STP! STR! STP! Serve the folks! Serve the revolution! Serve the social gathering!
THIS is meant to be the precept guiding each revolutionary, notably components of the Communist Social gathering of the Philippines (CPP). Paradoxically, this appears to be the farthest from the minds of the social gathering management as they will not hesitate, not even for a second, to sacrifice the lives of their very own folks, and even the odd folks they’ve sworn to serve and win the revolutionary battle for.
On Jan. 22, 1987,13 folks have been killed when the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas led a rally of about 10,000 activists, principally peasants, marching to Mendiola to demand real agrarian reform from the federal government of the late Cory Aquino. Whereas I’m tempted to place the blame completely on Cory’s Yellow authorities, it could be grossly unfair as it is just half of the story. The fact is that this explicit rally of which the underground Left was in command, was actually up for confrontation with the Marines guarding the bridge resulting in Malacañang. The truth is, footage exhibiting the peasants conducting last-minute drills on how one can break the navy phalanx and no matter barrier could be blocking their entry to the Palace. And within the command assembly resulting in that rally, everybody was briefed on the doable state of affairs and that features dealing with bullets. However the rally organizers determined to push by means of, completely disregarding the hazard their folks could be dealing with.
And the precise state of affairs as painted by the social gathering leaders ensued, 13 lives have been unnecessarily sacrificed. However that was not the only real plan of the social gathering management. It was really a preparation for a a lot greater motion — paving the way in which for an revolt, an city warfare.
Three days after the bloodbath, an indignation rally was known as. On the tail finish of the ralliers could be two models of Golden Taxi, loaded with high-powered firearms. As quickly because the tail finish of the rally approached Mendiola Bridge, navy operatives of the underground Left, utilizing the high-powered arms saved within the two taxicabs, would interact no matter navy unit could be guarding Mendiola. It might sign the beginning of city warfare. The plan, nevertheless, was known as off when forces recognized with the Marcos loyalists have been noticed massing up in Morayta, thus a state of affairs the place the underground city navy operatives could be sandwiched between the Marines on the Mendiola and the Marcos forces on the rear finish.
Had the navy carried out an inspection of each NGO workplace and authorized workplace recognized with the Left, they’d have found that they had all been transformed into makeshift hospitals to accommodate anticipated casualties from the preliminary engagement. And so they might have seized concrete proof linking each the underground and the authorized Left. No extra want for right now’s red-tagging.
However clearly might we see from this program of motion the utter disregard of the Left even when it considerations different folks’s lives. Not all who have been current on the indignation rally that was to be remodeled into city road combating have been navy operatives nor social gathering components. Some have been simply mass supporters and even merely pals who have been satisfied to affix the rally condemning the killing of the 13 peasants.
However the social gathering management would not be swayed by all these. Although denying to be Machiavellian as they profess to be true-blooded Marxists, they have been solely as much as the tip results of their plan — that’s, to create a revolutionary environment to expedite the revolution that they had been waging for about 20 years then.
And it was not the primary time that they had accomplished that. Fifty-one years in the past, they executed nearly the identical plan in Plaza Miranda.
With the battle cry, “A single spark can begin a prairie fireplace,” Jose Maria Sison ordered the bombing of the Liberal Social gathering grand rally at Plaza Miranda on Aug. 21, 1971. This was carried out by communist armed metropolis partisans who detonated two hand grenades on the LP occasion, killing 9 individuals and significantly wounding greater than 100, others together with the late senator Jovy Salonga, who was left blind in a single eye and deaf in a single ear, and congressman Lito Atienza.
Except for Salonga and Atienza, additionally wounded have been then Palawan congressman Ramon V. Mitra Jr., Eddie Ilarde, Eva Estrada-Kalaw, Liberal Social gathering president Gerardo Roxas, Sergio Osmeña Jr.; lawyer Martin B. Isidro who served as councilor, vice mayor and congressman of the Metropolis of Manila; Ambrosio “King” Lorenzo Jr. who was second district councilor of Manilal; and Ramon Bagatsing, the social gathering’s mayoral candidate for Manila.
Lorenzo was in a coma for 2 weeks and misplaced sight in his left eye and listening to on the identical aspect, whereas Bagatsing misplaced his left leg and suffered a crushed proper cheekbone and a shattered proper arm on account of the blast.
Whereas the bombing was initially blamed on Marcos, it was later discovered — primarily based on the testimonies of CPP personalities who have been concerned within the planning — that it was Sison himself who ordered the execution of the plan.
Curiously, Salonga, in his ebook, expressed suspicion as to why Ninoy Aquino was absent from such an essential rally whilst he, Ninoy, was presupposed to be the star of the LP.
The Plaza Miranda bombing, or the PMB, is an entire antithesis to Sison’s protracted folks’s struggle, or PPW, the very coronary heart and soul of his name for a nationwide democratic revolution. Whereas it could appear at first look that Sison was fixated on successful the revolution by means of his PPW — as could be gleaned from his criticisms in opposition to the ‘kinalburong tagumpay’ of the outdated Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), and even the brand new CPP’s Metro Manila-Rizal Regional social gathering command’s try and convey the armed battle to city areas, notably in Metro Manila within the late Eighties (this was one of many points raised within the so-called Second Nice Rectification Motion, or Ang Ikalawang Dakilang Kilusang Pagwawasto, within the early Nineties) — the PMB will disprove this because it was conceptualized with the first goal of expediting the revolution.
In keeping with 4 former rating social gathering officers, Chairman Sison had turn out to be satisfied by early 1971 — lower than three years after the social gathering was based — that it could take solely a well-timed incident to spark a fantastic upheaval resulting in an early communist victory.
In a gathering in February 1971, Sison offered the thought of the PMB which he claimed would set off a revolutionary scenario. The plan known as for the hurling of two grenades on the miting de avance of the Liberal Social gathering which he anticipated to be held someday within the third quarter of the yr.
Whereas many articles in addition to books have been written to reveal the true culprits behind the PMB, many nonetheless regard them as plain tsismis or gossip, having did not provide you with names of precise individuals who had participated or have first-hand information of the matter.
A minimum of Salonga questioned why Ninoy Aquino, who was then dubbed as “unequalled star of the Liberal Social gathering,” was absent from the occasion. In keeping with experiences, he was, at the moment, on the Sky Room within the Jai alai Constructing on Taft Avenue in Manila, celebrating a good friend’s birthday. His journey to Plaza Miranda was stated to have been delayed as he was nonetheless ready for Cocoy Laurel to complete his efficiency.
Former newsman and senior CPP cadre Ricardo “Dick” Malay, brother-in-law of Satur Ocampo, additionally pointed to Sison because the brains behind the PMB.
Not surprisingly, Sison, who has been residing in Amsterdam since 1988, has continually denied the CPP’s involvement within the PMB, even declaring that when the bombing passed off, “the Liberal Social gathering on the time was our ally of kinds.”
Thus, as early as then Sison had no qualms in betraying his personal comrades and different folks as properly. He disregarded his personal technique of protracted folks’s struggle which they nonetheless stick with it to at the present time, in favor of expediting the revolution and could not care much less if civilians have been killed on that fateful evening of Aug. 21, 1971.
Betrayal is nothing new to the Left. They’re solely out to serve the social gathering. And if you say social gathering, it solely refers to them — the Management.
