Gonzales’s NPA crap / Gut all kinse billboards

It’s all right for low-level bureaucrats to engage in pap and poltroonery but when a top-level cabinet secretary commits a boo-boo, he should be given short shrift. I refer to National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales’s weekend statement that "the NPA (New People’s Army) is the biggest threat to our democracy." Gonzales was never an intellectual heavyweight in the first place. But still that remark proves more than anything else that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo "suffers fools gladly" in her official family at a time truth must flare like a blue flame because we are in crisis.

NPA the biggest threat to Philipine democracy? Come again?

The biggest threat to our so-called democracy, if I may repeat anew, is precisely that democracy. It has been there for 58 years to serve the nationhand and foot, open the floodgates of progress and prosperity, bring us all to Valhalla, project our nation as one of the model republics in Asia. If only our democracy worked from the very outset, we would have no NPA, no group or organization of Filipinos advocating the contest of arms to seek justice and retribution.

Instead, this so-called democracy, has bound the citizenry hand and foot. Its leaders have achieved international notoriety for crime and corruption, and I do mean particularly Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada. Transparency International just anointed the two as among the tenmost corrupt leaders of the universe. And just over a year ago, the same Transparency International listed the Philippines as the eleventh most corrupt country in the world.

So, begorra, Mr. Gonzales, what the hell are you talking about?

If you know your history, the genealogy of world events, the throb of ideology, the tapestry of the 20th century, communism is a spent force and was interrred during the end of the Cold War in 1989-91. Karl Marx and after him Mao Zedong slipped into the mud of history’s wallow, and communism’s lesser lights twinkled out one after the other.

In the Philippines, the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines), whose military arm is the NPA, found itself an orphan and eventually entered into peace negotiations with the government. The on-off negotitions continue to sputter, what with Jose Maria Sison still playing the role of a pathetic Hamlet on a deserted stage. But communism’s demise is already writ in the stars. And even China in its latest constitution now admits the primacy of private property and free enterprise capitalism.

The NPA, sir?

I don’t really know how you arrived at your formulation that our democracy is now in very sick bay because it is threatened – foremost by communist arms. In the first place, if the CPP-NPA was a serious revolutionary organization in the past, particularly during the years of theMarcos dictatorswhip, it was because our political leadership oppressed thepoor, blighted their hopes, slit their throats. If ever they joined the CPP-NPA, it was not because they were enamored of Karl Marx or Mao.

Not at all. The road of armed uprising, of largescale violence, seemed the only recourse at the time. And so it was during our blood-splattered past when the Sakdals, the Tangulans, the Huks took to arms against a mediaeval and ruthless leadership. And absentee landlords , who hardly cared a fig for the peasantry, ruled the land.

Today, Mr. Gonzales, the NPA remains a relic of that past. It is no longer fueled by ideology. But it is there, a shadowy force, under the leadership of a Ka Roger, Commander Rosales, who bears a striking similarity to the peasant leaders of yore. All the massed miliary forces of the government cannot as yet wipe them out. But neither can the NPA storm out of their jungle hideouts and hamlets and march to the cities, as did Mao from Yennan, Chou En-lai, Li Lisan, Chu The and his legendary Eighth Route Army.

Honestly, the NPA does not pose the prime threat to democracy as Bert Gonzales claims. Bureaucrats like him, who fudge the truth, do. I knew this guy when he was hoisting the banners of European socialism, and boasting his Socialist Party had hundreds of thousands of supporters in the Philippines. The truth is that his is virtually a ghost Socialist Party. And he managed to get far in the corridors of power because he mastered the mystical art of sip-sip and Fr. Archie Intengan, now Superior of the Jesuit order, backed him up.

Now, Buster, you better shape up. You are occupying a very strategic position as national security adviser and it’s too early for you to bungle the job. I suggest initially you go back to your history books, and delve more deeply into the many revolts, insurrections and revolutions that have shaken our country. Then relate these to the wider frame of international relations.

The world has changed. And the Phi-lippines is almost always one of the last to change. This you should also understand.

We continue to cling to our brand of democracy, to elections, to self-perpetuating village, town and city rituals, remain intoxicated by celebrity, gasp in awe at the sight of the Black Nazarene, bow obsequiously in the presence of the white man. We are frightened by ghosts and phantoms, spooked by such relics of peasant power as the NPA, even when we know we are just little children frightened by the dark.

Such a small child is Secretary Bert Gonzales, National Security Adviser, who has still to be weaned from his diapers. But I do surmise Bert Gonzales is just doing his job.

And this job is to pretend that all is well, that the nation is doing just fine, that GMA has the government well in hand, and so you gotta vote for her May 10. Graft and Corruption. Mr. Gonzles doesn’t mention this at all as a national threat, perhaps the most insidious threat. Nor crime and violence and runaway lawlessness. Nor poverty, gnawing at the very marrow of the republic. Mr. Gonzales, our national security adviser, has to look for the ultimate scapegoat.

This is the NPA. Shame on you, sir.

* * *

Like a bad or accursed coin, it does not go away. I am referring to that billboard advertisement containing the offensive words: Nakatikim ka na ba ng kinse anyos? It is an insult, that billboard, an oscenity, foul and vulgar, drawn at dawn from the latrines at Oder-Neisse during the Second World war. Its advertisement is a spillway of dung, writ on billboards strung all over the nation. It shoud never have been allowed or condoned in the first place. It is meant to advertise the Napoleon Quince brandy. All it advertises is a lewd come-on to sex with a 15-year-old fillly.

So incensed was former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, a senatorial candidate, he ripped a portion of the billboard containing the offensive words. Now the lawyers of Destileria Limcuaco, manfufacturers of Napoleon Quince, are branding Lim every name in the book, with the additional threat to disbar him. Disbar Lim? They should commit hara-kiri for all the shame they have brought on us.

They got chutzpah, these dastards.

They’re like that rowdy young rogue who kills his parents. When pinched by the police, he bursts into tears and caterwauls: "Pity me, I am an orphan." Mayor Lim, an old, grizzled veteran crime fighter, who the underworld of Manila could never scare when he went after them hammer and tongs states: "For every hour and every day that passes by, the said billboard advertisements containing the offensive words "Nakatikim ka na ba ng kinse años" are there for the motorists and the pedestrians to see.This is clearly a continuing crime against public morals."

So it is.

And I would counsel the proprietors and owners of Disteleria to back down and back down pronto. They have enraged the entire citizenry of Metro Manila and now they would the media, the entire nation. They should listen further to what Mayor Lim says: "Any person can make a fool of himself for all I care, but in the meantime, we cannot allow something that affects everybody, especially minors and women whose dignity and honor are at stake here."

You know what? If any day now, any hour, the lawyers, the hawkers and defenders of Disteleria Limcuaco and Napoleon Quince brandy should find themselves assaulted, mauled and pummeled black and blue by an irate group of citizens for the kinse scandal, then thrown screaming into a ditch, the citizenry would cheer.

Remember when Fred Lim was Manila mayor, suspected drug pushers were accosted during the night, exterminated, then thrown into ditches with placards on their bodies: "We are drug pushers." Lim never owned the killings.

But he was lustily cheered. He was a hero.