Ocampo to Gonzales, AFP: 'Shut up!'

Progressive party-list groups often and openly branded as communist fronts seem fed up with accusations linking them to the underground movement. Now they are daring military officials and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales to show proof – and if they have nothing to show, they might as well shut up.

By Bulatlat.com  

Shut up if you have nothing to prove, progressive party-list leaders tell National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and the military. Photo by Arkibong Bayan

“The plain fact is that you lost and we won,” Bayan Muna (People First) lead House nominee Satur Ocampo addressed National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales. The usually sober but otherwise tough progressive legislator, stressing his point with a clenched fist, told Gonzales to “shut up” if he cannot prove his accusation.

Ocampo has been piqued by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s national security aide’s persistent allegations linking Bayan Muna and other progressive party-list groups to the communist underground.

In a news conference at the Kapihan sa Cypress in Quezon City May 29, Ocampo and other leaders of the groups dared both Gonzales and Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero, Armed Forces spokesperson, to show proof to support their allegations. Both men recently threatened to move for the disqualification of the winning party-list groups before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for being supported by the New People’s Army (NPA) in the last May elections.

Gonzales, in a radio interview earlier that same day, had said that the winning progressive party-list groups particularly BM, Anakpawis (toiling masses) and Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP) should expect a disqualification case from a fellow party-list group. Lucero had said as much in a recent press conference.

Comelec proclamation

At the Kapihan, Ocampo asked Comelec to proclaim their party-list groups as winners as it had done with 11 winning senatorial candidates. The poll body had, earlier last week, proclaimed 11 senatorial candidates who had emerged as winners in the electoral race based on its official canvass at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).

Latest results of the canvassing of party-list votes showed three of the six party-list groups – front runner Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, and GWP - are already assured of seats in Congress. If proclaimed, BM gets three seats and Anakpawis two. GWP is certain of sending its lead nominee Liza Maza to Congress, where she used to represent Bayan Muna.

Ocampo said if the Comelec does not proclaim them before the disqualification case is filed, they can conclude that the poll body is in cahoots with those who will charge them.

Gonzales is president of the Aksyon Sambayanan (People’s Action) party-list group, which has not managed to clinch a single congressional seat. His original political party, the Partido Demokratikang Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (PDSP) also lost in the May 2001 party-list race which was topped by BM.

“This (Aksyon Sambayanan) is probably the party-list group that will be used to file the case against us,” Ocampo added.

The BM representative also criticized Macapagal-Arroyo for tolerating her own adviser’s accusations and not acting to censure him.

Not our fault

GWP lead nominee Liza Maza, commenting on the alleged NPA support for her party, said: “We cannot choose our supporters in the same manner that we cannot choose our detractors. It is certainly not our fault if the NPA or any revolutionary organization, for that matter, finds our position on women’s rights a worthy advocacy.

Ocampo revealed that he and other Bayan Muna representatives will also file a resolution “pressing the appearance of Gonzales and AFP chief of staff Gen. Narciso Abaya during the lower chamber’s Question Hour to answer to charges that their move to disqualify Bayan Muna and other militant party-list groups on the basis of mere suspicion and without evidence amounts to a witch-hunt and a fishing expedition.”

Destabilization plot

Also earlier, Vic Ladlad, Bayan Muna director for organization, denied a police intelligence report linking him to a destabilization plot allegedly orchestrated by the Communist Party against the Arroyo administration. He was reacting to a statement by Chief Supt. Robert Delfin, police intelligence chief, fingering Ladlad as one of the leaders of the poll watchdog group Patriots, which the AFP has recently branded as a “communist front.” Patriots is also being linked to the alleged destabilization plot.

While Ladlad dissociated himself from Patriots, he saluted the group for its courageous efforts to monitor fraud and terrorism in the May 10 elections.

Ladlad likewise said: “The PNP accusation is a continuation of the violence and intimidation being inflicted against Bayan Muna and other progressive parties to prevent them from gaining seats in the House of Representatives. Already, 42 members of Bayan Muna have been killed since 2001, seven of them during the election period. But this did not stop people from still making Bayan Muna No. 1 in the party-list elections. By insinuating that I am part of a destabilization plot, are police officials now threatening to prevent Bayan Muna from being proclaimed?”

The Bayan Muna leader also said that “The accusation is nothing more than a cheap psywar trick of the PNP in the vain hope of deflecting charges of fraud and terrorism in the recent elections which Fr. (Joe) Dizon and his colleagues in the Patriots have courageously brought to public attention. The PNP intelligence is so plainly unintelligent to even think that by simply insinuating that the Communist Party of the Philippines is behind the protest actions, charges of fraud and terrorism can be dismissed outrightly.” Bulatlat.com

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