The other threat to national security is not coming from the left

MUCH attention has been focused lately on the political left. Concerted efforts are being exerted, with the blessings of government through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), that even the supposedly ideologically neutral Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) is now spun by red-taggers with political color. It is now being appropriated less, at least in terms of its optics, in preventing terrorism from those who attacked and laid siege to Marawi, than on focusing its ire on universities and colleges that have been labeled as breeding grounds for communism.

This is not to say that threats from armed leftist insurgents do not exist, but it behooves us to ask if there is evidence that it has in fact grown and has become an existential threat to the Republic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that while the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) still exists, there is no empirical data to show that they have grown in magnitude and extent that there has been a leveling up of their guerrilla warfare against the Philippine government.