STATE TERRORIST
UNDERSECRETARY Lorraine Marie Badoy of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) should first read up on political ideology before she goes around red-tagging people not only as communists but also as terrorists. As a government official, she should be made aware that the Constitution is not her warrant to harm people’s reputations, but is a burden that limits her power. She cannot use the excuse that she wass just exercising her free speech rights.
One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to know that a constitutional government is always a limited one in the sense that a Constitution delimits and binds the power of any government. Thus, if you are working for the government, your power is limited by the Constitution, and by your duty to serve the public. Badoy is a public official working in the communication apparatus of the Duterte administration. As such, she and her colleagues at PCOO do not have the luxury of compartmentalizing their expressions and opinions and conveniently distinguishing these from their official duties.
When Badoy called Sister Mary John Mananzan a terrorist who enables the communist New People’s Army (NPA), she was speaking as a government official. She cannot claim she was simply acting as citizen Badoy posting on her personal Facebook account. Civil service laws, rules and regulations do not distinguish the public and the private. Public officials have been disciplined, even removed from office, for their private indiscretions. Badoy’s indiscretion in inflicting her brand of terror on people whom she irresponsibly slanders and labels is patently a public one. In fact, what she does to people she red-tags, and there have been many, is not just mere slander and defamation. It is a dangerous act of state terrorism. Worse, it carries the air of official public policy.
Badoy conveniently uses the label “terrorist” to attach to anyone who adheres to the communist ideology, because in her mind this ideology is the one that propels the actions of communist rebels when they battle with state forces. While we cannot deny the fact that the NPA cadres have done their share in committing acts of political violence that killed even innocent civilians, and not just armed soldiers, only lazy propagandists would conveniently extrapolate their violence to the ideology.
Communism as an ideology speaks of an egalitarian, communal utopia where classes no longer exist, and states that serve only the ruling class have withered away. It is foolish to assume that it is always implicated in political violence. Communist political parties are legal participants in the democratic process in many countries like India. Badoy suffers the malady that afflicts propagandists when she conflates communist ideology with political violence, and then extends it to terrorism, simply because some who adhere to the communist ideology are engaged in political violence.
Badoy should be told that state forces are also engaged in political violence. And worse, in doing so they breach the limits imposed on them by the Constitution. Rogue cops terrorize the urban poor. Paramilitary forces armed by the State terrorize Indigenous peoples, peasants and human rights activists in the countryside. Thus, the ease by which Badoy redtags progressive forces and call them terrorists is one-sided, and patently implicates her in the propagation of state terrorism. Red-tagging individuals and labeling them as terrorists place them in the line of state terror, of being potential targets for statesponsored political violence.
Badoy can easily say that the state is just protecting itself, and that she is just doing her job to help the government she works for. But she cannot shirk her responsibility to uphold the law. She cannot irresponsibly accuse people of being involved in criminal activity without providing evidence of direct wrongdoing. She cannot theoretically argue that just because one adheres to the communist ideology one is already a terrorist. One can only be prosecuted for an action and not for a belief. An ideology is a belief, and a political ideology like communism remains in the realm of thought. It cannot be the basis to implicate any person to a crime as serious as rebellion or terrorism.
Badoy has to substantiate any allegation every time she utters one in public. She cannot go around using taxpayer’s money to hurl serious accusations. As a government official, she cannot use her private social media account to throw innuendos without substantiating them with evidence. The thing for Badoy is this, however. Whatever evidence she has that are from intelligence sources cannot just be publicly divulged, even as she cannot have the privilege of using it as a basis to sow intrigues. In short, even
if Badoy may be telling the truth, her hands are tied, not only by the Constitution but by the very nature of her job as a public servant.
Badoy can still do her job. She can mobilize her influence and seek the initiation of legal action against anyone on whom she found damaging information backed by evidence. But other than this, she cannot malign any person in public. She is not a member of Congress who has legislative immunity. She is not the President who is immune from suit. As an undersecretary, the Constitution doesn’t bestow on her any right to freely malign a citizen.
She cannot even use her free speech rights. In her tirade against Sister Mary John Mananzan, she used her personal Facebook account. Should Sister Mananzan sue her for cyberlibel, she cannot use as defense that it was an official communication in line with her duties, and then plead that she was just expressing her personal opinion and exercising her free speech rights. She cannot have both.
In the end, if Badoy cannot substantiate her allegations with evidence that can stand scrutiny in a court of law, she should stop aiding and abetting state terrorism, and cease exposing people she slanders to the risks of state-induced political violence.