This is insane: The government awarded P5-million to the informer whose assistance led to the arrest of Elizabeth Principe, a consultant of the National Democratic Front negotiating panel in peace talks with the government.

Just who Principe really is, the government has not been able to say.

What is clear is that the NDF has claimed her as one of its consultants. As such, she is protected by the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees solemnly signed by both the NDF and the Philippine government.

The tactic of criminalizing the Left is all too bad. Right now, the Communist Party of the Philippines is not an outlawed organization, but the way the government operates, it seems that it is. Its members and supporters are easy targets for slays and abductions. How the status quo seeks to entice the Left to “go mainstream” through acts of state terror, I do not know. It is quite obvious that enticement is not in the minds of Arroyo officials. Utak pulbura sila.

Those who seek a resumption of the talks will also find this development (the arrest of Principe and the criminalization of NDF consultants) an obvious bane. The government is truly disinterested in peace talks and would rather support the militarist policy of President Arroyo and her favorite general, Hermogenes Esperon.

The seemingly “tough” stance will be exposed for what it truly is: a veneer of weakness. In the next few months, the US Senate will check the compliance of the Philippines regarding the human rights preconditions it attached on the military aid alloted to the country for 2008.

The Arroyo administration’s continued failure to prosecute and punish not a single killer of activists, the abduction of NDF consultants Principe and Randall Echanis, the three extrajudicial killings this month, and the extension of Esperon’s term do not reflect an improving human rights situation in the country.