Sanchez: Enforcers? Or law breakers?

FINALLY, law enforcement on electoral rules on security for candidates is making some sense.

Chief Superintendent Isagani Cuevas, Western Visayas police director, put his foot down when he asserted that members of the Revolutionary Proletarian Army-Alex Boncayao Brigade are unauthorized to provide security to candidates.

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There are allegations that RPA-ABB members have been sighted accompanying several Negros Occidental politicians and are suspected of being on their payroll for the elections.

I find this tongue-in-cheek when Cuevas said that RPA-ABB members can join politicians in their campaign sorties, provided they are unarmed. That’s like saying Dracula is welcome to go inside a blood bank.

The RPA-ABB has no value whatsoever to society. What makes them important for politicians is their firepower. Government regulations are often left at the wayside when law enforcers allow these thugs to bear high-powered weapons.

In fact, when these bums confronted me in Cádiz several years back, they nearly stole my digital camera. They were so deathly afraid of photos showing them in full-battle regalia against an unarmed development NGO—in clear violation of their peace agreement with the government. (Although I did get a photo shoot of an RPA-ABB goon with a vintage Japanese Arisaka rifle.)

Take out their firearms, and you get plain bums and toughies that refuse to work for their upkeep. Without their weapons, they’re not even good enough to polish the shoes of their candidate patrons.

The RPA-ABB’s excuse for holding on to their firearms is that, among things, the New People’s Army will run after them. They need the weapons for protection.
So-called rebel returnees are a lot better because they work on farms or use whatever productive skills they have to feed their families.

Rebel returnees face the same problem from their erstwhile comrades. But they willingly turned their swords—or their guns—into plowshares. They availed of government assistance to reinvent themselves into productive citizens.

In that sense, I’m more impressed with Jerold Sadlom, Jonathan Pacheco and his wife, Lucy, Abraham Balansag, Johnny Magbanua and Timmy Casusa, and other 10 former CPP-NPA rebels who availed of the P20,000 each in financial assistance from the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Process.

Twenty-six other rebel returnees in the Negros island who availed of Social Integration Program funds last year received as much as P70,000, including the P50,000 livelihood packages.

Why can’t the RPA-ABB do the same and give up their weapons? That’s not going to happen soon, though. Many of their goons are probably getting more as bodyguards of unscrupulous politicians.

It would be interesting if the PNP or the military could name names of candidates who hired the RPA-ABB thugs as their security detail.

Then let government show its political will. Let Comelec deal with the erring candidates, and the PNP or the Army deal with the RPA-ABB goons.
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