'Tis the season for unholy alliances

Press Statement by Popoy Lagman, Chairman, BMP, 11 December 2000

I disassociate myself completely with the ragtag group of stragglers from the revolutionary movement that misappropriates the name of the Alex Boncayao Brigade. Nilo de la Cruz is guilty of misrepresentation when he invokes the name of the ABB for no single operative accompanied the self-proclaimed leader of the partisan group when he merged with the Revolutionary Proletarian Army of Arturo Tabara.

The working class leader, Alex Boncayao, will surely turn in his grave as his name is dragged into the capitulation of de la Cruz and Tabara. What kind of revolutionaries are de la Cruz and Tabara that just as the masses are fighting to oust Erap Estrada from power, they seek a compromise with the isolated and hated regime.

It seems that this is the season for unprincipled compromises and unholy alliances. On the one hand, Joma Sison has endorsed Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to be presidential successor, while on the other, de la Cruz and Tabara have embraced Erap at just the moment when he needs all the support he can get. The warring factions of the elite have evidently weakened themselves that they need crutches from the opportunist and reformist wings of the Left.

Of course, de la Cruz and Tabara will argue that they have forced concessions out of Erap. Aside from the release of political prisoners—which together with the commutation of death sentences is merely Erap the Grinch desperately playing Santa to gain popular support—they have gotten nothing that an NGO cannot solicit from government. The political detainees owe nothing to de la Cruz and Tabara, but to the powerful anti-Estrada movement that has pinned Erap to the corner.

We will not be surprised if a few days from now, de la Cruz and Tabara will be rubbing shoulders with Ronald Lumbao, another ex-activist in his youthful days. We wait for the exposé that de la Cruz and Tabara are consultants of Erap's crisis committee. What we are sure of is that de la Cruz and Tabara will have no problem qualifying for Erap's midnight cabinet of drunkards.