A spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) on Monday, March 14, accused presidential candidate and Vice President Leni Robredo of conniving with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) to disrupt the upcoming May 9 elections but this was disproved by the CPP itself.
Undersecretary Lorraine Marie Badoy, NTF-ELCAC spokesperson for sectoral concerns, said that Robredo should “stop insulting the intelligence of the Filipino people” by refusing to acknowledge the supposed endorsement by CPP founder, Jose Maria “Joma” Sison, of her presidential candidacy.
“The Vice President should stop insulting our intelligence further by pretending this endorsement is completely one-way with no participation on her part,” Badoy said in a statement as she claimed that Sison tweeted about his endorsement of Robredo.
Aside from Sison’s alleged endorsement of Robredo, Badoy also enumerated a number of “proof” for her claim including the reported presence of communist “operatives” in the Vice President’s campaign sortie in Cavite recently; her call for the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC; and her pledge to resume the peace talks with the Reds.
Robredo’s camp already denied the allegations that communist operatives were present in her Cavite sortie as Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, a key opposition figure, discredited the source of the intelligence information of the Vice President’s detractors.
Robredo had also taken back her calls for the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC, saying that what she opposed was the blatant red-tagging of the anti-communist task force against activists and dissidents of the government.
The Vice President had also stood by her claims to resume peace talks with the CPP.
Meanwhile, CPP chief information officer Marco Valbuena said that the government’s narrative on the possibility of an election disruption through an alliance between the communist groups and the opposition was based on “fabricated” intelligence reports.
“ Duterte is rushing to build the scenario of ‘election disruption’ in the face the increasing political isolation of the ruling regime and growing mass movement against the Marcos- Duterte tandem. The growing anti-Duterte and anti-Marcos movement is developing around the election campaign of leading oppositionists Leni Robredo and Francis Pangilinan,” Valbuena said in a separate statement.
Over the weekend, President Duterte claimed that he received an intelligence report about an alleged conspiracy between the CPP and the “yellow” forces or “dilawans,” a term associated with the opposition, to disrupt the elections.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Department of National Defense (DND) have yet to comment on the veracity of the intelligence report and where it came from.