On the Calls to Defund NTF-ELCAC

13 January 2025 The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict has achieved in six years what the Communist Terrorist Group (CTG) has failed to deliver in its more than five-decade existence – addressing the roots that fueled civil unrest, rebuilding communities, and bringing development to geographically-isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA). Yet, the Makabayan Bloc is hell-bent on painting the task force as nothing more than a state mechanism for harassing activists. This narrative conveniently ignores the reality that the NTF-ELCAC is fulfilling what the CTG has promised for decades but has never delivered.

While fostering vigilance against CTG forces—whether its armed guerrillas or the “legal democratic” organizations—is part of the task force’s work, it represents only a small fraction of its overall mandate. The heart of the task force lies in the Barangay Development Program (BDP), which delivers long-overdue government services to GIDAs—communities the CTG has exploited for decades and declared their so-called guerrilla bases.

For many of these communities, the BDP became the first development program they have ever received, not because of government insensitivity but due to the armed rebellion that deprived the development projects for many decades. Roads, schools, and health centers continue to be built, and sustainable livelihoods are being introduced.

Ironically, the CTGs themselves have long used these very same promises to recruit: "The revolution will build roads, bring education, deliver healthcare, and provide livelihoods." But what have they actually delivered in 56 years? Empty promises and bloodshed, wrapped up in highfalutin rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the NTF-ELCAC, in just six years, has delivered where the CTGs could not. This is why the Makabayan Bloc, being well aware of this fact, is desperate to repeatedly call for the defunding of the NTF-ELCAC. If the Makabayan bloc has its way, defunding the task force will surely deny these high-risk communities the development they have waited for far too long.Without these development programs, former CTG guerilla bases will remain poor, hungry, angry,—conditions ripe for them to return to the armed struggle.

They have gone so far as deliberately distorting facts and outright lying to undermine the Barangay Development Program. They have falsely claimed that the NTF-ELCAC holds and controls the funds for BDP, fueling misconceptions that these funds are misused to harass activists rather than serve their intended purpose. In truth, the funds for the BDP are managed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), a member agency of the task force. The BDP is monitored through a third-party mechanism involving civil society organizations (CSOs), providing an additional safeguard against misuse.

Let us be clear, the call to defund the NTF-ELCAC is not about protecting civil liberties or human rights. Otherwise, they would also empathize with the plight of the thousands of Filipinos whose sons, daughters and family members have been killed and victimized by the CTGs. These calls will do nothing but keep disadvantaged communities underdeveloped and reliant on the unfulfilled promises of the CTGs. This is not only irresponsible; it is a betrayal of the very cause they claim to champion.

The NTF-ELCAC builds where the CTG destroys. It uplifts where the CTG oppresses. To defund it would be to abandon the communities that need it most, leaving them vulnerable once again to the false promises of a failed revolution.

USec Ernesto C Torres Jr

Executive Director, NTF ELCAC