TOP-ranked officials of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the Noynoy Aquino administration, who were the commanders of the PNP’s campaign against illegal drugs, were themselves involved in that heinous crime. They were getting hundreds of millions of pesos in protection money from big-time drug dealers and recycling confiscated illegal drugs to sell to the market.

What is astonishing is that these officials had built a reputation, with the help of a gullible — or paid — media, of being bold crusaders who had succeeded in apprehending ‘level-one” drug distributors and seizing huge amounts of their illegal drugs.

The PNP officials, together with high-ranking Bureau of Customs officials, managed to hold on to their positions during the successor Duterte administration. President Duterte, however, had earlier ordered a top-secret intelligence operation to investigate the officials, not just because of information that he had been given, but also because of reports that despite his intense war on drugs, there were significant amounts of drugs still available in the market. The axe will soon be falling on these officials,

The output of that top-secret intelligence operation was a joint report marked “secret” of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the PNP dated September 12, 2018. The report named these PNP officials, one of whom became a high official of the PDEA, and narrated in detail their criminal modus operandi.

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THE claim by an Army general that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has been recruiting students in the country’s universities to join it and its New People’s Army (NPA) is nothing new.

From the party’s establishment in 1968 by Jose Ma. Sison, the Maoist communists have always focused their propaganda and recruitment work in universities, to take advantage of students’ unique psychological make-up that makes them vulnerable to radicalization.

It was in fact Sison’s evil genius to focus his political work in colleges, and even high schools, in contrast to the old Soviet-influenced Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) that believed the Stalinist myth that it is the working class—the proletariat—that is the vanguard of the Revolution. Sison instead made it a part of Philippine Maoist dogma, pointing out in his Philippine Society and Revolution, the CPP bible: “The majority of party cadres and regular NPA fighters are as a matter of course from the youth. The mobilization of the youth ensures the continuous flow of successors in the revolutionary movement.”

Sison claimed that his theory was right when the student revolt erupted in 1970. The youth association he set up in 1964, the Kabataang Makabayan, even if not really big, was by then so organized and experienced in street protests that it led demonstrators to storm even Malacañang and battle with the police, which portrayed the image of a country in uprising.

Or perhaps Sison merely stumbled upon that focus on students, since his post in the old PKP was as head of its Youth and Students Bureau.

Core leaders
Since the 1960s to this day, the CPP’s core leadership has been students radicalized into Maoism.

Sison was a probationary English instructor at the University of the Philippines for a year, and when he couldn’t get a permanent post, moved to Lyceum University and taught there for three years; that is where he got his first recruits.

The core group of his new Maoist party that broke away from the PKP were mostly students of colleges a stone’s throw from the Lyceum, from the so-called University Belt in downtown Manila, disdained by the mostly rich students of the cleric-run schools like the Ateneo and La Salle as diploma mills where the lower and middle classes – and hicks from the provinces – get their college degrees.

Sison’s deputy Carlos del Rosario (killed in 1971 by the PKP) taught at the Philippine College of Commerce (now Polytechnic University of the Philippines); his first general secretary Jose Luneta was Sison’s college buddy at UP; organizational department head Monico Atienza and education chief (and the first head of the Manila-Rizal Regional Committee) Hermenegildo Garcia were from Far Eastern University; his Youth and Students Bureau head Julius Fortuna was also a student at the UP; and Trade Union Bureau chief Noli Collantes (whom the party killed in 1971 when he left) was from the UST.

Nearly all of the famous party leaders, dead or alive, were recruited during their college days.  (more…)

PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Harry Roque Jr.’s pithy comment on Mocha Uson’s resignation from her government post hit it right on the head: “Lagot silang lahat kay Mocha.”

The term “lagot” is one of those Filipino words so nuanced and precise that it is difficult to translate into English. I’d translate Roque’s comment very roughly to: “Mocha’s (and her idol President Duterte’s) enemies are in big trouble now.” Indeed, as a government official, she had to pull her punches. No longer does she need to now.

Her resignation put her prominently in the front pages of all major broadsheets — surprisingly even the Yellow-controlled ones — and even tabloids, in several even above the newspaper’s fold, which means her photo will be seen even by people who don’t buy the newspaper.

