| Home | CPP | NPA | NDF | Ang Bayan | KR Online | Public Info | Publications | Kultura | Specials | Photos |
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
The Contras continue to disintegrate due to quarrels regarding their pilfered loot, utter opportunism, thorough exposure and severe isolation. The handful of revisionist and opportunist renegades, especially the Lagman cult in Metro Manila and the Tabara clique in Negros and Panay, are already in an advanced state of disintegration.
The rapid deterioration of the counterrevolutionary renegades stands in complete contrast to the steady restrengthening of the Party and the revolutionary movement through the Second Great Rectification Movement. From the time they bolted the revolutionary movement and brazenly wallowed in opportunism and corruption, their hypocritical stance of setting up another party and leading the revolution has been rapidly unmasked. Their anti-Party, anti-rectification and anti-Maoism campaigns are all failed demolition operations. They are detested not only by genuine proletarian revolutionaries but also by the elements they had deceived and carried away in the past. Even the counterrevolutionary leaders themselves could not stand each other's company. Quarreling over lootIn 1997, Sergio Romero bolted the Popoy Lagman cult because of conflicts over how to divy up money obtained from various shady deals. The most notorious case involved the disputed P80 million�other reports say P200 million�paid by the Public Estates Authority (PEA)-Amari gang to evict thousands of poor families living in Freedom Island, Para�aque. Lagman used the bogus "Alex Boncayao Brigade" urban partisans to collect payment and plot the demolition of the urban poor communities. But afterwards, Lagman pocketed the money, handing over only a tiny sum to Sergio Romero and for the relocation expenses of the families who had lost their houses. Another of Lagman's criminal rackets was extorting money from Chinese businessmen in Metro Manila. With the kidnapping of Chinese businessmen worsening and becoming more widespread, Lagman offered them the "protection" of the "ABB". But when he couldn't wheedle enough money from such deals, he turned to outright blackmail. First, he warned businessmen that they were on the hitlist of or, would become targets for liquidation by the "ABB". Then, he offered to strike their names off the list in exchange for a considerable amount. Lagman was able to suck in more money from this new scheme. One of those victimized by this racket was capitalist Leonard Ty who was killed by the "ABB" in 1996 after he refused to give in to Lagman. Lagman also raked in a lot of are given all-out support and provided with armed protection by the "ABB". Meanwhile, those who didn't pay were branded as "trapo" (traditional politicians) and lambasted in the mass media and their posters and headquarters vandalized. Some candidates gave money to Lagman in the mistaken belief that his "mass base" could deliver winning votes. Most of them just shelled out cash to avoid trouble. Demoralization and the rate of desertion among Lagman's remaining followers worsened after the 1995 polls because of Lagman's practice of keeping his deals with reactionary politicians to himself and squandering funds. Popoy's populism, Romero's vigilantism
Before such disputes over money erupted, Lagman's populism and Romero's vigilantism were but different faces of the bankrupt line of urban insurrectionism which relied on the opportunistic worship of the spontaneous consciousness of the masses and an obsession with self-aggrandizement in the bourgeois mass media. Lagman and Romero were one when it came to opposing and attacking the line of people's democratic revolution and protracted people's war. And after bolting the revolutionary movement, they also agreed to subordinate the "ABB"'s vigilantism to the reactionary government's anticrime campaign and their political activities to the parliamentary maneuvers and dreams of reactionary politicians, especially of Lagman's elder brother. After severing ties with Lagman, Romero hitched on to the Tabara gangster clique (Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino- Revolutionary Proletarian Army or RPMP-RPA) based in Negros. On March 26, 1997, the RPA merged with the ABB. With this move, Romero jumped from the frying pan into the fire: on October 16, 1997, after only a few months, he was captured by intelligence operatives of the Philippine Army. Romero's already dwindling group disintegrated even further due to old and new conflicts and irritations. Again, because of quarrels and suspicions over deals with reactionary politicians during the presidential elections of 1998, another anti-Popoy and anti-Romero/Tabara faction emerged, styling itself as a so-called "regional committee" in Metro Manila-Rizal in control of the "ABB". This faction has merged with BISIG and set up the Trotskyite group Liga Sosyalista (see "New Trotskyite Group"). Tabara gangster clique
