‘Oust Duterte’ call different from ‘Red October’ – activists

SAN PEDRO CITY — At least 70 members of militant people’s organizations massed up in Laguna province on Tuesday afternoon to assail the government’s claim of a destabilization plot against President Rodrigo Duterte.

The protest was also in response to the statement of Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, who said that the so-called Red October plot was meant to pave the way for Duterte to declare a nationwide martial law.

At Tuesday’s budget hearing at the Senate, Galvez said Duterte was “being dragged to declare martial law, most probably a revolutionary government.”

Casey Cruz of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan)-Southern Tagalog said activist groups had been calling for the “ouster” of the President, but this was different from the Red October plot, which she added was “baseless.”

The President himself and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana earlier said opposition forces were forming a coalition with the Communist Party of the Philippines to unseat him.

“‘Oust Duterte’ calls are a legitimate [campaign] based on socio-economic issues of the people, [unlike] this ‘Red October’ that is unfounded and which the government is only using to tag us as some kind of terrorists,’” Cruz said in a phone interview.

She also said the government had been “systematically” conditioning the people’s minds for a possible declaration of martial law.

Aside from Bayan, members of trade unions, women’s groups, and the religious sector in Southern Tagalog also joined the protest action at Crossing in Calamba City past 4 p.m.