“Kung wala nang mukhang ihaharap, e di puwet na lang!”, (if you have no more face to show, show them your ass). This is a popular Philippine showbiz expression to refer to people who have been caught lying and have lost face.
This aptly describes Major General Antonio Parlade Jr, chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) pitiful and disgusting attempt to once again cover up his command’s deliberate violations of the GRP’s own unilateral ceasefire in Rizal and Quezon Provinces which he and the AFP blamed on New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas parroting to the victim-blaming line of Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, Jr., the National Security Adviser.
The US Infantry School trained-Parlade could only naturally dismiss NDFP Negotiating Panel Fidel Agcaoili’s assertion that the AFP soldiers attacked the NPA guerillas conducting medical service in the village in Rizal Province, because it is impossible for him to dismiss the source of that assertion – which is the AFP ground report itself.
The AFP and the Duterte regime have been deliberately obstructing the people’s fight vs. Covid19 in the urban and rural communities by continuing fascist operations against the people, conducting aerial bombardments, hamletting that prevents farmers from going to their farms, illegal arrests and extrajudicial killings. In the urban areas, workers are prevented from going to their factories, and arrests are continuing, the most recent were the arrest of hungry urban poor residents in the national capital region who were forced to hold a street protest to call attention to the failure of Duterte to give them food despite his 275B pesos emergency fund.
Random interviews of ordinary people on the streets and in communities by national media networks have echoed one desperate plea from the people – they would die of hunger and repression, not from Covid19!
Yet, instead of listening to the people they pretend to protect and their insatiable fetish for anti-communist witch hunting, US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agent Parlade and the dysfunctional Duterte government have imposed more brutal measures, and have blamed the hungry protesters as being provoked by communists, even shamefully preventing well-intentioned individuals and those in the political opposition from extending humanitarian assistance and doing their share.
The revolutionary movement continues to learn from the lessons of history – one thing that Parlade and other US-trained agents in the AFP failed to learn in their studies in US military schools – that a just revolutionary resistance could not be stopped and armed conflict could not be solved without addressing the just grievances of the people.
Neither will state terrorism and repressive measures help in the fight to protect the people from Covid 19.#
Ma. Lourdes Barros
NDFP International Information Office
Related news: AFP bombing spree in Bukidnon-Davao border amid Covid-19 ceasefire