Only four have remained out of the 170 armed men deceived and carried away by Tabara in Panay in 1993. Because they have deceived and recruited a few others, they have a squad roaming around in a number of upland barrios bordering the towns of Ibajay, Pandan and Nabas in Aklan and a small team operating in a few barangays in the Leon-Tubungan border in Iloilo. Another squad brought in from Negros has been sent to the uplands of Miag-ao, Iloilo. Many of the Tabara gangster clique's practices are no different from those of the fascist troops of the AFP-PNP: cash and grain quotas are imposed on barriofolk and those who receive Red fighters into their homes are threatened. Their Special Operations Unit which was formed for bank holdups, kidnapping for ransom and other dirty jobs has thoroughly disappeared, with its members offering their "services" for a fee to politicians and highly placed officials of the AFP-PNP. Tabara himself instigated the dissolution of the armed units in the countryside and the underground organizations in the cities. Cadres based in the countryside were made to surface�made to surrender or "arrested" during meetings with Tabara in the cities�to lead the vacuous alliances that had been set up in urban areas. He encouraged commanders and cadres to patronize beer houses and live in luxury in urban areas, until they loitered in the cities and rarely went to see their men in the countryside. Daniel "Mokong" Batoy, a close aide of Tabara who serves as political officer of the RPA squad in Aklan, bases himself in a beach resort in Boracay owned by leaders of the RPMP. Batoy also has evident links with the military because he frequents the Philippine Army detachment in San Jose, Ibajay. Tabara himself (Andres Nava) is known to be an agent of the reactionary military. The special service he carries out for AFP intelligence is to cause the capture of cadres who then become passive or assume a legal status after a brief stint in prison. The RPMP-RPA leadership's capitulationism, obsequiousness to reactionary politicians and high officials of the AFP-PNP and luxurious lifestyle in the cities are the foremost reasons for the rapid disintegration of the units that had been deceived and carried away by the Tabara clique. Warren Calizo, former secretary of the RPMP "regional committee" in Panay and his wife Victoria Segui, split from Tabara because of a quarrel over how to divide P50,000 given by politicians during the presidential elections. Prior to this, Tabara had assigned Calizo and Segui to attempt to wrest the leadership and initiative in the urban mass movement in Panay away from the revolutionary forces and genuine progressives. In the cities and town centers, the clique brazenly collaborates with yellow federations like the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) and the Federation of Free Workers (FFW). It is with these elements that they march during Labor Day rallies. On the other hand, surrenderees are trucked in to attend demonstrations organized by the Contras. That the Calizos have been enriching themselves is no secret. Aside from commissions obtained from selling real estate, entering into contracts and engaging in a variety of businesses, the couple rakes in a lot of money from conniving with reactionary politicians during elections. Among those they have collaborated with are ex-Gen. Gerardo Flores, PNP intelligence chief in the late '80s who ran for congressman of the first district of Iloilo in 1995. In Negros, factions have also emerged due to disputes over how to divide the spoils from the 1998 elections, control over businesses and suspicions regarding secret connections with the AFP-PNP. Noel Etabag and Rufino Geanga have split from the Tabara clique, with Etabag and Geanga now using the names "Negros Regional Party Organization" and "Miguel Yntrencherado" against the RPMP-RPA-ABB. Lualhati Carapali, Tabara's right hand man in Negros, has been suspected by Yntrencherado and other former members of the clique of possessing safe conduct passes from the AFP and PNP since 1994. The continued fractiousness and disintegration of the Lagman cult, the Tabara gangster clique and other counterrevolutionary revisionist renegade groups are an inseparable part of their utter deterioration and unbridled opportunism. Their complete destruction will not be long in coming. Given the revisionist renegades' utterly bankrupt anti-Communist, anti-Party and counterrevolutionary line, it becomes all the more relevant and necessary to complete the Second Great Rectification Movement and restrengthen the revolutionary organizations and struggles in Metro Manila, Negros and Panay which were sabotaged and had suffered serious damage from the Contras' demolition operations. 
| |||||||||
|
[ HOME | CPP | NPA |NDF | Ang Bayan | KR Online |Public Info] [Publications | Specials | Kultura | Photos] The Philippine Revolution Web Central is maintained by the Information Bureau of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Click here to send your feedback. |
|
When he bolted the Lagman cult, Sergio Romero complained that the former was besotted with his legal status and with the legal struggle and neglected the underground movement. Not long after, however, Romero himself refused to return to the underground after being captured.
In Negros and Panay, the Tabara gangster clique which now sports the monicker RPMP-RPA-ABB also continues to disintegrate.
