Rigoberto Tiglao was a former red now turned red-baiter. He has joined Gary Olivar and this tragi-comic character called Jeffry Celiz in the chorus together with Duterte’s running-dogs who having failed to defeat the revolutionary movement militarily have now turned their guns on legal patriotic and democratic organizations, their leaders and sympathizers in on orgy of red-tagging and red-baiting.

Ever since he made a 180-degree turn and embraced the rotten system that he used to condemn when he was a young student activist with high ideals and noble principles, Tiglao has become a pesky nuisance to the revolutionary movement using his column in the Manila Times to spread garbage.

I write this as a rejoinder to his recent diatribe against the movement in his column, “The Communist Party and Sison’s greatest trick.”

I know a little bit about Tiglao. He was a leader of the patriotic organization Kabataang Makabayan at the Ateneo de Manila University in the early seventies. KM was very effective in arousing the masses and making them aware of the ills of Philippine society and their roots in imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Tiglao used to know these things by heart.

When Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972, the Kabataang Makabayan was outlawed forcing its leaders and members to go underground in order to be able to continue the struggle against the exploitative and oppressive ruling system. Some headquarters of Kabataang Makabayan were raided even before the people came to know on September 23 that Marcos had assumed dictatorial powers and had signed Proclamation 1081 on September 21 declaring the whole Philippines under Martial Law.

Tiglao was one of the KM activists who went underground. Next thing I knew, he was the head of the Manila-Rizal Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines. A short while later I learned that he was arrested. Then a long time passed and the next thing I knew he was the GRP ambassador to Greece. And he was now singing a different tune. Wow, what a great transformation!

In his recent diatribe, he complains that the Communist Party is invisible to many people. And in a snobbish tone says, “Only for us, the newspaper-reading strata of Filipinos, does a Communist Party exist.” Tiglao knows the reason why but he feigns ignorance. He himself tried to make himself invisible to the state’s forces when he went underground after Marcos declared Martial Law.

The Communist Party does not hide the fact that it is a clandestine Party. It is a way to defend itself from its enemy because it knows fully well that its enemy is a vicious enemy determined to defeat it not in civilized debate but to exterminate it physically through murder, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, etc. The Party has to do this especially because the enemy is many times more powerful — armed with weapons that kill, prisons that isolate and huge financial resources to fund its counter-revolutionary operations including paying snitches like Jeffrey Celiz. His experience of being arrested even while he was in the underground should have convinced Tiglao of the sinister efficiency of the state’s repressive apparatus.

One of the recent victims of this blood-thirsty enemy is Randall Echanis who was working in the open as a devoted leader and fighter of the peasant movement. He was also a member of the Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms and participated in all the five sessions of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations until these were stopped by Duterte. That is one of the dangers of revolutionary cadres working in the open. They expose themselves to the murderous enemy.

And what does Tiglao say about this cowardly murder by government agents? “When Randall Echanis was killed in August in his apartment under very mysterious circumstances…” Tiglao brags about being among the select few of the “newspaper-reading strata of Filipinos.” Well, details about Randall’s cold-blooded murder was all over the newspapers and they point to government hitmen as responsible. And Tiglao dismisses all this with his “under very mysterious circumstances”! He absolves the government and its henchmen and hints at the military psywar experts’claim of an internal purge. To what depths this scum has sunk is unbelievable!

The blood-thirsty psywar experts claim in their posters that the dastardly killing of Randy Malayao (another NDFP consultant in the peace negotiations)while sleeping alone inside a bus is the result of an internal purge. Was that also a killing “under very mysterious circumstances”, Rigoberto Tiglao?

Posing like an expert Tiglao says,” In the countryside, the masses have known only the New People’s Army (NPA), with hardly an inkling that there is a Communist Party that commands it.” Tiglao, who never worked in the countryside, pretends to be knowledgeable about revolutionary work in the countryside.

The Party is visible to the masses through the fine work of its self-sacrificing and hard-working cadres, activists and members. They do not announce themselves as communists to gain praise and honor. By their actions the masses know them.

There are instances when the Party comes out in the open. One such instance is the celebration of the Party anniversary in December 2012 somewhere in Compostella Valley attended by peasant masses that Duterte also attended when he was vice-mayor of Davao City. Duterte made a grand entrance coming down in a helicopter to attend the event. According to a news report, he turned over an unspecified amount to the NPA for the victims of typhoon Pablo.

Nevertheless, even in the countryside relatively far from the reach of the repressive machinery of the state, peasant associations have to go about their work semi-open and semi-clandestine because there are bad elements in the barrios paid by the military to spy on them. The peasant masses call them “demonyo” because they are traitors to their own kind. These bad elements are usually those who belong to gangs of cattle rustlers often protected by the military.

In Bicol, “Dose Pares” is such a gang protected and armed by soldiers and engaged in stealing carabaos, chickens, etc. They also write letters to businessmen posing as NPA and demanding money. Their criminal activities are combined with dirty counter-insurgency work under the protection and direction of their military handlers. Duterte alluded to the presence of these “demonyos” in his speech at the celebration of the Party anniversary mentioned above, “For spies who are here right now, do not worry because this is for the masses. This is to restart the circulation of money because right now the people has (sic) no money.”

By the way, in some regions, the masses call government soldiers “hapon” because elderly peasants are reminded of the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers during the Japanese occupation by the criminal behavior of the present government soldiers that beat up and kill peasants suspected of being Party members or members of peasant associations and steal chickens and other belongings of the peasants.

Let’s cut the bullshit, Tiglao. What you really want is for the Party to expose its cadres and members so as to render them as sitting ducks for easy picking by the military hitmen as shown in the cold-blooded murder of Randall Echanis who was 72 years old and no match to the brutes that killed him. These murdering beasts are trained and brainwashed in the American idea that “The only good communist is a dead communist.” ###