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Letters .

THE stepped up redbaiting by the Armed Forces of the Philippines is a clear sign of the Duterte regime’s full engagement in facilitating the return of dictatorship and cementing the comeback of the Marcos family.

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There is no other way to view the successive statements of Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Carlito Galvez and Brig. Gen Antonio Parlade.

The Movement Against Tyranny condemns these military chiefs for their outlandish claims linking the legal political opposition to an armed conspiracy to oust President Rodrigo Duterte.

The charge against MAT, the Coalition for Justice, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan and Tindig Pilipinas, and naming peace advocates Rey Casambre and former lawmaker Satur Ocampo as ringleaders, was a brazen lie to sow fear preparatory to the Sept. 21 United People’s Action.

The AFP and counterparts in the national police leadership knew all along that protest organizers and the National Capital Region Police Office were in close coordination to ensure a peaceful event. They went on with the attacks, orchestrated by Duterte himself and helped along by his social media mercenaries who even spread rumors of bomb attacks on the day of the protest.

Now that their lie has fallen flat, they persist with fantastical claims of a “Red October.”

The disinformation is in the service of a grand Duterte plan to bring the country totally under dictatorship in service to the Marcos clan and his gang of oligarchs and rapacious foreign masters. It was also to divert attention from the AFP’s humiliation as a court convicted Jovito Palparan for the 2006 abduction and torture of two student activists who remain missing till this day – a crime the military tried to cover up. Likewise, it sought to tar a now unified labor movement to deflect focus from growing anger over oppressive economic policies that fuel runaway inflation and growing hunger among Filipinos.

Galvez himself defended Marcos’ martial law and hinted that the AFP is now ready to bring repression to new levels even as Marcos defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and vice presidential race loser Bongbong Marcos tried to undo documented history, by claiming the two-decade dictatorship had no record of arrests, killings and other human rights violations.

The Supreme Court kept pace with this grand revisionist attempt, releasing the decision acquitting Imelda Marcos of money laundering charges months after its ponencia.

As an ailing Duterte flails away amid growing scandals of corruption, anger over economic injustices and extra-judicial killings linked to his drug war, and massive opposition to his planner charter change, his last ace is being brought to light: Marcosian dictatorship.

The AFP now wants a national inter-agency task force, via an executive order, to expand its targets beyond armed rebellion. Galvez sweeps away several laws and the Constitution by demanding the inclusion of “parliamentary struggle” as an anti-insurgency target. He also emphasized the need to clamp down on a growing youth movement and aired a plan to “stop recruitment” in schools. His worldview is chilling: no legal dissent can be allowed because this will lead to more militant struggle.

MAT warns the government: Filipinos will not draw back from the challenge of tyranny. We will fight and we will overcome. –Movement Against Tyranny

 

Marcosian

IN classic Marcosian fashion, the Duterte regime through the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is now setting up public opinion and the machinery for a massive crackdown on the democratic opposition to impose authoritarian rule all over the country.

The recent outrageous and fantastic accusations made by no less than AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Carlito Galvez and his deputy Gen. Antonio Parlade now subjects all groups critical of the Duterte administration to police and military surveillance and action for being part of an alleged conspiracy to oust Pres. Duterte.

The so-called “Red October” ouster plot is a military concoction and a big fat lie. There is no such conspiracy to oust Duterte. What we saw during the Sept. 21 Luneta Rally was the coming together of a wide array of political forces and individuals against Duterte’s plan to impose martial law and a fascist dictatorship.

The generals’ mention of known leftist personalities like Philippine Peace Center Executive Director Rey Casambre, former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo and even NDFP Chief Political Consultant Jose Maria Sison, who had no participation at all in the organizing of the September 21 Luneta rally, is a pathetic attempt at redbaiting and maliciously puts the said personalities in danger. This is an old psy-war trick that uses the communist bogey to sow intrigue and divide the democratic forces, and open them to attack by state security forces and rabid anti-communist groups, including para-military and vigilante groups.

The AFP’s proposal to create an inter-agency body to supposedly address the communist menace is nothing but martial law in disguise. Through this “whole of nation” approach, the AFP means to dovetail all government functions and agencies to a militarist approach to quell armed dissent and in the process undermine or do away with civilian supremacy.

Worse, the campaign’s target will be groups engaged in the legal democratic struggle, especially student organizations and labor groups, who are historically the strongest opposition to martial law and dictatorship. It also includes the political opposition and people’s organizations and social movements critical of Duterte.

Duterte regime’s latest attempt to vilify those who criticize and oppose Duterte’s increasingly tyrannical rule, sow intrigues to undermine broad unity against his regime and concoct a fake “Red October” plot to justify creeping martial law are ominous but bound to fail. We call on our people to remain vigilant and steadfast in the struggle for democracy, national sovereignty, human rights and social justice. –Bagong Alyansang Makabayan

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