Gov’t to crush Reds in 3 years

BALANGA CITY, Bataan – The government is determined to crush the communist rebellion before the term of President Arroyo ends in 2010, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said here.

"We have to eliminate this," Gonzales told some 1,000 businessmen and senior citizens during the quarterly meeting of the Bataan Chamber of Commerce and Industry held Wednesday.

He said communist rebels are "planning how I can be assassinated. That is true, our assets told me I should not joke about these things."

He said the rebels’ plan "is the reason why sometimes I am not able to come to some of your (events). I also want to live longer, but do you think Bataan is worth dying for?"Gonzales said the government is now capable of crushing armed rebellion as Filipinos are becoming more cooperative and knowledgeable about the role of subversive elements in society.

He cited the countries of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, whose respective governments totally crushed armed rebellion to pave the way for economic stability.

In Indonesia, almost one million hard-core communist rebels were killed by the military to clear the path to an economic boom, Gonzales said.He noted that in the Philippines, local communist rebels have destroyed about 50 cell sites of Globe Telecom in various parts of the country, since Globe is known to reject demands for payment of "revolutionary taxes."

Gonzales said he has asked Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo to renounce armed rebellion. "I am not against their ideologies but armed rebellion is no longer acceptable in our society," he said. "Don’t coerce, don’t harm anyone." Gonzales belied Ocampo’s claim that he was not involved in the killings in Leyte, where a mass grave was discovered by the military last year.

Ocampo, communist leaders Jose Maria Sison and Luis Jalandoni and 50 other co-accused were indicted on 15 counts of murder allegedly committed during "Oplan Ahos," which purged the ranks of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) of "spies and counter-revolutionaries" from 1985 to 1991.The remains of the 15 murder victims were among 67 bodies exhumed by government investigators from NPA "killing fields" in Sitio Sapang Daco, Barangay Kaulisihan, Inopacan town in Leyte on Aug. 26 last year after four former NPA members who had first-hand knowledge of the mass murder led military troops and police investigators to the site.

The four witnesses claimed the killings were carried out on orders of Sison, Jalandoni, and Ocampo, all ranking officials of the communist movement.

Gonzales said Ocampo was indeed involved because he escaped from jail in 1985. When asked if military men were involved in the unexplained killings of militants, Gonzales admitted there are a few misguided elements involved "but after investigation we found out that those were military men identified as coup plotters and destabilizers." Gonzales said President Arroyo is the most unpopular president in the world due to the many problems besetting the country but added, in her defense, that the country’s economic situation is basically sound.He said while the country is in turmoil, overseas Filipino workers help keep the economy stable by remitting $15 billion a year to their relatives in the Philippines.