Lorenzana says ending insurgency within Duterte’s term ”attainable”

January 8, 2019

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana admits that government’s objective to end insurgency within this year is not attainable.

“We cannot do it this year because that is a big problem. If you will recall, this insurgency has been going on for the past 50 years already and we cannot end it in one year. maybe our target now is the remaining three years of President (Rodrigo) Duterte's presidency. Maybe we can do that,” Lorenzan told reporters after the New Year’s call in Camp Aguinaldo Tuesday.

“(That’s) attainable with the way we are doing now with our localized peace talks and the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP), with the significant number of those return to the fold of the law. We can do it in three years,” Lorenzana added.

But in his speech during the New Year’s call, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benjamin Madrigal reminded troops of the goal to end the insurgency within the year.

“As we start another year, let me remind everyone that our end state for 2019 is to achieve the president's desire to ultimately win the peace, and finally put an end to local communist armed conflict,” Madrigal said.

“We intend to attain this by unifying our efforts at various levels of government with the end view of developing conflict resilient communities,” he added.

Lorenzana said based on their latest record the number of New People's Army members decreased to around 4,000 after around 1,000 surrendered to the government forces.

“Their number is about less than 6,000 armed rebels. Around a thousand of them have surrendered, so there are around 4,000 (left), but they have more militia. The militia is the underground movement, those who support,” he said.

“If we reckon, we estimate that there are about 50,000 New People’s Army (NPA) militia nationwide that supports them. we also want to get them,” he noted.

“Now out of the surrenderees that came to us since last year, out of the 11,000 who surrendered 1,000 of them are armed, the others were not because they are the militia, so number of militia were greater than their armed men,” Lorenzana added. Robina Asido/DMS