Militant Politics and the Shrinking of Civic Spaces among Peasant Communities in Cebu and Bohol

Lead Researcher(s): Regletto Aldrich D. Imbong
Status: Published

Executive Summary: Development and development work in the Philippines took a sharp yet unfortunate turn during the administration of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. As early as 2018, narratives concerning the shrinking of civic spaces of the country have been expressed, especially by development workers. In a 2018 article, Mariefe del Mundo (2018) of the Caucus of Development NGO Networks (CODE-NGO) described the deteriorating situation of “democratic practices, human rights, peace and order, and governance” since Duterte assumed office in 2016. The shrinking of civic spaces is later reiterated by CODE-NGO, which raised the alarm over continued and constant threats received by development workers as a result of their work and advocacies. The group called for “wider civic spaces” in order to fulfill the democratic functions of development workers “without fear of intimidation, harassment, or reprisal from State and non-state actors” (CODE-NGO 2024). The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) has similarly raised the alarm over the country’s shrinking civic spaces. In their CSO Manifesto for Enabling and Strengthening Civic Space in the Philippines, the CPDG positioned that “the current state of shrinking civic spaces” has significantly affected the work and operations of civil society and has likewise undermined civil society organizations (CSOs), especially in the exercise of civic participation and democratic governance.

The shrinking of civic spaces is equally expressed by development workers in Cebu and Bohol, the two provinces that compose the Central Visayas Region of the Philippines. Development workers have reportedly experienced increased cases of harassment and intimidation and have been subjected to red/terrortagging. The latter is the malicious naming or tagging of an individual or a group as terrorists (Imbong 2023). While the Supreme Court of the Philippines (2024) has declared it to be a threat to the right to life, liberty, and security, it has been used with impunity by known state agents in the conduct of their counterinsurgency campaigns. Red/terror-tagging is legally complemented through the anti-terror law, a mechanism which, according to United Nations experts, has been deliberately misapplied in targeting development workers tagged as terrorists or their financiers (Chi 2024). Among the latest of what activists described as trumped-up charges, 27 development workers from the Cebu-based Community Empowerment Resource Network (CERNET) were accused of terrorism financing in 2024. This and other instances of harassment and terror-tagging led the Aktionsbündnis Menschenrechte Philippinen (AMP 2024) to conclude what appears to be a government crackdown against civil society. This shrinking of civic spaces is concretely experienced by development 2 Militant Politics and the Shrinking of Civic Spaces workers, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and people’s organizations (POs) in Cebu and Bohol.

It is in the context of the shrinking of civic spaces that this paper reconceptualizes development, specifically the notion of participation. It particularly asks the following questions. How is development conceptualized by grassroots organizations in Cebu and Bohol that are mainly the targets of today’s political repression? At what point does the concept of development become dangerously subjected to state scrutiny and terrorist witch-hunting? How is participation reconceptualized given the experience of grassroots peasant organizations in Cebu and Bohol? The paper aims to make sense of what CSOs have described as the shrinking of civic spaces via a detour on an examination of how communities experiencing continued attacks and harassment conceive what development is. The detour aims to highlight that the shrinking of civic spaces is related with how communities understand development and participation. In these communities, the shrinking of civic spaces is particularly experienced through disenfranchisement and delegitimization.

As will be discussed in more detail subsequently, what particularly distinguishes the concept of development shared by these grassroots organizations is how they portray it as a dialectical process. The paper will argue that for these groups, development is a dialectical process that responds not only to the most immediate concerns of their respective communities but also goes beyond the immediate to realize political requisites. What this means is that development comes to be seen as both alleviation from perceived community problems and liberation from more fundamental and systemic issues. Their depiction of development as both alleviation and liberation can be captured in their narratives regarding the concept of kalambuan.

The dialectical conception of development (as kalambuan) also informs two things. First, development and development work in the Philippines, at least in the communities investigated, would require being political. Here, development will be governed by what I will describe as militant politics (MP). As will be elaborated, development could not just be the mere socio-technical implementation of projects helpful in the alleviation of community problems. In implementing these projects, more fundamental and oftentimes political issues arise that the community needs to confront and resolve if it has to pursue its development objectives. Second, the political dimension of development or militant politics, where systemic issues such as landlessness are called into UP CIDS discussion paper series 2026-07 3 question, is what the paper will identify as the threshold of state intolerance. It is a fact that not all development work and initiatives trigger state scrutiny or red/terror-tagging. The selective nature of such scrutiny and red/terrortagging reflects a deeper political question of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable paradigms of development from the vantage point of the state and why such a paradigm is intolerable in the first place.
Theoretically, the paper will enrich the discussion of participation via a conversation with the literature on community-driven development (CDD) and post-development (PD). There have been various efforts to mainstream the CDD in the country as a development strategy. While the CDD consciously integrated participatory approaches in its development strategies, its notion of participation is limited to what will be described as participation in projects. The latter is examined through Mahjid Rahnema’s post-development critique of participation (Rahnema 2010). The paper will contend that through MP, participation is reconceptualized as both participation in projects and participation in liberation, corresponding to the dialectical conception of development informed by MP. This reconceptualization illuminates the limits of state intolerance and sheds light on the shrinking of civic spaces in the country.