Key Philippine Military and Insurgency-Related Events: PROOF OF LIFE | Elusive Negros priest-turned-rebel Frank Fernandez goes public again after 3 decades

Friday, December 23, 2016

PROOF OF LIFE | Elusive Negros priest-turned-rebel Frank Fernandez goes public again after 3 decades

From InterAksyon (Dec 23): PROOF OF LIFE | Elusive Negros priest-turned-rebel Frank Fernandez goes public again after 3 decades

Government wanted posters show a picture lifted from the news of a mustachioed, middle-aged man, one of the communist rebel leaders on Negros who marched through the streets of Bacolod City during the ill-fated peace talks with the administration of the late President Corazon Aquino in 1986.

Over the next three decades, Frank Fernandez, a former Catholic priest, has been declared several times by the military to be either dead or suffering from a serious or terminal illness of one sort or the other, even as he continued to be the voice of the revolutionary movement on the central Philippine island.

On Thursday, December 22, at a grassroots peace forum organized by the rebels in a mountain village in Central Negros, Frank Fernandez, who has acted as spokesman of the National Democratic Front on the island since the early 1990s, when he gave up a national leadership position in the underground organization and returned to oversee the revolutionary movement’s recovery from a disastrous rift that had decimated its ranks, allowed his face to be photographed again by media.

While visibly older -- he is in his 70s now -- appeared healthy, his body lean, his movements belying his age. Journalists who have covered him over the years said he actually looked much healthier than he did two decades ago.

He jokingly said claims about his premature demise or infirmities “are probably so they (the military) can collect the P5-million, now P10-million I hear, bounty on my head” but, turning serious, said these “are part of the psychological warfare component” of the counterinsurgency campaign, mainly spread in the hopes of sowing demoralization among the rebels and their supporters.

An NPA platoon presents arms as the communist anthem 'Internationale' is sung during a grassroots peace forum in Central Negros. (photo by Nonoy Espina, InterAksyon.com)

“Abi nila kun mapatay si Frank Fernandez, may epekto sa rebolusyon (They think if Frank Fernandez dies, it will affect the revolution),” he said, adding this was probably why Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Maranon Jr., who is 81, “repeatedly claims I am ailing.”

“Everyone dies,” Fernandez said. “But look around you, look at all the young people who are here in the NPA (New People’s Army) and the revolutionary masses. The people know that the revolutionary movement on Negros is alive not because of Frank Fernandez but because the people themselves give the revolution life. So, I may no longer be here but they ensure the revolution lives.”

NPA units that showed up for the peace forum were overwhelmingly made up of young men and women who looked to be in their early 20s.

The peace forum drew more than 3,000 people from all over Negros -- mainly from areas where the rebels operate -- to a village school although many more continued to arrive throughout the day and was, according to NPA officers, the largest event they have organized in years.

Discussing his health, Fernandez admitted to suffering “minor ailments that are manageable by the medical teams of all NPA units” as he makes his way around guerrilla zones.

In fact, to get to the peace forum, he said, he joined NPA units march over 15 nights through mountainous terrain, “without flashlights, fording rivers and carrying packs.”

He then playfully issued an invitation to Maranon “to come visit the guerrilla zones so I can challenge him to race me hiking through the countryside.”