Liquidating ‘Politics of Change’

Is Bayan Muna, a neophyte progressive organization which topped last year’s national Party-list elections, marked for liquidation? Is the growth of this legitimate political party being nipped in the bud by government security forces even before its ‘Politics of Change’ wins more adherents in a country ruled hopelessly by elite politics?

By Bobby Tuazon

Bulatlat.com

This question has surfaced on the heels of recent reports that more Bayan Muna (or Masses First) grassroots leaders and organizers have been killed or reported missing, or have become victims of other forms of harassment. And the perpetrators, Party-list sources allege, are military, police and paramilitary elements.

Killings and other violent assaults on Bayan Muna organizers have become more frequent as the nation prepares for the barangay (village) elections this coming May and as more U.S. special forces are arriving for war exercises in the country.

This week, Bayan Muna Representatives Crispin Beltran, Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza demanded President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to order the Armed Forces, police and other agencies to stop the violent attacks against the party. They have also started moves to conduct a legislative investigation.

The three House representatives cited police surveillance of Bayan Muna activities in Central Luzon, Southern Luzon and the Visayas as part of a campaign of “political repression” against the organization.

99 victims

In a report this week, Bayan Muna said that from Feb. 2, 2001 to April 12 this year, 99 coordinators, members and supporters were victims in 64 cases of violence perpetrated by government’s security forces. Of this number, 16 were brutally killed while six were abducted and remain missing to this day. Aside from the Armed Forces and Philippine National Police (PNP), paramilitary groups such as the Citizens Armed Force Geographical Units (Cafgus) and Civilian Volunteers Organizations (CVOs) were reportedly involved.

The latest to fall in government forces’ alleged systematic political repression against Bayan Muna is a peasant couple from Mindoro Oriental. Expidito Albarillo, 48, a barangay councilor, and his wife, Manuela, 45, were reportedly executed at close range dawn of April 8 in Barangay Caisapa, Oriental Mindoro.

When found, the body of Expedito, municipal coordinator of Bayan Muna and member of Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Mindoro Oriental (Kasama-Mo), bore a big wound in the left arm and several gunshot wounds in other parts of the body. One of his eyes was gouged out and his skull chiseled from the back.

Manuela, on the other hand, had a gunshot wound below the right eye and another in the left armpit. Her neck, human rights investigators said, was shattered. She was also a member of Bayan Muna.

Eyewitnesses fingered soldiers of the 16^th Infantry Battalion under the command of a Lieutenant Dimapinto as the suspects in the couple’s killing.

A friend of the Albarillos, Mar Aldava, recalled Dimapinto as saying to him before the killing incident, “Lahat ng nasa order of battle na hindi namin masupil ay tinutuluyan naming patayin, at si Ka Ispid Albarillo (the victim) ay nangunguna sa order of battle, pumapangalawa ang apat na Aldava.” (We kill everyone who is in our order of battle and cannot be silenced. Ispid Albarillo tops our order of battle, followed by the four Aldavas.)

Other provinces

Part of an island, Mindoro Oriental lies west of the Southern Tagalog region where most of the killings, involuntary disappearances, unjustified arrests, arbitrary detentions and other forms of intimidation against Bayan Muna members took place since last year. Similar incidents happened in Central Luzon, Cordillera, Cagayan Valley and in Davao provinces in southern Philippines.

Bayan Muna insiders said that the systematic pattern of violence committed against their membership could not take place without orders from military and police field commanders – or even from top authorities. Indeed, many police and Armed Forces officials have been reportedly incensed at the presence of Leftist representatives in Congress and would like to see the group’s expected gains in future elections preempted. Police units in Central Luzon and other regions have been ordered to keep an eye on the activities of the party during the barangay elections. Why Bayan Muna has been singled out for police monitoring has raised not a few concerns.

Bayan Muna gained popularity in the heat of the campaign to oust then President Joseph Estrada last year and its entry in electoral politics thereafter had been welcomed by many politicians, church leaders and businessmen in the country. But the right-wing military, police and anti-communist fanatics made sure the new party would disintegrate at its birth by subjecting its candidates and campaigners to surveillance and death threats during the Party-list elections last May.

Top military intelligence officials had said that after the elections, the entire Armed Forces would go after the guerrillas with more firepower, but stopped short of revealing whether Bayan Muna would be a legitimate target.

Just the same, marking Bayan Muna a fair target for political liquidation – something which Arroyo herself might have encouraged by calling Beltran a “communist” - is a purge directed against the “politics of change” which the party represents. “Politics of change” – a vision that identifies with the masses’ democratic aspirations – may have found a voice in Congress but it is in the rural countryside and urban areas where its political star has proven to shine more brilliantly thus threatening the traditional strongholds of elite politics. Hence, the liquidations.

A newspaper reported a military official as saying that the repeal of the anti-subversion law “only empowered the communist rebels to take control of the government.” “Look, they now have representatives in Congress…We could not allow that to happen,” the official went further.

The current threats the political party is faced with is reminiscent of what befell another militant organization – the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan – New Patriotic Alliance) – during the administration of President Corazon Aquino in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Prominent leaders of Bayan became targets of assassinations and death squads one after the other at the height of Aquino’s “total war” against revolutionary forces. The killings took place as the nation was locked in the issue on whether to dismantle the U.S. military bases and amid renewed covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Today, thousands of U.S. armed forces are in the country in what concerned quarters describe as a new war of aggression in the Philippines, targeting in particular the armed Left and Moro guerrillas. The American forces’ deployment has given both U.S. and Philippine defense and military intelligence officials a greater latitude to closely coordinate current and future operations not only against the Abu Sayyaf but also other suspected “terrorist groups.” And Bayan Muna, among many groups, has stood uncompromisingly against such armed presence by the global hegemon. Bulatlat.com

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