Tainting Patriotism : QC IMC

The Arroyo administration is at it again. It is once again playing its old game of seeing red whenever it hears unfavorable comments on its performance as an administration directly catapulted into power by the people through a popular uprising.

Last May 21, an "intelligence report" by the Armed Forces of the Philippines branding the poll watchdog group Patriots as a "communist front" and linking it to purported "destabilization plots" by the Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) which fielded actor Fernando Poe, Jr. as its presidential bet, came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Patriots, which had been conducting fact-finding missions and documenting incidents of electoral fraud and violence reported to its telephone hotlines, had earned the ire of the Arroyo administration for its daring exposes.

Initially Malacañang spokespersons had tried to dismiss their findings as mere "sensationalization" of "isolated incidents." But failing to stop the watchdog group, the administration camp is now trying the old tactic of red-baiting in an attempt to discredit Patriots without squarely confronting the issues it has been raising.

The AFP report is patently fallacious. Patriots had been founded last February, contrary to what it states that the group was formed only a few days before the elections. Opposition groups such as the KNP are not members of Patriots; they do cooperate with the watchdog group, however, in monitoring and exposing cases of electoral fraud and violence--as do the progressive party-list groups whose members have frequently been seen in its activities.

The cases of poll fraud which Patriots has been able to document are not of their own invention.

Even the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has admitted that there was fraud in the conduct of the May 10 election.

Even high officials of the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) such as Carmen Benares and Hadji Dalidig have reported incidents of poll fraud in different parts of the nation.

Its statement that May 10 was a "tainted exercise" is impossible to brand as a creation of wild imaginations; it only echoes a similar remark earlier made by presidential contender Raul Roco of Alyansa ng Pag-asa, who earlier called the recent election "a soiled process." For that matter, Alyansa ng Pag-asa senatoriable Frank Chavez has been able to come up with convincing evidence of fraud.

With regard to its findings of violence, Patriots has only confirmed and elaborated what the spokespersons of the Philippine National Police (PNP) have said to the media, that May 10 was "the bloodiest election" the country had in two decades.

But the red tag against Patriots came only after it had made a series of exposes on electoral fraud and violence. Is it because of all poll watchdog groups, it is Patriots which has been the most consistent and vocal in its condemnation of these maladies?

If the Arroyo administration finds it fit to call Patriots a "communist front" because of its exposes against poll fraud and violence, then what does it make of the Comelec commissioners who admitted that there was fraud in the May 10 elections, of the likes of Namfrel officials Benares and Dalidig who made similar reports? What does it make of presidentiable Roco and senatoriable Chavez who obviously know whereof they have been speaking?

For that matter what does it make of the PNP, whose assessment of the violence of the May 10 polls Patriots' findings merely confirmed and elaborated?

Face the issues squarely, Madame President. But if concern for clean elections be "communism," by all means call Patriots and its allies "communists." Call us "communists" as well. QC Indymedia