The narrative is so positive for her. She wasn’t fired by President Duterte which would have meant that she has become a liability. She made a “personal sacrifice” so that the Yellow and Red congressmen won’t be able to use her as an excuse for dragging their feet in passing the budget of her office, the Presidential Communications Operations Office.

Her resignation letter shows that her fame has not at all gone to her head, as she thanked Duterte for giving her a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for appointing her as Assistant Secretary. She even assured the President that “my loyalty to your administration has not wavered.”

With the newspaper coverage of her resignation (and her column in the Philippine Star), Uson has broadened her base from the 5.6 million followers of her blog to include 1 million print media newspapers (including pass-on readership) readers. With her looks and communication skills honed over many years, it would be cinch for her to expand her reach to broadcast media.

Hogging the headlines, positively.

What more do you need to be a household name to win a Senate seat? I think she has now become more popular to win a Senate seat than those whom a recent poll claimed are leading such a race: Grace Poe, Pia Cayetano and Cynthia Villar.

What Mocha has going for her, which these three don’t have, is that she has portrayed herself an ordinary Filipino, which explains why she has amassed 5.6 million followers, many of whom are OFWs abroad or are from the lower classes. She speaks in Filipino, in the manner of ordinary Filipinos. Even her hairdo does not seem to be the kind well-to-do women get from expensive salons.

Just take a look at the list of the top 12 that poll claimed Filipinos will vote as senator next year, with among those occupying the 11 to 17 slots including Sergio Osmeña, Mar Roxas and Bong Revilla who have disappeared from the front pages.  (more…)

THE arrogance demonstrated at the airport by “ACTS OFW” representative Aniceto Bertiz 3rd that triggered netizens’ outrage should remind us how absurd our so-called party list system is.

Purportedly set up to represent the country’s marginalized sectors, it has merely become the means for millionaires, religious cults, and most importantly, Communist Party cadres to enter Congress.

While supposedly representing OFWs, Bertiz is not an OFW, and is in fact the 11th richest party-list congressman now. While he claims to have been an OFW in his youth, Bertiz owns and heads the Global Asia Alliance Consultant Inc., one of the biggest deployer of OFWs. For each deployment his company charges a substantial fee. For him to claim that he represents OFWs is like saying that a capitalist who was once a salaried employee and then set up his own business represents the workers of that enterprise.

To explain what this party-list system that Cory Aquino and the Yellows made a part of our Constitution, I am reprinting below (with some minor edits) the first part of a series I wrote last February this year (“The party-list system is utterly absurd, a mockery of democracy” and “Cory Constitution gave fake parties House seats”).

Thank you, Mr. Bertiz, for reminding us that we really have to do away with this mockery of people’s representation. Abolish the party-list system, which has spawned hundreds of Bertizes since 1998, and even worse, Magdalo mutineer Gary Alejano, Akbayan’s Tom Villarin, and Carlos Zarate.  (more…)

FOR all the Yellows’ shrieks alleging widespread human rights violations (HRVs) during Martial Law, they have never filed a single case for such crimes at the Commission on Human Rights it set up in 1987 nor in any Philippine court.

Even as the Yellow regime held uninterrupted power for 12 years (Cory and then her anointed Fidel Ramos), it never got around to filing a single case against, much less convict, a Marcos, a police or military, soldier or policeman for HRVs, the biggest “sin” the martial law regime has been accused of.

And to think that during that time, the Yellow presidents totally controlled the judiciary: Cory and Ramos in their 12 years in power appointed 33 of the country’s Supreme Court justices, as many as Marcos did in his 17 years as president and then strongman.

In fact, by 1987, Aquino had appointed all of the 15 Supreme Court justices, except two who had been appointed by Marcos (Ameurfina Melencio-Herrera and Hugo Gutierrez, both of whom left the court in 1993).

But she didn’t. Then CHR chairman Aurora Navarrete-Recina in March 1997, upon the request of then Rep. Imelda Marcos, issued a certification that there were no formal complaints with the CHR against the former President and members of his family. I haven’t found any report that such cases were filed after 1997.

