By Herbert Vego
“What’s happening to our country, General?”
If you were already of discernment age in 1982, you would remember that question muttered by former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez while he was being wheeled into the emergency room of a hospital. He had survived an ambush and was talking to then Quezon City police chief Tomas Karingal.
This time, under different circumstances, we are tempted to pose the same question to Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., the chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Southern Luzon Command, who had red-tagged movie actresses Liza Soberano and Angel Locsin, and Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray for alleged alliances with organizations linked to the communist New People’s Army (NPA).
Parlade had asked Soberano to abdicate the Gabriela Youth Group: “If you don’t, you will suffer the same fate as Josephine Anne Lapira.” Lapira, 22, was a student activist who died in an alleged encounter in Batangas province between the Philippine Army (PA) and the NPA.
For that, Parlade had a hard time parrying bashers in the social media who believe there’s nothing wrong with being identified with human-rights advocates like the all-women Gabriela.
The NPA as the armed component of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has been around since 1969 when some of our present-day AFP generals were yet unborn. It began with only 60 armed Maoist ideologues who rapidly multiplied by thousands, lured by the promise of equality under the “people’s government.”
It is ironic that the generals generalize the local communists and their sympathizers as “subversives” while showing subservience to the Chinese communists.
Awkward, yes, but Pres. Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly praised Pres. Xi Jin Ping for being a “friend”. There was indeed a time in February 2018 when he said before a gathering of the Chinese Business Club at the Manila Hotel, “Kung gusto ‘nyo, gawin ‘nyo na lang kaming province.
In his video-recorded address before the 75th United Nations General Assembly, however, he recognized the 2016 decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which had declared that certain territories at the West Philippine Sea belong to the country’s exclusive economic zone.
Earlier, in his 5th State of the Nation Address (SONA), Duterte had pronounced himself “inutile” on the pretext that he could not afford to go to war with China.
No wonder our generals have done nothing to prevent the “visits” of unidentified Chinese to our claimed territories, namely the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal.
We have seen aerial photos of China’s military bases there, built with airstrips, ports and missile sites.
How would our soldiers react if China’s well-trained People’s Liberation Army (PLA) come to colonize the entire country?
At the moment they would not do it, since they are still incapable of warding off the ever-present American war ships patrolling the West Philippine Sea in support of “freedom of navigation” in that strategic waterway where $3 trillion worth of goods pass every year.
I suppose that the silent majority in the military’s rank and file are not happy in the service of somebody who calls them “my soldiers” when it’s we the taxpayers who pay their salaries.
If separation of powers in our government were more truth than fiction, we could have relied on Congress and the Supreme Court to take up the cudgels for us.
It’s a pity that only a few of our senators – such as Risa Hontiveros, Joel Villanueva, Nancy Binay and Richard Gordon – have raised the alarm over the massive entry of Chinese from China since 2017, in cahoots with corrupt officials of our Bureau of Immigration.
Sen. Hontiveros alleged that they had generated some P30 billion in kickbacks from the 3.8 million Chinese arrivals. At least 28,000 of them, whose average age is only 35, are “retirees.”
Retiring in our country at age 35? What if they are actually trained combatants from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA)?
Remember, there was a time when the police arrested two Chinese nationals, each with a PLA identification card, for gunning down a fellow Chinese national in Makati City.
This reminds us of the story of the Trojan War, where the Greeks concealed themselves in the hollow wooden statue of a horse in order to take over the walled city of Troy.
Are we seeing a “Trojan horse” in the making?
