By Junex Doronio
CLAIMING TO BE INDEPENDENT, a panel from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has left the executive committee of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
“’Yung ugnayan namin ay nandoon pa rin, pero ‘yung execom kumbaga wala na kami (Our connection is still there, but in the execom, so to speak, we are not there anymore),” CBCP Commission on Public Affairs executive secretary Father Jerome Secillano said in a radio interview.
This move seemed to jive with the stance of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) which has warned that the CBCP “may be used to deodorize the counter-insurgency task force amid a long list of abuses and violations attributed to it.”
Bayan Secretary General Renato Reyes Jr. told the CBCP of the limits of any engagement with the NTF-ELCAC.
“While we believe that the CBCP has by and large stood for basic human rights especially against red-tagging and extrajudicial killings, joining the NTF ELCAC sends the wrong message to the public,” the Bayan official said in a statement.
Secillano maintained, however, that being outside the executive committee, the CBCP panel can always be “somehow honest” with the NTF-ELCAC.
The CBCP earlier reported a survey by Caritas Philippines showing that 90% of respondents are against the church joining the NTF-ELCAC.
(ai/mnm)