Gov’t should continue LPE peace program

Posted to the Manila Standard (Jan 31, 2022): Gov’t should continue LPE peace program

The Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity (OPAPRU) on Monday has urged the next administration to continue the Local Peace Engagement (LPE) with the Communist Terrorist Groups (CTGs) as it is the most effective way to end local communist armed conflict.

At the virtual press briefing of the National Task Force to End Local Communists Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) Assistant Secretary Wilben Mayor, chief-of-staff and OPAPRU spokesperson said they are recommending that LPE should remain in the peace process to finally put an end to the more than five-decade-old insurgency of the Communists Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army – National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF).

“Like any other administration who has their own policy and directions, LPE is only part of our recommendation to the next administration, an effective way, to sustain the gain of peace we have experienced,” Mayor said, as results proved that LPE had placed the CPP-NPA-NDF in the losing end.

Mayor explained that when President Rodrigo Roa Duterte discarded the peace negotiations at the national level for the lack of sincerity from the CPP-NPA-NDF panel, this has been replaced by “the 6-points peace and development agenda” under Executive Order No. 70, which adopted a ‘whole-of-nation approach’ that centered mostly through LPE and the creation of NTF-ELCAC.

That move, Mayor said, paved the way to fast-track development projects in areas earlier declared as CTG strongholds with all the government agencies joined in 12 clusters working hand-in-hand with the local executives and even local and community leaders, including village chiefs (barangay chairmen) in two tracks of approach—community consultations and problem-solving.

“OPAPRU believes that LPE while nationally orchestrated and locally implemented has been effective in most conflict-affected communities, preventing the communities to be exploited, (by CTGs),” Mayor explained.

“Peace is possible in direct consultations nationwide,” he added. And while LPE was adopted and implemented by previous administrations, the Duterte Administration “enhanced” the process “that provides platforms for former rebels to directly be involved in the peacebuilding process.”

Interior and Local Government Director Rene Valera on the other hand, said the Retooled Community Support Program (RCSP) under the LPE proved “that communicating for a perpetual end to extreme violence and forming alliance towards positive change,’ has made many communities free of CTGs.

Valera explained that RCSP involved all the stakeholders, starting from the national government to local executives and leaders down to citizens of communities bothered by CTGs “to secure peace and development’ and unhampered delivery of basic services.

Major General Edgardo De Leon, Commander of the 8th Infantry “Stormtrooper” Division of the Philippine Army, now handling the insurgency in Eastern Visayas said LPE “is a proof of an effective concept.” It placed their military operations though successful, secondary to non-military aspects of the concept.

The army official added that these discoveries and disclosures made by ‘whistleblowers’ prompted Joma Sison to prove that he is the one leading the CPP-NPA-NDF by claiming that revelations made by surrenderees were ‘fake’ and concocted by the military.

He added that the NPA surrenderees no longer cover their faces when they surrender to the government and return to the folds of the law. Previously, the government forces do not show their faces, with respect to them and their families. But now these former rebels are insistent to show themselves and tell everyone that they are not fake surrenderees. And many of them are already part of the government’s nation-building programs.

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