A startling radio interview
I doff my hat to my fellow The Freeman writer in Sir Leo Lastimosa for his resourcefulness in giving air time, in his DYAB radio program, to a certain Juanito Magbanua yesterday morning. The latter claimed to be the spokesperson of the so-called Apolinario Gatmaitan Command of the New People’s Army, the armed sector of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the Negros provinces. Sir Leo and ABS-CBN (short for Alto Broadcasting System-Chronicle Broadcasting Network) scored well in that broadcast master stroke. Many listeners of Sir Leo who do not believe in the communist ideology must have felt a huge amount of unease to hear the voice of discord. The interview was not done in a sensational manner and it tempered the otherwise brutal image of the acknowledged rebels. On the other hand, the libertarians among his radio and television following welcomed the opportunity to listen to some issues espoused by those who have continued in the last half a century to challenge the establishment.
Mr. Magbanua talked like an Ilonggo. That was my immediate impression of the communist ideologue. His intonation seemed to reveal his regional orientation although a smattering of Tagalog dialect spliced his exposition telling me somehow that he might not be a native Negrense. In substance, the way he couched whatever he wanted to say was a study of careful projection because he managed to indicate a deep understanding of our country’s social ills enough to tweet at some pronouncements of President Rodrigo Duterte. Or it could also be the hard and scarred lessons he painfully imbibed from their struggles that made him sound like a learned propagandist. Or Mr. Magbanua could simply be a corruption of a James Dean starrer, “rebel with(out) a cause”.
In any case, two of the things the NPA spokesman mentioned riveted my attention. Here is the first. While belying the recent assertion made by the Armed Forces of the Philippines that the communists are extorting money from politicians as campaign permit fee of some kind, he said that indeed they are getting voluntary contributions from some candidates. The voluntariness of the supposed contribution is not yet a proven fact. If true, this is of far reaching implication. It is very bad to have some persons seeking elective government positions to be sympathetic to Karl Marx’s political proposition; it is criminal for them to sponsor an ideology that seeks to oust our form of government and replace it with something else that is perceived to be godless. Even if it will be almost impossible for intelligence agencies to validate this startling Magbanua claim, it is a serious revelation demanding most intense investigation. Our armed forces, the police authorities and everyone else including civilians have the duty to identify these infidels and save our democracy from possible perdition.
I have noted President Duterte make a number of unpresidential declarations (to say the least) in the past. Repeating them here is not useful although for purposes of this column today let me refer to the Malacanang claim that forty per cent of the NPA’s are fagots. The president’s attack was uncalled for. It did not improve the state’s campaign against rebellion nor hurt the insurgents in any way. This is the second issue where Magbanua scored. He seized the opportunity to show that our president has been making baseless assertions. The communist propagandist belabored the point. In his view, the president is so untruthful that many of our people have lost trust in him.
President Duterte must take a clue from the Magbanua statements. It is important that for the president to keep our confidence in him, he should wean himself from giving untruthful, mostly childish claims. If the president finds it impossible to avoid irresponsible pronouncements, then the people close to him must act as the first line critics to alert him against veering off important presidential course or each time a Juanito Magbanua has a chance to be heard, he will make a folly of our leader.
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