UNPOPULAR OPINION | Why Development Gives the CPP a Headache

The Communist Party of the Philippines has repeatedly opposed government development programs in conflict-affected communities, going so far as to discredit, question and campaign against them.

The CPP’s National Democratic Front in Eastern Visayas recently trained its attack against the Support to the Barangay Development Program (SBDP). Since 2019, the CPP has portrayed the program as a source of corruption and political patronage and used alleged problems in its implementation to argue against expanding its budget or for its abolition.

Government spending must certainly be scrutinized. Every peso intended for conflict-affected communities must reach its rightful beneficiaries. Delayed, defective or overpriced projects should be investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable.

But there is a difference between demanding that a development program be implemented properly and arguing that the communities themselves should no longer receive it.

The SBDP exists precisely because many of these communities spent years neglected while communist groups operated in them. Its projects include farm-to-market roads, classrooms, water and sanitation systems, health stations, electrification and livelihood support. Funding is released under the Local Government Support Fund to local government units rather than being a discretionary fund directly controlled by NTF-ELCAC.

That matters because development changes the relationship between communities and the state.

A road that connects farmers to markets, a health station that provides basic services or a classroom that gives children a place to learn may look ordinary in the cities. In an isolated barangay, these can represent the first tangible signs that the government has finally reached the community.

A functioning water system is not counterinsurgency propaganda. Neither is a classroom, a health station or a farm-to-market road. These are basic services that communities should have received long ago.

And that is precisely why development matters in ending insurgency.

The CPP has long benefited from communities where poverty, isolation and the absence of government services created fertile ground for recruitment and influence. When government presence becomes visible through actual services and opportunities, the insurgents lose one of the conditions on which their political narrative depends.

The numbers also make it difficult to dismiss the program outright. From 2021 to 2025, ₱36.823 billion was allocated under the BDP for 4,830 barangays. In March 2026, the Department of Budget and Management released another ₱8.08 billion for development projects in 808 insurgency-cleared barangays.

These figures do not prove that every project was properly implemented or that every community received everything it needed. They establish the scale of the intervention—and therefore the scale of the responsibility to monitor it.

The SBDP should not be immune from scrutiny. It means the opposite. The answer to corruption is transparency, auditing and accountability—not abandoning development in communities that need it most. If a project is defective, repair it. If funds were diverted, investigate and prosecute those responsible. But do not use the possibility of wrongdoing as an excuse to withdraw roads, schools, water systems and health services from communities that waited decades to receive them.

The CPP has reason to understand what happens when the government pulls services out of these communities. The question is whether Filipinos should allow that to happen again.

The CPP’s deeper problem is not simply that development programs can fail. It is what happens when they succeed.

When roads are built, services arrive and communities gain opportunities, the CPP loses the conditions that allow its insurgency to survive. Every completed project weakens the argument that armed revolution is the community’s only remaining choice.