OI ILANG POTBOLON ANG BISE P?

11 December 2024

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Highlighted excerpt from the article

“Our patriots in the intelligence community should intensely investigate if reports that the Marcos regime have allied with the communist are true as this would be pure treason of the vilest kind: Partnering with the communists to neutralize the Dutertes just for his Marcos-Romualdez clan to continue in power.”

Communists: Marcos' ally in impeachment to oust Sara

Opinion by Rigoberto D. Tiglao, The Manila Times, December 6, 2024

LOOK at it objectively and rid yourself of their very successful propaganda — started way back in the 1960s — that they are crusading "progressives," "people's organizations" or "cause-oriented groups." Nearly all of those who claim to be such are communist or leftist groups, who have expertly manipulated the democratic process to obtain at least roughly 1 million votes to win a seat in the House of Representatives.

The persons who filed the second impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte are mostly communist cadres, their allies and a few naïve idealists they have fooled and have manipulated. Their spokesman, Neri Colmenares, had long been leading Left fronts, as the first such, Bayan Muna. (Colmenares it seems never forgot his torture by the military when he was captured in 1983 by the military that alleged he was with an NPA propaganda unit in the Cagayan Valley).

The organizations they represent are mostly Communist Party fronts. Believe me on this, as they were my comrades in the 1970s. I was surprised to see in news photos of the complaint's filing by these aging veterans of the party now in their late 70s and a few cadres I had supervised when I headed the party's Manila-Rizal organization. One of the prominent ones there brought me to the restaurant where I talked to his boss, the party secretary-general, to find out if they could support Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's 2004 candidacy.

The list of those who filed the complaint is a veritable roll call of known leaders of all leftist groups (except for the Communist Party and its National Democratic Front) that I was surprised why their leaders chose to list them all as complainants. They even included several individuals who are in respected academic institutions, but who probably have already been recruited to the party. I think this is an indication that the party's executive committee of its politburo issued a firm order to file the complaint. I wonder why?

Party

The party reportedly had early this year reached an agreement with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his cousin Martin Romualdez to be supportive of this cursed administration — even to the point of being in the vanguard of the black-propaganda campaign undertaken in Congress against the Dutertes to culminate in the impeachment.

Their late prophet, Jose Maria Sison, must be turning in his icy grave in the Netherlands. How can the Communist Party support the son of the dictator whom he and his comrades fought for half a century, whose regime killed and imprisoned about 100,000 communists and Red fighters? If ever they had to support a political leader to be able to participate in the "democratic space," it should be Duterte, with the former president having been the only Philippine president to openly oppose US imperialism — which the party (correctly) and consistently claimed was humanity's enemy in this era.

If their political calculation was that being part of a campaign to fight corruption in the country would boost their popularity, they're very wrong. Despite Marcos' intense campaign to demonize Sara and her father, the latter still have the masses' support, who view them as folk heroes. The dominant perception remains that the Dutertes have been loyal in serving the people.

Or do they think that Sara's conviction would trigger, as in the case of Joseph Estrada, a people-power episode that would oust Marcos, a reverse of how Estrada's impeachment led to his downfall and to a "revolutionary flow." But the only communist that could see such a scenario would be the late Sison, and his Machiavellianism has not rubbed off on any of his successors.

Money

Therefore, the only motivation I can think of for the communists to agree to be Marcos' forces is that which motivates most men and organizations: money. After all, the communists desperately need funds for their New People's Army, which has barely 500 armed fighters to survive in far-flung hinterlands. Their front organizations have become financially distressed as funds from abroad, especially from Europe, have all but vanished after Sison's death in 2022.

Our patriots in the intelligence community should intensely investigate if reports that the Marcos regime have allied with the communist are true as this would be pure treason of the vilest kind: Partnering with the communists to neutralize the Dutertes just for his Marcos-Romualdez clan to continue in power.

The initial plan I was told was for the leftist group to file the only impeachment complaint. Bayan Muna party-list representative Colmenares (the only lawyer in that cabal), touting his experience as a prosecutor in the impeachment of the late chief justice Renato Corona and former justice secretary Merceditas Gutierrez, claimed that charging Duterte of just one ground for removal — betrayal of public trust — would speed up the trial to end before the 2025 elections, which would likely result in a new Senate likely to be sympathetic to her.

However, the alleged betrayal of public trust was based only on allegations regarding her allegedly anomalous and opaque use of P165-million confidential funds when she headed the education department and as vice president. These were the alleged "discoveries" in the hearings in Congress, which, however, have the following fatal flaw: witnesses were neither cross-examined nor the documents presented subject to examination.

Media

For instance, there is that allegation that a receipt for confidential funds was paid to one "Mary Grace Piattos" which had been proven nonexistent. But did the congressional investigators prove that that receipt was authentic, and how did they get such a confidential document?

And of course, there wasn't a single allegation that she stole from her confidential funds. How can they find if she did if these were classified as confidential, i.e. secret funds?

This reminds me of the claim in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Corona made by the Land Registration Authority head (an appointee of former president Benigno Aquino III) that he had 45 properties, which the prosecutors claimed proved his ill-gotten wealth. Corona's defense lawyers, after cross-examination of the documents, proved that he had only five properties, with many of the alleged properties being owned by the chief justice's namesakes or totally not even in his name.

The other cabal of complainants that filed the first complaint consists of such persons, nearly crackpots like mutineer Gary Alejano and Roberto Reyes, a priest who thinks jogging is a political protest move, and other obscure persons as well as clerics who describe themselves as "activists" united in their hatred of Sara's father. I had been told that former senator Leila de Lima was their leader, but it turns out she is not even a complainant although she was its designated spokesman.

De Lima

Maybe de Lima — even in her thirst for vengeance — has so much respect for herself she'll never be recorded as a complainant in a ridiculous, mindless set of complaints. It is a testament to the sorry state of our media that the complaint has been given front-page and even banner treatment, with even veteran columnists fooled by the complaints' validity.

Many of the allegations are plain stupid and ignorant, with eight alleged to have been committed before her tenure as vice president, and the others brazen proven lies (such as Trillanes' claim of the Duterte's tens of millions of bank accounts, which he totally invented) or totally baseless (such as the allegation that she left the education department with P12 billion in disallowances, suspension and charges which the Commission on Audit report denies). Would you believe those crackpots claimed as one count her "refusal to condemn China's bullying in the West Philippine Sea?"

There must be a law penalizing such "pambababoy" of this important means for assuring our system has its checks and balances called the impeachment process.

Marcos still has a clear head: he knows the two complaints won't ever get the required one-third votes in the House to get a trial by the Senate going. Only a dozen — the Left party-lists — would be voting for it.

So, now his apologists can claim the impeachment came to nothing because Marcos decided not to support it, since it "does not make any difference even in one single Filipino life, so why waste time with it."

Then why did he, or his cousin Martin, in the first place meticulously conceive and execute the plan — a very expensive one — in the first place?