Communists making best use of Philippines' financial crisis

By Cecilia Quiambao

MANILA (JP): The Asian financial crisis has given a new lease of life to the Philippines moribund communist insurgency, which now aims to feed on popular discontent over painful structural reforms deemed necessary to restore the country's economic health.

A spectacular raid near Manila last week has restored the New People's Army's (NPA's) standing as a credible armed guerrilla threat, giving the government of President Fidel Ramos a new headache as it is trying to negotiate peace with recalcitrant Moslem separatists in the south.

A 30-member NPA unit raided Montalban, a sleepy town on the foot of the Sierra Madre mountain range located 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of the capital, on Oct. 30, killing a policeman and abducting the town's police chief, Chief Inspector Rene Francisco and another officer.

Ramos, a former armed forces chief, was livid with rage. "This is a failure of command," he said as he gave a tongue-lashing to the military and police brass who he accused of letting down their guard in the days leading to the All Saints' Day holidays.

He said the military should "improve their intelligence network".

Armed forces chief Gen. Arnulfo Acedera on Monday mustered a battalion-size rapid deployment force, backed by an air force special operations wing, to respond to similar attacks in the future.

There have been fears of more NPA raids to boost the negotiating leverage of the group's parent organization, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), in peace negotiations with the government.

"You are expected to be in position within 30 minutes of any actual engagement," Acedera told the elite force, formed two years ago to respond to any crisis situation but which only this week deployed outside Manila.

The Montalban raiders "are urban-based communists who might not be based in that area," he said. "It is high time that we employ our counter-terrorist assets."

"I do not want a repeat of any situation near that of the Montalban situation."

However, former defense secretary Renato de Villa, who quit this year to concentrate on campaigning for the May 1998 presidential election, said the rebels have lost the capacity to mount simultaneous operations across the country, as they did in the late 1980s when the NPA's ranks peaked at more than 25,000 fighters.

In certain areas, responsibility for fighting the NPA has been turned over to the police from the military command in recognition of the decline of the insurgency.

However, de Villa said that despite the factionalism and major arrests which have decimated their ranks, the communists remain capable of mounting isolated armed raids.

The acting police chief of Montalban, Chief Inspector Amado Burog, said he had received a call purportedly from the NPA to inform him that a "people's court" will put the captured police chief on trial for allegedly accepting bribes to turn a blind eye on illegal quarrying activities in the town.

The NPA resurgence has been accompanied by a revival of a protest movement led by leftist elements. A transport strike crippled Manila and major provincial centers last month.

Several thousand farmers and workers marched to Manila from nearby southern provinces last week, while a group of farmers are on hunger strike outside the agriculture department building.

When things were going well, the left could hardly muster a hundred people on the streets. But now, as oil prices rise with the removal of state subsidies, as unemployment and inflation rates soar, as lending rates go up to defend the peso against speculators, the so-called "parliament of the streets" is alive.

"The president's popularity ratings have gone down considerably in the aftermath of the peso depreciation," University of the Philippines political analyst Alexander Magno has said.

"While the depreciation was due to factors beyond our control, its impact on domestic prices has sparked disenchantment."

In fact the NPA attack has occurred amid continued military successes against the movement, which has splintered into several factions after the collapse of the communist states of Eastern Europe.

The government last month captured Leonilo de la Cruz, the head of the Alex Boncayao Brigade guerrilla hit squad, which assassinated about 200 police and soldiers in Manila in the 1980s and which broke away from the CPP-NPA in the early 1990s.

The military was forced to release another leader of the faction, Arturo Tabara, and two aides who had been captured along with de la Cruz after it was found out that there were no pending charges against them in court.

The mainstream CPP-NPA faction, led by CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, has most of its leaders living in exile in the Netherlands where they are negotiating with Philippine government emissaries for a political settlement to the 28-year-old rebellion.

The mainstream group's guerrilla unit, the Banahaw command led by Gregorio Rosal, is still operating in the provinces south of Manila. Some military officials believe the unit is responsible for the Montalban raid.