By the Movement Against Tyranny
September 24, 2018
Inquirer photo
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.
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.#
