EDITORIAL - The largest illegal armed group

As usual the cops are slow in solving the daring assassination of Daram town Mayor Benito Astorga. They might have an easier time now that a group has claimed responsibility for the killing: the New People’s Army.

A statement purportedly from the NPA command in Samar said Astorga was executed for supporting the military’s anti-communist campaign. There has been no denial from communist leaders so the admission could be true. And it should remind authorities of the serious threat posed to peaceful elections by the nation’s largest illegal armed group, the NPA.

Already the hooligans masquerading as insurgents have started extorting "campaign fees" from potential candidates for local posts. Those who reject NPA demands could suffer the fate of Astorga and be accused of committing crimes against the people. Even some NPA members who are disillusioned by the group’s extortion and banditry and try to rejoin the social mainstream are executed, with the hit being blamed on the government.

NPA extortion has been one of the biggest disincentives to investments in the countryside, and one of the major hindrances to economic development. Businessmen have found their farms, factories, trucks and buses torched after they refused to cough up "revolutionary taxes." Rural folk cannot be connected to the rest of the country because NPA bandits keep blowing up the cell sites of telecommunications companies that refuse to pay protection money. NPA banditry has been a major factor in the continued impoverishment of the people whose cause communist leaders claim to champion.

Now the bandits are out to subvert the people’s will in the coming elections. Authorities must see to it that the elections will not turn into a fund-raising activity for the communists, whose foreign funding sources have dried up after the NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines were included by the United States in its list of international terrorist organizations. The communists have protested their inclusion in that list. But what the NPA did to Astorga was a terrorist act, meant to undermine democracy. Authorities must stop these armed thugs from further acts of terrorism.