Rebel returnee in Bohol says NPA 

uses agitation strategy to play 

with people’s emotions

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, April 27 (PIA) – Agitation as a strategy to keep discontent high.

This is how the New People’s Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front survive, feeding on the people’s discontent and preying on their helplessness to force them to rise in arms against the government.

The confession was among the information which a former rebel Virgilio Quisto, shared moments before he has to give his testimony of the government’s goodwill to people like him who made the decision to take the path of peace.

Then, it was always easy to hit the raw nerve of the poor people, because we trained for that. Now, however, no matter how good agitation is, somehow, the government can easily get and appease the sentiments of the people.

Ang ila, programa alang sa kagubot, wala silay Department of Agrarian Reform nga tinuod nga manghatag og yuta, wala silay programa alang sa mga kabus, ang ila, ang pagdakop sa emosyon sa tawo aron mo-alsa, Quisto said amidst hundreds of land reform beneficiaries accepting their Certificates of Land Ownership Awards and Agricultural Free Patents in a program during the service caravan in San Vicente, Trinidad.

Quisto, whose family received 2.14 hectares of land which they have cultivated since they occupied a portion of the government sequestered lands of the abandoned Bohol Cattle Corporation, spoke for his mother Consorcia

The former rebel shared that he joined the rebels in Surigao del Sur in 1987 and for 12 years, he went up the mountains or rested in his home when there were no offensives.

Sensing that the government was getting serious in cracking down on the underground movement in Surigao, he, along with his family, went home to Bohol.

It was the government’s offensive against the rebels and overhead, we could see cannonballs flying and exploding in the hills, he shared, before they decided to make it to Bohol.

As an active rebel in the movement, his arrival to Bohol found him in a rather comfortable situation. Assigned to Bohol Guerilla Front 3 based in the mountains of Maribojoc, Loon, San Isidro, Calape Tubigon and Antequera, Quisto said he was there during the encounter in Tan-awan in 1995, Tubigon, when he said they had two casualties.

By 2016, he went down the mountains and joined the legal fronts, for reasons he did not specify.

Between 2019 and 2020, Quisto again went active in the Sandatahang Yunit Propaganda operating in the forests of Bilar, Batuan and nearby towns.

But admitting he is too old for the mountain treks, and sensing the disillusionment and the empty promises he got from the movement, he decided to make it to the lowlands and live in peace.

A member of the provincial association of rebel returnees, Quisto now helps the government in convincing his former comrades to take the same way he did.

With Talibon Trinidad Farmers Association (TTIFA), Quisto along with the organization’s president Rowena Eronico, started to regain the trust of their members, who were then organized to agitate the government in the issue of land reform, anti oil-palm, poverty and alleged militarization.

In 2020, it was hard to get the sympathy of TTIFA, but then, persistent paid off because we are now getting majority of our members back, TTIFA president Eronico said.

Wala na ba diay gyuy luna sa inyong kasingkasing ang tinabangay ug hangopay sa masa?

(Do we not have space in our hearts for cooperation, for brotherhood as men?

Wala na tay rason pa, kay ania na ang atong gitagna niadto nga dili madayon. Ania na, nagpang-apod-aporan na kita sa yuta, ug dili ang kalihukan ang nakahimo niini.

We do not have any reasons anymore, the time has come, the one we said would never happen, is here and we are given ots, not by the underground movement, but by the government we downplayed before, Quisto belted out.

Mabuhi ang mga mag-uuma, Mabuhi ang DAR, he summed. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol)

RESTORING WHAT HAS BEEN ruined. Rebel returnee Virgilio Quisto narrated how they manipulate people’s sentiments to keep them feeding the kindling of dissent into an unquenchable fire to properl enough disruption of services to revolt. (rahchiu/PIA_7Bohol)

CAPS OFF. A rebel returnee places hi life at risk speaking in public against the underground movement, but forQuisto, the lies have to stop because many young lives have been lost in the senseless revolution. (rahchiu/PIA_7/Bohol)