MANILA, 9 September 20006 — The controversial general whom the outlawed communist New People’s Army (NPA) has declared a “dead man walking” vowed yesterday to keep the rebels running even after his retirement from military service.
Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan announced his intentions after Malacañang Palace tapped him to join the National Security Council as soon as he reaches his mandatory retirement age on Sept. 11.
Palparan’s new post was disclosed by presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor yesterday after the general paid a courtesy call on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Defensor said Palparan would be appointed deputy national security adviser for the anti-insurgency campaign.
Palparan’s new post would entitle him not only to military security but also give him wider powers to direct Arroyo’s “all-out war” against communist insurgents.
“I’ll always be (on the) offensive against them in whatever way I can. I won’t tell you how, but I will always be (on the) offensive against these people, so they’ll have a hard time coming near me,” Palparan told reporters after meeting with President Arroyo.
NPA leader Rogelio “Ka Roger” Rosal earlier declared that Palparan’s days were numbered as he neared his retirement age.
Asked if he was scared, Palparan said: “I’m not afraid of them. They are weak. They can only kill people because we respect them too much, so you’re giving them a way to come to you. But if I don’t give them a way they will always be running away from me.”
Palparan has been tagged “berdugo” or executioner by leftist activists and human rights groups for the wave of political killings wherever he was assigned. His assignments include the islands of Samar and Mindoro and Central Luzon region, north of Manila.
Even the governor of Bulacan province in Central Luzon had accused the general of engaging in human rights violations. Palparan is currently the commander of the army’s 7th Infantry Division, which has jurisdiction over the region.
But President Arroyo has upheld him, even citing him as a model officer in her state of the nation address at the opening of the 13th session of Congress in July.
Palparan had denied ordering the assassinations, although he boasted that his open campaign against communist insurgents has emboldened villagers to come out and fight the rebels and at the same time discouraged others from helping the insurgents. “It is unfair somehow, because the people might believe in it, but now I have to live with it, so that’s okay because the majority of the people know it’s not true,” he told reporters.
Great Injustice
Malacañang’s announcement of Palparan’s new post horrified leftist groups.
This is a great injustice, an insult, to all the victims of political killings, and shows Mrs. Arroyo’s support for butchers and murderers in her government,” Renato Reyes, secretary-general of the group Bayan, was quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer as saying.
Another group, the fisherfolk alliance Pamalakaya, said it will file a complaint before the United Nations Human Rights Council against Palparan, along with Arroyo, presidential Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, and several others.
Pamalakaya chairman Fernando Hicap said the group will cite in its complaint the murders of Orlando Rivera, chairman of its chapter in Obando, Bulacan, and Napoleon Bautista, who was snatched in Hagonoy, also in Bulacan, and later found dead in the neighboring town of Calumpit. (With a report from the Inquirer News Service)
