GMA foils Madrid-type terrorist ‘plot’, but FPJ still ahead in polls

PISTON-KMU and other radical jeepney groups went ahead with their tigil-pasada strike yesterday, but despite the fact that it hurt some areas in Metro Manila and, more so, certain provincial routes, causing inconvenience to workers and employees, the effort was a flop.

In places where demonstrators threw themselves on the street to block traffic, but not for long, it was noticeable that most of the protesters were young people, students and activists apparently, not jeepney drivers.

Oh, well. With those red banners flying, what did we expect?

As for the 35th founding anniversary of the Communist New People’s Army last Monday, aside from two attacks in which a few soldiers and policemen died, while inflicting heavy casualties on the raiders, the Day came and went without any "great offensive" launched by the rebels. But let’s not get complacent. Despite the current excitement over Islamic terrorism, the NPA remains the more deadly long-term threat. If you noticed the NPA’s "publicity photos", young boys described as "recruits" are holding the ugly-looking Armalites and sub-machineguns. Kids are the easiest to recruit. Give ’em a gun, the feeling of power, and they’ll kill without mercy. In guerrilla war, these children are the most bloodthirsty of the lot.

When we were covering the fighting in the former French Indo-China countries – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos – we were absolutely terrified of those kid cadres, toting lethal AK-47s and B-42 hand-held rocket launchers. When they were spotted in the ranks of the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao, this was a "heads-up" signal for us to dive for cover.

Kids with guns are completely ruthless. Slaying people for them is a game, and they believe themselves invincible – slated to live forever. Older guerrillas think before they kill, if killing is deemed necessary. That’s the lesson we learned in the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia, and in the Plain de Jarres and Plain de Jonc in Laos.

Do the NPA claim to have "swollen" in numbers to 11,000 cadres? Their propaganda arithmetic may be screwy, but make no mistake – they’re deadly. Worst of all, they disrupt the economic life of the nation, starting with the very poor themselves. In Bicol provinces – would you believe? – those avowed protectors of the peasantry "tax" farmers, with a single hectare to cultivate the equivalent of "one sack of rice" per harvest. Sanamagan! How many sacks of rice can a dirt-poor peasant harvest from one hectare of land? Since there are, at most, only three harvests of rice per annum, this means the farmer must cough up three sacks of rice – food snatched from the mouths of his own family. For what? To "contribute" to the Revolution, which is designed to save him.

Remember. The bigger the victim, the bigger the taxes. The NPA won’t ever surrender, nor sincerely negotiate peace. Why give up a multimillion-peso industry?

* * *

It was all over the wire-services yesterday, including the globe-girdling British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC). The president announced her government had foiled a terrorist plot to bomb Metro Manila Madrid-style, carrying out a series of arrests of Abu Sayyaf terrorists and seizing more than 80 pounds of explosives.

What’s interesting is that President GMA averred that one of the arrested men had claimed that he was among those responsible for the February 27 explosion and sinking of the WGA Superferry in which more than 100 passengers lost their lives. The Abu Sayyaf had, almost immediately after that terrible disaster, claimed "credit" for the sinking in Manila Bay – but the government, military, and in truth, the public in general, pooh-poohed the claim.

Even the grieving families of the victims didn’t seem to believe the Islamic terrorists had the ability to do it. Hence, there was no wave of revulsion and indignation, like that among the Spanish people in the wake of the horrible March 11 Madrid train bombings.

I was in Madrid, seeing those scenes of mind-boggling carnage, then witnessing millions of Madrileños in the streets despite a heavy downpour (2.3 million of them in the capital) angrily protesting the outrage and vowing to get the terrorists.

TVE, television España, outdid itself covering those furious demonstrations, flashing its roving camera eye from city to city; projecting the images to all Spain and the planet.

Eleven million Spaniards and foreign sympathizers were in the streets, chanting their fury, from Barcelona to Zaragosa, Teruel, Sevilla, Cadiz, Cordoba, Toledo, Valencia, Santiago de Compostela, and so on. It had been a stunning example of television wizardry which brought all these protest marches into your living room simultaneously.

But our Superferry tragedy? I guess the sinking of the MV Doña Paz some years ago, which took more than 1,000 passengers to a watery grave in the world’s worst maritime peacetime "accident", had numbed our public sensibilities.

Did the Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf really blow up the Superferry? The figure for the "dead" in Estacion Atocha, El Pozo and Santa Eugenia train bombings in Madrid has been revised downwards from 201 to 190. If so, in the doomed Superferry we lost at least half that number in one blow – 100 men, women, children and babies. The police and military are now examining the possibility that Islamic terrorists (like the Moroccan bunch linked to al-Qaeda in Spain) might have done the deed.

