The Role of governance in ending the Insurgency Problem

The Philippine communist insurgency is a long-drawn problem that beset the

country for five (5) decades. It has resulted to countless of lives lost and is one of the
main reasons why the country is hard-pressed to achieve economic development. An
important question to answer at this point is how did the communist insurgency
successfully sustained its rebellion for five decades? To answer the said question, we
need to look at the factors that fuel this insurgency namely; the communist narrative with
the social issues used to fuel the masses into subversion; the presence of communist
ideologue or propagandist that incites the people; and the armed members who threatens
those who do not believe the ideology into submission. These three factors materialized
into the Communist Party as the ideologue; the National Democratic Front and its allied
organizations as the propagandists; and the New People’s Army as its coercive force.
These factors are mutually supporting each other and when seen at this perspective, it is
apparent that there are three aspects of the insurgency that needs to be address at the
same time in order to curtail and ultimately stop its existence.
First, the communist ideology and its narrative that utilizes social problems and
injustices must be effectively countered. Secondly, the ideologues and propagandists
must be declared illegal and their medium of dissemination curtailed. Third and last, the
armed groups must be neutralized and or destroyed. Closer inspection of the Anti-
insurgency campaign of the Philippines for the last five (5) decades will immediately
reveal that we have look at the communist insurgency as a purely military problem. Thus,
the Uniformed Personnel under the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the National
Police were the only one’s taking serious effort to counter insurgency with the rest of the
government instrumentalities act as spectators at the sidelines. This approach chipped
on the number of armed members of the revolution but because the ideologues and the
propagandist which are supporting the armed members are not being addressed, lost
armed members of the rebellion are easily being replaced. This situation is the reason
why the communist rebellion has survived for five decades, the government is only using
one agency to address one facets of the insurgency, while completely ignoring the other
two equally important factor on ideology/issues and propagandist. Addressing these two
(2) factors entails the active participation of the whole government instrumentalities. The
executive branch with all its departments, bureaus and agencies should address the root
causes of insurgency (i.e., social injustice, poverty, land reform, unemployment and
underemployment, corruption, etc). The legislative and judicial branch of the government
should enact and exercise the law that shall prohibit rebellious propagandist hiding under
the cloak of democracy (i.e, freedom of speech) from inciting sedition and rebellion.
Along this vein, there is but one element that needs to be present in all of the
government instrumentalities, and that is good governance. Leaders in government
service must stand their ground as the protector of the people and state by doing their
respective constitutional mandates. Department heads in the executive department must
ensure zero tolerance to graft and corruption and develop a culture of service among all
government workers (no government employee must feel entitled over any other Filipino
citizen whom they served). This will surely translate to better service to the Filipino people,
one that will be felt by the all Filipinos in all levels of society. With this, we shall minimize
the social ills that are being used by the communist as fuel for their proposed social
change. The communist ideology is long dead, it is only able to sustain here in the
Philippines because of the social problems experienced by the Filipinos, which the
communist propagandists are twerking to support their narrative.
We need to confront the communist propagandist. The uniformed personnel are in
no way equipped to confront them because the existing laws protect them. As such, the
legislative must do their part by enacting laws that shall limit the capability of these
propagandists to operate freely from within our democratic society. But without a strong
democratic leader to govern the myriad of personalities in the legislative branch especially
due to the presence of communist operatives already elected in congress, this shall
remain a wish. Nevertheless, it is a matter that needs to be done by our civilian leaders.
Legislation is another battlefield to confront the longest running insurgency in the world,
to win, there is a need for its leaders to govern its members effectively.
The third aspect is of course the military arm of the communist insurgency. The
Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police is equipped and
trained to neutralize and destroy them. As of this time, our President is giving his full
backing to the men in uniform and this translated to more aggressive uniformed personnel
willing to dedicate their lives to accomplishing the mission of destroying the armed
component of the communist insurgency. Nevertheless, there is still a question of why,
amidst several armed encounters it appears that only a handful of armed rebels are either
killed or captured? It appears that even in the military, there is a need for its leaders to
govern better. To incite the warfighting ethos of the soldiers once again.
The common denominator among all these is the need for good leaders that
exercises good governance in all branches of the government from the executive to
legislative and to the judiciary; and, in all levels of government from national to local
agencies. Truly magnificent is the pearl of the orient, when its leaders shall at long last
get their acts together.