Red recruitment

It looks like sanity is starting to prevail and government security forces are approaching reports of a supposed plot to oust President Duterte with prudence.

The Philippine National Police is meeting with officials of the Commission on Higher Education and administrators of 18 universities and colleges regarding reports of recruitment being conducted in the schools by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) mostly through film showings.

If the Armed Forces of the Philippines wants to preserve its credibility and the public trust that it has regained in recent years, it should join the dialogue and even backpedal like mad from its claim about a Red October plot to oust Duterte.

Already, the AFP has become the butt of jokes after its top officers admitted at a congressional budget hearing that the opposition Liberal Party and Magdalo party-list were in fact not linked to Red October.

As for the Reds, it’s a rebel group, the members are rebelling, and what’s the goal of a rebellion?

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The communists have been recruiting at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City even when I was a student ages ago, when there were frequent mass actions on campus with the participants waving red flags.

A dear friend was recruited, leaving me to do our joint term paper in one class because of her frequent absences. At least she didn’t suffer the fate of UP activists Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, who remain missing after being kidnapped by the military on orders (as established by the Malolos trial court) of the unapologetic “Butcher” of Bulacan Jovito Palparan.

I learned about my classmate’s recruitment only when I became a reporter, and state intelligence agents told me she was on their list of suspected New People’s Army amazons or at the very least an NPA sympathizer. There were other personalities high on their target list, however, and she was spared from arrest.

I’m not the only one whose reaction to military reports of communist recruitment in UP Diliman and Manila (UP Los Baños students are reportedly complaining about their school’s exclusion from the list) is: so what else is new? Or, as a colleague often says when presented with stale news – “si Rizal, patay na” – asking if the bearer of the old news is aware that Jose Rizal is dead.

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Even the PNP spokesman, Chief Superintendent Benigno Durana, says as much. It’s the AFP, not the PNP that is accused of engaging in Red-baiting, Durana stressed at the outset as he fielded questions from us on “The Chiefs” last Friday on Cignal TV’s One News channel.

The PNP has related intelligence information on communist recruitment in certain schools, Durana told us. He wouldn’t categorically say if the intel is A-1 or raw F-6. But he said a more prudent approach would have been for the AFP to meet with the administrators of the 18 universities and colleges on the list instead of publicly identifying the schools.

Durana also said that while the communists may be engaged in continuing recruitment and the objective of a rebellion is to overthrow the government, they don’t have the capability to succeed.

But he echoed a warning from PNP chief Oscar Albayalde, that there are limits to academic freedom, and professors who incite their students to rebel against the government can face administrative and other sanctions.

UP Diliman chancellor Michael Tan, who was also a guest on The Chiefs together with filmmaker Hector Barretto Calma, fears that such warnings can endanger the flourishing of critical thinking and lead to a witch-hunt.

Who will draw the line between criticizing the government and inciting to rebellion or sedition? And what could be the impact of fear on critical thinking and innovation?

Tan brought with him to The Chiefs a replica of the Filipino-built Maya nanosatellite, which was developed under a program jointly carried out by UP and the Department of Science and Technology together with Japan’s Kyushu Institute of Technology. Maya-1 was launched into space on June 29 this year at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and deployed into orbit from the International Space Station on Aug. 10. It measures only 10 x 10 x 11.35 cm and weighs just 1.11 kilograms.

What’s the connection of Maya-1 with Red October? Not that “maya” is Filipino for sparrow; the CPP’s urban hit squad Sparrow Unit has nothing to do with it. Tan explained that unfettered critical and creative thinking made Maya-1 possible.

Calma, who will soon be showing in regular cinemas his movie about an NPA amazon that has a PG rating from the MTRCB, pointed out that there have been more showings of documentaries about martial law in schools because of two recent events: the anniversary of the declaration of martial law last month, and that tete-a-tete uploaded on Facebook between Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and his father’s former defense chief, Juan Ponce Enrile.

The historical revisionism espoused by the two had the effect of heightening student interest in finding out the truth about what happened during Marcos’ martial law, Calma and Tan told us. It has nothing to do with any ouster plot and the CPP is not behind the film showings, the two stressed.

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Among the presidents, Duterte, who describes himself as a socialist in his youth, can be considered to be the most sympathetic to the communists. He brought them into his Cabinet, allowed one of their front organizations to occupy a housing project for military and police, and revived the peace negotiations (now stalled again).

So Duterte should be keenly aware of the root causes of the communist rebellion in our country, and the fact that CPP members and sympathizers in the Philippines are unlike those in communist countries past and present.

(Related to this, my memory is starting to fail me: contrary to what I wrote, Russian Ambassador Igor Khovaev did not describe himself as a communist. What he told me, off-camera, was, “I am a guy who was born and raised in a communist country.” Last week he clarified to me that his adherence is “to only one ideology – the national interests of my country.” My apologies to the ambassador.)

The communist Soviet Union imploded. It’s unlikely that communism as an ideology will gain enough adherents, even among the most impressionable Filipino youths, to succeed in this country. But Red-baiting can fuel suspicions that someone is laying the groundwork for a crackdown on political dissent.

Our recent history shows that such a crackdown can make a rebel movement stronger.

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Oops: The National Day of South Korea is on Oct. 3, not Oct. 4. Sorry, my mistake.