Interlopers

Over the weekend, New People’s Army guerrillas mounted a bold attack against the power plant at Ormoc, Leyte. They evidently intended to burn down the facility, trip up power supply and create maximum havoc.

The attack was repulsed. Two policemen and three employees of the plant were killed. The fire was contained. Power supply continued.

The CPP-NPA warned of more attacks as it celebrated the guerrilla group’s anniversary yesterday. This ossified movement has a perverse way of commemorating important dates in its sad history: they kill and maim, they burn and sow fear.

In the case of the Ormoc power plant, officials say that the communists tried to collect "revolutionary taxes" from the facility. They mounted an attack when their demand was rejected.

It is the same story of extortion over and over again. Some of the local candidates that have been ambushed so far say that the communists first tried to extort from them. The acts of violence were intended to sow fear in order to facilitate extortion.

The wild boasts of "massive attacks" by communist guerrillas serve a two-fold purpose. First, they are trying to reassure their own followers that the movement is still a force on the political horizon, capable of holding its own against the Philippine military and pursuing its quaint version of a "protracted people’s war." Second, they are trying frantically to take advantage of the electoral process to shake down politicians and raise funds for themselves.

The CPP-NPA, like the traditional parties, is in dire need of funds to support the numerous party-list front organizations they have fielded in this election.

For some reason, the communist leadership has been swayed into a political project that seeks to overwhelm the party-list system. Where, in the past elections, they fielded only one party-list contender, they have now fielded several groups representing trade unions, the youth and women’s groups.

This political project aims not only to increase the number of seats occupied by leftist personalities in the House of Representatives by using redundant party-list vehicles.

I suspect that the Maoist wing of the local communist movement – the wing led by Jose Ma. Sison and expressed through the CPP-NPA – intends to shut out the other leftist groups that had earlier broken away from the old orthodoxy. More than just monopolizing leftwing representation in the House, there seems to be a compulsion to annihilate their ex-comrades from any access to "legal" representation.

It is a dictate of political vanity, an assertion of their own "correctness" and ideological supremacy over an increasingly marginal community of partisans still abiding by some 19th century version of utopia.

One breakaway leftist group – Akbayan – has actually filed a resolution at the House condemning the CPP-NPA for using force and intimidation to help their party-list allies. It will not be surprising if the principal target of CPP-NPA intimidation would be the party-list campaign workers of the breakaway leftist groups.

One could imagine that the funding requirements for fielding numerous party-list front organizations would be immense. This adds urgency to the NPA’s role as fund-raiser for the "legal" effort to win seats in the House.

There is no other conclusion to draw: the ambitious effort of the CPP-NPA to monopolize party-list representation in the House is fueling the violent attacks mounted by communist guerrillas. For fund-raising purposes, the communist guerrillas are willing to cripple vital economic facilities, wreak havoc in our lives and harm the poor.

In terms of the larger political alignments, the communists are lost in the woods.

In order to strengthen their hand at the negotiating table and win concessions from government, the communists have tried their best to discredit the Macapagal-Arroyo administration and push her government to the political defensive. In this election period, they have escalated their attacks on the President.

But the effort to undermine President Gloria’s electoral appeal puts the communists in an awkward position. They could not openly endorse the lead opposition candidate – although spokesmen for the KNP claim they have the support of the CPP-NPA – because this candidate is captive to personalities associated with the Marcos dictatorship and the failed Estrada presidency.

The hate campaign against President Gloria being mounted by the CPP-NPA is not matched by an offer of an electoral alternative to her. NPA spokesman Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, is obviously an admirer of KNP vice-presidential bet Loren Legarda. But his superiors in Utrecht frown on being openly associated with a potential electoral loser.

The communists are nothing more than vicious interlopers in this process.

They are polluting the democratic process with hate and violence. They are sowing fear among constituencies in the hinterlands, constituencies that desperately want to participate in a secure and open democratic process.

The communists are smart and cynical political operators. When security forces attempt to contain their destructive activities, they claim their human rights are being violated. And then they shoot down candidates who refuse to pay what they call "permit to campaign" fees.

I have said this before and I have been attacked with hate mail and poisoned letters. But I will say it again: in this election, the CPP operates the largest protection racket and the NPA is the largest private army in existence.

By its mere existence, this obsolete ideological movement penalizes our economy by capacity to use violence and cause destruction. They prevent development for many rural communities and add to the poverty of our people.

By insinuating themselves into the democratic electoral process, they infect that process, undermine our democracy and threaten the sanctity of the ballot with insane violence. Their extortion activities adds to the costs of elections and the corruption required to cover those costs. By their propensity to use intimidation, they constrict free expression and preempt freedom of choice.

Only the party-list groups Akbayan and the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (ANAD) have found the courage, so far, to risk communist intimidation and denounce the extortionist activities of the CPP-NPA.

Yesterday, the headquarters of the group Kaisambayan was attacked with pillbox bombs. Kaisambayan is composed of former leftwing activists who now support the candidacy of President Gloria.

Kaisambayan attracted attention a few weeks ago when it put out an ad criticizing candidate Fernado Poe Jr, for being a puppet of Marcos cronies. Now it finds itself threatened by an unholy alliance of extortionists from across the political spectrum.