SOMEWHERE IN AGUSAN— The National Democratic Front (NDF) “many” companies and business ventures have sent feelers to talk with them than become the target of punitive attacks that befell two US banana and pineapple companies and a consolidator operation last year.
“Ka Oris,” the nom de guerre of Jorge Madlos, NDF spokesman in Mindanao, said the revolutionary front would only talk with those with no record of destroying the environment and those with no standing complaint of abusing workers or residents in the host communities.
Oris said that while owners of business operations in the countryside have been normally seeking their favor against punitive attacks by paying revolutionary taxes, he said more have been sending feelers to talk with them. These include the management of a banana company in Bukidnon that its armed unit, the New People’s Army (NPA), swooped down upon in February last year and confiscated the weapons of its plantation guards.
“But we told them to stop expanding their farm and improve its treatment of its workers,” he said, when asked to assess the compliance of companies to its previous warning of avoiding damage to the environment and abusing the residents.
In February last year, NPA units swooped down on the Del Monte and Dole plantations in Bukidnon and surprised the companies’ guards. The guerrillas collected weapons.
In June it also attacked the guards of the Korean brokerage operation company Shanalynne.
“Ka Norsen Mangubat,” the nom de guerre of the spokesman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in North Central Mindanao, said the attacks were part of the major military operation of its armed wing to carry out the order of the NDF to mount punitive actions against erring companies.
Years earlier, it also mounted damaging attacks on foreign mining companies in Surigao del Norte and Bukidnon.
The CPP commemorated its 45th founding year on December 26, becoming Asia’s longest-running revolutionary movement.
While Oris admitted that the NDF has moved back its projection made in 2010 of achieving the strategic stalemate stage in five years, or about two more years to a more uncertain period, he said it was not an indicator of odds against them.
On the contrary, he said the revolutionary movement has already organized 2,000 barrios in 200 municipalities in 19 provinces in Mindanao, a figure that he said was already double what it was five years ago.
It has also increased its military engagement with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police, from 200 tactical operations in 2010, to 350 operations the following year to 400 in 2012. It has conducted about 420 operations this year.
“The AFP lost an average of an equivalent of one battalion of its men per year in our battle engagements while we lost an equivalent of one platoon per year,” he said.
He said the NPA has already formed 10 battalions in Mindanao that were now spread in 46 guerrilla fronts in five regions. This number was being backed by one battalion of local militias.
“In Mindanao, there are now 10 million organized masses,” he said.
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