles against the US-Marcos regime,” said the CPP.

NSC Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya took exemption from the statement amid ongoing exploratory peace negotiations between the two sides.

NSC Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya said that instead of calling to abandon armed struggle in its anniversary statement, the CPP doubled down on its commitment in pushing it.

“To make matter worse, the CPP in the same Anniversary Statement called the forthcoming ‘exploratory talks’ resulting from the Oslo Communique as ‘an additional battlefield to advance the national democratic cause’,” Malaya said.

“The use of the word ‘battlefield’ is telling. This only means that the CPP have not abandoned its original position,” he added. —VAL, GMA Integrated News