Another bogeyman of the Duterte administration

After Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana unilaterally terminated the University of the Philippines-Department of National Defense Accord, the Armed Forces of the Philippines issued a list of UP alumni who are supposedly CPP/NPA members—clearly, a result of sloppy intelligence. It was a good thing UP and those named forcefully pushed back against the unfounded claims.

The Sword of Damocles now hovers over every campus in the UP System, notwithstanding Lorenzana’s claim of merely caring for the security, safety, and welfare of UP constituents.

Why does the military brand UP as a breeding ground for communists when it cannot even capture Joma Sison or Nur Misuari, much less their followers? For a long stretch during Cory Aquino’s term as president, the AFP itself was a breeding ground for putschists.

It will not strain logic to say that Marcos’ term as president nurtured intellectual fervor at UP, whether or not the spillover was the growth of communist beliefs among UP’s then intellectuals. And now that Rodrigo Duterte is in the twilight of his term as president, to quote Samuel Huntington, “the interest of the president is consistent with nothing else.” After the drug campaign as the first bogeyman, communist recruitment has become the second bogeyman.

Primer Pagunuran,
primerpagunuran@gmail.com