Badoy rejects call to resign: ‘I have not deceived the Filipino people‘

MANILA, Philippines — Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy dismissed on Wednesday the call of the Makabayan bloc for her to resign from her post, saying that she should not be the one to leave office because she had never deceived Filipinos.

Badoy made that statement in a Facebook post in reaction to Makabayan bloc members in the House of Representatives, who had earlier asked her to resign for red-tagging them without basis.

“As for the Makabayan Bloc Reps calling for my resignation — I’d be sorely disappointed in myself and see it as inadequacy in doing my job if they didn’t ask for anything less,” Badoy said in her post.

“Also, I’m not the one who has to resign because I have not deceived the Filipino people nor have I done anything to hurt them.  I come to the table with clean hands and as pure a heart as I can muster,” she added.

https://www.facebook.com/lorraine.badoy/posts/10158597481124834

Members of the Makabayan bloc — represented in the House by party-list lawmakers of ACT Teachers, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, and Kabataan —  called for the official’s resignation after the House Committee on Appropriation hearing on the proposed 2021 budget of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO).

Badoy is a PCOO undersecretary and at the same time the spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).

Over the weekend, Badoy asked Makabayan bloc lawmakers to drop the “legislator” title and admit to being ranking members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).

Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate and ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro raised the issue during the PCOO budget hearing on Wednesday. Castro also moved for the suspension of the hearing, further delaying the discussions.

Zarate, Castro, and Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas said that PCOO’s budget must be scrutinized if one of its officials was engaged in red-tagging.

“If Usec. Badoy will continue to use her position and taxpayers’ money to criminalize dissent, she might as well leave her post. Her baseless accusations against activists and legal organizations are dangerous, especially in this political climate where activists who are voicing out the demands of the crisis-hit Filipinos were being red-tagged, illegally arrested, and even killed,” Brosas said.

Badoy countered that Makabayan should stop filing cases of red-tagging as it has not been proven to bring substantial harm against the individuals who had been red-tagged.

Earlier, however, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said that red-tagging had a role in cases where activists were either killed, harmed, or harassed.

Zarate recently filed a complaint against Badoy before the Office of the Ombudsman for red-tagging — months after Ibon, a think tank organization, filed another red-tagging complaint against her.

“The Makabayan Bloc Reps ought to give this redtag charge a rest. We can no longer count the number of times they’ve sued government for redtagging. They’ve done it in all administrations,” Badoy said in her Facebook post.  “And each time, our courts would throw it out for lack of merit.”

“All petitions they’ve filed against government have failed to pass the substantial evidence test,” she added. “ In other words, our courts have already ruled that membership into the organization redtagged is not an actionable threat,” she claimed. “In even more specific terms, there is no evidence that being lumped with commies is a threat to your life.”

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