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Communist guerrillas will use the
May 14 midterm elections to raise funds through extortion, put
sympathetic candidates into office and rally their forces, police
said Friday.
In a briefing
to foreign diplomats, the police said the Communist Party of the
Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, would use
all its resources to “threaten the integrity of the elections.”
“All the
political machineries of this communist terrorist group, like the
party committees, guerrilla fronts, agitation/propaganda groups,
legal fronts and allied organizations will commit themselves to the
upcoming elections,” the police said in a briefing paper.
As part of
this effort, the NPA is sending extortion letters demanding fees of
up to P1 million from politicians if they want their campaigns to go
undisturbed by the rebels.
The paper also
said there would be a resurgence of CPP-orchestrated killings of
candidates and other political supporters the party perceives as
enemies. Communist guerrillas in the countryside will also
intimidate voters into supporting CPP-controlled fringe political
parties and sympathetic candidates, police said. National Security
adviser Norberto Gonzales warned on Thursday that the communists
were training snipers to assassinate her and other officials.
The
Philippines goes to polls on May 14 to elect the entire 250-member
House of Representatives, half of the 24-body Senate and over 17,000
public officials, including governors and mayors.
Gonzales
openly accused six leftist parties with representatives in Congress
of being fronts for the CPP, charging that they were using the
democratic process to further their armed rebellion. The groups have
denied such accusations.
On Thursday, a
lower court ordered the arrest of leftist legislator Satur Ocampo
and 50 others who were indicted for their alleged role in a deadly
NPA internal purge in Leyte from 1985 to 1991.
The CPP and
the 7,000-member NPA have been waging a nearly four-decade
insurgency to seize power in the Philippines.
 --AFP
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