End is near?

That’s how President Duterte is in ending the communist insurgency during his term that he made sure his message was heard loud and clear. The country cannot afford to pass the problem that has pervaded through five decades to the next generation.

“It has to be now,” he stressed as he warned of “a little trouble” in the coming months as the military tries to solve the situation following the collapse of the peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front that the President himself initiated upon assuming office in 2016.

Whatever that “little trouble” is remains to be seen.

The issuance of Executive Order 70 directing the creation of a National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC), as well as the adoption of a national peace framework that contains policies addressing the root causes of insurgencies, is however proof positive of this presidential determination to finish off the insurgency that has only brought misery to the Filipino people.

Between 1969 and 2008, more than 43,000 insurgency-related fatalities have been recorded following the protracted people’s war launched by the rebels who have embraced Maoist principles in their fight against the government. The rebellion lived on with funds from revolutionary taxes, extortion and large scale foreign support campaigns.

In calling for an end to the insurgency, the President pointed out that revolution is no longer in vogue.

At the 31st anniversary celebration of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program last Tuesday, Duterte said, “You cannot win a fight for social justice or for a better life in your country if you go to revolution. It won’t work.”

Recent developments have pointed to the no-nonsense drive of the government to turn the tables on the Left, whose propaganda war to win the tide of battle in the bar of public opinion has left the government no option but to fight back.

Only recently, the NTF ELCAC has been able to turn off the source of funding of Left-leaning militant organizations in Europe by providing documents to show that their contributions have been used to destabilize the government.

Philippine officials went as far as going to Europe to ask the European Union and Belgium to stop funding the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, Ibon Foundation, Karapatan and other groups, saying the funds are only prolonging the communist insurgency.

Aside from asking these European institutions to stop support, the delegation was also able to clear up the muddled human rights narrative of the Left particularly non-government organizations masquerading as human rights defenders.

As the government takes its war against local communists a step further, we could see it taking initiatives to counter their every move. The police’s request to be allowed to enter state universities and colleges to neutralize the efforts of militant organizations to brainwash students and recruit them to their side is a step in the right direction. The Left has been hiding under the veil of academic freedom to influence students and reinvigorate its by now obsolete ideology.

The recent walkout and day-long rally of students to denounce what they termed as campus militarization was, for us, instigated by the Left so as not to disrupt what they have been doing so successfully in school campuses.

We have nothing against academic freedom and free expression as long as it is done in the proper context. Student activists’ action nowadays, however, have become an annoyance to the public senses. Which brings us to the question, Is the “Makibaka” that these students chant still relevant?

We agree with the President that this is no longer the effective way of expressing positions to shape public policy.

For most Filipinos, the youth, as the hope of the Fatherland, can use their young minds to touch lives by simply being good and kind to others.

As President Duterte said, “If you want changes, it has to be through evolution, not revolution.”

Indeed, if we cannot have law and order in this country, we will never rise to the next step as a nation.