TODAY is All Souls’ Day, a day traditionally set aside to remember our departed loved ones.
I suppose it would not be asking too much if we also offered a prayer for the souls of those who fell victim to the atrocities allegedly committed by the CPP-NPA-NDF throughout its more than half-century-long communist insurgency.
Among the latest reported victims are 99 individuals killed by the Leonardo Panaligan Command of the New People’s Army (LPC-NPA) in Negros Occidental. These deaths have been linked to an ongoing series of alleged spy-tagging killings documented in investigations by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for them, this more than 50-year-old insurgency appears to be on its last legs.
Its decline has been accelerated by intensified military operations conducted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the NTF-ELCAC’s Barangay Development Program (BDP), which strikes at the insurgency where it hurts most.
Through a whole-of-government approach, the BDP brings essential government services to even the most remote barangays, addressing long-neglected community needs and, in the process, weakening the insurgency’s traditional support base.
Now you know why the usual suspects — the useful idiots and pseudo-communists in the House of Representatives, particularly the Makabayan bloc and its allies — seem hell-bent on defunding and abolishing the NTF-ELCAC.
Speaking of pseudo-communists, BAYAN-Panay, the Panay chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), a coalition of left-leaning organizations associated with the broader Makabayan movement, recently accused the NTF-ELCAC of implementing supposedly nonexistent development projects in Iloilo.
The controversy arose from the Commission on Audit’s (COA) 2025 audit findings, which showed that 29 projects under the NTF-ELCAC’s Barangay Development Program, with an aggregate estimated completion cost of P73.892 million, remained unfinished.
Of these, eight projects costing P8.178 million were reported as nonoperational, contrary to Section 5.2.1.b of Department of the Interior and Local Government Memorandum Circular No. 2023-063.
BAYAN-Panay subsequently alleged that 16 of these projects were “ghost projects” — 10 in Tubungan, four in Leon, and two in Igbaras.
The group further claimed that 13 additional projects remained incomplete as of the end of 2025, raising questions about the implementation of projects supposedly funded as early as 2021.
The Iloilo Provincial Government, however, has strongly rejected allegations that the 16 projects were nonexistent or involved the misuse of public funds.
Instead, the provincial government has committed to completing 19 unfinished development projects by 2028 using local funds.
Provincial Administrator Raul Banias minced no words in defending the provincial government’s position.
“Our position is simple: An unfinished project is not a ghost project. An unspent allocation returned to the national treasury is not stolen money. A COA observation advising operational remedies is not a finding of malversation. We take legitimate audit observations with utmost seriousness and will comply with all audit recommendations to deliver completed roads, potable water, and agricultural facilities to the people of Iloilo. But we will not allow the legitimate work of government auditors to be hijacked by ideological groups to sabotage programs that bring basic services to communities previously neglected by conflict.”
Banias further emphasized the provincial government’s commitment to completing the projects despite the return of unused national funds.
“There is no ghost project here. We returned the money because the law required it — but we are using our own funds to complete every single project we started. That is our commitment to the people,” Banias said.
Not surprisingly, the NTF-ELCAC did not take BAYAN-Panay’s accusations sitting down, accusing the group of misrepresenting government audit findings.
NTF-ELCAC Regional Legal Officer Flosemer Chris Gonzales challenged the group’s opposition to the Barangay Development Program, which finances infrastructure projects and essential public services in communities previously affected by insurgency.
“You say you are for the people, yet you are against programs that are pro-people. You are against the very local government that helps the people.”
At the end of the day, this controversy, in my view, merely exposes the growing desperation of the CPP-NPA-NDF. With the insurgency losing ground and its supposed fronts increasingly weakened, the movement appears to be shifting its battle to urban areas, where it can exploit democratic institutions and processes as political weapons.
Having failed to win its war in the countryside, is it now attempting to wage the same struggle through the very democratic system it has long sought to undermine?
Really, BAYAN-Panay, how quaint./PN
