Are we being pulled or fooled from left to right?

With intelligence reports now trickling in, the public is beginning to see that there is a strong indication that indeed, there was connivance between the left and elements of the military to topple the Arroyo administration. Leftists trying to topple the government has been a continuing struggle for over 60 years in this country. During my interview with GMA last week, she really believes it’s the leftists that are driving all the unrest and it’s about time we finally put an end to the decades-long communist insurgency.

When radical labor leader Crisanto Evangelista established the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) or the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1930, he capitalized on two things: The discontent of peasant farmers over their continuing poverty who felt that they were no better than they were under the Spaniards, and the people’s disappointment over the failure of the US government to grant independence to the Philippines. PKP was outlawed in 1932, but was later legalized in 1937. It merged with the Socialist Party of Jose Abad Santos to form the popular front which fielded candidates for local and congressional elections. Had it not been for the Japanese Occupation, the merger might have succeeded in pulling the country towards the left.

Ramon Magsaysay succeeded in pulling the country towards the right again when as Defense Secretary, he decimated the leftist movement with the arrest of the entire Manila-based leadership of the CPP, with support from the American intelligence network through the CIA’s Edward Landsdale. Magsaysay’s popular presidency could have spelled the end of the leftist threat. Unfortunately, he was killed in a plane crash exactly 49 years ago on March 17, 1957. Infighting within the CPP by the Lava and Taruc factions had also effectively reduced the influence of the left, which by 1950 reportedly had some 500,000 mass-based supporters and 15,000 armed guerillas, remnants of the Hukbalahap.

The early 1960s saw a resurgence of the communist influence, driven by pervading poverty especially in the countryside. On December 26, 1968, Jose Maria Sison by then the rising star in the leftist movement reestablished the Communist Party of the Philippines, adopting Maoist ideology. In 1969, the New People’s Army was born, headed by former Huk commander Bernabe Buscayno. It was the CPP’s armed wing, and it had one objective: To overthrow the government through protracted guerilla warfare.

In September 1972, the country swung towards the ultra right when Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law. Leaders of the left, among them Satur Ocampo, Jose Maria Sison and Bernabe Buscayno were arrested, along with the political opponents of Marcos. Because of the military suppression, the NPAs grew in number particularly during the late ’70s. After EDSA I, the Cory government released most of the leftists including Jose Maria Sison and Bernabe Buscayno. Nur Misuari, the MNLF leader, was allowed to come back. This annoyed and displeased the military establishment no end, which ultimately led to nine coup attempts against the Cory administration.

Today, leftists have been able to take advantage of the divisions within the military and the establishment, forging links with their mortal enemy to aggressively pursue their objective: To overthrow the government. This unholy alliance is being exposed especially in light of a US State Department report alleging that the leftists source most of their funds from drug trafficking, which is why the US has stood pat in giving communists a terrorist tag. Sadly, while most communist countries are veering away from the left, the most significant of them being China which has even adopted capitalism, here we continue to struggle from left to right.

If some of these business groups and a few members of the elite think that making a deal with the left will bring about positive change, they will be in for a rude awakening, all they have to do is look at the example of other countries that have suffered under leftist rule. Even media people who complain about their freedoms being suppressed should also look at countries like Nicaragua where the left-leaning Sandinistas clamped down on the press. Businessmen were actually marginalized for many years, and the country was pushed to greater ruin and poverty with thousands killed and displaced. The international community did not support the Marxist-inspired government, which greatly contributed to the disarray in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas’ 12-year rule ended when Daniel Ortega lost in the 1990 elections to Violeta Chamorro, an erstwhile Sandinista ally. But in the end, most high-ranking Sandinistas were said to have acquired great taste for wealth and luxury appropriating government-sequestered mansions for themselves.

When the Iron Curtain was finally raised, the Soviet Union’s former satellites immediately repudiated communism, and for many of them, it was a long trek to democracy and economic progress.

Our friend Nap Rama, the publisher of Manila Bulletin, told me the other night that he and Max Soliven were in the frontlines fighting Marcos for freedom and democracy. He strongly believes that they have achieved that now, and yes, he agrees that people should be vigilant about it but not to the point of overthrowing a democratically elected government and conniving with the left or the ultra right.

If the politicians, the military, the elite and civil society continue to be divided and not attend to the real root causes of the country’s age-old problems of poverty and social injustice, we will just fool ourselves into thinking that a change of government either to the left or to the right will make things any better. It can only make things worse.

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