STREETWISE
Losing Her Grip
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s
pretensions to heading a democratic regime and of having a firm grip on power
are fast falling apart. The almost weekly, if not daily, political killings and
abductions carried out by suspected agents of the state have exposed the seeming
“inability” of Mrs. Arroyo’s government to put a stop to these heinous crimes.
BY CAROL PAGADUAN-ARAULLO
Businessworld
Posted by Bulatlat
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s pretensions to heading
a democratic regime and of having a firm grip on power are fast falling apart.
The almost weekly, if not daily, political killings and abductions carried out
by suspected agents of the state have exposed the seeming “inability” of Mrs.
Arroyo’s government to put a stop to these heinous crimes.
The victims’ families, the activists and the human rights
groups are finally being listened to when they say that there is an unacceptably
huge number of people whose murders or involuntary disappearances are related to
their political beliefs and activities with the military, police and/or
government-sponsored “death squads” as prime suspects.
An overwhelming number are identified with the national
democratic movement, as exemplified by the progressive party lists such as Bayan
Muna (People First) and the militant formations such as Bagong Alyansang
Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance), but other activist groups like
Kilusang para sa Pambansang Demokrasya (KPD or Movement for National Democracy)
and the followers of former President Joseph Estrada in the United Masses for
Justice and Democracy (UMDJ) have also been recently victimized.
The government line – these are just individual, unrelated
cases that they are dutifully investigating; there is no pattern to the mayhem;
and those who decry military/police involvement are communists or communist
sympathizers whose unfounded accusations ought to be dismissed outright – has
been completely debunked.
After pretending for more than a year that the problem did
not exist, government has resorted to a different tack. The favored explanation
by Malacañang today is that the leftists are killing each other off.
The argument goes: they’ve done it before, they can do it
again. Why they are doing so now and how government can put a stop to this
supposedly fratricidal rampage are questions that Messrs. Eduardo Ermita,
Norberto Gonzales and Raul Gonzalez and the Philippine National Police (PNP) and
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) smart generals seem to consider
irrelevant.
That incredible theory has not caught on considering the
victims’ track record as militant leaders, human rights advocates and even just
plain civic-spirited citizens. In fact, the victims’ kin, friends and co-workers
have consistently denounced the tagging of the New People’s Army (NPA) as the
perpetrators to be a malicious attempt to get the real culprits off the hook.
However, the recent murder in broad daylight of Sotero “Ka
Teroy” Llamas in Tabaco, Albay appears to be a renewed attempt to give credence
to the discredited government line that the killings are the result of the blood
thirsty vindictiveness of the communist movement, if not part and parcel of
another violent “purging” of its ranks.
Mr. Llamas, a legendary communist leader in the Bicol
region who gained national prominence when he was wounded and arrested after a
firefight with government troops, was subsequently released and became an
adviser to the National Democratic Front (NDF) in peace talks with the
government. He then helped found the progressive party-list group Bayan Muna
before running for governor of Albay under the Panfilo Lacson wing of the Laban
ng Demokratikong Pilipino (Democratic Filipinos’ Fight). He chose to retire from
political involvements and run a small business after he lost his electoral
bid.
As such, he did not run afoul of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP) in any way nor the progressive party list he had joined after
having given up the armed struggle. But Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) head,
Gen. Pedro Cabuauy, has foisted his ignorant if not malicious speculation that
Mr. Llamas was killed by his former comrades because he had run for governor
allegedly against their wishes. This canard was immediately belied by Mr.
Llamas’ widow but the government persists in peddling the lie to the uninformed
public.
Presidential Defender Mike Defensor added a touch of the
comic to official avowals that government could not have had any reason for
wanting Mr. Llamas dead by claiming that the former rebel had been helping the
government in certain projects. He apparently had forgotten or was completely
ignorant of the fact that the Justice Department had included Mr. Llamas, along
with more than fifty others including progressive party list legislators Satur
Ocampo et al, among those government charged last month with conspiracy to
commit rebellion.
It did not take long for the police body tasked to
investigate the political killings, to posit another incredible theory. Former
Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan and his followers in the Guardian Brotherhood
Inc. are being implicated in the unsolved murders. This was just after National
Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales announced that the CPP-NPA planned to
assassinate Mrs. Arroyo and other cabinet members even as they were also
planning to assassinate their alleged allies in the Opposition. Again no
plausible reason could be provided by the National Conspiracy Adviser.
Is this a convoluted if somewhat crass plan to disrupt the
broad anti-Arroyo alliance or are Mrs. Arroyo’s defenders simply running out of
excuses and ruses?
Whatever it is Mrs. Arroyo’s boys are cooking, her refusal
to condemn the killings, her failure to order an honest-to-goodness
investigation by an impartial and credible body and her inability to sanction
immediately and severely those police and military men found to be remiss in
their jobs of running after the true perpetrators or worse, as in the recent
case of the ambush by Cavite policemen of a militant trade unionist, of
participating in such crimes themselves, speak loudly about where her true
attitude and intentions about these killings lie.
Seen in the light of the political persecution that Mrs.
Arroyo’s opponents are currently being subjected to such as the six progressive
party list representatives and others accused or implicated in false rebellion
charges, the Red-labeling and demonization of legal democratic organizations as
“terrorists,” the continuing Gestapo-like arrests of critics and alleged
dissidents in the name of countering “destabilization” and the state terrorism
being inflicted on ordinary people by government’s militarization of the
countryside, what adds up is that Mrs. Arroyo is resorting to sheer violence on
top of wholesale deception in order to prop up its tottering regime.
Mrs. Arroyo is generating more political turmoil, more
rebelliousness and the just condemnation by the Filipino people as well as the
international community among whom there still exists high regard for the
rule of law and respect for human rights and human dignity. Businessworld /
Posted by Bulatlat
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