Army tags SoCot board member, mayor as NPA supporters

From the Philippine News Agency (Jan 18): Army tags SoCot board member, mayor as NPA supporters

An Army official has tagged a provincial board member and a municipal mayor in South Cotabato as alleged supporters of the communist-led New People’s Army (NPA).

Lt. Col. Harold Cabunoc, commanding officer of the Army’s 33rd Infantry Battalion, said Thursday the two local officials had reportedly provided logistical and material support to rebel units in the area.

He declined to name the concerned officials but said their supposed involvement in NPA activities were confirmed by former rebels who recently surrendered to their unit.

Cabunoc claimed the board member assisted the protest actions led by militant groups in March and April 2016 in the cities of Kidapawan and Koronadal.

Two farmers were killed while more than a dozen others were wounded as police operatives tried to disperse protesters who were barricading a portion of the Davao-Cotabato highway in Kidapawan City.

Authorities claimed the protesters then included members of the NPA as well as their sympathizers.

“He provided the vehicles that were used by the protesters and the group of lawyers that later assisted them,” he said in an interview over radio station dxKR in Koronadal City.

Cabunoc said the mayor, as claimed by the returnees, provided rice assistance to rebel units based in the boundaries of South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat provinces.

The rice supplies were supposedly received by an NPA unit based in the upper portion of Bai Saripinang, Bagumbayan town in Sultan Kudarat, he said.

But he said they were still conducting validations as to whether the concerned mayor was aware of the move.

“It’s also possible that he could have been misled and was made to believe that the rice assistance was intended for his constituents,” he said.

South Cotabato Gov. Daisy Avence-Fuentes admitted that she was aware of such report but said she would leave it to military authorities to take proper action.

She urged Cabunoc and the other military officials to file appropriate charges against the concerned local officials if they have enough evidences against them.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1022038