All of a sudden, this government is seeing enemies at every corner. It is a state of affairs that hardly inspires confidence, particularly when the enemies are imagined.
This week, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the real reason the government terminated peace talks with the communist rebels was that they were plotting to overthrow President Rodrigo Duterte as early as 2017, if he refused to join them in a coalition government.
The Defense secretary said during a lull in the fighting due to a unilateral ceasefire from 2016 to January 2017, the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front called a People’s Congress during which they created a three-year plan that included the ouster of Duterte if he rejected a coalition government—which he has.
What’s more, Lorenzana said, an ongoing review of all peace documents and agreements forged with the communists showed that they were laying the foundation for power-sharing under a coalition government.
The Defense chief also accused the communists of using the lull created by the peace talks to regain lost ground and rebuild their base, as well as to obtain the release of top party members who were detained.
Of course, numerous administrations have used communist plots as a bogeyman in the past—to distract the public from their failures, or to condition people to the coming of draconian security measures.
This is no surprise, since the stated goal of the CPP, after all, is to overthrow the government through armed revolution and to seize power. Sporadic peace talks have done nothing to change this overall objective.
Mr. Lorenzana’s statement that several peace documents and agreements lay the foundation of a coalition government is a little more surprising, however, because it suggests that government negotiators have been hoodwinked by the communists all along, and that they unwittingly agreed to share power with the rebels.
Even more surprising was the Palace saying it would not rule out the possibility that Catholic Church leaders were conniving with the communists to oust President Duterte.
This possibility was raised by Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque, who had earlier declared that the Church was not part of any destabilization plot.
“Maybe many of them do not accept the President so it’s not farfetched to say they could unite with the CPP-NPA to oust President Duterte,” the spokesman said in Filipino.
In offering this serious accusation, the Palace spokesman offered no evidence, only conjecture.
Roque also claimed that Catholic leaders only became outspoken in their criticism of Duterte when “their candidate” in the 2016 presidential elections was defeated by Duterte.
This is patently untrue, of course, as the Catholic bishops began to criticize Duterte when he was still running for office and cursed Pope Francis in November 2015 for causing traffic during his visit to Metro Manila.
Of course, verity seems to be in short supply these days, as the administration makes a show of holding a dialogue with Catholic and other religious leaders, even as the President continues to mock their faith.