THE Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said it is ready to thwart any attempt by operatives of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its front organizations to embarrass and discredit the incoming Marcos administration, especially on June 30, 2022, when Ferdinand ‘Bongbong/BBM’ Marcos Jr. formally assumes office as the country’s 17th president.
DILG Undersecretary and spokesperson, Jonathan Malaya, said they are seriously taking all ‘intelligence reports’ pertaining to the CPP’s plot to disrupt the presidential inauguration “and we will do what is necessary to thwart any attempt to embarrass or discredit the forthcoming inauguration.”
In a press briefing organized by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC) on Monday, June 20, 2022, former rebels Orlando “Ka Warly” Baluyot, now chairman of Tinang Samahang Nayon Multi-Purpose Cooperative, and Ka Pong Sibayan, a farmer from Hacienda Tinang in Concepcion, Tarlac, said CPP operatives have started organizing Tarlac farmers to join the CPP planned protest rally on June 30.
Hacienda Tinang was in the news lately after the police arrested last June 9, 2022 over 90 student activists and other members of the cooperative’s breakaway faction being run by the CPP for breaking into the cooperative’s tilled lands and started uprooting their planted sugarcanes and other food crops (see also Pinoy Exposé, Volume 3, Issue No. 23, June 13, 2022).
Aside from infiltrating their community, the two also bared that CPP operatives are also agitating the farming communities in nearby Hacienda Murcia and Bgy. Central inside the Aquino-managed, Hacienda Luisita.
“Ayaw talaga nilang maupo si Marcos. Iyon ang nakita natin na gagawin nila sa June 30 bago maupo si Pangulong Bongbong Marcos,” Baluyot said.
The CPP supported the candidacy of Vice President Leni Robredo during the May 9, 2022 elections but lost massively to BBM.
Ahead of the inauguration to be held at the National Museum in Manila (formerly the old Philippine Congress building), Malaya said the department has tasked some 6,200 policemen to secure the site and its perimeters.
Additional police mobile groups are also on standby should the CPP front groups attempt to disrupt the inauguration.
Malaya added that reports reaching the DILG also showed that CPP front groups and operatives are also agitating the residents of provinces surrounding Metro Manila, such as Laguna, Cavite, Pampanga and Bulacan while also not sparing to hoodwink the youth and the students to join the demonstration.
He added the CPP plot is nothing new. “That’s part of their playbook. Whoever sits in Malacañang is their enemy because ultimately, all they want is to overthrow the government through violent means to be followed by a socialist revolution.”
“We respect the people’s rights to free expression, peaceably assemble, and the exercise of their democratic rights but this has to be done within the bounds of the law,” Malaya added.
“Therefore, we advise all protesters to hold their peaceful demonstrations in Manila’s designated freedom parks such as Plaza Miranda, Plaza Dilao, Plaza Moriones, and Liwasang Bonifacio. There are so many to choose from.”
A warning from Juan Ponce Enrile
Former Senate President and national defense secretary, Juan Ponce Enrile, the incoming Chief Presidential Legal Counsel to BBM, in a social media post last June 15, 2022, warned he has received reliable information that aside from domestic opposition mostly stirred up by the CPP, there also groups in the United States “planning and preparing to cause serious embarrassment and trouble for our newly-elected President.”
At 98 years old, Enrile is the country’s oldest and active statesman. He also held several Cabinet posts, the last of which, as defense secretary, under BBM’s father, Pres. Ferdinand Edralin Marcos.
“I have a humble unsolicited advice for the national security officials of the new regime. Instead of making soft and pacific statements seemingly intended to quiet and to gain the cooperation, trust, and confidence of the habitual trouble makers in this country, I suggest that they should sharpen their intelligence information,” Enrile said.
A week before he issued the warning, Jjujne 8, 2022, some 400 Filipinos and Fil-Americans marched in downtown New York carrying a black streamer that reads, ‘Never Again,’ a slogan created by the CPP against the Marcoses and the imposition of martial law in the Philippines in 1972.
“Caution is the name of the game,” Enrile stressed.
“You are just starting your travel in troubled waters. Your adversaries have not stopped. To borrow a phrase from someone, right now ‘they are hiding their brightness and biding their time,’” he said.