I also haven’t found any cases alleging HRVs by the Marcos regime filed in local courts.

Reasons why

Why were there no such cases filed?

I could think of four reasons:  (more…)

JUAN Ponce Enrile’s recent claims on Martial Law in his interview by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has thrown the Yellows and Reds into paroxysms of rage against the respected senator. The unkindest comment was from the editor in chief of Philippine Star who, instead of presenting facts to debunk Enrile’s claims in her column, branded him “a senile man with symptoms of dementia” who “should be tossed into a regular jail pronto.

Such is the sad state of journalism in this country. Such vitriol is proof of Jose Ma. Sison and his Communist Party’s victory in having Filipinos toe their propaganda line, helped by the Yellow Cult.

The communists’ fabrication in Hitler’s style of repeating the Big Lie again and again: “Communists and its NPAs arrested or killed in the course of their armed struggle against the reactionary State are victims of human rights violations.”

Lazy or naïve journalists — and unscrupulous ones fabricating false data — have swallowed the lie. A CNN Philippines article was entitled “8 things Juan Ponce Enrile, Bongbong Marcos got wrong about martial law.” There it claimed: “More than 3,000 were killed during the Marcos regime, data from human rights group Amnesty International show.” I have copies of the AI reports from 1974 to 1981: Nowhere did the AI make that claim.

That article also claimed: “A 1974 Amnesty International report also said Enrile ‘admitted privately to the Archbishop of Manila that incidents of torture against martial law detainees had indeed occurred.’”

That’s not Marcos, but Cory.

The biased-for-the-leftist-view report of course didn’t report the actual AI phrase which was “reportedly admitted,” which means it was hearsay on the part of AI. It also didn’t quote the very next sentence after that: “Mr. Enrile also said some colonels and other high officials had been court martialed.” That is evidence that there was no state policy for torturing dissidents, but did occur as aberrations that happens all the time in all countries during armed rebellions.  (more…)

AGAIN that cliché I can’t help but use for this affront to the Republic: Only in the Philippines.

Communist Party founder Jose Ma. Sison spent his entire adult life trying to violently overthrow our democratic system. By many accounts, he had personally ordered the execution of probably several dozen Filipinos whom he condemned as counter-revolutionaries, ordered the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing of a Liberal Party rally, and for nearly 50 years now exhorted the party’s New People’s Army to wipe out soldiers and policeman of the Republic.

He was captured in 1977 and faced charges of rebellion, subversion, and murder in two military courts, a process deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1981, since the crimes were committed during Martial Law.

Corazon Aquino ordered him freed eight days after she assumed power on Feb. 25, 1986. A few months later, after a speaking tour at the University of the Philippines, he abandoned his comrades in the country and went abroad, finally settling in the Netherlands in 1987. There he continued his incessant exhortations for the NPA to intensify their killing of the Republic’s soldiers — one soldier a day, he even boasted a few months ago.

Yet last May, he and his wife Juliet got P2.4 million, remitted to his bank in Utrecht. For his arrest in 1977 and incarceration, and because his wife’s psychological travails due to his detention, they were declared “human rights violations victims” during the Marcos regime, deserving to be, as Sison himself quipped, “instant millionaires.”

It was the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board (HRVCB) attached to the Commission on Human Rights that declared the Sison couple as “human rights violations victims,” and gave them P2.4 million. Among the members of the board (who are appointed by the President) who decided on this was now CHR chair Chito Gascon, and former National Democratic Front spokesman Byron Bocar.  (more…)

EVERY September since EDSA we get reportage condemning the strongman Marcos for alleged human rights abuses during his regime, and the killing of young people who were purportedly merely fighting for “farmers’ rights.”

These accounts are so naïve, their writers so gullible to the narrative of the Communist Party and the Yellow Cult, or guided by their outfits’ owners who were the oligarchs that Marcos had put away during Martial Law.

If there’s a single person to be blamed for the killing of young people by the police, the army and even by village militias during martial law, it is Communist Party founder Jose Ma. Sison.

