How Julian Felipe Reef brouhaha impacts on CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency

By Mauro Gia Samonte / The Manila Times

A NUMBER of speculations has surfaced from the continuing controversy on the Julian Felipe Reef in the South China Sea. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana appears the most persistent in hammering on the issue in the media so that one sector believes the incident has given him the opportunity to craft his political designs, i.e., running for president in 2022.

A popular radio commentator, who pretends to authority on diplomatic matters, confided to me recently that it is all about the procurement by the Armed Forces of the Philippines of allegedly five patrol boats from the United States. Considering that driving away the Chinese from the South China Sea has been America’s magnificent obsession, hyping the incident in the media becomes an effective bargaining leverage in the deal.

In other words, make it appear that China is intruding into Philippine territory, which the US does not want to happen, and with the Philippines combating such intrusion, it can get those needed patrol boats at a bargain.

But is the cost of those five patrol boats so large that taking the country into the brink of war with China is commensurate for their acquisition?

I see it differently.

Remember the Senate inquiry on red-tagging at the start of the year? The Makabayan bloc (Gen. Antonio Parlade calls them Kamatayan bloc) were, like members of a choral group, singularly vociferous in proposing that the P19 billion budget for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) be diverted instead to the modernization of the Philippine armed forces in order to make them fit to counter the alleged Chinese intrusion into the West Philippine Sea (WPS), the name the liberals and the yellow media use for that section of the South China Sea. The party-list bloc was joined by Senators Ana Theresia “Risa” Hontiveros, Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and Mary Grace Poe in that slant, singing, so to speak, the same tune in perfect unison with that warbled by known US mouthpieces former associate justice Antonio Carpio and former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario. So, the Senate inquiry became an occasion for showcasing what General Parlade would call “strange bedfellows” relationship among communist terrorists and US stooges.

Why “strange”? Because otherwise class enemies are combining harmoniously.

From the looks of it, the NTF-Elcac has been very successful in its job. Marinduque and Palawan are reportedly now completely free from New People’s Army (NPA) influence, the planned establishment of a revolutionary government headquarters in Mindoro frustrated, with the site for those headquarters taken over by government forces, the Bicol NPA throwing in spasms on the throes of death, and Northern Luzon folks openly burning Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-NPA flags to show their growing contempt for communist terrorists.

From the looks of it, the CPP-NPA-National Democratic Front (NDF) insurgency is definitely on the demise. General Parlade has said so in his last three successive columns in The Manila Times where he predicted the death of the NPA and the NDF before the year ends.

But from the looks of it, the United States is trying its damn best to reverse this development. The complete extermination of the communist terrorist insurgency is a basic condition for the attainment by the country of peace and stability, the ultimate requisite for the country to move on to economic status it already had back at the advent of the 1970s. A progressive Philippines is anathema to US designs in the Asia-Pacific region. So, for America’s sake, the CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency must be sustained, and an effective way of doing this is to frustrate the NTF-Elcac.

It is in this context that I shudder at the way the Amboys are doing their damn best to drum up the so-called incursion by Chinese fishing vessels into the Julian Felipe Reef. If the drumbeating succeeds at diverting attention from the NTF-Elcac to the South China Sea tension, then the CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency gets a much-needed respite from the government blitzkrieg that is in progress now thereby frustrating what General Parlade has predicted as total annihilation of the communist terrorists before the year ends.

Truth of the matter is that those disputed Chinese vessels were in the region as they had been used to doing since time immemorial – fishing. They dropped anchor on the reef to take shelter from bad weather. A diplomatic protest was issued by the Philippines, leading to a meeting between the militaries of both countries to settle the matter and in that meeting, the Chinese explained the real nature of the presence in the reef by the Chinese vessels — indeed, taking shelter from bad weather — and the Chinese side assured their Philippine counterparts that the vessels would leave as soon as the weather cleared. And the vessels did leave as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had assured. It turned out that some 40 vessels stayed in the area to resume fishing. Ever on the lookout for issues in pushing US interests in the region, the Amboys Carpio and del Rosario, joined in by traditional allies liberals and yellow press, distorted the fact of the fishing venture of the Chinese vessels which chose to remain, making it appear as intrusion into Philippine territory.

A writer colleague has pointed out that Vietnam has put up permanent structures on nearby reefs in the area but has not met with an outcry from Carpio, del Rosario et al. Why are they so noisy on Chinese vessels just fishing in the area as they used to over the centuries?

The presence of a top official of the security sector, the Defense Secretary no less, among the US rah-rah boys protesting what is a distortion of an otherwise innocent fishing expedition to make it appear as a violation of Philippine sovereignty is definitely alarming. It is pushing the country to the brink of a military confrontation with the Asian behemoth. For what, for defending Philippine sovereignty?

Nah!

It is for advancing US insistence in interfering in the exclusive affairs of the Asean region. Like continuing its freedom of navigation operations or fonops in the South China Sea where already a mechanism of a Code of Conduct among Asean nations is in place to the exclusion of outsiders.

Or, in the Philippines, like forestalling the imminent demise of the CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency.

Gets?

(Originally published in The Manila Times)