2 party-listers rap Duterte for coddling commies

Still irked at having been declared persona non grata by the Davao City council, the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (Anad) party-list and Bantay party-list Reps. Pastor “Jun” Alcover and Jovito Palparan, respectively, again hit hard at the city council members yesterday, charging that not only are council members sleeping with the enemies of the state, but also Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is also coddling Maoists and sleeping with the enemy.

Both Palparan and Alcover are known to be ultra-rightists and anti-communists.

Palparan and Alcover charged that the councilors who had approved the resolution and their presiding officer, Vice Mayor Sara Duterte, who is now seeking the city’s mayoral position are all members of the Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod whose 2010 election slate for the City Council includes three candidates from Makabayan, a creation and a political party of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF), so the claim went.

They showed Tribune a photo of Mayor Duterte with a reportedly known communist commander, Kumander Parago, which they said is “enough proof that Duterte is coddling the communists.”

“Imagine that! Here we are, working to ensure that democracy in this country lives on and we have been fighting the enemies of the state—the Maoist terrorists—as a soldier, and now as a congressman, but there is Mayor Duterte and his Maoists councilmen, not only sleeping with the enemy of state but actually coddling them to the point of having these Maoist terrorists in the City Council — and under Duterte’s orders to declare me and and Jun Alcover persona non grata in Davao City! So who is the enemy of the state, the elected congressmen who are doing their bounden duty to push through their advocacy or Duterte and his City council members with their Maoists links declaring us persona non grata?” Palparan fumed.

Speaker Prospero Nograles earlier commented on the issue of the council declaring the two congressmen persona non grata as a clear sign of “disrespect,” and the council’s violation of parliamentary principle and demanded an apology from the Davao City Council.

“The Davao City Council violated parliamentary courtesy regarding their resolution on two congressmen, members of the House of the People and should therefore apologize to the institution Congress represents,” Nograles was quoted as saying.

The Speaker, asked to comment on charges from Alcover and Palparan that Mayor Duterte and his City council members are coddling so-called enemies of the state, told the Tribune yesterday that “The charges of the alleged links of Mayor Duterte and some named members of the city council with the declared enemies of the state are very serious charges, and this is a worrying one. Perhaps the best thing to do is to have the matter investigated impartially to get at the truth of these charges.”

In a statement, Alcover said: “Anad Partylist and myself, since the 80s during the period of the National Alliance for Democracy (NAD), the precursor of Anad, including the famous Alsa Masa Movement in Davao, is, and shall always be for the service of the people of Davao. We received not a single centavo from the City government to support our effort.

“Now, between us and the city councilors, who are the ingrates? Definitely it is City Mayor Rudy Duterte and the members of the Davao City Council for not recognizing our efforts to protect the people’s rights and freedom, and our democratic institutions from the onslaught of Maoist terrorism,” Alcover stressed.

Alcover slammed the Davao Mayor and the councilmen who had declared them persona non grata, saying that instead of upholding their respective oaths of office, “they are now coddling and supporting known Maoist terrorist personalities, especially its sectoral front and pseudo partylist organizations in the city.”

He, however, assured that despite what he called the highly condemnable act of the City Council of Davao, that “our campaign against communism and terrorism will go beyond the May 10, 2010 elections. Our fight is beyond partisan politics. Ours is an ideological-political struggle. We will move on even if Digong Duterte and his ilk are hot on our tail!”

Both he and Palparan tagged Duterte as a “communist lap dog,” pointing to the alleged “open alliance of the mayor’s Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod and the Makabayan.

He and Palaparan charged Duterte of opportunism, saying he is paddling in two canoes by playing with the military-police establishment while coddling the local organs of the CPP-NPA-NDF.

Anad partylist has also bared that the alleged communist terrorists have started harassing the mountain folk of Davao City to force them into supporting the candidates of Hugpong, viewing the terrorism acts undertaken by local NPA units as part of the tactical alliance of the CPP-NPA-NDF with Hugpong. –Charlie V. Manalo, Daily Tribune