Lucy Torres backs anti-insurgency efforts, slams rebel extortion in countryside

“It’s a very personal issue for me.”

Leyte 4th district Representative Lucy Torres-Gomez said she is passionate about fighting insurgency because she was exposed to the problem growing up.

Her father was a “planter,” who like many businessmen in the provinces, was threatened by insurgents.

Gomez’s family owns several hectares of land in Leyte.

She said people critical of the government’s anti-insurgency program don’t know how it is for businessmen who are extorted for “revolutionary tax.”

“Pag hindi ka nagbibigay, sinusunog yung farmlands… ‘Yung iba na natatakot at nagbibigay, after a few months pag hiningan ng increase at hindi nakabigay, pinapatay ‘yung livestock at sinususunog ‘yung tractors,” she said on Politiskoop.

She said she personally knew at least five people who were killed by insurgents.
“These were not just names on a payroll. These were actual people I grew up with. Some of them who have been with my family even before I was born. Their children were my playmates,” she said.

“People who grew up in the big city, they don’t really feel or see how grave or how real the threat is,” she added.

Gomez is a supporter of the much-criticized anti-terrorism law.

She is also against calls to defund the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (BTF-ELCAC). She supports the task force’s programs for the development of barangays that have been cleared of rebel communists.

Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)