Militants slam GMA's P1-B "murder" funds
"If you can't beat them, kill them."
Such is the interpretation of militant groups on the message echoed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo relative to the additional P1 billion fund for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). The amount as pushed was aimed to revitalize the government's aim to crush the 37-year-old communist insurgency. However, for Sanlakas, Freedom from Debt Coalition, Arroyo's declaration of war is "a sure recipe for more state-sanctioned violence and carnage against legitimate political dissent using peoples' money."
And it will be murder in a colossal scale, the group warned while adding that the President has virtually become more powerful.
"Although disguised as an all-out military offensive out to smash the "communist threat" under the flagship of Oplan Bantay Laya, Mrs. Arroyo is also declaring an all-out war on the legal political opposition by making no distinctions whatsoever between armed rebels and open political dissenters," the group said in a news statement sent to The News Today (TNT). "Mrs. Arroyo's declaration that "the fight against the left remains the glue that binds" is a clear endorsement for the massacre of more political activists and personalities just by simply branding them as leftists."
Such as the group decried how in the span of three years, several hundred activists and legal front leftists were allegedly tortured and killed.
"This kind of initiative is but commonsensical of a government that cannot wash away its issue of legitimacy. This embattled regime is so desperate to survive that it will use everything at its disposal particularly public funds to confirm its right to rule," the statement continued.
"Without a doubt, the funds that will be allocated to Oplan Bantay Laya are nothing but annihilation funds out to exterminate all citizens humbly exercising their right in exposing and opposing the illegitimacy of the Arroyo regime. However, the first victims of this mad endeavor will not be armed rebels but the student activists, priests, journalists, NGO workers and sectoral leaders who struggle with the poor in aspiring for a better life."