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President Gloria Arroyo said on Friday that the
military played a major role in the growth of the Philippine economy
by maintaining peace and order in the country.
Her statement came a few weeks
after a rebellion attempt against her government failed.
“If we have 7 percent growth
today, it is in large part because you men and women in uniform are
100 percent behind the Constitution and our democracy,” President
Arroyo in her speech told the Armed Forces of the Philippines during
the celebration of its 72nd founding anniversary.
“The guarantee of stability and
the rule of law which you safeguard all across the archipelago is
the foundation on which we are building the current surge in the
economy,” she was quoted as saying by the TV network ABS-CBN.
During the past years, the
military defended the President from rebellious soldiers. The
military’s loyalty, under the Armed Forces chief, Gen. Hermogenes
Esperon Jr., to Mrs. Arroyo prevented political groups from
unseating her.
The most recent failed rebellion
was led by Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th and Army Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim
on November 29. The two led mutinous soldiers in a six-hour standoff
at a five-star hotel in the country’s Makati City financial
district.
Trillanes was also involved in a
failed mutiny in 2003, while Lim was detained for his alleged
participation in a failed coup plot in February 2006.
He was lumped up by Esperon with
New People’s Army (NPA) rebels.
“Destabilizers [are] no
different from communist insurgents, ready to sacrifice the common
good just to quench their thirst for power,” the military chief
said in his speech.
In her speech, the President
lauded the military’s anti-insurgency campaign aimed at ending
left-wing insurgency in the country by 2010.
The military recently boasted
that the communist NPA rebels’ strength has gone down to 6,061,
which is half of the group’s estimated strength in 2001.
In his report, Esperon said a
total of 1,344 left-wing rebels were slain in combat, captured or
surrendered from January to November this year. The military
estimated the rebel group’s strength last year at 7,000 fighters.
“At the rate we are going, we
will put an end to the insurgency by 2010,” Mrs. Arroyo said.
The military also flaunted its
supposed successes against Muslim separatist rebels.
Esperon, in his speech, said the
military is on track in defeating, too, secessionist groups in
southern Mindanao.
The military chief noted that the
successes included the neutralization of top leaders of Abu Sayyaf,
a Muslim extremist group, including Jainal Antel Sali Jr., alias Abu
Solaiman, its number 2 man.
He reported that the Abu
Sayyaf’s strength in 2007 was placed at 379 members, which is down
by 16 percent from the 452 that was recorded last year.
For this year, Esperon said, the
military neutralized 144 leaders and members of the extremist group.
Sixty-seven of them were killed, 53 arrested, 22 captured and two
surrendered.
In his speech, he also thanked
the President for the P150 increase in the troops’ combat pay and
increases in allowances and for the release of P1 billion for a
housing program for soldiers.
--Xinhua And Anthony Vargas
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