The employees’ unions in the Senate and the judiciary on Friday strongly rejected accusations by two government officials that they were communist front organizations spying for the rebel movement, saying such allegations had put the lives of their leaders and members in danger.
“[We] urge our senators to demand both National Intelligence Coordinating Agency Director General Alex Paul Monteagudo and Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy an apology for putting the institution in indignity and our leaders’ security in peril based on purely unfounded allegations,” Senado, the Senate employees union, said in a statement.
Monteagudo, in a Facebook post on Monday, said Senado was manned by the activist group Courage and acted as the “eyes and ears” of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), and the Marxist umbrella, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), “to hijack government plans and programs.”
Courage is the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees, the biggest alliance of labor unions in the government.
Akin to ‘ridicule’
At a Zoom briefing with Senate reporters, Senado president Rosel Eugenio said their members’ lives and security were jeopardized by the “malicious, baseless and dangerous accusations” that the union was a communist front.
He was referring to the many activists who had been violently attacked, arrested or killed after they were red-baited, or tagged as communist rebels or supporters.Senado said the accusations “ridicule the security measures that we are implementing in the Senate by claiming that the CPP-NPA-NDFP has infiltrated the institution.”
“It is an affront to the Senators and officials of the Senate administration in implementing security inside the institution,” Senado said.
“Red-tagging is dangerous. It puts the lives, security and liberty of the target organizations and individuals in jeopardy,” it added.
“Red-tagging has led to the arrest and detention of individuals due to fabricated charges, enforced disappearance and killings of human rights defenders, leaders of progressive organizations, lawyers and unionists. It almost put the Senate employees under investigation although evidently, no violations are being committed,” the group said.Unionists, not terrorists
In a joint statement on Friday, the Judiciary Employees Association and the Supreme Court Employees Association joined Senado’s call to pass a law criminalizing Red-tagging after they were also linked by Badoy to the CPP because it was affiliated with Courage. “We are unionists, not terrorists!” the court unions said. “As court employees, we have taken our oath to adhere to our Constitution and the rule of law.” “Likewise, we do not pursue to overthrow the government, but rather give suggestions and find solutions to the concerns of the employees on the issues affecting our jobs, salaries, benefits, working conditions and democratic rights,” they said.
They said Red-tagging was unacceptable in a democratic society and “tramples on our political, civil and democratic rights.”Badoy, who is also a member of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), on Friday said she stood by her statement linking the leaders of government workers’ unions to communist rebels.
“Those are not opinions. Whatever DG NICA [Monteagudo] said and whatever I’m saying, those are not our personal views, that’s the official stand of the NTF-Elcac and therefore it’s the official stand of the government,” Badoy said in a phone interview.
According to her, it was only the leaders of the government workers’ unions that had ties to the communist underground through Courage.
By calling out the government union leaders with ties to the rebels, the NTF-Elcac is “defending and protecting the employees of government who are unwittingly being used by the CPP-NPA-NDFP,” she said.
The Makabayan bloc at the House of Representatives said Red-tagging “sets the stage for violent actions” against workers’ unions.
It supported an investigation of the actions of the two officials, but warned that this should not be used to launch “a reckless witch-hunt and as a venue to baselessly vilify and label various organizations and individuals, and to spread more of their badly written fiction.” —WITH REPORTS FROM DJ YAP, MARLON RAMOS, LEILA B. SALAVERRIA AND JULIE AURELIO