I saw Jose Ma Sison on TV laughing lustily as he recounted how his mother visited him in jail on the eve of his release in 1986 and asked him to turn a new leaf.  “Iniligtas ka na ng Diyos; nasunod mo na ang gusto mo, nakasulat ka na sa kasaysayan.  Magbagong buhay ka na.”  (God has already saved you.  You have gained what you wanted, your name is already written in history.  It is now time for you to lead a new life.)  At the mention of God, Sison burst with maniacal laugher mocking both God and his mother.

Like all doctrinaire communists, Sison is a confessed atheist.  To him God is a laughing stock, a superstition invented by the ruling classes to sedate the suffering and pacify the rebellious instincts of the masses. Therefore the human conscience that supports the belief in an all-powerful Creator has no place in the breast of this communist.

No conscience nagged him when he ordered the bombing of the Plaza Miranda miting de abanse of the Liberal Party in 1971.  He wanted to force a revolutionary situation that would split the country’s leaders and clear the way for a Communist seizure of power.  No conscience obstructed him in ordering the bloody purges of the CPP-NPA that resulted in hundreds being shot for doubtful loyalty to the cause.  Thus the Armed Forces have dug hundreds of shallow graves in the Southern Tagalog region and in Northern Mindanao where the bodies of Sison’s victims had been dumped in a pogrom reminiscent of the Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rogue.
 

And yet in the same talk show, Sison was seen exulting in the comparison he made of himself and Nelson Mandela, the hero of the South African struggle against apartheid.

And he did not wince in comparing himself with George Washington, who he said was a terrorist in the eyes of the British colonialists.

These are clear symptoms of a megalomaniac at the head of a brutal terrorist group, the New People’s Army which over three decades has killed thousands of their countrymen, most of them small farmers who were accused of collaborating with the government.

The truth is that Sison is neither a Mandela nor a Washington, but a Filipino Pol Pot and the army he leads is not a liberation movement but a terrorist group thriving on extortion, murder and other crimes.  In conjunction with corrupt government officials, they are responsible for thwarting their country’s economic and social development for over three decades.

Sison’s Maoist model has long collapsed, together with the Berlin Wall, into the dustbin of history.  The 16th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China is celebrating the success of two decades of an opening to the world which has created an economic powerhouse out of the horrors and ruins of the Maoist Cultural revolution.

The Arroyo government is creating the conditions that will compel Sison and the NPA to come to terms with history’s verdict.  With each day they are passing into into historical irrelevance.  Sison can still redeem himself by signing a final peace settlement offered by the Arroyo administration.  He can then come home to the embrace of his alienated countrymen.  He should pay heed to the words of his own mother and should not laugh again when she mentions God as the ultimate savior of all sinners, and that includes us all.

END