The red flag is up
The narratives of the ex-rebels on the manner of how they were recruited by the communists during the Senate hearing recently sent ripples to my past, when similarly, the leftist group Samahan ng Demokratikong Kabataan recruiters gained foothold on me and my young mind back in the ’70s.
At one instance, I was standing amid rice workers along the paddies and prodding them to strike against the oppressive owners of the rice mill when local bullies, obviously from the mill owners, dropped by to throw Molotov bombs on the rather peaceful but heated meeting. Nobody was hurt!
I was barely 16 years old then. Presently, an alarm is being raised on the growing frequency of young people opting to leave their institutional studies in exchange for the brainwashed ideals of communist cadres.
They are abandoning the prospects of a better life of sensibility and rationality for a more difficult life in the boondocks of a rat hiding perpetually until the voracious cat of the armed rightists catch them with their sharp paws.
Secretary Eduardo Año of the Department of the Local Government recommended strongly the revival of the law declaring subversion as a criminal act.
The retired Philippine National Police chief and now sitting senator is hell bent on enacting the law in order to crush communism at its outset, right at the seedbed of false youthful ideals propagated by the leftist organizations in the country.
Some of them are well entrenched in the nation’s political tapestry, such as the leftist partylist members of the House.
President Rodrigo Duterte in May 2018 stated that the military is winning against the New People’s Army (NPA) and communists with the capture of some of their henchmen. Also, not a few times, did he demonize the mentor of communism in this country, Jose Maria Sison, as a leader of an archaic organization.
Recently, however, the President ordered a crackdown on the NPA rebel groups who managed to sneak out of their lairs to ambush unsuspecting armed personnel, most recently
“If today, by the military’s own admission, there is seemingly a resurgence of communist enrollment activities among the idealistic youth, then probably there must be a seedbed that stimulates it to grow!
in Isabela and Iloilo, where rebels were seen roaming freely the streets of a village.
Presently, since it is now the youth that are being “ambushed” by the leftist elements, some hard questions had to be answered.
I was recruited to be a young activist when military rule was already in place even before martial law was declared in 1972. In the hinterlands of Laguna, militarization and its abuse, obviously, was a thing of derision especially among the youth.
It was easy for the recruiters to pry on the youth who had begun hating the rightist ideals of the military and its patronage of the dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos.
That was the seedbed of the growing rebellious trend among the young recruits at that time.
Hence, if today, by the military’s own admission, there is seemingly a resurgence of communist enrollment activities among the idealistic youth, then probably there must be a seedbed that stimulates it to grow!
Why? Does this government bear a rightist mark or character or even espouse it? Does the practice of the revolving door for retired military officers appointed to sensitive positions in government an indication of militarization, as Sen. Dick Gordon would like to surmise? Is President Duterte a dictator, for instance, when he declared martial law in Mindanao and threaten to do so for the rest of the country?
Is this country’s government bereft of a social philosophy or at least, ideals and principles that would leave our young people without a handle or a wall to lean on?
The young idealists may find themselves empty and the vacuum could be ripe for the communist leftist ideals that thrive on the anti-thesis of whatever is “right” in the present dispensation to fill in such void.
After all, it is not just a matter of reviving the law criminalizing subversion and annihilating the rebel groups through fire power and military might.
We should be defining subversion before we slap it on the youthful faces of our young people and, more proactively, finding the true ideals that would feed the hungry minds and hearts of the youth.
“It was easy for the recruiters to pry on the youth who had begun hating the rightist ideals of the military and its patronage of the dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos.