CPP/NDF-EV: On the statements of Samar Gov. Tan and PAMANA bureaucrat Emy Bonifacio maligning the NPA

NDF-Eastern Visayas propaganda statement posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines Website (Jul 15): On the statements of Samar Gov. Tan and PAMANA bureaucrat Emy Bonifacio maligning the NPA

Fr. Santiago “Ka Sanny” Salas, Spokesperson
NDFP Eastern Visayas (Region VIII)

15 July 2017

The National Demoratic Front-Eastern Visayas takes exception to the insults against the New People’s Army made by Samar Gov. Sharee Ann Tan and Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) bureaucrat Emy Bonifacio. While announcing infrastructure programs under PAMANA last June, part of the P2 billion peso budget for the entire Samar island, the governor and the flunkey said their projects would bring peace and progress if only the NPA would not be “extorting” from these.

For the uninformed, the PAMANA is carried out by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. It implements programs, usually road projects, together with anti-NPA propaganda in areas believed to be NPA strongholds. In other words, while the GRP and the NDFP are negotiating peace, the PAMANA is the GRP’s knife to stab the NDFP in the back.

While we thus dismiss the utterly false charge of “ten-percent NPA extortion,” the NDF-EV also does not look too kindly either at the PAMANA as a cosmetic solution. The country needs social, economic and political reforms. Without basic changes, the PAMANA is just paving the road to hell with cheap propaganda. The roads proclaimed to service the people can very well be used by capitalists and landgrabbers exemplified by big mining and logging concessions to extract and export natural resources and deprive the people. The roads ballyhooed to make “peaceful and prosperous” communities can very well deliver fascist soldiers to militarize civilian communities and commit human rights violations. In the end, nothing will change but for a turn for the worse.

Having said that about the PAMANA, what about its two promoters Tan and Bonifacio?

We do not think the troika of Gov. Tan, her brother the vice-governor, and her mother the congresswoman, have any more outstanding contribution to Samar province other than defining the meaning of nepotism. We also believe the Tan dynasty is the one really extorting, as much as 50 percent from construction contractors. How so? Because many roads in Samar province are either half-finished on one side only, or are concretized halfway to town but muddied halfway back to the village. Seriously speaking, we are not even talking yet about the other contributions of the Tan dynasty to “peace and prosperity” such as its share in the election-related murders in Calbayog City, the rampant family business of usury, the proliferation of ghost employees, and everything else that is rotten about traditional politics in Samar.

As for Emy Bonifacio, she has long embarked on the careerism of being the factotum of the military and the reactionary government in their “counterinsurgency” campaigns and other fascist and anti-people maneuvers. She became notorious at the center of Samar Island Partnership for Peace and Development, an instrument of the military to coopt the church, local government, mass media and other sectors for civil-military operations alongside intelligence and combat operations. Through such a “multi-stakeholder” approach, Bonifacio served as the factotum of the military in “counterinsurgency” campaigns from Oplan Bantay Laya under the Arroyo regime and Oplan Bayanihan under Aquino II. Heading the PAMANA in Samar is thus only the most recent shameful episode for this dubious political operator in the service of the reactionary ruling system.

The maleficent verbal attacks by Tan and Bonifacio reflect the Duterte regime’s insincerity for a just and lasting peace. The GRP should have terminated the PAMANA if it defers to a genuine peace process. Instead, the GRP is using all-out war along with a pacification campaign, through such programs such as the PAMANA, to attack and subdue the people and the revolutionary forces. If the prospects for peace talks are dimming, there is thus no other choice for the people but to continue fighting a just war for real peace and progress through attaining national freedom, democracy and socialism.”
https://www.philippinerevolution.info/statements/20170715-on-the-statements-of-samar-gov-tan-and-pamana-bureaucrat-emy-bonifacio-maligning-the-npa