Casiño a leftist but not a genuine nationalist

May I react to Daniel Aloc’s letter “Genuine nationalists still can’t escape Red-tagging” (Inquirer, 5/2/13). It appears that because of Teddy Casiño’s campaign ad (“Karaniwang Tao”), the party-list Bayan Muna representative who ran for a Senate seat in the recent elections got Aloc’s vote.

Aloc considered the ad as a plain assertion of Casiño’s basic political agenda—genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization. These agenda are alright except that Casiño’s background is hazy. As a student, he was already an activist; he later became a member of the Left-leaning Bayan Muna. He has also openly supported Left-leaning organizations. There was even talk that he attended a recent New People’s Army anniversary. In the May elections, there was suspicion he was supported by the leftists and even the NPA.

I have nothing against Casiño. In fact, in the past I admired him for I thought he was a genuine nationalist. Not anymore. The Red-tagging on Casiño is well-founded, considering his colored past with leftists.

I agree: Former senators Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tañada were real, genuine nationalists who devoted their time and lives to the country. But it is unfair for Aloc to say they had some influence on politics and enjoyed the services of a political machinery, unlike Casiño who relied only on the support of community-based organizations. Casiño had this strong support from these organizations because they belong to or are allied with these organizations which we all know to be left-leaning.

Recto and Tañada, in their time, could not escape Red-tagging but it did not do them justice, for they did not have alliances with the Reds even as they championed the rights of the masses.

—THOMAS M. LOVID,

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