The Marcos administration started the year 2025 with the radical reorganization of the National Security Council. I do not know by whose advice the reorganization came from, but the Chief Executive is the focal figure behind the move. Since the declaration, the Executive Order has spawned diverse speculation bordering on talks of martial law in the offing or just plain dirty politics.
Executive Sec. Lucas Bersamin and NSC adviser Eduardo Ano had been doing the task of explaining the rationale of the reorganization. National security is a primordial concern and by the looks of the new set-up there is no assurance the matter of national security will be better- addressed.
The present set-up is infirmed for while it rid of the past presidents and the incumbent Vice Presidents it added some members from the House of Representatives some of whom have questionable ideological persuasions.
The experience and expertise of past presidents are valuable to national security. In the case of Vice President Sara Duterte, her experience in dealing with threats, especially those from Communist and its armed component, the New Peoples Army, can neither be denied nor belittled. Most of her nemesis in Congress are in fact members or supporters of the terrorist organizations.
Her ouster from the NSC is actually not only about dirty politics but a direct assault on bigger-than-life leader who undoubtedly looms to be the next President of the country. She alone stood path against President Marcos revival of peace negotiation and the granting of amnesty to the CPP/NPA terrorists who had already been routed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and its vital adjunct – the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC) which she chaired.
Was it because she dubbed Marcos avuncular treatment and negotiation with the CPP/NPA a “deal with the devil” that she now has to be sidelined?
Bersamin and Ano have a lot more of explaining to do. As Mayor of Davao City which was once a stranglehold of the CPP/NPA and whose regime earned the southern capital the moniker “the killing field of the Philippines”, and then freed completely of the terrorist forces ang declared later by the AFP as the first area in the country to be “insurgents free”, surely VP Sara Duterte could have contributed immensely to the nation’s security.
I do not know the agenda and logic behind the revamp but for certain it is stirring the hornets nest.
