COMMENTARY: A Preliminary Sampling of What is Not Red-Tagging (Second of 8 parts)

[2]  The Manila Times (MT) 2016-2022 opinion column pieces of veteran journalist (and admitted former CPP Manila-Rizal Regional Committee secretary) Rigoberto D. Tiglao on front organizations and personalities of the CPP-NPA-NDFP, to name 15 of many such pieces:

            —  “The ideological bankruptcy of the Communist Party and its fronts,” MT, November 30, 2016

            —  “Communists in Duterte’s gov’t: Good or bad?” MT, January 6, 2017

            —  “Sara tells it like it is: 6 party-list groups are communist fronts,” MT, October 26, 2018

            —  “Duterte: Bayan Muna, KMU, Gabriela are communist fronts,” MT, December 7, 2018 

            —  “The communists’ most successful strategy – but don’t Red-tag it,” MT, June 3, 2019

—  “Shameless prostitution of academe: The communist party’s martial law course at UP,” MT, September 26, 2019

—  “Sison, with his huge ego, red-tagged his communist fronts long ago,” MT, September 14, 2020         

—  “The Communist Party and Sison’s greatest trick,” MT, November 9, 2020

—  “Communist Party’s greatest trick: Shocking examples,” MT, November 11, 2020

—  “How communists gained control of UP Student Council, Philippine Collegian, and most campus organizations,” MT, January 11, 2021

—  “Communists’ continuing infiltration of media a reality,” MT, June 11, 2021

            —  “Stop exposing communist fronts?  That’s nuts,” MT, July 13, 2022

            —  “Court ruling that CPP-NPA not terrorists astonishingly absurd,” MT, October 3, 2022

            —  “Judge uses the usual communist propaganda line in CPP-NPA decision,” MT, October 5, 2022

            —  “ ‘Husband of judge in terrorist case a member of CPP front organization’,” MT, October 17, 2022

A long sample passage from the above-listed Tiglao opinion column piece “The communists’ most successful strategy – but don’t Red-tag it” (MT, June 3, 2019), citing his own personal experience and knowledge, reads as follows:   

This strategy is its use of fronts and of organizations it had infiltrated and whose leadership it had captured. These are exploited not just to recruit people into their ranks but to disseminate its propaganda and to acquire finances, especially from gullible Western do-gooder NGOs and foundations.

… Even media had hesitated to expose these Red fronts and puppet organizations for fear of being called Red-baiters, afraid that they could be targeted by the New People’s Army assassination teams….

The process, which I myself experienced, was as follows. Either excited over the huge youth demonstrations in Washington and Paris, or seeking an organization defying the mimic-America culture of that period and championing nationalism, students, mainly from UP, Lyceum, and the Philippine College of Commerce (now the Polytechnic University of the Philippines) – schools where Sison or his first comrades taught – joined the KM [Kabataang Makabayan].

After enjoying the KM’s camaraderie — it had a penthouse headquarters in Quezon Avenue where you could hang out and sleep — and more importantly, after experiencing “police brutality” — and consequently radicalized — in demonstrations, its members would be ripe for their introduction to Mao Zedong Thought and communist dogma.

Its most active members — almost all in their teen-age years or early 20s — would be invited to apply as “candidate member” of the Communist Party, and a young man would almost always be flattered to be invited to join some kind of elite secret society. Indeed, it was nearly a religious ritual when a candidate becomes a full-member, raises his fist, swears to the party constitution with the hammer-and-sickle flag hanging on the wall, and is given a .45 or an Armalite bullet as a souvenir.

Many would be invited to join the NPA, romanticized as already liberating peasants in their mountain “bases” in Isabela. Many of them would be killed in a few months in firefights with the police or town militias, who thought they were bandits….

It was the KM template that Sison and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) used to expand the communist ranks throughout martial law. Just as KM was the recruiting venue for the youth, the party set up mass organizations for several “sectors” — among them workers, peasants, teachers, artists and even for OFWs….

One kind of organization that advances the CPP’s agenda are those it had infiltrated and captured the leadership of, which includes the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, one of three groups that filed a case in the Supreme Court to stop the military’s alleged “red-tagging.” Most of the members of such organizations are not CPP members but its leaders are, who convince the members that their political activism is for some noble goal, for instance, fighting for human rights.

There are dozens now of such organizations. The website Bulatlat for instance posts nothing but news articles and opinion pieces critical of government since it was set up, expounds on the same propaganda line the party undertakes in different periods of time, and even covers on the ground the CPP and NPA’s anniversary celebration. I get very regular emails from a “Children’s Rehabilitation Center,” which report only on alleged abuses of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The other two kinds of CPP organizations are, first, those which are “underground,” completely controlled by the party, but called “allied organizations” of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in order to portray it as an alliance of independent revolutionary organizations representing various sectors of Filipinos. The NPA and even the first mass organization that Sison set up, the KM, are such NDFP member organizations.

While these organizations recruit their own members, these also act as the command centers of the second type of CPP-controlled entities, the legal organizations, which include the “party-lists.”

This may as well segue to a shorter sample passage from a later above-listed Tiglao opinion column piece “The Communist Party and Sison’s greatest trick” (MT, November 9, 2020), also citing his own personal experience and knowledge, which reads as follows:   

These Red party-lists don’t even have an organizational structure or officials.  It is the Communist Party that tells all these parties who their representatives will be in Congress.

