STREET JUSTICE (RISE of “PARTISAN” TRIBUNALS)

The plot on the life of MMDA Chief Roberto “Bobby” Esquivel almost cost his fourteen year old son but it did not spare the poor family driver Jonny Agbay. Agbay died bearing six bullet holes including a clean-slate to the head. Was it a darn incident of “mistaken identity” gone extreme? An intel glitch within the
PARTISANO” or the Partido Marxista Leninista ng Plipinas (PMLP) that caused innocent flag? Where in it just?

“PARTISANO” IN A NUT SHELL

Pocketed liquidations usually done along crowded streets and cities nationwide to include greater Manila by so-called “PARTISANO” or the Rejectionist's armed component swarming Luzon could be traced back in the middle of 1999. The “Rejectionist” faction came into existence when Felimon “Popoy” Lagman, former Secretary of CPP's Metro-Rizal Regional Committee (MRRC) rejected the nature to empower and aggravate the countryside encircling major cities as an actuation of takeover. However, the Rejectionists such as the “PARTISANO” wanted the revolt to start among cities particularly in Metro Manila were the seat of state power rest.

Moreover, the PARTISANO title projects two differing statements. One, a partisan or follower of the PMLP's “codex” of what is right and second a detriment against their targets which are eighter abusive lapdogs or cronies. Ironically, these Rejectionists who were suppose to zero-in on the “big fishes” taking control in the districts the group was subsequently beset with riddling money-heist. Instead of so-called “liberation of the people” they turned into money making where they ended-up as a political private armed groups for familial empires in the province and worst crime syndicates to include gun-running.

HARD TO SWALLOW

Rights groups in the country to include justice enthusiast like myself have continuously clamored for the precedence of the country's courts and law enforcement in pinning-down culprits. However, looking at a distant mirror made me realize that none among my “rights” mates give a damn when police officers, politicians or worst suspected military informants were murdered in broad daylight while way home or else while on their last bowl of noodles along foodhouses nationwide. Worst in this , unexplained disinterest is that the common people like primary targets' staffs and mostly their private drivers gets the deadly bullets and draw the first blood strain. No one would remember the Esquivel's driver-Johnny Agbay. The case would center on the successful plot on the MMDA exec but not on the needless death of Agbay along with the torn lives of his widower and orphaned children.

Where there ever a difference between a single police's life and that of a journalist or activist? Is the rights group lead by the honorable Leila de Lima “partisano” in nature? These death squads whether it be by the so-called Rejectionist faction or the CPP-NPA are by fact nothing else that coward criminals who stabs and snatch unwary adversaries. As de Lima accentuated, the streets were never a battleground. The cities, market places and even the police stations and jails across the country should have been treated the same. There was never a battle in someone else's “liquidation” or assassination but plain and simple murder. Whatever misdemeanor those victims have indulge on or bear it by their mere identification as men in uniforms or authority figures, the CPP-NPA and so as its defunct groups never earned the right to rob them of their rights for a day in court or a day where he could fight for himself. Nothing is right in intentional act of back-bite that cause human lives, whether it be an impulse of ideology or by mere fact that they are opponents by virtue of warfare.

By the end of year 2007, almost a hundred among suspected military informants and roughly a routine figure of 10 PNP or AFP personnel were liquidated in the country. The former other than death endured further tortures among Communist tribunals and latter gets nothing but a flag to commemorate their demise. The red army even poses these figures in cyberspace as triumphant operations against AFP. It was horribly showcased as a notch of success towards the Sison's conceptualized guerrilla warfare.

This so-called Communist's way of gaining justice at gunpoint is as illusive and absurd like begging mercy from a tyrant. If the “Partisano” group have ditched and buried every fiber of human conscience and guilt while they pulled the trigger at Agbay, the people who knew better never would. Or should I say with the obvious selective clamor for justice of KARAPATAN together with the CHR that they already did the opposite?