The left-leaning Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) scored Walden Bello and Akbayan Rep. Etta Rosales for saying that they fear for their lives because they are on the New People’s Army (NPA) “hit list”. According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of KMP, “to the best of our belief these two are just”KSP or kulang sa pansin“[”Who want to attract attention“] so that the public may notice them. It also is a ploy to heighten their price in the eyes of their master Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the US, to say that each of them can now be considered as a big fish by claiming that their lives are threatened”.
“They want to climbed further on the opportunist ladder by projecting themselves as targets of the NPA and not merely serve as apologists and issue-muddlers of the regime. They claim to be progressive by occasionally criticizing the regime but their track records show how chummy they are with each other, it even came to the extent that the Armed Forces of the Philippines openly campaigned for Akbayan in the last election”.
As for his part Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of the group, “the timing of their letter is also quite suspect and is an obvious move to vilify the CPP, on its 36th anniversary. Though our organization does not condone the activities of the NPA, we respect what they are doing and in actuality more and more peasants are supporting them because they are implementing what they call the agrarian revolution”.
“While the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) has been exposed as a sham and anti-peasant re: Hacienda Luisita Massacre, the minimum program of the agrarian revolution farmers say have given them concrete gains like the lowering of land rent, lowering of usury, increase in the pay of farm workers, increase in the prices of farm-gate products and lower the rent on farm inputs. These are the reasons why more peasants are supporting the NPA,” added Ala. “As for Etta and Walden as well as other pseudo-progressives, I think that they should not worry, the NPA as I see it have more important things to do than to waste time on them,” ended Ala. # # #
KMP - 26 December 2004