Loren Legarda

FIFTY-THREE years since the Communist Party launched a conspiracy to topple our democratic government through force, killing over 14,000 of the Republic's ...

Isn't she wondering why Surigao, Samar and areas close to mines have become the centers of NPA activity? It is because hers is the kind of view that the CPP since 1969 has used to justify its bloody program to capture political power and establish its one-party dictatorship and recruit thousands of young idealists only to die uselessly. If I sound angry at Legarda and her inane views of the CPP, I certainly am. Most, if not all, communist party leaders become egoists, megalomaniacs after having tasted that power of life over death when they order the execution of "class enemies" and having control of people and events. It is only the CPP's propaganda fronts — especially the Bantayog ng mga Bayani — which have routinely included in its roster of "heroes" NPA commanders and CPP cadres. Its leaders become megalomaniacs, as Stalin and Mao Zedong demonstrated, with the masses (and students) they lead becoming unconscious pawns. About half of these though, as I quantified in previous columns, were casualties of the Muslim insurgencies, the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. It is scandalous for Legarda to claim in her press release that "there are many faceless, nameless heroes — having celebrated National Heroes' Day last Monday — who may be associated with the Communist Party of the Philippines." This is the number of those killed during martial law that the Human Rights Compensation Claims board identified (and ordered that compensation of P1 million be made to their relatives). One of Sison's books is titled The Philippine Revolution: The Leader's View. "I stand here as someone who has worked with the so-called left...and there's nothing wrong with that," Legarda boasted in her speech. And Legarda speaks of them as heroes.