All out war vs. NPA? Stop blaming the government!

By the time you read this column, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would have finished her meeting with the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, happily giving him the good news that the Vatican loves to hear; that the Philippines has finally found the courage to shift from our current Culture of Death by allowing for the Death Penalty into a Culture of Life or as the President aptly put it,"to celebrate life in the most meaningful way."

While I submit that it is easy to say that I am against the Death Penalty, it is really easier said than done because, thank God we or our families have not been involved in any criminal or heinous crime, but I have my reasons why I changed my mind regarding the imposition of the Death Penalty, while there are still many who believe that the Death Penalty should be imposed.

One of the principal reasons why I had a change of heart was a visit to the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) where I realized that Capital Punishment by Lethal Injection was actually an easy way out of misery. Being thrown to a Filipino prison for life assures the family of the victims of heinous crimes of a life of suffering until death.

Anyway, after years of believing that the Death Penalty has deterred others to commit heinous crimes, I saw some statistics that disproved this thinking. More heinous crimes were committed even after the Death Penalty was imposed and somehow the presence of capital punishment was merely used by the families of the victims more as an act of revenge to pay for the crime committed against their loved ones.

I was reading the analysis of Amando Doronila yesterday who wrote that the Death Penalty abolition contradicts all-out war against the Communists. Let me just say that we ought to compare apples with apples, not apples with mangoes because we're not talking about the same things. So let's call a spade a spade. not a kamunggay!

Right now, I submit that we do have an all-out war against the New People's Army (NPA) and that's because the NPAs in the past 30 years have been killing innocent soldiers and civilians and often, even their own cadres who get sick and tired of fighting their endless war. How do we stop the killing if we can't convince the NPAs or Joma Sison to stop the killings? Mind you, Doronila's article proves my point that the problem we really face today is that we still have too many people in the media (there's a lot of them right here in Cebu!) who are still sympathetic to the cause of the Communists.

I submit that it is better to quarrel in the negotiating table than kill each other but the reality on the ground is, the Communists have killed and still kill people who are diametrically opposed to their line of thinking. I will never forget Fr. Rustico "Tikoy" Tan, a member of the National Democratic Front (NDF) who spoke before our Rotary Club 17 years ago when there was a lull in the fighting. He told us that if the Communists take over the country they would surely purge this nation of intellectuals, a pattern used by Communists in China and Russia. Purge means to kill!

In short, because Communism is a godless ideology, they do not believe in the Ten Commandments where God warns us "thou shalt not kill". Hence killing is part and parcel of the Communist way of life! God knows Josef Stalin killed more people in Ukraine than the Nazi extermination of Jews in the whole of Europe but there was hardly any world denunciation of Stalin's actions because even the witnesses were killed!

Twenty years ago I got my first taste of the danger of journalism when I openly declared that I was anti-communist. In response, I got a lot of death threats and was in the order of battle by the NPA! But after all those ill-fated peace talks with the Communists I no longer believe that they want to talk peace. Perhaps the best reason why we should no longer talk with the Communists is simply because they are using peace talks to gain military and political advantage, but not really to gain peace. Hence, the only solution to this impasse is an all-out war against the Communists!

I have more respect for Sein Fein and ETA who unilaterally put down their arms and sit down to talk peace with their respective governments. But this is not the case of hardcore Communists like Jose Ma. Sison or Fr. Luis Jalandoni who are hiding in a foreign land waging war against our people, in the name of the people? At this point, we should stop blaming the Philippine government for waging an all-out war against the Communists! Let's start blaming the Communist for waging a war against the Filipino people, all in the hallowed name of the minority Filipinos; after all, that's the whole truth.Tthe Communists represent a very small minority in this country!

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