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THE Interior and Local Government secretary Benhur Abalos’ campaign to get the Philippine National Police’s 479 generals and colonels to submit this only-in-the-Philippines thing called “courtesy resignations” — wholeheartedly backed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — will be among this administration’s colossal governance blunders.

Talk of historical irony. It was Marcos’ nemesis who invented this fiction of courtesy resignation.

“Courtesy resignation” is the pulled-out-of-thin-air invention that President Corazon Aquino used in her Proclamation 1, issued Feb. 25, 1986, or the day she claimed to have assumed the presidency. In that proclamation, she said: “As a first step to restore public confidence, I expect all appointed public officials to submit their courtesy resignations beginning with members of the Supreme Court.”

“Courtesy resignation” was obviously a public relations spin for Aquino’s dictatorial order: “All you Marcos minions, including the Supreme Court, step down now!” The Supreme Court justices of course ignored Aquino’s order and so did Marcos Cabinet ministers and deputies who simply didn’t go to office, didn’t even bother to submit “courtesy resignations” and faded away from the government — refusing to pay “courtesy” to the new one-woman ruler. Even the highest ranking official after Marcos, Prime Minister Cesar Virata refused to vacate his post, pointing out that it wasn’t Marcos who appointed him but members of the Batasan Pambansa.

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IN a span of just a week, a tsunami of demoralization has hit the police and the military.

This was the result, first, of an ill-advised move by Local Government and Interior Secretary Benjamin “Benhur” Abalos Jr. to publicly “persuade” police generals and colonels to submit “courtesy resignations” so he could fire those officials suspected of corruption or involvement in illegal drugs.

Their fate though would be decided by a five-man board, including retired generals — practically a star chamber that has no basis in the Constitution or any law. While police officials expressed support for it of course — lest their refusal be taken as evidence of their guilt — they view it as an attack on the integrity of the entire officers’ corps of the Philippine National Police, as it declares that they are guilty until proven innocent.

The second trigger has been Marcos’ appointment as Armed Forces chief of staff (AFPCOS) on January 6 of Gen. Andres Centino — whom he had removed from his post two months after he assumed office in July 1 — replacing him with Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro. Apparently in protest at the appointment, Jose Faustino, the defense department officer in charge and several other DND officials, submitted their resignations. Marcos has neither accepted nor rejected these so far.

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THE gargantuan mess that shut down our international airports on, of all days, New Year’s Day, should be a slap on our nation’s face. It was a harsh reminder that in contrast to most of our neighbors, we have neglected to build what is indubitably a crucial element of economic growth: an efficient, no-fail international airport.

The Manila International Airport in fact is a symbol of our economic decay over the years. Manila had the first modern international airport when it started operations in 1961 — when we were the most developed country in Asia — thanks to the runway the US built in the latter years of World War 2 to accommodate even its biggest bombers, positioned to destroy Japan.

Six decades later our international airport still uses basically the same runway, with the main addition being the construction of two new terminals, Terminal 2 in 1999 and 3 in 2008, after useless legal battles against it.

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THAT’s the tack that President Marcos Jr.’s airport officials, particularly his Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista, are using to explain the unprecedented shutdown of the Philippines’ airspace on New Year’s Day, which resulted in the cancellation of flights to and from Manila, stranding 60,000 passengers.

They claimed that the country’s Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) system conked out because its two power supplies failed, that it was an old system.

What really happened was an unbelievable howler: airport technicians plugged the 220-volt system to a 380-volt power line, damaging it.

Yet Bautista’s explanation was preposterous; he claimed the CNS/ATM system that the previous Duterte administration bought and installed was outdated.

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THERE are three crucial points President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. must keep in mind, or work for, in his meetings in China, especially with its President Xi Jinping. I didn’t pull these points out of thin air but are based on the intensive research I did in 2014-2016 that was the basis of my book, Debacle: The Aquino Regime’s Scarborough Fiasco and the South China Sea Arbitration Deception.*

First, forget — and bury 6 feet under — the silliness that is the 2016 arbitration ruling by a three-man panel, which the Aquino 3rd regime itself appointed. Six years after it was handed down, the world has forgotten about it. Except, of course, the US (with its usual minions), which after all maneuvered the witless President Aquino 3rd into filing the case, as a smokescreen for his colossal fiasco of losing Scarborough Shoal in the standoff with China in 2012 and in his naiveté that it would recover that lost territory.

