The death of an infant

The treachery and ambuscade of the New People's Army on a police patrol and a civilian car seemed to have been stonewalled and consigned to oblivion. The Commission on Human Rights, the garrulous cabal of leftist political fronts and their allies in the streets are eerily quiet. A four-month old infant was killed as the NPA rebels rained a hail of bullets in a private car that only happened to be passing along the path of a police vehicle which the NPA elements ambushed minutes before.

The baby died instantly while two other women, who were in the same vehicle, were seriously sounded. In the police vehicle, one officer was killed while five others were wounded. 

The bloody ambush happened last November 9 in Talakag, Bukidnon. Sadly the pontificating Socrates Villegas of the Catholic Bishop of the Philippines vanished from his usual stunt. The Human Right Watch advocates are silent. Senators Risa Hontiveros, Antonio Trillanes, Bam Aquino and the jailbird Leila De Lima and their counterparts in the Lower House, among them Edcel Lagman, are so mysteriously quiet. Not a word for the baby, not a message of condemnation like what they did for Kian.

Has the success of the ASEAN summits and the failure of Bishop Villegas adventurism to assemble a perceptible number of people in his own brand of EDSA dampened their mood and enthusiasm that one more infant killed by NPAs does not stir any interest from them anymore? 

President Rodrigo Duterte is about to declare the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People's Army as terrorist organization. The declaration will give the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police the readiness and the courage to fight and address the half-a-century old insurgency in the country. The ideology is stuck with the obstinate Jose Ma. Sison whose ideas have become irrelevant.

Not a few quarters are curious why we had pursued peace talks with the CPP/NPA when in each round of talks, new agenda and demands crop up. We have an infinite wellspring of hopes and patience amidst all the insults and the rising toll of casualties among our men in uniform and now ambuscades of unarmed and helpless civilians. 

Something is queer in the government efforts to quell insurgency which has become a facade for terrorism and in not a few instances extortion, kidnapping and other forms of hooliganism. But something is even more incredulous and ironic when you look at how the Netherlands gave asylum to the CPP/NPA/NDF! The European Union had kept on its list of terrorist organizations the Communist Party of the Philippines with its armed forces and yet it provided its leaders a mantle of protection and financial support. The motive therefore becomes convoluted if not suspect.

The USA and the EU had declared CPP a terrorist organization except for the Philippines which, during the time of Corazon Aquino, allowed it to recuperate. It would take a revolutionary to defeat a rebellion which had metamorphosed into a terrorist clone. President Duterte is on the edge and enraged. He is not about to tag the CPP red, he is about to declare them terrorists. The death of an infant triggered that.