‘Triumvirate to topple the gov’t’ - expensive information?

The Office of the President's confidential and intelligence fund exceeded the P1 billion mark but what will it be used for?

The General Appropriations Act for the 2019 budget is slated to be passed into law by November. In this proposal, the Office of the President has the allocation amounting to P6.7 billion. This is 12 percent higher than that of 2018. From this amount, P1.25 billion is for confidential expenses (audit is unnecessary) and another P1.25 billion for intelligence expenses.

According to the DBM, the confidential and intelligence fund that has a total of P2.5 billion will be used for President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s war against drugs, criminality and corruption. And this fund, COA said, will be used for intelligence gathering and to purchase information that is necessary for public safety and national security.

After the Marcos political and social system, never had the Office of the President gone beyond P1 billion confidential and intelligence fund.

In Duterte’s administration, one of the pricey information we could possibly purchase from this fund is a kind like there is a destabilization plot by a triumvirate forces composed of the Liberals, Communists and the rightest Magdalo that was supposedly launched on September 21 under the aegis “Tindig Pilipinas”.

The president himself announced that a friendly foreign country whom he did not name, was the source of information. And the AFP’s effort then, I supposed, was to google a name of the game as “Red October”

Red October instigated and referred to the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. And there was also the 1975 Clancy’s novel on mutiny aboard on the Soviet destroyer Storozhevoy, aimed to overthrow Leonid Brezhnev.

On September 24, AFP deputy chief of staff for operations Brig. Gen. Antonio Parlade, narrowed down the brewing conspiracy and renamed “Oplan Talsik”. And to substantiate the intelligence claim of Red October, the AFP connected the international celebrations for (Marxism) communism happening on October.

This time the Red October claim becomes a bit reliable, although sounds ancient and familiar tune, at face it is no longer pre-fabricated in form like a draconian tactic, just like before the Marcos style martial law was imposed. In the end, the P2.5 billion confidential and intelligence fund is justifiable to be in good hands.