DAVAO CITY — Vice President Sara Duterte on Wednesday admitted that she avoided mentioning the New People’s Army which she regards as the “devil’s name”, but has only realized the need to speak about it to defeat them.

“We needed to speak of the devil if only to defeat the devil. And we did,” she said in her speech during the Davao City’s first anniversary as an insurgency-free city. “But speak of the devil not with fear but with the resolve, the bravery, the tenacity of real patriots determined to defend our fellow Filipinos, particularly our children, and our homeland.”

The Vice President clarified that she avoided mentioning the “devil’s name” in order not to dignify its presence or acknowledge the monstrosity of its terrorist acts over the past 53 years.

“I thought that mentioning ‘New People’s Army’ added more air into their swollen state of madness and encouraged them to unleash more destruction and death and string another cycle of violence for the people to suffer from,” Duterte said.

She recounted the terrorism perpetrated by the NPA which includes the death of a four-month-old girl in Talakag, Bukidnon, following an NPA ambush in November 2016 and the death of a vendor who died five days after falling into a coma after he was hit by a landmine that the NPA detonated in Mandug here in May 2017.

“The threat of a terror group like the NPA to the lives of Filipinos, the future of our children, and our most cherished democratic ideals are real. Let us look back at Paquibato when it was still under the shadows of the NPA,” Duterte said.

She added that during that time, most children were not getting enough nutrition and many were out of school — a vulnerability exploited by the NPA for recruitment.

“There was a scarcity of government services and basic infrastructure because Paquibato was an NPA territory and this made the people more miserable,” Duterte said.