President Duterte has advised Filipinos not to vote for party-list political parties he claims back communist insurgents seeking to destroy the country.
Duterte stated the rebels utilized the party-list system to enter Congress in his public address last Monday and referred to them by the moniker KABAG (stomach pains in Filipino).
“You will see from their behavior and the way they espouse their advocacy for a party, their drift is really to the left,” the President said. “So you won’t forget, remember the KABAG: Kabataan-K, Anakpawis-A, Bayan Muna-B, (Alliance) of Concerned Teachers- A and Gabriela.”
He claimed they were legal fronts for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the communist rebels’ political arm. These party-list groups make up the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives.
“Do not vote for them,” the President said. “Let us put an end to that. Let us give everything to the barangays. We are wasting lives. We are wasting money.”
Duterte linked the party-list organizations to the New People’s Army (NPA), which has been rebelling against the government for decades.
Duterte asks public not to vote for KABAG party lists
“The problem is they are supporting or they are really like legal fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines,” Duterte said in Filipino. “The problem is they are using money, they get money from the government and they are supporting those sons of b*****. They are supporting a bunch of (people) without ideology.”
Duterte also stated that communists had infiltrated international organizations and were funding militants with the state fund.
While he provided no evidence to back up his claims, he echoed a narrative promoted by Presidential Communications and Operations Office (PCOO) Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy. She was a spokesperson for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
Badoy developed the name “kabag” for the CPP-party-list NPA’s groups, which she defined as “urban operatives,” in a statement released on March 21.
Badoy restated her prior claim that Makabayan coalition groups were fronts for the CPP, acting as “atsoys and atsays” (servants) to their terrorist leaders.
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