PAQUIBATO DISTRICT, Davao City—Mayor Rodrigo Duterte offered to New People’s Army guerrillas a multimillion-peso oil-palm plan of Malaysian and Thai business groups, in another bold move to contain any outbreak of violence in this northern hinterland.
Duterte publicly announced the offer a week earlier but on the commemoration of the 116th Independence Day in this restive district, he repeated the offer while the top brass of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) listened, as with the residents of the 11 barangays of this district.
Duterte assured the guerrillas, and their mass supporters here, that he would not ask them to surrender nor turn in their weapons.
“You can hide them anywhere, hang them on trees or stack them inside those bananas. My offer is for you to avail yourselves of this opportunity for work.” He said Malaysian and Thai corporations told him they were interested to open up an oil-palm plantation in the city, and the required area of 100,000 hectares would make the venture the biggest yet in the country.
“If you agree to work on this project, I will promise you that it will be given only to you and your people here,” he said. He added that he would ask President Aquino to allow him to close Paquibato, 70 kilometers north of downtown Davao City.
He said Armed Forces Chief Gen. Emmanuel Bautista would not likely mind keeping the soldiers off the area. “Just one thing: I would not ask you to surrender, or lay down your weapons. But do not impose taxation,” he said.
Mel Joseph Escobidal, Paquibato barangay chairman, said the mayor has yet to inform him of the details but said the district may have the area needed. Alberto Laydan, 64, an Ata tribal purok (community) leader of Barangay Salapawan, also of Paquibato district, said his neighbors did not know of the mayor’s offer yet. But he said the oil-palm plantation would be welcomed in his place.
Paquibato is one of the hotbeds of insurgency, traversing the sparsely populated mountain boundary with Loreto and San Fernando towns of Bukidnon to the north, Arakan Valley of North Cotabato to the west and Talaingod town of Davao del Norte to the east. On Thursday, 40 government agencies held its first Serbisyo Caravan, a periodic gathering of national government agencies to render food relief, medical and dental services, processing of documents and to sit down with barangay leaders.
The place is populated by the Ata tribe, and its subtribal communities of Ata Matigsalog and Ata Manobo.
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