The Philippine National Police (PNP) has expressed support on localized peace talks as one of the ways in dealing with communist insurgency in the country.
PNP chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin, Jr. said localized peace talks was proven effective in convincing not only members of the Communist Party of the Philippines- New People's Army (CPP-NPA) but also their supporters in the countryside.
Security officials earlier said that mass-based support of the CPP-NPA is one of the reasons why the communist rebels continue to wage armed conflict with the national government.
Azurin said he saw once again the effectiveness of localized peace talks during his visit in Bicol region to preside the surrender of 32 NPA members.
In the wake of the scuttled peace negotiations with the CPP-NPA-NDF (National Democratic Front), the PNP fully supports the initiative of the government in promoting localized peace talks with the local communist movement and its remaining guerrilla fronts in the countryside," said Azurin.
"This policy of the government to reach out the hand of friendship in a grand gesture of peace augurs well for the community policing mandate of the PNP based on the principle that local problems are best resolved at the community level by all members of the community themselves which include among others, families, barangays, LGU, religious sector, NGOs, and police," he added.
Localized peace talks is among the core concept behind the establishment of the National Task Force to End Local Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Thousands of communist rebels and their supporters already surrendered to the government in the past three years.
The localized peace talks is reinforced by allocating development funds in the barangays that were already cleared of the communist rebels.
The NTF-ELCAC, however, was affected by red-tagging controversy usually initiated by some of its past spokespersons.