LEFTIST members of President Rodrigo Duterte’s Cabinet are bound to stay, Malacañang said Monday despite calls from a top critic to kick them out already after they allegedly encroached all branches of government.
“As far as the Office of the President is concerned, we see no reason why the three so-called leftist members of the Cabinet will have to be removed. The President continues to repose trust in them,” Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra told a Palace news briefing.
Guevarra said that with the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law, there was no reason that those espousing ideals of the left should be outlawed, or kicked out from government.
“…the very purpose of that repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law is to ensure that people who advocate Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Maoism, et cetera, will not go underground and that they join the legitimate organizations, so that they can espouse whatever they want to espouse,” he said.
Guevarra added: “That’s why we have these groups also in Congress. So if we have these groups in Congress, why don’t we have them as well in the President’s Cabinet?”
On Sunday, Senator Antonio Trillanes III claimed he had received information from the military that hundreds of cadres from the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA were now officially employed in various government agencies.
The National Democratic Front had earlier nominated Social Welfare and Development Secretary Judy Taguiwalo, Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano, National Anti-Poverty Commission Secretary Liza Maza, and Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor chairperson Secretary James Mark Terry Ridon to join Duterte’s Cabinet—as part of his efforts to seek better ties with the left.
However, recent developments led to the scrapping of peace talks, with Duterte branding the Communist Party of the Philippines as “enemies of the state.”
Military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla reiterated calls for communists to lay down their arms before talking peace with the government.
In the same news briefing, Guevarra played down as “colorful language” Duterte’s apparent threat for the police to finish the communist armed wing New Peoples’ Army “within five years”—or before he steps out of office.
“As to the statement of the President to wipe out the NPA, I guess that’s just colorful language, all right to mean actually ‘let’s go and deal with this long standing problem.’ All right, this has been going on for long, long time and it’s just a matter of priorities. We now have the Marawi problem, so we deal with that first. We focus our attention on that. Then after that, well, the government will just continue with what it has been doing before,” he said.
Padilla likewise described communist attacks as “very treacherously planned,” as he justified the cancellation of the peace negotiations out of Duterte’s apparent anger amid the lack of sincerity from the communists.