USC rescue is another eye opener

THE police operation last February 15, 2021, at the University of San Carlos in Cebu province where 19 ‘Lumad’ youths were rescued from the hands of suspected communist operators is another ‘eye opener’ to all of us on the extent and depth of CPP penetration of our social and political institutions.

One week now after the incident and where much details have finally surfaced, we now have the liberty of looking back and confirming that, yes Jose, the entire University of the Philippines System (not only UP Diliman, UP Manila or UP Los Baños) has been deeply penetrated and being manipulated by the CPP.

For we know now that the rescued youths, aged between 14 to 18, were first brought to Cebu province from their homes in Davao del Norte in 2019 by the group of Bayan Muna Rep. Eufemia Cullamat and they were first “accommodated” at the UP Cebu campus, before finally ending up at the USC seminary where they were finally rescued.

How many more use of such ruse by the CPP (in the guise of ‘educating’ the Lumads) had taken place earlier, this the government would have to find out.

The operation also speaks volume as to how the CPP ruthlessly exploits the bleeding hearts for the poor of the priests at USC that the latter readily accommodated the Lumads without first making a careful investigation of the circumstances that brought these youths into their doorsteps.

And it is also a credit to the ignorance—or is it stupidity—of the SVD priests at the USC that they agree for the ‘teaching’ of these Lumads based on a ‘curriculum’ not approved by the government, considering that the USC is an institution of higher learning. Its administrators should know better.

Were they simply hoodwinked too by the Reds or were they also fellow communist travelers? A separate investigation should answer this.

That the CPP can make even the wisest among us look and act as dumbs is not limited of course to our educational and religious institutions but, as events turned out, into the halls of Congress.

This is demonstrated by that pitiful “privilege speech” delivered last February 17, 2021, by 1-Pacman partylist Rep. Michael ‘Mikee’ Romero, where he ranted at the PNP for “police abuses” during its operation two days earlier in Cebu.

As it turned out, Romero appears as clueless as the SVD priests in Cebu as to the “antecedent facts” of the rescue.

It turned out that he simply ‘re-echoed’ the propaganda line of the Makabayan Bloc that what happened was another case of gross human rights violation by state forces.

Indeed, Romero made a pitiful sight of himself when on interpellation by his more senior colleague, Senior Deputy Majority Leader, Boying Remulla of Cavite, he admitted to being ignorant of a lot of details—he is not aware that there are complainants, the parents of the Lumads, that prompted the police to conduct the operation and, that the USC has no permit from the education department to host and educate the Lumads.

Unless we Filipinos become fully alert on the extent that the CPP is willing to go in order to push its agenda of bringing down the government by armed force, we really cannot move forward as a united people.