Bayan denies connivance with NPA on sabotage plot

ANGELES CITY — The militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) denied yesterday the allegations of the Armed Forces Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) that it is conniving with the New People’s Army (NPA) in sabotaging a flagship project of the Arroyo administration in Central Luzon.

Bayan described Nolcom’s allegations as "utterly malicious, preposterous, and irresponsible."

Nolcom earlier issued a statement quoting Nolcom chief Maj. Gen. Romeo Tolentino as saying that leaders of Bayan’s Pampanga chapter and the Komite sa Hilagang Kanlurang Pampanga of the Communist Party of the Philippines’ provincial committee met the other week in Angeles City and discussed an alleged plan to sabotage the P21-billion Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway project.

But Roman Polintan, Bayan regional chairman, denied that such a meeting ever took place.

"It is highly irresponsible and grossly unbecoming of Gen. Tolentino as the highest ranking Army official in Central Luzon to deliberately dish out lies through the media about this thing," he said.

"If there was, indeed, such a meeting, why did he not order his men to arrest the alleged rebel leaders as they used to do?" he asked.

Polintan said the Nolcom apparently "fabricated" the story about the alleged connivance "to maliciously link Bayan with the NPA in order to condition the minds of the people, providing an excuse for the military’s sustained attacks on progressive organizations."

Polintan, however, admitted that Bayan is opposed to the expressway project because of what it claimed to be its "deleterious effects on peasant communities, especially the Aetas who are being driven out of their ancestral lands and deprived of their livelihood to give way to the project."

"The project, which is funded by a foreign loan, would only aggravate the country’s foreign debt burden which would, in turn, result in further budget cuts on social services just to service these loans," he added.

"But why is the military so afraid about our opposition to the project that it has to maliciously spin the yarn of an alleged connivance between the NPA and our organization?" he further asked.

Polintan said, "If the NPA is also opposed to the project like we do, it may be that it also considers the same as detrimental to the interest and welfare of the people concerned. But this supposed similarity in our assessment and stand should not be taken as a connivance between our groups."