* * *

Among those captured by our police intelligence agents was the Abu Sayyaf "executioner" who had allegedly beheaded the American hostage, Guillermo Sobero, in Basilan.

PNP Director-General Hermogenes "Jun" Ebdane and PNP Intelligence Group Director (Chief Supt.) Ismael Rafanan have asserted all four captured ASG cadres had warrants of arrest on their heads for their alleged participation in the kidnappings which gained us worldwide notoriety – those pulled off in Sipadan resort in Sabah, Malaysia, and the Dos Palmas Resort in Palawan.

The Abu toughie arrested, Alhamser Manatad Limbong, had a colorful nom de guerre like "Al Musa", "Hassan", "Sayyaf Kosovo" and was fingered as the murderer who had beheaded Sobero in Basilan. He was and also being tagged as having been involved in the bombing incident in Malagutay, Zamboanga City which killed an American serviceman (in October 2002). If this is true, he’s a big fish "terrorist", indeed.

The others collared in raids in Makati and Quezon City were Redendo Cain Dellos a.k.a. Habil Akmad Dellosa, supposedly trained by an Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah instructor in January 2003 in Jolo, with further explosives training in Buti, Lanao del Sur; Abdurasid Banjeng Lim, alias Abu Haifa, belonging to the ASG Urban Commando, a suspect in the Dos Palmas kidnapping; and finally Radzmar Sangkula Jul a.k.a. Michael Saavedra, ASG explosives trainor, and a suspect in the March 2000 kidnapping of 53 hostages in Tumahubong, Basilan.

I can only say: Go get ’em, Gloria Emperadora. Borrow that kamay na bakal from your bête noir, Ping Lacson. Terrorism must be fought with every weapon at our command, relentlessly, without let-up.

Yet, the mailed fist is getting confused with the "peace branch" in the other hand. Sucking up to Malaysian observers, led by a general no less, who came to check on what’s going on in Mindanao, visiting guerrilla camps down south, the GMA government has loudly reiterated its eagerness to forge a "peace deal" with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). In the first place, why are friendly Malaysian Muslim officers "touring" Islamic guerrilla camps in our country, as if rebel enclaves in our sovereign territory were tourist resorts? The meddling by foreign Muslims and, in truth, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is what emboldens our rebels.

The OIC and the Malaysians provide the insurgents, who have been as murderous as the Abu Sayyaf, with a blanket of protection – abetted by the Surrender Gang in the GMA government.

Last Saturday, I met National Security Adviser (Secretary) Norberto Gonzales, in Cebu along with Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita. Bert Gonzales told me they had located two "terrorist training camps" in Mindanao, but before he could give their locations he had been hushed up by DND Secretary (former General and Congressman) Ermita.

Don’t tell me those terrorist training camps were being operated by the Abu Sayyaf – not the MILF and the Jemaah Islamiyah. Since the MILF claims a 12,000-man "army", and those camps are in their sector, how could those training spots flourish without their cooperation, even supervision? If we don’t crush those camps now, the terrorists being primed inside them will have scampered off to do mischief, not only in Metro Manila but in surrounding Asian countries.

Yet we bleat about "peace" and hold off from striking until after the elections? Too late means too late – and the blood of the victims of the assassins will be on our heads. In fact, they may get our heads.

* * *

For all his reversals in Cebu, and the already visible cracks in his command structure, FPJ is still ahead of GMA in recent "polls".

One unofficial survey taken by a religious group reportedly puts him 18 percent ahead of the defending champ, La Presidenta. Was this group the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC)? Further this affiant sayeth not.

Is there a new Social Weather Stations (SWS) coming out, giving Ronnie Poe a bigger lead than that? Abangan. I can’t say either. But that’s the word spreading like wildfire. Remember, even if rosy statistics spill out, that GMA still enjoys the Equity of the Incumbent, not to mention those snide remarks about the Majority of the Comelec.

Let me repeat, as a cautionary word, what I’ve written before. Panday would do well to assert himself as the Boss on the KNP Opposition, not someone jerked around a cordon sanitaire which may be the "invisible government", – aw shucks, "visible government", really – if FPJ becomes President.

There was a weird incident which took place last Monday when Ronnie presided over the gathering in the Club Filipino in which several congressmen and local officials belonging to the ruling Lakas-CMD of La Gloria, Danding’s NPC (Nationalist People’s Coalition) and the Liberal Party, defected to him and joined his pangkat.