I know this for a fact as I was witness to his madness. In his delusion that he is the Philippine Mao Zedong who would lead the communists to victory through armed struggle, he sent in the 1970s hundreds of idealistic youth to far-flung rural areas with hardly any military training and armed with only rusting World War 2-vintage rifles and pistols. These were teenagers and those in their early 20s, roused to revolutionary fervor by the 1970 demonstrations and the global youth uprising of that era.

The urban activists that Sison deployed to the countryside, who believed Sison’s propaganda that they were warriors of a formidable “New People’s Army,” headed by a legendary Kumander Dante, and armed with brand-new AK-47s that China had provided, were no match for the police and the military. With that impression, do you think a platoon of soldiers – as young as the NPA fighters – who might have chanced upon them in the middle of a dark night in some jungle, would first ask them to surrender, before firing? Just last June, Army rangers on a long-range patrol mistakenly killed six police officers and wounded nine more during an operation against NPAs in a thick jungle.

In many cases, these radicalized, naïve drop-outs were killed just by village militias, who thought that they were bandits.

Decades later the communists, the Yellows, and gullible clergymen would call them human rights victims, or heroes in the “struggle for democracy.”  (more…)

WHAT has happened to the University of the Philippines, supposedly the country’s center of scholarship that is subsidized by tens of billions of taxpayers’ money, and which for decades has been headed by people who resist mobs and even governments in order to assert the institution’s academic independence?

It now has a president so spineless and so worried he might lose his well-paid job, that he immediately capitulated to the small but noisy leftist gangs in the university.

UP President Danilo Concepcion was without an iota of doubt a huge supporter of the strongman Marcos all throughout his regime.

As a Marcos believer, he got to be a member of the Sangguniang Bayan of Valenzuela, 1972 to 1974, and president of the Kabataang Barangay Federation of Metro Manila from 1976 to 1978. Under Marcos’ aegis, he was youth sector representative in the Interim Batasang Pambansa, the proto-parliament that the dictator had organized, from 1978 to 1984. A Marcos stalwart, now senator Richard Gordon, took Concepcion into his law firm, which became the base for his legal career.

Nothing wrong with that, and — despite the Yellows’ propaganda that martial law was a dark period of our history — many of the country’s best and the brightest worked under Marcos in their conviction that he was leading the country out of our quagmire, as strongmen all over our part of the world were doing.

We even had a president who was martial law’s muscle: Marcos’ cousin Fidel Ramos who headed the national police (called the Philippine Constabulary) for the entire period of that regime. The administrator and legal eagle of the regime was Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, at 93 a revered elder statesman of our nation.

KB reunion
Last August 27, officials and members of Marcos-era Kabataang Barangay — the strongman’s project to mobilize the youth for building the nation (or alternatively, depending on your political persuasion, to get the youth to support his regime) — had a reunion at the UP Alumni Association’s event venue, attended even by Imee Marcos, who headed the KB in that era. Concepcion, one of the top bigwigs of the KB, of course, attended it, “to be with old friends I haven’t seen for decades,” he said.

A harmless reunion of an organization, the kind that people in their 50s and 60s revel in to relive their youth, the best times of their lives.  (more…)

HIS big mouth has put Antonio Trillanes 4th in another big trouble, this time for allegedly violating the nation’s anti-sedition laws.

The non-lawyer forgot or didn’t know — perhaps in his panic or shock over President Duterte’s move against him — that calling for the overthrow of a Philippine president other than through impeachment, violates our anti-sedition laws, which most countries also have.

Trillanes talked — or shrieked — too much in his daily press conferences against Duterte after the President voided his amnesty on September 4. His rantings against Duterte, according to a suit filed September 14 by former Negros congressman Jacinto Paras and three others, were in violation of the anti-sedition provisions of the Revised Penal Code (Article 142), or the listing of most crimes and the penalties for these.

These among others clearly specify that to incite “people against the lawful authorities” is sedition and punishable from six months to six years imprisonment.

Duterte issued his proclamation against Trillanes, but then asked the courts to issue the warrant of arrest. Obviously afraid of spending a single night in some grubby police jail, Trillanes has holed up in the Senate (for the 15th day today), and threw vitriol against the President, calling for his overthrow almost every day.

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