The surrender campaign of the US-Duterte regime is a big fat pocket!
The comical episodes on fake surrenders in the country unfold day by day. For pure psywar, the corrupt military and civilian officials continue to make money from the various trickery feigning success of their counterrevolutionary war against the national democratic revolution.
Propaganda and psychological warfare comprised a large component part of the Oplan Kapanatagan of the US-Duterte regime in its pipe-dream to end the communist armed conflict. Duterte, like his idol – the fascist dictator Marcos, nurture his psywar operatives along Hitler’s chief propagandist Joseph Goebbel’s strategy: that even sheer falsehood and half-truths if propagated repeatedly will in the end be accepted as truths. During the heyday of his rule, Marcos had his gang of Goebbels propping up his brutal dictatorship. When Marcos became acutely isolated from the broad masses of the Filipino people, his martial law propagandists grew ineffective, were replaced one after the other until his US masters found in him a puppet liability beyond tolerance, hence his ignominious ouster.
However, in the internet era that we are now, even ordinary citizens who have access to mainstream, alternative, and social media can plainly figure out truths from untruths, factual from fake, real from the imagined. Much more for an awakened, patriotic and struggling citizenry, shenanigans are easily spotted specially if done excessively. It will certainly backfire. This was the case of the clumsily photoshopped presentation of the more than “300 surrenderees” in Masbate. This exposé earned the ire of netizens, media and the reading public. It exposed the military’s flagrant hoodwinking handiwork to keep the public misinformed and the fakery of the surrender campaign of the US-Duterte regime and the attendant Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) as a corruption racket of AFP/PNP generals.
The guilty scheming Maj. Aguilar was quick to apologize publicly and made a more outrageous alibi that it was an honest mistake, purportedly to protect the identity of the surrenderees and the AFP spokesperson professed further that it was an isolated case. Well that was overdosing the public with more lies.
Up here in the Northern Luzon, similar gimmickry cum milking cow ventures are glaring proof that the Masbate hullabaloo was not at all an isolated case. In the Ilocos-Cordillera region, as with other regions of the country, people are being subjected to different forms of coercion to force them to submit to this dubious program. In order to meet their quota and project a prettified scenario that they are winning the war and in the process, get a share of the reward money, officers and personnel of the AFP concoct numerous schemes in order to present “surrenderees” and gloatingly project them to the media. One comical incident was the case of fake surrender of Ifugao, Kalinga, Mountain Province, Abra and Isabela peasants. Under pain of being falsely accused as NPA supporters, they were transported aboard military trucks to the headquarters of the 5th Infantry Division in Gamu, Isabela. They were ushered in a huge hall set like a dining room. But alas! No food was served in the finely arranged dining table. Instead, various types of guns were laid in each table ranging from the rusty homemade short arms, hunting guns, to the high caliber sort of rifles. All 72 of them were presented as surrenderees before President Duterte during his visit in September 2018.
After the well documented fake surrender, the peasants were served little food packed in small cellophane bags. A few of them received P15,000 each and were transported back to their respective communities. They were told that another surrender batch of their barriomates will follow soon.
In this case, the corrupt officials of 5th ID were not only fooling the public, they were even fooling their own commander-in-chief!
On the other hand, police officials show off their separate exhibits. Take the case of an Abra fake mass surrender. Ten civilians from Sallapadan, Abra were summoned by PNP Provincial Dir. PCol. Alfredo A. Dangani in the provincial police headquarters in Bangued where they were forced to take oath as surrenderees and had their group picture taken despite the barrio folks’ protestation. Obviously, no one would ever believe that a 74 year-old man and women elderlies would ably qualify as militia members! Joining the fray rather brazenly was PCol. Job Russel Balaquit, the PNP Provincial Director of Kalinga. For failing to get civilians to sing his tune, he arrested four women elderlies from Barangay Buaya in Balbalan, Kalinga in the evening of October 24, 2019, brought them to Camp Juan Duyan, Tabuk City and presto! He already had four surrenderees up his sleeve the following morning. The dossiers of the four dated as far back as the Marcos period. What a comedy indeed!
It is also noted that most of these supposed surrenderees were recycled as they were presented as such in previous periods. Clearly, this scheme was to pad the lists of supposed surrenderees to gain larger amounts to fatten their pockets leaving the surrenderees to a next possible round of surrender summon.
Clearly, corrupt psywar operatives in the AFP and PNP are more interested with stealing people’s money allotted for E-CLIP. Unlike Goebbels who successfully manipulated German minds to worship Hitler like God, the crooks are not concerned if their commander in chief appears even more silly before the entire Filipino people.
With these numerous machinations being exposed, no one would ever believe these long running lies of the AFP-PNP sycophants except themselves and their fascist masters. In the face of the increasing exploitation and oppression, the people’s resistance will further intensify. More and more will be compelled to join swelling ranks of the revolutionary forces. As long as the basic problems of the people are not addressed, the armed revolution will continue to surge forward in the countryside. The national-democratic revolution continuously grows with the support of the people, and no amount of fascism, militarization and sham campaigns can turn back its advance. On the other hand, the AFP-PNP’s losing course shall run parallel with the downhill path of the US-Duterte regime, and their infamy shall lead to their downfall.
Oust the US-Duterte regime!
Fight against fascism and tyranny!
Expose the sham surrender campaign of the AFP!