Other members of the House of Representatives who do not belong to the so-called "Makabayan bloc" should be ashamed of themselves for calling their colleagues such.
By using the term to describe the gang of France Castro, etc., these congressmen and congresswomen are in effect inferring that they themselves are not patriotic and are not for the Filipino people. Do they realize that?
Imagine calling a group nationalist when all they do is to heckle the administration--any administration--and toe the line of the Communist Party of the Philippines?
Talking about the CPP political stance, it is a fact that the party thrives on its duality. On a particular issue, it has a "political line" for its membership and sympathizers and a "mass line" to be published, propagated and disseminated to the public. Its duplicity is obvious, and it does not take a Jun Parlade to notice it, and expose it. He called the "Makabayan bloc" in Congress the Kamatayan bloc, and he was just being scientific about it.
I asked above if it was makabayan or makasarili?
The question surfaced anew with the release by the Supreme Court of its Writ of Amparo ruling in favor of Siegfred D. Deduro some 10 months ago, but was announced by the High Court only this week. Deduro was a party-list congressman in the 12th Congress who’s affiliated with Bayan Muna.
Compared to the Writ of habeas corpus, the Writ of amparo is relatively new, just like the writ of Kalikasan. Not many Filipinos know about this legal option.
A writ of amparo protects individuals whose right to life, liberty, or security is violated or threatened by unlawful acts of public officials, employees or private entities.
In a 39-page decision dated July 4, 2023, the high court declared that associating red-tagging and guilt by association jeopardizes a person’s fundamental rights to life, liberty, or security. The SC nullified the ruling of the Iloilo Regional Trial Court in dismissing the former lawmaker’s amparo petition.
According to court records, military officers led by Maj. Gen Eric Vinoya, chief of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division headquartered in Camp Jamindan in Capiz, explicitly said that Deduro and others are leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army. This is tantamount to red-tagging, a controversial activity because it is considered a grey area in legal parlance.
Deduro further said in his petition that posters were put up in different locations in Iloilo City with his image labeled as a criminal, terrorist, and member of the CPP-NPA-National Democratic Front of the Philippines. He said unidentified men followed him on several occasions. This prompted Deduro to file an amparo petition before the Iloilo Regional Trial Court, making Vinoya and other military officers the respondents.
The RTC, however, dismissed Deduro’s petition on Oct. 26, 2020, saying that the former lawmaker’s allegation of red-tagging was “baseless.” Deduro then elevated the petition before the SC, assailing the dismissal of the RTC.
The SC said red-tagging depicts a “likely precursor to abduction or extrajudicial killing (EJK),” citing previous cases of enforced disappearances.
“The foregoing accounts of red-tagging depict it as a likely precursor to abduction or extrajudicial killing. Being associated with communists or terrorists makes the red-tagged person a target of vigilantes, paramilitary groups, or even State agents,” the SC said.
“Thus, it is easy to comprehend how a person may, in certain circumstances, develop or harbor fear that being red-tagged places his or her life or security in peril,“ it added.
The SC then ordered the regional trial court to conduct a summary hearing regarding the amparo petition. Since the RTC will still conduct a summary hearing on the amparo petition of Deduro, this case is still very much in play, with its resolution yet far away into the future. The magistrates only defined what red-tagging is, and remanded the case to the RTC.
Why, then, is the so-called Makabayan bloc moving for the abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)? The task force is the group’s main adversary in the ongoing debate about red-tagging.
If you abolish the NTF-ELCAC, you also scrap its relevant poverty-reducing projects in the countryside such as water supply, roads, etc. that directly benefit the poor. Abolition of the task force will also mean that one of the NDF’s most effective enemies will be marginalized, which is the objective of the Front’s operatives in the legal, parliamentary struggle—now called congressmen and congresswomen.
The shameful stance is to promote their own interest, even if the poor in far-flung barangays are deprived of water, power, mobility and livelihood. That is why the whole idea is a fake “makabayan” and a genuine “makasarili.”
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