I know that for a fact.  When I asked for a meeting with these party-list representatives in early 2004 to try to secure their support for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo [sic] election, I and my late deputy Renato Velasco, went to the assigned meeting venue, a steakhouse in Quezon City.

We were surprised that it was Rafael Baylosis whom Quimpo’s book mentioned above said was one of the two top leaders of the party’s highest body, the executive committee of the central committee, who met with us.  A comrade from the University of the Philippines days, it was Baylosis who negotiated with us for the party-lists’ support for Arroyo (which we didn’t get).

In a separate table were Teodoro Casiño and two other party-list representatives; they said absolutely nothing at the meeting, they were focused only on the T-bone steaks they ordered. They were there to convince us that it was the party through Baylosis who called the shots.  

And so as regards such Tiglao opinion column pieces on front organizations and personalities of the CPP-NPA-NDFP, it should again be asked: were they made with the use of threats and intimidation?  With the malicious purpose or motive to silence, discourage or delegitimize the legitimate exercise of various constitutional freedoms?  Unfounded, i.e. not grounded in truth and facts?  Or do such opinion column pieces constitute protected speech and media commentary?  Both anti-CPP statements like those of Tiglao as well as pro-CPP statements are to be protected under the constitutional freedoms of speech and of the press[1] but these are qualified by “the legitimate exercise thereof” in p. 14 of Badoy-Partosa.[2]  The qualification “legitimate” must be understood to mean “for purposes not contrary to law”[3] nor for means not contrary to law, stated otherwise lawful purposes (ends) and means.  Badoy-Partosa in p. 17 likewise speaks of “a right to publish the truth”[4]  All these under our constitutional “regime of truth.”[5]  And so, telling the truth (truth-telling)[6] would appear to make a difference also in issues of red-tagging. 

Incidentally, the last three above-enumerated columns pertained to the Resolution dated 21 September 2022 by RTC Manila Branch 19 Judge Marlo A. Magdoza-Malagar in Civil Case No. R-MNL-18-00925-CV (Department of Justice vs. CPP and NPA) which dismissed the DOJ Petition to proscribe or declare the CPP-NPA as terrorist groups under Section 17 of the Republic Act No.  9372  (the Human Security Act of 2007), even as this was already repealed by R.A. 11479 (the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020).  Tiglao severely lambasted Judge Magdoza-Malagar for her court decision, as had broadcast journalist Dr. Lorraine Marie T. Badoy-Partosa, a former spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), in several social media posts.  This precisely was the subject of the afore-mentioned Badoy-Partosa cases finding her guilty of indirect contempt of court for, among others, “the harmful, vicious, and unnecessary manner in which respondent launched her criticism” and “vitriolic statements and outright threats against Judge Magdoza-Malagar.” It remains to be seen whether Tiglao’s opinion column criticism against her could or would be similarly sanctioned judicially, as there do not appear to have been red-tagging cases filed against him so far unlike with Dr. Badoy-Partosa and other NTF-ELCAC-related personalities.

SOLIMAN M. SANTOS, JR. is a retired Judge of the RTC of Naga City, Camarines Sur, serving in the judiciary there from 2010 to 2022.  He has an A.B. in History cum laude from U.P. in 1975, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nueva Caceres (UNC) in Naga City in 1982, and a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2000.  He is a long-time human rights and international humanitarian lawyer; legislative consultant and legal scholar; peace advocate, researcher and writer; and author of a number of books, including on the Moro and Communist fronts of war and peace. Among his authored books are The Moro Islamic Challenge: Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process (UP Press, 2001);  How do you solve a problem like the GRP-NDFP peace process? Part 2 (Sulong Peace, 2022); and his latest, Tigaon 1969: Untold Stories of the CPP-NPA, KM and SDK (Ateneo Press, 2023). He also has a trilogy of books on his court work and practice:  Justice of the Peace (2015), Drug Cases (2022), and Judicial Activist (2023), all published by Central Books, Inc., Quezon City.

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[1]  1987 Constitution, Article III, Section 4 on freedom of speech, expression, the press, peaceable assembly, and grievance redress petition.

[2]  Badoy-Partosa:  “The Constitution provides full protection to the legitimate exercise of the freedoms of expression, speech and of the press.”  (p. 14)   “Nevertheless, the exercise of these freedoms is not absolute.” (p. 17)

[3]   From the wording in the 1987 Const., Art. III, Sec. 8 on freedom of association.

[4]   Citing the SC En Banc Decision in People vs. Godoy, 312 Phil. 977, at 1017 (1995):  “There is a right to publish the truth but no right to publish falsehood to the injury of others with impunity.” 

[5]  1987 Const., Preamble, penultimate phrase:  “a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace.”

[6]  See Francis Allan Angelo, “Truth-telling a must for accountability – former Chief Justice Sereno,” Rappler.com, March 1, 2023.  Here Sereno as having spoken of the Constitutional Preamble reference to “a regime of truth” as having “laid down the basis for truth-telling as both right and duty.”  She also further spoke of freedom of expression, speech and the press as the foundations of truth-telling.