By Alec Go
The chairperson of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) has called on NCIP’s officials and personnel to resign, and challenged government units to fight for the rights of indigenous cultural communities (ICCs) and indigenous peoples (IPs).
NCIP Chairperson Allen Capuyan, in a January 9 statement, said this is in line with President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s administration’s cleansing process of offices under the government’s executive branch.
“Said call is directed to those who are no longer effective in the performance of their respective mandates and to those who are unable and unwilling to respond to legitimate burning issues raised by ICCs/IPs, and which have remained unacted upon for several years now, such that a number of NCIP personnel themselves have become a big part of the problem,” he said.
“Further, there are those who respond half-heartedly, thereby aggravating the problem instead of solving the same. It’s for this reason that I filed cases against a number of our personnel,” he added.
Capuyan said he also noticed that some National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) personnel have “failed or refused to act in accordance with the avowed purpose of the task force” that makes it irrelevant.
He added that the “absence of a formal hand-over of the series of presentations of the former leadership of the NTF-ELCAC has exacerbated the situation.”
“Thus, I also call for the voluntary tender of resignation of some members of the Secretariat of the NTF-ELCAC who failed to perform concrete actions since the start of the administration of President Ferdinand R. Marcos,” his statement read.
The statement came also a week after Interior and Local Government Secretary Benhur Abalos called on colonels and generals to tender their courtesy resignation amid the reported links of some police officials to the illegal drug trade.
