Know your Enemy

From the Malaya Editorial:

The military has expressed support for national security adviser Norberto Gonzales call on voters to throw out party-list representatives in the House in the May elections. So this is what the ballyhooed "reformed, apolitical" Armed Forces has turned itself into? A Red baiter like the Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas of Gonzales and Romeo Intengan, that Jesuit throwback to the Cold War?

We know where Gonzales is coming from when he calls on voters to reject party-list groups which he suspects of serving as "fronts" of the Communist Party of the Philippines. This is not the first time he is campaigning against Leftist party-list groups. And this will not be the first time either that he will likely be spurned by the voters.

His PDSP has not won a single party-list seat. It will likely not win a seat this time around either. Which simply goes to show an anti-Red platform won’t fly in elections.

The AFP, however, is not a political party like the PDSP. It enjoys a monopoly of state violence. It has no business telling people whom to vote for or against when they go to the polling places.

And just to enlighten the AFP leadership, advocating communism of whatever variant is not a crime. R.A.1600, the Anti-Subversion Law, was repealed way back to the time of President Fidel V. Ramos. The idea is to precisely entice supporters of the communist movement to make their pitch for their political program in the open, specifically via the electoral process.

Gonzales, of course, claims that Leftist party-groups directly support the communist rebellion, citing the alleged diversion of their representatives’ pork barrel to the New People’s Army. The Commission on Audit has not reported any such diversion. And even if Gonzales is right, the proper action is to charge the suspected party-list lawmaker with rebellion.

That indeed was resorted to by the State when it charged Rep. Crispin Beltran. Even a cursory look at the charges, however, will show the case against Beltran is based on suppositions, conjectures and speculations. Not a shred of hard evidence.

pinag-iinitan na naman ang mga Bayan Muna at Akbayan ng AFP. Read this too.

And Crispin Beltran was arrested for a 21-year old charge of "inciting to rebellion" from the Marcos era. :rolleyes: