THE National Police and the Armed Forces are discussing a proposal for the police organization to take over the anti-insurgency operations in some areas in the country.

Senior Supt. Nicanor Bartolome, National Police spokesman, said on Monday that the force hopes to take a direct hand in the campaign against the New People’s Army (NPA) through an agreement being worked out with the Armed Forces.

Bartolome said the National Police is well prepared for the job considering the existence of its elite unit, the Special Action Force, and its provincial and regional mobile groups.

However, Bartolome said police officials are still discussing with their counterparts in the military which provinces would be taken over by the National Police in the anti-insurgency drive.

Bartolome said currently, the NPA has about 5,200 regular guerrillas.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro has condemned the order of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) to the NPA for the latter to intensify its attacks against the government and private targets, including business establishments.

Teodoro said the order, which was issued by the CPP on the occasion of the NPA’s observance of its 39th anniversary on Saturday, “only confirms the government position that the CPP and its armed wing, the NPA, are terrorist organizations.”

He noted that the CPP and the NPA are becoming more desperate as their strength is being depleted.

Teodoro ordered the military to intensify its operations against the communists and secure vital installations.

“We look forward to the achievement of far greater victories in the revolutionary struggle in the coming year. We can reap great victories by continuing to seize the initiative and launching far more tactical offensives against the enemy than last year,” the CPP told its armed wing.

Leaders of the communist movement said the government will never achieve its target of ending the insurgency by 2010.

“The US-Arroyo regime is daydreaming by boasting that it can destroy or reduce the NPA to inconsequentiality before 2010. Oplan Bantay Laya 1 failed miserably to destroy a single guerrilla front from 2002 to 2007,” the CPP said.

“Oplan Bantay Laya 2 is bound to fail even more miserably in the few remaining years of the regime. The regime itself is in grave trouble and is on the brink of an ignominious downfall,” it added.

The NPA command in the Ilocos-Cordillera Region said its forces surpassed last year its previous records on the number of attacks against government forces.

The CPP told the NPA to take advantage of the political crisis and economic problems that are plaguing the Arroyo administration and intensify its revolutionary activities in cooperation with the people.

The CPP also ordered the NPA to see to it that its guerrilla fronts currently numbering 120 to 130 will increase to 173 and cover all congressional districts in the country.

“These must be seed units for building new guerrilla fronts. The seed units could be at least two squads or platoons divisible into armed propaganda teams. In building relatively stable base areas, it is a matter of administrative political cohesion at first and all-round development of a number of guerrilla fronts,” it said.

The CPP also said that with too many demands the administration is putting on the table, the prospects of resuming the talks with the government are already “dim or nil.”

Ermita hit for ‘stretching’ SC ruling

SENATORS on Monday slammed Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita’s “erroneous” interpretation that a recent Supreme Court (SC) ruling effectively allowed Cabinet officials to evade Senate summons to testify in inquiries into alleged anomalies in the Arroyo administration until the publication of Senate rules covering investigations in aid of legislation.

INTERNATIONAL Container Terminal Services Inc., the country’s largest port operator, has bagged the 25-year contract to manage and operate the state-owned Mindanao Container Terminal (MCT) in Misamis Oriental, besting two other bidders.

THE National Police and the Armed Forces are discussing a proposal for the police organization to take over the anti-insurgency operations in some areas in the country.

A NATIONAL Police task force tasked to investigate cases of unexplained killings has filed 83 cases, arrested of 28 suspects, affected the surrender of 14 others and had four assailants convicted, a report to the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) revealed.

A RECENT report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that while the Philippines has a low brain drain rate, Filipinos who reached college remain attracted in working or settling over long periods in OECD’s 29 member-countries.

ORGAN transplants in the Philippines, including those scheduled under the medical-tourism program, have been temporarily held in abeyance by the Department of Health (DOH) pending approval of a new policy being drafted that will establish a board to set the guidelines on organ transplantation in the country.

ALARMED by what he described as the “alarming rate” of incestuous relationship in the families of overseas contract workers, a legislator has filed a bill moved to criminalize incestuous sexual relations between family members, imposing stiffer penalty to guilty parties.

LABOR Day is just a month away and Sen. Mar Roxas wants to be able to present a labor law exempting minimum-wage earners from income taxes so that he will push for it as soon as Congress resumes in April.