The recent coup rumors within the terrorist Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are among manifestations of the US puppet army’s rotten and factionalized character. CPP chief information officer Marco Valbuena recently emphasized that these rumors merely confirm the factional loyalties of the officers and troops of the AFP. Their loyalty is not to the Filipino people but to whoever among either the Marcos or Duterte faction lines their pockets with rewards.

“But regardless of their side, they are all corrupt, fascist, and puppets of the US (although some are being courted by China),” Valbuena emphasized. He said that AFP officials are rotten to the core, citing among others, the recent cases of the embezzlement (stealing money) even of the small salaries of lowly troops in the frontlines, such as the CAFGU in Zamboanga and Mindoro provinces. Some of these lowly soldiers have taken to Facebook to express their complaints and relate how their families have been suffering from hunger, misery and abuse. The CAFGU is the AFP’s paramilitary force focused on the counterinsurgency campaign in rural areas. The AFP commonly uses them as cannon fodder in its operations against the NPA.

Valbuena said that even within its own ranks, the crimes of senior officials are flagrant, such as the recently exposed rape and molestation of two junior officers by a major and the recently exposed rape by an AFP general of a junior officer. These cases, Valbuena stressed, are just reflections of the chronic abuse and terrorism of the AFP against the masses, especially in remote villages. The fascist military’s sexual abuse of women and civilians have been reported in many villages under militarization.

The terrorist AFP and its fascist generals, Valbuena said, can maintain their arrogance because the US is behind them. “It is the US military officials who truly run the AFP, providing weapons, doctrine, direction, and training,” Valbuena emphasized.

The CPP called on ordinary soldiers and the CAFGU, especially those from the peasant class and children of the toiling masses to leave the fascist army. “To those enticed to join the military because of the high salary, do not enter the hell that is the AFP,” the CPP stated.

Meanwhile, the CPP laughed off the latest fake numbers vomited by the US-Marcos regime’s conjurer of lies, the NTF-Elcac. The counterrevolutionary agency again recently claimed that the NPA is a spent force, with only one remaining “active front,” but then claims that its has “captured” 64 “camps,” facilitated the “surrender” of almost 500, and seized more than 400 weapons from January to May 22 of this year alone, according to the CPP.

“Every so often, the NTF-Elcac comes up with these numbers to justify the millions of funds that their officials are embezzling and squandering. Their so-called projects under the Barangay Development Project are mere showpieces and ostentatious infrastructure, not suitable livelihood projects that are often left abandoned,” the CPP stated.

The CPP stressed that the NTF-Elcac and the AFP have done nothing to address the fundamental demand of the peasants for free land distribution, but they are in fact the ones driving farmers off the land to give way to the plunder of the country’s wealth by corporate plunderers.

“That is why the masses still turn to the NPA,” the CPP said.