Claiming that the armed insurgency is nearing defeat, National Security Adviser and NTF-ELCAC vice chair Eduardo Año has broadcast his agency’s intentions to inflict the final blow by escalating the persecution of what they view as the legal infrastructure of the armed revolution. Año made these pronouncements in an article entitled “An Insurgency-Free Philippines is on the Horizon” dated May 4, 2025.
Accordingly, non-governmental organizations receiving foreign grants will be subject to intense scrutiny, and those targeted for persecution slapped with trumped-up financing terrorism charges. The NTF-ELCAC will also be intensifying its attacks on the legal democratic movement, on academic freedom and freedom of association on the pretext of stemming recruitment to the New People’s Army. Alarmingly, Año is likewise paving the way for a major crackdown on progressive candidates and partylist groups, dismissing their advocacy of pro-people politics as a “rebranding and resurgence of insurgency in electoral disguise.”
If anything, Año has brought red-tagging to a new and more malevolent level, brazenly mocking calls by a number of United Nations special rapporteurs to stop red-tagging and deliberately defying a Supreme Court ruling defining red-tagging as a threat to life, liberty and security. In obliterating distinctions between legal and armed resistance, Año thereby justifies arbitrary and widespread repression and even the infliction of violence, in open disregard of international humanitarian law.
Not surprisingly, the NTF-ELCAC has also admitted that it will be wheedling more money out of government coffers to fund not only these escalating attacks on the people’s movement in urban areas but its fake and forced surrender schemes in the countryside like the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) and its Barangay Development Program, the so-called soft component that partners with brutal military operations to comprise the regime’s counter-insurgency drive.
The NTF-ELCAC, however, wants this funding to be exempt from scrutiny during the annual budget deliberations by asking for “multi-year funding shielded from political interference.” This tack is no different from that of Sara Duterte, whose continued refusal to disclose how she spent hundreds of millions of pesos in confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) is nothing but a ploy to conceal her fraudulent use of her CIF.
Meanwhile, under the E-CLIP, so-called surrenderees and surrendered firearms are often recycled as the military and local government units scramble to fulfill counter-insurgency quotas and “achievement targets” imposed by the NTF-ELCAC. Surrendering and enrolling in E-CLIP, however, is no guarantee against continued harassment and unjust arrest and detention, as evidenced by the presence of several political prisoners in jails who had already surrendered and were living as civilians but were nonetheless arrested.
The forced surrender scheme has also been the source of bogus witnesses whose perjured testimonies form the basis of the manufactured criminal charges against activists, human rights defenders and other dissenters. Like the recycled surrenderees and surrendered firearms under E-CLIP, many of these mercenary witnesses have also been recycled by the NTF-ELCAC to provide perjured testimonies in the multiple trumped-up cases being filed against activists.
No matter how Año and the NTF-ELCAC frame their repressive schemes, they reflect a rabid intolerance to dissent and a desire to control social discourse, distort narratives to favor their powerful masters and further constrict the civic space. It is Año and the NTF-ELCAC that are advancing the State’s terrorist agenda.
KARAPATAN roundly condemns Año and the NTF-ELCAC’s terroristic plans of escalating repression and vows to intensify its campaign not only to defund the NTF-ELCAC but to abolish it altogether.