Alamon: Prelude to a crackdown

IT IS the scary red month of October, a significant month if we are to believe the scandal and alarm that the military has been wailing about everywhere the past week. The communists are working out a plan to remove the president from office supposedly by launching mass demonstrations, coordinated tactical offensives, and widespread labor strikes within the month. This would truly be of either great positive or negative concern if the information came from truly reliable sources.

But for the military establishment who in the same breathe downplays the capabilities of their long-time foes by branding them as a spent force and all of a sudden draw up the spectre of a red take-over in a supposed destabilization plot inflating their enemies’ capabilities all of a sudden, it is clear that something is suspiciously wrong.

Operation “Aklasan” or Red October supposedly uncovered in a Tanay, Rizal raid of a Chinese farm house has now morphed into the recruitment of rebels from the studentry in scores of Metro Manila universities who will lead the ouster of Duterte according to the recent installment in the military’s seeming manufactured telenovela. They also cite the subversive documents gathered from a Gensan raid a couple of months ago where 13 activists were illegally detained and divested of personal belongings.

All these occur at a time of heightened attacks against progressive religious and legal organizations who are maliciously red-tagged openly as was the case in Misamis Occidental where IFI Bishop Ablon and the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines were branded as NPA supporters in graffiti. Before Mocha Uson was forced to resign, one of her last acts as assistant secretary was to provide platform in her video blog for known lumad paramilitary leaders connected to the murder of Lumad leaders in Lianga, Surigao del Sur last 2015 discrediting progressive Lumad people’s organizations.

It does not matter that there are frayed threads to their narrative with multiple conflicting sources with fantastic claims. The idea is to precisely create a specter of a looming powerful attack from unfamiliar shadowy constructs that are now present not just in the doorsteps of Manila but also in Mindanao and other rural areas.

Suddenly, the blind followers of a bankrupt ideology have managed to make themselves so formidable and relevant that we should all be wary when they descend down from the mountains and unleash wanton violence. This seems to be the grand plan of this extensive media campaign that creates favorable conditions for a beleaguered government with serious issues of competency and legitimacy hounding it as manifested in the runaway inflation rate and the discredited drug war.

All these create a sociological effect that places the entire population on the edge. The special element here is the ratcheting up of the indices of fear and anxiety among the general population making it easier for the government to make pliable and docile the general body politic who are now restless over the failed electoral promises of Duterte and hungry from the exorbitant prices of goods brought by his tax reform program. The unverified news of the murdering rampage of an ethnic tribe in Bukidnon that flooded social media a fortnight ago are just examples of the manifestations of this social paranoia enveloping the national consciousness.

Instilling fear and confusion and propping up a supposed common enemy are but ways to douse the growing social dissatisfaction even from among the military's own ranks.

We’ve heard it straight from the horse's’ mouth actually. In a speech in Samar this week, the president gave out stern orders to neutralize the NPA rebels implying the targeting not just of armed combatants but also their civilian supporters. Even more revealing among the statements coming from the military is that, according to them, the rebels are actually forcing the hand of Duterte to declare martial law with their actions. This could very well be a Freudian slip that betray the hidden logic of the activated intricate propaganda program.

Taken together, all these lay the groundwork for a harsh and brutal crackdown of the enemies of Duterte’s State with the expectation that we would all be paralyzed out of fear or be confused in our collective stupor. But are they correct in their assessment?

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