TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The leadership of the Cordillera Boding Administration (CBA) revealed that the reunification of the fragmented Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA) could be realized the soonest because of the intense desire of the leaders of its various factions to get their acts together for the sake of advancing the region’s renewed quest for regional autonomy.
Engr. Andres Ngao-i, CBA chairman, said that he had been receiving numerous calls from the leaders of the different CPLA factions over the past several weeks inquiring on the details of how the CBA will pursue the reunification and there is a big possibility that this united CPLA may be realised within the next several weeks.
“There were numerous instances in the past when the CPLA was on the verge of breaking up but we were able to consult among ourselves that prevented the armed group from being divided. We employed proven indigenous peoples practices that led to our unity in the past that is why we can easily do it this time,” Ngao-i stressed.
The CBA reunified the Kalinga factions of the CPLA that resulted to the selection of Juanita Chulsi as the recognized CPLA commander with Drew Walsi as her chief of staff while ousted CPLA Kalinga leader ConradoDieza will remain as the armed group’s liaison officer.
Since April 24, 2017 when the leaders of the feuding factions met in Mount Data at the sidelights of a forum organized by the Office of the Presidential Affairs on the Peace Process (OPAPP), Ngao-i noted that their decision to reunite the feuding factions virtually opened the communication lines among them and paved the way for their regular communications over the past months.
According to him, what is important to the group is that even those who signed the controversial closure agreement with the OPAPP during the Aquino administration also signified their intention to actively participate in the reunification process considering that their primary objective is to lobby the national government for the grant of the region’s renewed quest for regional autonomy.
The two CPLA factions in Abra are the Ronald Balaw-as and Mailed Molina factions while the CPLA groups in Kalinga are the Dieza and Andew Cos-agon faction while the Humiding-Ganggangan faction had been the ones that entered into the controversial closure agreement with the government in July 2011.
The CBA is the political arm of the CPLA while the CPLA is the armed group of the CBA and both groups were instrumental in the signing of the famous Mount Data peace agreement between the said groups led by Fr. Conrado Balweg and the Philippine government represented by former President Corazon C. Aquino on September 13, 1986.
The major demand of the CPLA-CBA from the government is the grant of autonomous statues to the Cordillera that paved the way for the issuance of Executive Order No. 220 that created the Cordillera Administrative Region composed of the provinces of Abra, Benguet, Mountain Province and Baguio City from Region I and the provinces of Ifugao and Kalinga-Apayao from Region II on July 15, 1987.
By HENT
