Thus, clarified Isabela fourth district Rep. Giorgidi Aggabao on his reported run-in with New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas in a remote village in Echague town last Monday afternoon.
"It is not true that we were held hostage by the NPA. I would say that it was a cordial meeting with our revolutionary brothers," Aggabao told select reporters past midnight Wednesday.
Earlier, police authorities said Aggabao, along with Mayors Leoncio Kiat and Virgilio Padilla, of Echague and San Agustin towns, respectively, was held for two hours by fully armed guerrillas in Barangay Nilumiso.
Aggabao’s group had just come from consultative meetings in mountain communities when the rebels, led by one Ka Jun of the NPA’s Benito Tesorio Command operating in San Agustin and Quirino province, blocked their six-vehicle convoy.
The guerrillas, police said, divested Aggabao’s nine security escorts, three of them policemen, of their firearms. They also took the lawmaker’s 9-mm licensed pistol.
Aggabao said an NPA courier had failed to relay to him the need to secure a permit-to-campaign before he could visit the mountain communities which were said to be NPA strongholds.
"They thought I received the message and disregarded it," he said. "Eh talagang di ko natanggap yung message ng kanilang courier kaya pumasok ako sa area nila (I really did not get the message from their courier so I entered their area)."
Aggabao, however, said he did not accede to the rebels’ demand to pay the fee. "I will be willing instead to give (something) in kind like food, shoes or clothes, but not money," he added.
"Nung nalaman nila na talagang hindi pa naiparating sa akin ang kanilang mensahe, umalis na sila, umalis na rin kami (When they learned that their message had not reached me, they left us and then we left the area)," he said.
He said he and the rebels did not reach any compromise.
Meanwhile, Senior Superintendent Joe Goltiao, spokesman of the Philippine National Police, said policemen and soldiers have been deployed since Tuesday at the Sierra Madre, particularly in the mountain towns of San Mariano, San Agustin, Santiago and San Guillermo.
Goltiao cited unverified reports that most of the NPA guerrillas who reportedly held Aggabao’s group were minors aged 13 to 15.
Chief Superintendent Jefferson Soriano, Cagayan Valley police director, told The STAR that his men are gathering evidence of the NPA harassment.
"We will pursue the legal offensive against these rebels," he said.
Police downplayed reports that some 80 guerrillas were involved in the incident. "At the least, there were about 15 to 25 armed rebels involved; 80 is too much of an estimate," a police official said. — With Christina Mendez