Red October

A Masbate native who is now a blue-collar worker in Manila says communist rebels have a strong presence in his home province.

The worker understands that the insurgency feeds on poverty, bad governance and social injustice. He says that criminality is high in his province, with even the impoverished being robbed of their earnings from the sale of backyard crops and livestock. Or else they are forced to sell their crops to middlemen at unreasonably low prices. When thievery happens, the worker says, the victim has three options.

One is to just grin and bear it, praying for divine justice to catch up with the crooks.

A second option is to report the case to local authorities – the barangay and police. There is no certainty that the culprit will be caught. If the suspect is arrested, he may be allowed to post bail or manage to escape. Or the case may be dismissed because the poor litigant does not have the time or resources to pursue a court case that can drag on for a decade, even with assistance from the Public Attorney’s Office.

Such litigants just want the stolen goods back, plus a bit of jail time for the thief, in hopes that the punishment will teach the culprit a lesson so he won’t steal again and the victim will feel safe. Such crime victims, however, often fail to get redress in the country’s dysfunctional criminal justice system.

So they take the third option, if presented to them. The blue-collar worker says that when people in his village turn to the New People’s Army with complaints not just of thievery but also of abuse by the wealthy or state forces, the culprit is shot dead. In return for the swift justice, the NPA occasionally gets free meals from the grateful household.

The gratitude can be abused. A “donation” of chickens and an occasional pig to the NPA can weigh heavily on an impoverished household. The worker says the household is also typically compelled to pay “revolutionary taxes” about twice a month.

Serious trouble can erupt when the military gets wind of the assistance, even if forced, given to the NPA. A terrible fate can await NPA sympathizers, whether genuine or simply those who are left with no choice but to give in to rebel extortion.

Reprisals by government forces, however, can backfire and drive more people to turn to the NPA for swift justice.

This is the situation in just one province. You can see why we now have the world’s longest running communist insurgency.

And you can see why government forces are insisting that there is a genuine communist plot, code-named “Red October,” to oust President Duterte next month.

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Incidentally, Russian Ambassador Igor Khovaev asked me why we call our homegrown rebels communists.

“Look at me, I am a communist,” Khovaev told me when he was our guest some weeks ago on “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News. Neither the Leninists nor Maoists would recognize the rebellion being waged by the Communist Party of the Philippines, said Khovaev, who grew up in Russia when the Soviet Union was still in existence.

The envoy of course understands that for many members and sympathizers of the Philippine communist movement, the driving force is not ideology or the attainment of some vague communist utopia.

Poverty, social injustice, state abuses, glaring inequities, weak governance – these roots of public discontent made the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) attain utmost strength during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

Today, thanks to the persistence of the problems, aggravated by the dirty war on drugs, the insurgency is enjoying such a resurgence that an administration led by an immensely popular president feels threatened by a supposed plot to oust him.

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From exile in the Netherlands, one of the world’s most liberal societies, CPP founding chairman Jose Maria Sison pointed out to The Chiefs that the communists are waging a rebellion, so obviously, their ideal goal is to overthrow the government.

But Sison has denied that there is any “Red October” plot spearheaded by his group.

President Duterte has claimed that Joma Sison is dying of cancer and that the communist rebellion would be crushed by mid-2019. Still, even with the CPP leader’s allegedly poor health, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) maintains it is taking seriously the supposed ouster plot.

The opposition Liberal Party as well as the Magdalo group of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV have also denied conspiring with the communists to topple Duterte. The Magdalo in particular has stressed that it cannot possibly work together with rebels who continue to kill government forces, which the group is representing in Congress.

Still, President Duterte has insisted that certain elements in the AFP are part of Red October, and the plot is still on.

Since the Marcos dictatorship, the AFP has evolved in terms of professionalism and now enjoys a much-rehabilitated image in the eyes of the public. Let’s hope it is not staking that hard-earned respect on a fabricated conspiracy.

If Red October turns out to be a case of smoke and mirrors to justify a crackdown on political dissent, it could work in favor of the communist movement.

Like Sison’s purported looming demise from cancer, the death of the communist rebellion by next year could turn out to be greatly exaggerated.