Color me red

NO, RED-TAGGING is not a monopoly of dictatorships, like Marcos’ and their second-rate apers, like Duterte’s.  

Duterte, yea, no matter him infamously ululating once: Sinong NPA dito? Halika nga. Tapos pagtalikod mo, marami. Sige na, sige na. Walang hiyaan. Huwag kayo mahiya. Sino? T*** i*** ang ni sino sa inyo walang kamay ni isa. May alam ako mga journalists na Left talaga. O baka nagkadre doon sa Cordillera.

As the recently red-tagged Sonia Soto spotted on: It was not between her and the NICA-3 director Rolando Asuncion, her tagger who has since made a sorry excuse for an apology, a fauxpology veritably. Rather, it was the system.

The system, the State, indeed.

As the very meaning of red-tagging or red-baiting cited by Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Leonen in his dissenting opinion in Zarate vs. Aquino III definitively impacted: “the act of labelling, branding, naming and accusing individuals and/or organizations of being left-leaning, subversives, communists or terrorists (used as) a strategy...by State agents, particularly law enforcement agencies and the military, against those perceived to be ‘threats’ or ‘enemies of the State’.”  

Aquino III there referencing the BS whose administration was generally hailed as democracy at its freest, if at its weakest. Yeah, red-smearing happens in democracies as much as in dictatorships.

Why, even the administration of the BS’ mother, the sainted icon of democracy  Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino herself, was not spared from the maculation of red-tagging.

Cory bet is Red. So screamed the banner of Tempo, June 13, 1987, to wit:

Brig. Gen. Eugenio Ocampo, chief of the Regional Command 3 of the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police, said that he can substantiate his report on alleged cheating during the May 11 elections.

…General Ocampo said that an administration congressional candidate who won in Pampanga’s 3^rd District is a ranking member of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army and was listed in the military’s Order of Battle…

General Ocampo cited how former Pampanga Governor and Solicitor General Estelito P. Mendoza lost…to his opponent Oscar Rodriguez, a Lakas ng Bayan candidate.

According to military intelligence, Rodriguez is known as Ka Jasmin in the CPP/NPA and was in the Order of Battle…

The Order of Battle, where red-tagging routinely descended to. Its basic military meaning of “a tabular compilation of units, commanders, equipment, and their locations in a theater of operation” mutated to extra-judicial means, aye, mutilated to nothing more than a list of “perceived and actual enemies of the State for neutralization, not excluding execution with extreme prejudice.” That hodge-podge of terms I concocted.    

The Order of Battle. Something a number of journalists, this one not excluded, shared with Cong Oca during the heydays of Cory’s democracy.

It still creeps he hell out of me to now recall:

Pampanga PC-INP commander Lt. Col. EQ Fernandez reading over radio DZRH the names Elmer Cato of Manila Chronicle/Reuters, Sonny Lopez of Malaya/UPI, Bong Lacson of People’s Tonight/AP, Chandler Ramas III of Daily Globe, Jay Sangil of the Philippine Daily Inquirer as listed in the Order of Battle after they were found in the “roll of members of the CPP-NPA” along with other “subversive documents” during a police-military raid in a rebel safehouse in San Fernando, Pampanga.

Yeah, the so-called roll of members actually the attendance sheet in a previously held press conference of the Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon in their office.

Our protestations of innocence meriting not the expungement of our names but their – Elmer’s, Sonny’s, and mine – enrolment in the more lethal list of right-wing vigilantes then headed by the dreaded Col. Rolly de Guzman, who rose to infamy in the all-too-public murder of Zamboanga City icon Cesar Climaco. At the time, Angeles City and Pampanga were in the grip of a war of attrition between the NPA urban partisan guerrillas of the Mariano Garcia Brigade and the para-military vigilantes that in a single month claimed over 40 lives.       

As indeed a “standing order for execution” was issued against the three of us, stayed only by the intercession of friends and patrons with personal connections to the executioner, and subsequently arranging for us a parley with him, where sans any apology, and after a long diatribe against the communist movement warrantied our safety from the vigilante’s bullets.

Much, much later, in an interview on Sonny’s Aksyon Central Luzon with Gen. Jovito Palparan who was then with the North Luzon Command – GMA time, if memory serves right – I asked if there were any mediamen in any military order of battle in the region. His definitive answer: None.

The relative peace of mind among media brought about by Palparan’s affirming assurance shattered now with the NICA director’s wholesale tagging of 31 media persons as virtual red cadres. That he did not give any name other than Sonia’s was calculated to impact the ranks of media with a more pervasive chilling effect.

Red, I feel my soul on fire. Indeed, Le Mis.