KABUGAO, Apayao – Officers and members of the unified Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA) Kabugao command strongly condemned the alleged criminal acts committed by disgruntled members of the group in illegally recruiting civilians in their place and reportedly collecting money from them with the promise that they will be integrated into the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
In an official statement issued by the unified CPLA Kabugao command which was forwarded to President Rodrigo Duterte, the group claimed that former Bucloc Mayor Mailed Molina, Conrado Dieza and Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte National Executive Committee member Daisy Lee had been allegedly misusing the unified CPLA to recruit civilians from their place and subsequently collect from them certain amounts of money with the promised integration to the AFP once the region will become a federal state or achieve autonomy status in the future.
The group claimed that the trio had been allegedly going around the region over the past several months recruiting innocent civilians to join the federalism movement which they are advocating and for their later alleged integration into the AFP or the supposed regional security force provided that they shell out P1,000 to the organizers of the recruitment activity.
Earlier, similar complaints were raised by concerned citizens in Kalinga, Mountain Province, Ifugao, Abra and Benguet questioning the authority of the trio to do recruitment of innocent civilians, collecting from them a certain amount in exchange for the promised integration which is actually considered false promise from the start.
Previously, police and military authorities vehemently denied having authorized the trio to recruit civilians for integration because there are requirements to be complied with by the said individuals when applying to be part of the Philippine National Police (PNP) or AFP, thus, whatever actions being done by Molina, Dieza and Lee have no blessings from the concerned authorities.
The Kalinga Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) also came out with an official statement disowning the illegal recruitment activities being done by the trio and advised barangay, municipal and city officials provincewide not to allow the said individuals to use government facilities for their illegal recruitment activities because the same was never sanctioned by the police and military authorities.
On his part, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process underscored that the government never authorized certain individuals to go around the region and recruit in the guise of being former CPLA officers and making obvious false promises of integration to the PNP and AFP since it is only the police and military that are authorized to do recruitment and integration activities to boost their ranks.
Even the unified CPLA leadership under Abra Vice Governor Ronald Balao-as strongly denounced the illegal recruitment of civilians being done by the three individuals because the group’s new officers did not even sanction their questionable transactions, especially that they had been allegedly misrepresenting the organization in their transactions with concerned government agencies in Metro Manila.
By HENT
