Inquirer
Published on Page A10 of the June 29, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
"Meeting in Brazil, the World Social Forum called for a stop to threats against ideologues like Walden Bello, Lidy Nacpil and others. The assassination threats were credible, it said. “Kill the chickens to scare the monkeys,” Mao Zedong taught."
BLOCKED from boarding his Europe flight, party-list representative Satur Ocampo invoked his constitutional right to travel. Yet, the “Batasan 5” group of party-list representatives and their communist allies seek to destroy that same Constitution, a reader writes. So, why should you give them the “benefits of law”?
The question bugs many. They see that New People’s Army (NPA) attacks, and the National Democratic Front’s “legal struggle,” are flip sides of the same coin. Both seek to overthrow government and install an unelected “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The NPA shares the “same world view” with the Batasan 5, party-list representative Teddy Casiño murmurs. Democratic space, meanwhile, gives them elbow room: from “peace talk consultant” passes to parliamentary immunity from arrest.
Isn’t that allowing arsonists into your house? “This would never have been allowed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea,” columnist Antonio Abaya notes. Onli in da istupid Pilipins.
