The shameless retention of a P7.1 billion pork barrel is a disgrace

Our Senators and members of the House of Representatives may be in sharp disagreement on Cha-Cha or "Charter change," but one vote is unanimous for both Houses: yesterday, our so-called solons retained their awesome P7.1 billion pork barrel. Chairman Manuel Villar of the Senate committee on Finance justified this act by saying that the Senators had merely approved the sum which the House of Representatives had sent up to them.

The euphemism, of course, is that this is the "Priority Assistance Fund" – but you know who’re being assisted by this immense sum – the Senators and Congressmen themselves.

The House, indeed, restored, without subtracting a peso, its own pork barrel "gravy," and, naturally, the disbursement of these funds are described as underwriting vital projects.

Did you know that "pork barrel" funds are not audited at all, or require the vetting and approval of the Commission on Audit? There are, in truth, like "intelligence funds." The money released to congressmen and senators doesn’t have to be justified or explained. In sum, those billions of taxpayers’ pesos can be utilized for anything at all without any checking.

Sanamagan. Even our Leftwing "party list" congressmen insist on keeping it.

What’s the use of Cha-Cha, or all that glib talk of reform? What we need is not a change of Charter, it’s a change in men and women, who’re running the store. A change for the better.

And the P1-trillion 2006 budget, just approved by the upper chamber, doesn’t promise this is going to happen.

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The Philippines has truly turned into Ambush alley, with the victims of murder being leftists, middle-of-the-roaders, rightists, and journalists of every stripe.

Yesterday morning, one of the most dreaded former New People’s Army commanders, now turned businessman and political consultant for the National Democratic Front (NDF) was ambushed and killed in Barangay Fatima, Tabaco City.

While a bullet through the head slew Sotero Llamas, alias "Ka Teroy" and "Kumander Nognog" (for his dark complexion), his driver-bodyguard, Marciano Bitara, Jr., a former Malilipot town councilman, was only wounded – by one of the bullets which killed Llamas.

In his heyday, Llamas as "Kumander Nognog" (he hails from Bulan, Sorsogon, the same hometown as Gringo Honasan’s), was feared by everybody in the Bicol region as an intrepid and tough NPA leader.

The suspects? His former comrades in the NPA. When Nognog had run for governor in 2004 as an LDP, in the ticket of Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, his fellow rebels had actively campaigned against him. Perhaps he had stepped on too many sensitive toes in the movement, or was regarded by his fellow "Red fighters" as an apostate.

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Incidentally, quite apart from the Hukbong Magpapalaya ng Bayan or Huk rebellion, and later the "resurrection" of this rebellion when Jose Ma. Sison re-founded the Communist Party and launched the New People’s Army insurrection, did you know that Communism was brought here by the Americans?

The original Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (its earliest appellation) was immediately brought into the mainstream of the worldwide Communist struggle in the 1920s.

When the Second Congress of the Comintern was held in Moscow in 1920, the leaders of the movement decided to devote their full attention to driving out "Western imperialism" from the colonies of the West in Asia and Africa.

Responsibility for the Philippines, at that time an American possession, was, logically enough, turned over to the Communist Party of the United States.

Representing the Comintern, an American named William Janequette, alias Harrison George (no relation to the former Beatle) arrived in Manila in 1924, under the pretext of meeting labor leaders and observing labor conditions in the country. Janequette’s mission bore its first fruit when a Filipino delegation, composed of prominent trade union leaders, left for Canton (now Guangzhou), China, to attend the First Congress of Oriental Transportation Workers.

A second Comintern agent appeared on the scene in July 1925. Coming from Hong Kong, the party organizer posed as an "Elias Fuentes" a Filipino musician from the Crown Colony. In reality, he was a young Indonesian named Tan Malaka (later to figure prominently in his own country). Active and personable, Tan Malaka was able to pass himself off in Manila for more than a year and a half as a champion of Indonesian freedom and cultivated numerous friendships, many of them with influential men.

The deception did not come to an end until January 21, 1927, when the Philippine Constabulary, probably alerted by the Dutch police who had been hunting Malaka, placed him under arrest. He was finally deported the following August by the acting US Governor-General, Eugene Gilmore, and took off for Amoy (Xiamen), China. Tan Malaka’s "happy" sojourn in the Philippines, however, reveals that Filipinos of that time did not regard Communism as any threat and were not hostile to Red agitators.

In fact, no less than the late President Manuel L. Quezon (then the President of the Senate) opposed the harsh measures taken against Malaka and expressed the opinion that under the American flag, "political refugees" were entitled to full protection and asylum. Quezon obviously regarded Malaka as a refugee from the Dutch colonial masters in Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies.

The late Senator Claro M. Recto, who was to become Chairman of the convention which drafted the first Philippine Constitution in 1936, went so far as to propose a Tan Malaka assistance fund.

During the intervening period between Janequette’s pastoral visit and Malaka’s ejection from Manila, it’s clear, the Red seed began to germinate. A succession of Filipino labor leaders and intellectuals began making trips to China, Japan, Europe and the USA to attend labor conferences under Communist sponsorship.

Most of these names were later to crop up in the line-up of the guiding echelons of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP).

The first bunch of returnees from Canton in 1924 set up a "Secretariat" in Manila and started publishing a secret newspaper called The Dawn. The second group invited by Malaka established formal links with the Comintern's labor organization soon after they got back. In May 1927, Crisanto Evangelista of the Congreso Obrero de Filipinas (COF) or Workers’ Congress of the Philippines, pushed through a resolution in its conference to affiliate with the Red international labor federation.

The following year, COF acquired a political arm, the Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party).

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At long last, the overt moves and burgeoning membership of the various Red-front organizations began to dismay the press. Businessmen and landlords, traditionally the conservative classes (the Communists call them "reactionaries") started calling for curbs to stop the threatening "Red octopus." Even Quezon, taking a hard, second look at what was happening, voiced warnings against the perils of Bolshevism in speeches and articles he published in the Spanish-language daily, La Vanguardia.

Marxism, in the meantime, was being brought down to the peasant (barrio) level by a peasant leader named Jacinto Manahan who had made a trip to Moscow under the auspices of the Krestintern or Peasant International. Manahan, who was to break with the movement years later, moved tirelessly among tenant and farm labor associations and finally emerged president of a peasant group which dubbed itself Kalinpunang Pambansa ng Mga Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KPMP or National Federation of Peasants).

The culmination of all this patient groundwork was the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas. The PKP or Communist Party was officially founded on August 26, 1930.

The date had been carefully chosen, for it was the anniversary of hero Andres Bonifacio’s "Cry of Balintawak." The first call for a national Revolution against Spain in 1898.

The Communist menace today is far from dead. The NPA, NDF and their political fronts are still in the struggle, under different labels and disguises.

What can we do? Ramon Magsaysay used the four F’s: Find ‘em, Fool ‘em, Fight ‘em – Finish them!