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I DON’T think most people know it, and I’m sure our professional historians will disagree with me on this claim. No, the singular event that shaped Philippine post-war history wasn’t the imposition of martial law in 1972, the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr., or even the 1986 EDSA revolt.

These were all consequences in the chain of events triggered by this bold but diabolical attempt at changing history: the bombing on Aug. 21, 1971 by Communist Party activists, directed by its chairman Jose Ma. Sison, of the Liberal Party’s last election rally for the 1971 senatorial elections. Without it, there would not have been martial law nor the EDSA revolt.

The chain of events triggered by that terrorist attack would eventually lead to the deep 1983-1984 economic-political crisis that contracted our economy by an unprecedented 14 percent. That meant the country lost 5 full years of growth — an epoch in economic terms. This largely explains why we became laggards in an energetic region in which the so-called Asian tigers had emerged.

This is the reason why I used the space in my last three columns posting excerpts from US journalist Gregg Jones’ 1989 book Red Revolution, the most comprehensive, investigative account of Sison’s most evil deed. The chapter “Ghosts of Plaza Miranda” establishes without an iota of a doubt that it was the Communist Party under Sison that was responsible for it.

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EXCERPTS from Gregg Jones’ ‘Red Revolution’:

The secret of Plaza Miranda might have died with Danny Cordero in the Isabela jungle if not for the troubled consciences of a few young party officials privy to the truth. Some of the CPP’s politburo members were horrified by the carnage at Plaza Miranda.

They were supposed to be fighting a people’s war against fascist landlords and greedy imperialists, not against liberal politicians. Indeed, the party was secretly working with the Liberal Party to undermine Marcos.

How, these CPP officials agonized, could such an attack on civilians — on allies — be justified? Silently, some of the communist leaders nursed serious qualms about the bombing. It was not until some months later that one of the politburo members got up the courage to discuss the subject with Sison.

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EXCERPTS from Gregg Jones’ ‘Red Revolution’:

In mid-August 1971, CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) central committee member Reuben Guevarra arrived in Manila for discussions with party officials. Guevarra was a member of the CPP’s powerful military commission and was the political officer in charge of the northern Luzon region, which included the Isabela guerrilla front.

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SO long indeed does Truth overtake Lie.

In one of his recent columns, Ambeth Ocampo reported that it was one Joseph Salice who in his 2017 PhD thesis provided evidence that it was Jose Ma. Sison who ordered his closest Communist Party cadres to bomb the opposition miting de avance.

This is wrong. Salice relied almost entirely on his conclusions on journalist Gregg Jones’ book, Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement published 28 years ago, in 1989.

It is a remarkable, courageous piece of investigative journalism, not only because of its wealth of detail that he managed to get ranking Communist Party leaders to reveal. He published the book when Marcos’ portrayal as Devil Incarnate was at its height, so few believed his revelations. It was a book ahead of its time.

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ONE obvious problem in the debate over the creation of the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is that President Marcos Jr., his political lieutenants and economic managers have been unable to communicate what the MIF proposal involves in detail.

They have overestimated Marcos’ political support, and underestimated those very much against him and his family, and thus miscalculated that it would be a breeze to pass the law creating it. While he won with 59 percent of the votes, his rival had 30 percent. This is still a substantial sector which, more importantly, includes the noisy, chattering class with the most access to media. I haven’t heard of a Yellow believer supporting the plan, while the Yellow and Red ideologues were quick to condemn it without even reading the bill.

Marcos and his officials had also wrongly thought that the decades-long propaganda against the martial law regime had been buried by his landslide victory. Marcos and his family indeed appear to be unconcerned about undertaking a program to debunk the anti-Marcos lies spread, and still being disseminated, by the Reds and the Yellows.

A good example is that even an economist — note that he was even awarded the stature of a National Scientist — claimed the SWF would extend “behest loans” to favored businessmen as what allegedly happened during martial law.

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