Old wounds, new battleground? Anakbayan, Akbayan and Left parliamentary politics

From GMANews (Oct 25): Old wounds, new battleground? Anakbayan, Akbayan and Left parliamentary politics

Their names may sound alike, but they are mortal enemies who can't stand to be in the same room together. Last week, their feud reached a very public climax when members of Akbayan and Anakbayan engaged in a shouting and shoving match at a press conference that nearly came to blows. Akbayan accused the youth group of “hooliganism,” while Anakbayan called the party-list group a “puppet” of the Aquino administration. The stage was set for this episode when Anakbayan wrote a letter to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) earlier this month asking it to disqualify incumbent party-list Akbayan from the 2013 elections.... De La Salle University political science professor Antonio Contreras said the bitter rift between these two groups can be traced to the split of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1992.... He was referring to the division among the Left that happened more than a decade ago when Armando Liwanag (believed to be CPP founder Jose Maria Sison’s nom de guerre) issued a document called “Reaffirm our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors.” The document was an attempt to return the party to its founding principles of characterizing Philippine society as “semi-colonial and semi-feudal” and the waging of a protracted people’s war in the countryside to topple the government. Those who supported the document were called “reaffirmists” while those who refused to do so were called the “rejectionists....” Political scientist Ramon Casiple of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform (IPER) agreed that the current feud between Anakbayan and Akbayan has ideological roots. He said Anakbayan’s request to disqualify Akbayan may be an attempt from the progressive bloc to “have the monopoly of Left parliamentary politics....”

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/279645/news/specialreports/old-wounds-new-battleground-anakbayan-akbayan-and-left-parliamentary-politics