MANILA, Philippines — Army Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. will better help the government’s cause if he practices some prudence and self-restraint in tagging people and organizations as members of terrorist organizations, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said on Tuesday.
In a Viber message, Lacson reminded Parlade that under the newly enacted Anti-Terrorism Act, only the courts can declare who are considered terrorists.
“Maybe a little prudence and self-discipline on Lt. Gen. Parlade’s part will help,” he said.
The senator made the statement amid the backlash that Parlade, the spokesperson for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflicts (NTF-Elcac), has been getting over his recent statements.
The Army general drew flak when he issued what many considered as a veiled threat against actress Liza Soberano for associating with Gabriela Women’s Party, a progressive party list group that has been one of the targets of the NTF-Elcac in its information campaign.
Lacson said he saw Parlade as the kind of a military officer who was “dedicated to the accomplishment of his mission to end the half-century-old insurgency problem.”
“That being said, his only fault is that he overanalyzes and overtalks, with some of his public statements threatening to affect his mission,” he said.
Speaker Lord Allan Velasco, for his part, dared Parlade to file charges against members of the House Makabayan bloc whom he accused as communists.
“If he has evidence, gather them and go to court, and not to the media,” Velasco said in a statement on Tuesday.
As Speaker, Velasco said he was “duty-bound to protect them from potential harm due to these careless accusations so that they may carry their legal and constitutional mandate as members of Congress.”
Meanwhile, militant group Pamalakaya on Tuesday called on Cavite Gov. Jonvic Remulla to declare Parlade “persona non grata” in the province, following his Red-tagging spree of activists and celebrities.
The group lauded Remulla for scoring Parlade for threatening outspoken women.