NPA sets 8 guidelines for bets seeking campaign ‘permits’

From the Business Mirror (Mar 25): NPA sets 8 guidelines for bets seeking campaign ‘permits

The New People’s Army (NPA) has said “crooks and anti-people” politicians will be allowed to campaign in guerrilla areas as it laid down seven guidelines for candidates to observe to qualify for “permits to campaign.”

In an e-mailed statement, the NPA Southern Mindanao Regional Command, also warned “derelict and despotic politicians.”

Rigoberto F. Sanchez, spokesman for the NPA SMRC, said the candidates vying for political positions should abide by guerrilla policies and programs and to extend material and financial assistance to the guerrillas.

The statement said candidates “must demonstrate sincerity in both words and deed; undertake concrete actions conform to campaign promises; desist from performing counterrevolutionary intelligence activities; abstain from gambling, drinking and prostitution; not to connive and conspire with the Armed Forces; provide material and financial help to fund mass production campaign, education and health; put immediate infrastructure projects in areas badly hit by Typhoon Pablo; and shun from carrying firearms.”

It did not state, however, how much was being required from politicians but the military has insisted that the NPA rebels have been asking for the so-called permit to campaign fee.

In demanding that politicians abide by its guidelines, the NPA said that politicians could not discard its claim that it was an armed force that “exercises control over a significant portion of territory in the country, under an effective and responsible command.”

“As the masses participate in the reactionary electoral process, politicians and bourgeois political parties are interested in reaching out to them. It is only proper and fair for these politicians to respect the distinct territories held by the revolutionary government and coordinate with the NPA and people’s militia, organs of political power, revolutionary forces and party branches,” the statement said.

Notwithstanding the guidelines, the NPA said it would still let the Communist Party of the Philippines lay down further policies “to classify mayors, governors and members of Congress as allies, neutrals or enemies.”

“The Armed Forces is allergic to the very idea that the NPA can let progressive and neutralized candidates win while it can also isolate the most rabid ones,” the NPA said.

But it said that “in general, the revolutionary forces have long considered the electoral process of the reactionary state as farcical because traditional politicians of the exploiting classes monopolize this fleeting circus.”

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/index.php/news/nation/11181-npa-sets-8-guidelines-for-bets-seeking-campaign-permits