Ronnie Poe saw gubernatorial candidate Marietta Primicias-Goco and hugged her tight, assuring her that she is his candidate and that he would "raise her hand" for the governorship of Pangasinan.

Then there ensued a funny scene. Two officious guys whom the Pangasinenses present called the Hawi Boys (don’t know what that means), whom we’ll call V.D. and J.R., tried to drag FPJ away from Marietta.

To his credit, FPJ shrugged off their attempts, and that of their real chieftains whom the Pangasinenses described as the ASO Bunch (Angara-Sotto-Oreta), to dissuade him from proclaiming Marietta Primicias-Goco. The trouble is that when FPJ with Marietta is tow, proceeded to a private room in the Club for an "enactment" of the hand-raising, the event as inexplicably "censored". Here’s how it went: Into the room went FPJ, accompanied by his grise eminence Senator Tito Sotto, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imee Marcos, and Marietta and her partner candidate for Vice Governor Chris Mendoza.

When FPJ was about to raise Marietta’s and Chris’ hands for the sake of recording the event in photographs for press release, the so-called Hawi Boys blocked the personal photographers of Marietta, denying them entry into the room. Why? The ASO group, those present reported to this writer, then beckoned the "official" KNP photographer to snap the pictures instead. Flash. Flash. Whaddya know? As soon as the KNP photographer left the room, the Hawi Boys intercepted him and "confiscated" his film.

The result? No photographs of the "proclamation" by FPJ of Goco and Mendoza. As if it had never happened. Did happy FPJ, who left the room convinced he had done what’s right, know about this frustration of his activity? Is this now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t a foretaste of his leadership?

In a subsequent showdown it must be said, Congresswoman Imee Marcos, who after all is chairperson of KNP Region 1, firmly defended Marietta in the KNP executive committee meeting with Makati Mayor Jojo Binay and Horacio "Boy" Morales. Sources say the KNP Execom agreed to throw its full support behind Marietta Primicias-Goco’s candidacy. Yet, there’s been no release of that "missing" proclamation photograph. Sus, will the ASO Gang have the last word?

* * *

Is it true then that ex-Executive Secretary and Senator Ed Angara (who was out in the cold but recently re-admitted by the Inner Circle when it was heard GMA had "offered" him a chair at her table) has joined Tito Sotto and Tessie Aquino-Oreta in a close-guarding every move of FPJ’s to the exclusion of any other?

I hope it’s not true, despite all the symptoms, that the ASO group had been negotiating with incumbent Governor Victor Agbayani, Lakas-CMD, who’s a die-hard for GMA, and a handful of Lakas mayors. For what? For themselves, not FPJ? Or for Agbayani to junk GMA in favor of FPJ – with Goco and Mendoza being "shut out"? Are Pangasinan’s gambling lords somewhere in this equation?

In the FPJ-Loren camp, I’m sorry to say, there are already tales circulating about how the same Hawi bunch tried to short-circuit Senator Serge Osmeña in Cebu.

Ronnie had wisely called on Serge to join him in Cebu – since the other Osmeñas were in separate camps (Tommy and Sonny for GMA, Lito for Raul Roco). Serge flew in to backstop Ronnie and Loren Legarda, but had to return to Manila the following day, but he made his mark. It’s unbelievable that Serge’s group clashed with the Hawi Boys. Weren’t they supposed to be on the same team? The top Hawi bruiser, V. D., didn’t even allow Senator Osmeña’s political officer to board the float of FPJ-Loren in the political caravan.

During the lunch hosted and arranged for by Serge in Toledo City (Cebu), the Senator briefed FPJ on how to conduct his campaign in the Visayas, particularly in Negros, Panay and Bohol.

FPJ showed Serge the campaign schedule prepared by the ASO group and Serge suggested that Ronnie not waste his time and resources on thinly-populated areas. FPJ agreed to scrap certain whistle-stops, but the ASO group reportedly resented this tampering with their "itinerary". They even tried, it’s said, to prevent FPJ from proclaiming Rene Relampagos as his Bohol gubernatorial candidate. FPJ, however, went ahead and batted for Relampagos all the way.

Is there trouble in the Paradise-bound Wagon? You betcha.

A final word: FPJ better go to Pangasinan. My count was incorrect. La Presidenta GMA has already "visited" Pangasinan nine times since February 10. She’s carpet-bombing all his support areas there.

Politics is war "without bloodshed", Otto Von Bismarck said. Alas, sometimes madugo, too.