On the seventh anniversary of the the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) reiterates its analysis that the government’s anti-communist agency is a bane to workers’ labor and human rights and to democracy in the country. We dare President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to immediately abolish the agency.

After the November 30 protests, various organizations and personalities are talking about democracy, fearing that the Dutertes will take advantage of workers’ and Filipinos’ discontent against corruption under the Marcos Jr presidency. The Dutertes represent democratic decline, autocratization, if not outright authoritarianism, and Sara Duterte is currently leading surveys for the 2028 presidential elections.

The creation of the NTF-ELCAC in December 2018 is a major turning point in Rodrigo Duterte’s descent into authoritarianism. Fearing protests against, and accountability for, his war on drugs and anti-worker and anti-people policies, Duterte created the NTF-ELCAC to supposedly target the Communist Party of the Philippines and the rebel group New People’s Army. The NTF-ELCAC in turn red-tagged and targeted labor and social movement organizations and all critics of the Duterte government.

The NTF-ELCAC presided over various human rights violations against workers and and other marginalized sectors, as well as against labor and social movement activists in the country. It openly and loudly called for, and justified such violations – from surveillance to harassment, from abduction to disappearance, and from imprisonment for trumped-up charges to extra-judicial killings.

These human rights violations further impoverished democracy in the country under Duterte. Labor unions and organizations, as well as grassroots organizations of marginalized sectors, were considerably weakened, and their capacity to demand their rights and assert their interests to the government was seriously impaired.

If President Marcos Jr really wants to embody democracy against the authoritarian Dutertes, he should immediately abolish the NTF-ELCAC, Duterte’s creation and henchman. He should provide redress to the victims of rights violations committed by the NTF-ELCAC under Duterte’s command. He should immediately release the 18 political prisoners from the labor movement and hundreds of others from the social movements in the country.

No less than the International Labour Organization (ILO) Tripartite High Level Mission to the Philippines in 2023; Ms. Irene Khan, United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; and other UN Special Rapporteurs who visited the country have called for the NTF-ELCAC’s abolition.