Emboldened by how it has gotten away with the most corrupt deals, the most heinous of crimes perpetrated by state security forces with impunity, the most brazen of political maneuverings and the most outrageous lies – the Arroyo boys are deep into their latest Machiavellian maneuvers to turn a bad thing to their advantage.
Why not use the quarrel between justice officials and the drug enforcers over alleged rich-kids-cum-drug-pushers as an occasion to highlight the “drug czar’s” political will to fight the drug lords and related scumbags? Why not recycle General Palparan, Mrs. Arroyo’s counter-insurgency poster boy, as the newest crime buster, this time against drug pushers, the kind of public scourge everyone abhors and would like to be rid of.
Riding on the public clamor for decisive action on the drug problem, Malacanang has named Palparan as a prospective key official of the DDB or the PDEA. The general, not having any legal, moral or political scruples about resorting to extrajudicial killings in counter-insurgency is now touted to be just what is needed for the anti-illegal drugs drive. This feeds into the thinking that government can and should utilize extralegal, in fact, illegal measures to solve intractable problems.
But the plot thickens. It is mind boggling that Mrs. Arroyo and her bright boys would not see that pushing Palparan into the DDB would set off another controversy. Several senators, a conservative cardinal and another prelate, opinion makers, not to mention human rights advocates and activists have all decried this politically explosive appointment of “The Butcher” in the DDB.
Arroyo’s Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, himself a retired general who saw official duty in Vietnam together with Fidel Ramos as part of the Philcag contingent in the late sixties, says that General Palparan will be useful because of his expertise in intelligence work that he put to good use dismantling the communist movement’s political infrastructure. That is, he was supposedly good at identifying and eradicating communist rebels pretending to be unarmed activists.
(He was also good, by the way, in scaring the daylights out of the relatives, neighbors and friends of these government “enemies” by threatening or actually punishing them instead. The reality is that the quality of the intelligence gathered may be poor, unreliable or even riddled with false information, but for the likes of Palparan, it doesn’t matter. Brute force, naked terror and summary execution should do the trick.)
Not so subtly, Malacañang is not only praising Palparan’s “intelligence” but also exonerating him and the Arroyo government of the murder, torture and disappearances of hundreds of victims who were innocent, in truth and in law.
We suspect that Arroyo’s foremost militarist in civilian garb, General Ermita, is taking a leaf from the Vietnam War, specifically the Phoenix Program, and trying to apply this failed counter-insurgency measure into the Philippine setting. In brief, the Phoenix Program was a military, intelligence, and internal security program designed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and coordinated and executed by the South Vietnam security apparatus and US Special Operations Forces during the war. It was in operation between 1967 and 1972 and was designed to identify and “neutralize” (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.
The Phoenix Program that this government has copied and used in its Oplan Bantay Laya I and II is historically proven to be a failure. It was a covert operation, evidently and admittedly violative of international law and it failed. It did not destroy nor did it undermine the Vietnamese people’s support for the Vietnamese revolutionaries. The ultimate judgment came in the form of abject US defeat in the Vietnam War.
By resurrecting General Palparan and attempting to absolve him of his crimes, Malacanang is banking on the public’s short memory and its strong repugnance for and condemnation of the drug menace in order to clear the GMA regime as well for its coddling and encouragement of this erstwhile criminal-in-uniform. Unwittingly, the GMA regime reopens the case against Palparan and itself. It may end up with the whole scheme backfiring on its face. Posted by Bulatlat.com
