EDITORIAL - Let’s see if NTF-ELCAC will call out police community pantries

After the first community pantries were set up and others started blossoming around the country, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) saw these not as people helping other people during a time of need, but as two things; a concerted move to make the government look bad and as a front for communists to advance their cause.

NTF-ELCAC spokesman, Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., went as far as to compare the organizer of the first community pantry to Satan offering the apple to Eve, in other words she was allegedly tempting people to rise up against the government.

It’s an accusation that isn’t just baseless, it almost borders on delusional paranoia.

While many in the government have risen to the occasion to actually defend the operation of community pantries, and even to open their own, it seems the NTF-ELCAC will not be made to account for its baseless accusations.

Sure, Armed Forces chief General Cirilito Sobejana told Parlade to be “exercise more diligence” when claiming who are communists, but beyond those admonishing words it seems we can expect nothing more. Not even if their accusations placed the lives of those who organize community pantries in danger.

And now even the police have come to appreciate the situation and are planning to set up their own community pantries.

Here in Cebu one such initiative is expected soon.

“By May 15 po I’ll make sure na lahat ng police stations namin ay may community pantry na at meron na ring garden na pagkukuhanan nila sa kanilang harapan,” Cebu Provincial Police Officer director, Police Colonel Engelbert Soriano, was quoted as saying in a report in the newspaper.

The military? They have been ordered to assist community pantries “by providing food and allotting funds for their initiative” by Sobejana, no less.

Let’s see how the NTF-ELCAC will react now. Will they still have the gall to call these pantries organized by policemen and members of the armed forces as fronts for the communist movement? Will they still compare policemen contributing goods for those in need to Satan offering the apple to Eve?

Let’s see what happens if they do.