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TAGUM CITY—President
Arroyo said she would direct the military to form an
“investment defense force” to provide a wider security
shield to businesses located in the countryside.
The
pronouncement came on the heels of renewed guerrilla
attacks of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Davao Region
in the past month.
“Because
we can see the NPA impedes progress in many investment
areas here in Mindanao, because many investments are in
the countryside and rural areas, I will instruct the
Armed Forces to form an investment defense force,” she
announced in her address to the Peace and Security
Summit in this capital city of Davao del Norte, some 55
kilometers north of Davao City.
The
investment force would allow the military “to give a
protective shield to power assets, other infrastructure
and mineral-development projects,” she added.
She
disclosed that there was “already a task force in the
DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resources]
to protect power assets, and the military contributes to
that.”
“But
there are other infrastructure to be identified by the
peace and order councils of Mindanao, where we need more
than the usual police action, where we actually need a
bigger hand, a protective shield in order to protect
investments in Mindanao,” President Arroyo said. “It’s
very important that the investors feel confident to be
in
Mindanao.”
She
cited the hesitance of call centers, for instance, as a
case of how investments have been slow in coming to
Mindanao.
“There
are call centers in
Davao, but there should be more. But many of the clients of
the call centers are still hesitant to make their call
centers located even in
Davao.”
“And,
therefore, that shows that there is that perception that
investments may not be safe from the NPAs and terrorists
and the rebels.
And
that’s why we need to have these investment defense
force,” she added.
How that
force would be formed remains uncertain, with senior
security and regional military officials awaiting
instruction from Malacañang.
National
Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales told reporters here
after the end of the summit on Friday that he was not
privy to the concept and believed that it would emanate
from the Office of the President.
He would
not also confirm if the concept was the similar to the
creation of Special Cafgu Active Auxilliaries (SCAA)
among companies, including that of the National
Transmission Corp. (Transco) which already finished
training a company-sized unit each in its
Davao City
and General Santos City areas.
The
Transco has coordinated the creation of the SCAA with
the local Army brigades. The Transco said the militia
would beef up its existing security of its lines and
substations.
Maj.
Medel Aguilar, chief of the AFP’s 5th Civil Relations
Group, also said the military has no guidance yet on
forming the defense force. “We will wait for that,” he
said.
President Arroyo has stuck to the 2010 timeline she gave
the military to end armed rebellion, saying that the
communist-led insurgents “have spent years as a
low-level threat.”
“We can
see the progress and development of a number of rural
areas, but they [the NPAs] are responsible for a wide
range of human-rights abuses,” she said.
“If we
are to become a First World country, we must put a stop
to their ideological nonsense and their criminal acts
once and for all,” President Arroyo said in her speech.
Meanwhile, the National Democratic Front (NDF), which
maintains the NPA as its armed wing, said her attendance
in the summit was meant to “secure” her administration.
“After
instigating a maelstrom at the House of Representatives,
Mrs. Gloria M. Arroyo is now wooing local bureaucrats,
politicians and the military in a bid to consolidate her
fragile hold to power,” the statement read, a copy of
which was printed in local newspapers in Davao City.
The NDF
said the summit was “merely part of the orchestra to
hide the series of military losses in the region and
elsewhere.” |
