Butcher, patriot

You have to hand it to the retired generals and active officers who have expressed their support for retired Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan: they have the guts to come out openly in defense of their beliefs, no matter how seemingly unpopular.

But then they are members of the uniformed services, not politicians. Compare their clear, unwavering support for Palparan to the gutless flip-flopping, attempts at deniability and downright lies we’ve been getting from Malacañang and the bosses of the Liberal Party (LP) on Charter change and the possibility of lifting President Aquino’s term limit.

You can understand why some officers afflicted with a messianic complex (now infecting P-Noy like Ebola) would want to give the civilian leadership a good whipping by staging a coup d’etat.

If the coup attempt fails, the officers can at least have some fun unnerving the political leadership. In the Arroyo administration, one of its staunch opponents used to say that if he wanted to annoy the government, all he had to do was invite a small group to a gathering and whisper “coup!” – his version of “boo!” – and government forces would be placed on red alert.

So far the coup stories these days have been nothing but bum steers, involving the usual bored characters dreaming of quick fixes to complex national problems.

And so far, not even the usual suspects are planting naughty rumors about a brewing coup over the arrest, finally, of the Army general called “The Butcher” by his favorite targets, left-wing militants.

But the state’s treatment of Palparan is being closely watched by certain members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police. Three decades after the end of martial law, there are still elements within the AFP and PNP who believe Palparan’s methods are necessary evils.

You’d be surprised to find out how high up in the security establishment such sentiments go, and who are some of the silent sympathizers. No, they’re not among the “KSP” or kulang sa pansin who like to make coup noises.

Having talked to several of these silent sympathizers, I wasn’t surprised that retired generals have come out openly to support Palparan, calling him a true patriot. Dozens of them even faced off with the angry activists who staged a rally outside the Malolos City courthouse the other day, looking like they wanted to lynch Palparan as he was brought there for his arraignment.

*   *   *

A woman who has been an activist since her university days told me that seeing Palparan in detention in Bulacan – all skin and bones, haggard, clad in what looked like a hospital gown that made him seem like a patient in the ICU – she was reminded of Holocaust victims’ descriptions of the banality of evil.

Palparan tends to elicit such comparisons from the groups that dubbed him berdugo in the areas where he served as military commander.

The retired generals and active elements in the AFP and PNP say the berdugo tag is unfair and Palparan deserves his day in court.

We can guess what Palparan’s defense will be: everything he did as a military officer was in the line of duty, and consistent with his mission of keeping the nation safe from its enemies.

Palparan has always denied involvement in the kidnapping and alleged rape and torture of University of the Philippines students Sherilyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño. The two girls, now among the Philippines’ desaparecidos, were suspected of being communist sympathizers. They were seized by gunmen on June 26, 2006 while doing fieldwork in Hagonoy, Bulacan.

A month later, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in her State of the Nation Address, praised Palparan, saying he “would not stop until our communities are free from the night of terror and awaken to the dawning of justice and freedom.”

In the gallery, Palparan stood up and acknowledged the praise with a wave to GMA and the crowd.

GMA had her own group of loyalists in the military and police who probably advised her that the berdugo deserved the public praise.

That sentiment, AFP and PNP members have told me, did not go away with the restoration of democracy in 1986.

*   *   *

Judging from the political success of Dirty Harry types in this country, we can surmise that the sentiment is shared by many Filipinos.

Just look at the composition of the Senate and the House of Representatives since 1987 and you will see a validation of this sentiment.

Palparan himself won a House seat as the first nominee of the Bantay party list in the 14th Congress.

In several areas, individuals who organized grassroots-based vigilante groups to eliminate communist presence in their communities were rewarded by residents with election to the top posts in their local government.

The enduring power of Juan Ponce Enrile, architect of martial law, is testament to the reality that Filipinos are slow in condemning human rights violations in the name of national security.

Such sentiments develop when law enforcement is weak and the judicial system is unreliable, and when the enemy is waging asymmetrical warfare. Citizens are then willing to look the other way when security forces resort to extrajudicial methods of keeping the public safe from violence, rebel extortion and ordinary crimes.

How do you deal, for example, with people who torch buses, trucks and other private property and then melt back into their mountain lairs because you won’t give in to their “revolutionary taxation?”

Members of the Presidential Security Group during Corazon Aquino’s presidency used to regale the press corps with stories of bravery in the conflict zones of Mindanao. In retaliation for the decapitation of soldiers, they said, they cut off the ears of slain Islamic extrmists and pickled the lobes in vinegar. Soldiers newly assigned to the frontlines were made to eat the earlobes for courage, the PSG men narrated.

I don’t think they were joking.

That’s the culture that bred Palparan and accepted his methods of fighting a dirty war. And the culture is still around.