Gonzales said the NPA wants to increase its influence by having its own political leaders in provinces as well as in the House of Representatives through the party-list system. The fund-raising activities, he said, also include selling "permits-to-campaign" to other candidates in rebel-infested areas.
"This works both ways: the NPA rebels raise fund through extortion to finance their activities but also to help the campaign of their front political leaders, who in turn give them support once they are in office," Gonzales said in a telephone interview.
He said that in 2004, leftist party-list lawmakers have funneled some P500 million in pork barrel funds to the NPA or projects that would benefit their front organizations.
Gonzales had earlier accused Bayan Muna Reps. Satur Ocampo and Teodoro Casiño of supporting NPA guerrillas and called on the House of Representatives to investigate their use of pork barrel funds.
However, Gonzales also said the government has not totally closed the door to peace negotiations with the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front (CPP-NDF) despite the atrocities of their armed wing, the NPA.
Gonzales is also the chairman of a democratic left party, the Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (PDSP). He said there is a view within government that the new peace overtures from leaders of the armed communist movement are only a trap given communist leaders’ regard for peace negotiations as a mere tool to push forward their ultimate objective of seizing power through armed struggle.
Gonzales pointed out that, time and again, CPP-NDF leaders have declared in clear terms that they do not see the desirability of an accord through peace negotiations.
He cited the speech of self-exiled CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison in Oslo where Sison made clear statements that armed struggle is his group’s principal form of struggle, with peace talks only secondary, even to the legal mass movement.