I HAVE written two columns debunking the ruling of Manila Trial Court Judge Marlo Magdoza-Malagar that the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed group, the New People's Army,…

DEFINITELY. But of course I mean only as secretary of the Agriculture department, since after 100 days this has proven to be a very wrong move.

In June, days before he assumed office, Marcos said: “It’s important that the president take that portfolio not only to make it clear to everyone what high priority we put to the agricultural sector, but also as a practical matter, so that things move quickly.”

It turns out that the Agriculture department in practice has become his administration’s lowest priority, with the President, sources in that department say, having visited its headquarters only twice. The first was on July 4, his first and only meeting with the department’s executive committee. And the second, a week later, but to meet only with his representative Leocadio Sebastian (who was fired a month later) and a few directors.

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ONE big failure of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. in his first 100 days in power is this: He has failed to connect with the masses, which down the road could weaken his political base, making it harder for him to govern the country. Instead, his optics have portrayed him as among the country’s elite, in stark contrast to his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte’s image as, yes, a politician, but one with the masses, who knows what he masses feel.

What else would one expect, with images of him with this magnate-friends drinking wine as soon as it became clear he would be winning the election, of his luxurious inauguration and birthday parties, and singing heartily at a senator’s posh birthday celebration.

Any images of him showing concern for the poor, or those suffering from some calamity in these first 100 days? None. Although he did an aerial inspection of the flooded areas in Central Luzon hit by typhoon Karding last month, he didn’t land in any place, according to him, “so that local authorities can focus relief efforts need not welcome him.” That may be true, but that won’t endear him to the masses.

OK, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. is a cousin of House Speaker Martin Romualdez, so we shouldn’t begrudge the latter’s praising his first 100 days to high heavens. But Marcos’ first 100 days haven’t been at all impressive: they even reveal serious flaws and failures in his presidency so far.

At the outset though, I have to emphasize that rating a presidency after its first 100 days can’t yield authoritative conclusions. The period is too short to really evaluate how this president is managing an organization of one million employees, and directing the course of the ship of state.

This 100 days thing is actually another US political tradition (the other is the SONA) we aped from our supposed tutors in democracy. President Franklin Roosevelt started this gimmick, in his case a clever one since he challenged Congress at the start of his term in 1933 to pass 15 laws in three months (turned into the more catchy 100 days) to address the Great Depression at the time. It did.

Maybe his speechwriter took a cue from Roosevelt, as Marcos in his first SONA listed 19 bills he asked Congress, both chambers of which he incontrovertibly controls, to enact.

WHATEVER the Left propagandists and bleeding-heart liberals claim are the serious dangers of what is unfortunately called “red-tagging,” such public identification of organizations and individuals as being fronts or members of the Communist Party, if it had been done in the 1970s with the same intensity that it is being done today, I wouldn’t have become a party cadre, and remain one for six years.

And probably neither would the 10,000 youths recruited by the party, many to die tragic, really useless deaths in some godforsaken jungle and paddy field.

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ON Monday, I discussed how utterly absurd was Judge Marlo Magdoza-Malagar’s decision not to declare the Communist Party and the New People’s Army as terrorist organizations. Out of the thousands of incidents of CPP-NPA attacks on our uniformed men and civilians who were unwilling to support them — amounting to 30,000 casualties — she limits her evaluation to only nine cases — yes just nine, all occurring in 2020 and 2021 — to determine whether they are terrorist groups.

And absurdity piled on absurdity, she says these nine incidents could not make the CPP-NPA terrorists since they are not “widespread” as they involved only 12 Filipinos out of the 100 million Philippine population!

But not only that, Malagar’s decision itself shows her sympathetic regard for the communist movement, and her total ignorance of the issue — terrorism — that she was supposed to study.

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MOREOVER, Regional Trial Court Judge Marlo Magdoza-Malagar’s decision that the Communist Party-New People’s Army are not terrorists reveals her total ignorance of what terrorism is and/or her bias for the communist insurgents. The Supreme Court should investigate this debasement of our justice system.

If the following isn’t absurd, I don’t know what is: Malagar claims that the reports of thousands of Filipinos killed by the CPP-NPA since their founding in the late 1960s are based on hearsay, which she cannot consider in her decision as these “have no probative value.”

She says, without explaining the criteria she used, that only nine incidents involving the killing of civilians — occurring only in 2019 and 2020 — can qualify as terrorist acts. However, practically in the same breath, she claims these can’t make her rule that the CPP-NPA are terrorists since the definition of terrorism is that such acts must be “widespread.”

HISTORIANS, especially those of the Yellow persuasion currently monopolizing the martial law discourse at the UP, Ateneo and UST, must investigate the claim — for me, a fact without an iota of doubt — that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was responsible for the Aug. 21, 1971 bombing of the opposition rally at Plaza Miranda.

They cannot bury their heads in the sand, or cover their eyes, and pretend that the CPP had nothing to do with it.

Nor can they claim it was an insignificant event in our political history. It was intended by its architect, the CPP chairman at that time, Jose Ma. Sison, as he had explained, “split the ruling classes” so they would fight each other to cause a “revolutionary flow.”

In 1989, American journalist Gregg Jones published a book Red Revolution, which incontrovertibly showed that it was the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) that undertook August 21 1971 the bombing of the Liberal Party’s main electoral rally.

That was the vilest false-flag operation ever undertaken in this country. Even as Jones was largely sympathetic to the Communist insurgency, seeing it as a legitimate revolutionary movement against the dictatorship, his book had a chapter titled “Ghosts of Plaza Miranda.” There, he said the perpetrator was the CPP, as ordered by its chairman then Jose Ma. Sison. The book provided details on how the Plaza Miranda was planned and executed, the personalities involved, based on his interviews with officials at the Central Committee level.

A pioneer in modern terrorism

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THAT 30,000 figure is based on the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ official list of soldiers killed by the New People’s Army totaling 12,861 from 1975 to 2015; my estimate is that the number of police casualties is the same, and half that the number of village militia and “uncooperative” civilians executed by the communists.

(The killing continues, but we have no data on the number of killed from 2016 to yesterday.)

Note that 30,000 is 10 times the 3,000 allegedly killed by martial law forces according to the Human Rights Victims Compensation Board (and given P2 million each in “compensation” by a law pushed by President Aquino 3rd in 2015).