COMMENTARY: A Preliminary Sampling of What is Not Red-Tagging (4th of 8 parts)

Read the 3rd part

[4] Table on Major Leftist Parties [of Communist/National Democratic (ND) Tradition] in the Philippines in Figure 2.2 at p. 64 of Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, Contested Democracy and the Left in the Philippines After Marcos (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008).

Quimpo is currently an associate professor of political science at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, but was formerly a high-level CPP cadre in Mindanao and Western Europe.[1] He knows whereof he speaks. The above-said Table is as follows:

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist	Marxist-Leninist
Underground party: CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines)   Guerrilla army: NPA (New People’s Army)   Allied legal parties: Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela	Legal party: PKP (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas)
Underground party: MLPP (Marxist-Leninist Party of the Philippines)   Guerrilla army: RHB (Rebolusyonaryong Hukbong Bayan)   Allied legal party: None	Underground party: PMP (Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino)   Guerrilla army: None   Allied legal parties: PM (Partido ng Manggagawa), Sanlakas
	Underground party: RPM-P (Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa – Pilipinas)   Guerrilla army: RPA-ABB (Revolutionary People’s Army[2] – Alex Boncayao Brigade)   Allied legal party: Alab Katipunan
	Underground party: RPM-M (Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa – Mindanao)   Guerrilla army: RPA-M (Revolutionary People’s Army – Mindanao)[3]   Allied legal party: AMIN (Anak Mindanao)

(Data from interviews and discussions with leaders of leftist parties)

This table is obviously part of an academic work in the legitimate exercise of constitutional academic freedom,[4] including when presented and discussed in the classroom for political science courses. Though legal political electoral parties are publicly linked here to underground Communist parties and some guerrilla armies, this hardly amounts to red-tagging. Besides, there is clearly no use of threats, no malicious purpose to impede constitutional rights and liberties, and no unfounded information.

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[5] “Philippine Left Political Map: A Working List” in the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas (RPM-P) political tract “The Philippine Left Milieu” (2022)

The above-said RPM-P “Philippine Left Political Map: A Working List” follows in full: [words in brackets are added]

Reaffirmists

CPP

NPA

NDF

Rejectionists

PMP

PMP

Others

The RPM-P, as a “rejectionist” faction that split from the “reaffirmist” CPP, knows of where it came from, well enough to identify its national-democratic mass organizations (NDMOs), elsewhere referred to as “legal fronts,” as part of the regular political mapping done by revolutionary organizations. Is this red-tagging? Hardly. Again, there is clearly no use of threats, no malicious purpose to impede constitutional rights and liberties, and no unfounded information.

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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 solv 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] See esp. Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo (eds.), Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years (Manila: Anvil, 2012).

[2] This article author’s footnote correction: Revolutionary Proletarian Army.

[3] This article author’s footnote correction: no “-Mindanao” suffix, thus only “RPA” as the acronym.

[4] 1987 Const., Art. XIV, Sec. 5(2) on academic freedom in all institutions of higher learning.