Opinion: No goodbye for the general

Opinion piece posted to the Manila Times (Jul 25, 2021): No goodbye for the general (By Mauro Gia Samonte)

Today is the turnover ceremony for the Southern Luzon Command (SolCom) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. will bow out as the commanding chief and pass on the baton to the incoming commander, Maj. Gen. Bartolome Vicente Baccaro, Philippine Army commander, 2nd Infantry Division.

I have had good enough occasions of getting familiar with the outgoing commander such that if only because of my instincts as a film director, I should give vent to my predilection to bombast and bravura to portray his person in epic proportion, which I believe he deserves.

Yet strange that on the subject, I just am at a loss for words. And on emotions, it is some big void you feel, so deep it defies being expressed. You know, the kind of feeling that because incapable of being said at all, it turns out to be a feeling of nothing for nothing. Some smart psychologist would term it stoicism.

At any rate, an utter failure to lift someone to the pedestal you want him to be on. And failing thus, you simply drop into wordlessness.

But then again, how do you word a general like Parlade?

I wouldn't dare.

It's been only some three or so years ago that a common friend, Celso Cainglet, brought General Parlade to lunch with our exclusive group of stubborn Don Quixotes in Mentong Laurel's now defunct Mama Rosa Restaurant in Barrio Kapitolyo in Pasig City; Celso was Parlade's professor at the Philippine Military Academy.

That lunch meeting turned out to be a personal milestone for me. For long already, I had been on the lookout for someone to push an idea of finally putting a stop to the half-century old insurgency of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF). I had long decided that the armed struggle for the liberation of the working class had gone passé and that under the trends of the world at present, such liberation cannot but take place only as assimilation into the existing world dominant trend. In such a reckoning, the armed struggle of the CPP-NPA-NDF becomes a reactionary exercise; true enough, the CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency has been the major factor accounting for the retrogression of the Philippine economy. My idea was for that insurgency to be crushed through a two-pronged attack: all-out war against the leaders and blind followers of the insurgency; and all-out benevolence for those who return to the fold of the law.

"'Yang mga NPA, mabubuting tao 'yan. Hindi 'yan mag-i-NPA kung masasama 'yan. Ang masasama ay' 'yung mga lider. Kaya dapat pag-ibahin ng pamahalaan ang pagtingin sa mga lider at sa mga follower ng NPA. Sa mga follower, be all-benevolent. Buong pusong akitin sila pabalik sa batas. Pero sa mga lider, be all-out belligerent. Banatan na ang mga 'yan. Burahin na. Pulbusin na (Those NPA are good people. They will not turn NPA if they are bad. Those who are bad are the leaders. So, the government must make a distinction between the leaders and the followers of the NPA. To the followers, be all-benevolent. Attract them back to the fold of the law wholeheartedly. But to the leaders, be all-belligerent. Slam them. Erase them. Pulverize them)."

This was the gist of a television interview I had with Mentong Laurel, which I had made known to General Parlade when I visited him in his office at the J7 Camp Aguinaldo shortly after our first meeting.

And that was it. From then on, by a matter of course, our paths in countering the communist terrorists always converged.

He gets designated as SolCom chief, I text him promptly, afraid that the designation is a demotion, considering that he is down to regional command from the general staff.

"It's a promotion," he tells me.

My kumpadre assures me that the SolCom post normally is a steppingstone to the post of the Chief of Staff.

And then the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) was constituted, and General Parlade was designated as its spokesman. From the published dynamics of the task force, it becomes evident that it is an implementation of my own ideated counterinsurgency thrust cited above.

I keep track of the general's moves. How courageous of him to have come on his own in that Makabayan bloc forum in Quezon City in which he intended to debunk the lies of propagandists of the CPP-NP-/NDF against the government. He said then, he did not come with guns. He was armed with nothing but the truth.

Comes now the Liza Soberano controversy. I picked up from his Facebook page a fair warning to the actress about Gabriela. The warning is in defense of the celebrity from bashing from netizens for her appearance in the webinar organized by the CPP front party-list group. I took up the general's line that celebrities should be wary of the deceptive tactics of communist front organizations, expounding on it in this column. At the same time, General Parlade, gets to have his column in The Manila Times, accounting, each time, for a one-two punch combination with me on every issue in the counter-insurgency narrative.

As of last count, NTF-Elcac Vice Chairman Hermogenes Esperon Jr. reported that more than 800 barangay (villages) have been freed from NPA influence; by his own account, General Parlade is enthused at the fact that the NPA is crumbling in Bicol. Together with that enthusiasm is an expressed determination to be still in the thick of the fight even beyond his official service in the AFP.

This, then, must account for my apparent stoic feeling over General Parlade's retirement. He is not going after all. The turnover ceremony must only be just protocol. The counterinsurgency fight keeps on to the intended end.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2021/07/25/opinion/columns/no-goodbye-for-the-general/1808288