Running after the wrong foes

FRONTLINE

Ninez Cacho-Olivares

07/12/2007

Gloria Arroyo and her aides assure that the anti-terror law will not be used against their critics and naturally, their political foes, yet all indications point to precisely using this law that curbs the rights of the people, against Gloria’s foes and critics.

A case in point: Just days before the implementation of this law — even in the absence of the implementing rules, the military leadership announced the redeployment of the soldiers to the Metro Manila urban poor districts, starting with Quezon City and following this up in Manila.

These soldiers, so the military excuse goes, will be doing the communities good, since civic action work will be done, along with keeping the peace, plus some educational learning to be imparted by the soldiers to the children.

Needless to say, this is hardly the function of the military — including the task of keeping the peace, since this is a police function. As for educating the youth, what business is it for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to take on tutorial duties, especially when they hardly have the experience or qualifications as teachers?

But of course, the subject taught will be political in nature, such as that which they did before the elections by getting the residents to reject leftist party-list groups.

Why should the AFP again deploy soldiers in these urban poor areas, if not because this has everything to do with the anti-terrorism law that is being implemented by Gloria and against her political foes?

NCRPO chief Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino, the brains behind this deployment of soldiers in Metro Manila, already admitted earlier that this was being done to convince Filipinos to stop joining protest rallies and people power revolts.

It is the same aim Gloria’s AFP has today, as she is much too scared of another people’s uprising to topple her and her government, with a plus for her today, courtesy of the anti-terror law and her prostituted military.

With the military on the lookout for “evidence” against Gloria’s foes who will be tagged as “terorrists” or “accomplices” of terrorists, and with the cooperation of the equally prostituted barangay officials, Gloria’s goons can easily manufacture evidence and come up with more trumped-up charges against her critics and political foes — that is for certain.

Why bother to deploy soldiers in the Metro Manila slum areas, keeping these barangays “drug-free and robbery-free” as well as do civic action duties when these soldiers are needed in the hinterlands where the terrorists can be found?

And who are the terrorists as branded by international governments and as allowed by Malacañang, if not the Abu Sayyaf and the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army but not the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which has taken responsibility for the deaths of some 23 Marines and several injured in the Tipo-Tipo encounter.

The terrorists are out there, so why are the soldiers being deployed to Metro Manila urban poor communities to perform tasks which are not part of their duties and when there are no terrorists in these slum areas?

And that is the reason the Arroyo government can’t lick the real enemies of the state because its focus is not on the real threat of terrorism that can be found in the hinterlands, but on Gloria’s political foes.

Even the government’s intelligence network is focused not on these insurgents and terrorists but on monitoring Gloria’s critics and political foes.

Up to the present time, the military has been indulging in pure guesswork on the whereabouts of kidnapped Italian priest, Giancarlo Bossi. It can’t even state just which group has Bossi, or even state whether he is dead or alive, passing off some dated pictures and a badly written Italian text message as proof of life.

It wouldn’t surprise anyone if someone in the Arroyo military came up with that text message and the photo to get the heat off its back. The photo message was traced to a Basilan mayor. Then came the text message. So who among those that abducted Bossi would have knowledge of the Italian language and pass this off as proof of life?

If the military intelligence was really focused on the real terrorists and even Bossi’s kidnappers, by this time, the military would know who the abductors are, where Bossi is, and could even have saved some lives of the Marines who died in Tipo-Tipo.

Instead, it has focused on Gloria’s political foes, whom she wants to arrest and detain, under the anti-terror law.

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