Rodrigo Duterte, mayor of the third largest city in the Philippines, is urging the Communist rebels to lease or sell 50,000 to 100,000 hectares of land to a group of Malaysian and Thai investors to use for a palm oil plantation.
According to the Philippine military, Marxist violence in that country led to the deaths of 3,000 people between 2001 and 2009. Yet Mayor Duterte thinks that local rebels in his city can be happily bought off with rents paid by foreign investors.
This is the same mayor who let it slip that he himself has paid revolutionary taxes to these insurgents (a common terrorist financing tactic), and he encouraged corporations to do the same. Just what kind of investors are these who would be willing to make such deals? One suspects that corruption between Duterte and this unnamed group of investors is afoot; backscratching is going. The only good news is that the Communist terrorists themselves don’t seem too interested Duterte’s corrupt deal.
It should be noted that the tendency of businessmen to cave into the demands of terrorists and pay them money is how ISIS rebuilt its capital before beginning to sweep down the Iraqi countryside.
From Davao Today in June:
Duterte urges rebels to engage in palm oil “joint venture” with Malaysian, Thai company
By JOHN RIZLE L. SALIGUMBA
June 13 2014
DAVAO CITY — Mayor Rodrigo Duterte urged New People’s Army guerillas to “bury your guns, or hang it on a tree” and engage into a joint business venture with a Malaysian and Thai entity that is looking for a 100,000-hectare area to plant oil palm and sesame seeds plantation.
With Paquibato District a known “stronghold” of the NPA in northern Davao City, Duterte said a plantation in their mid would be solely offered to the guerrillas to grab the opportunity.
“Wa ko mangayo nga ang NPA isurrender ilang armas, tagoan lang nila unya akoy mopagador, sabot mo kung pila ilang pangayuon sa yuta. Kay ilang paliton ang palm oil unya naay trabaho. (I do not ask the NPA to surrender their arms; they just have to hide it. You [NPA] should talk [to investors] how much [rent] you want for the land. They [investors] will buy it and provide jobs),” he said.
Duterte said if the NPA agreed, he guarantees to talk with President Benigno Simeon Aquino III and the Armed Forces of the Philippines about “closing” Paquibato.
“Inyo na, kamo diri ug mga NPA,” said Duterte during the 116th Philippine Independence Day commemoration program he attended in Barangay Paquibato Proper, Paquibato District here.
Duterte was talking about his proposal several times since May this year but it was only lately that he gave the nationalities of the supposed investors. The size of the supposed plantation range from 50,000 to 100,000 hectares, which are figures given by Duterte himself in interviews with the media.
The NPA has not issued any statement yet on Duterte’s offer but the guerrillas have spoken against oil palm plantations in several statements.
The Communist Party of the Philippines refers to the NPA as “‘the tax enforcement agency of the people’s revolutionary government’ as it collects ‘revolutionary taxes’—especially from foreign-owned enterprises—in the regions where it operates.”
Police arrest 4 leftist terrorist thieves
January 14, 2016Four Marxist guerrillas who were in the middle of an extortion operation have been arrested near Manilla. Police found an extortion letter in possession of the cell of the New People’s Army. The group may have been targeting the phone service company Globe Telecom.
The concept of “revolutionary taxation”—shaking down capitalists to fund revolutionary activities—is inspired by the writings of Marx, Engels, and Emile de Girardin.
From Inquirer Southern Luzon:
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