THE TIMING, perhaps coincidence, is uncanny but the party-list group Alliance of Concerned Teachers or ACT whose self-proclaimed fear of a non-existence term they themselves conjured out of thin air, the so-called “red tagging”, would themselves commit a “red herring”.
For the uninitiated; a “red herring” is a piece of information that is, or is intended to be, misleading or distracting.
Just recently, a New People’s Army-initiated violence in six towns of Masbate affected over 55,199 learners and 2,815 school personnel that led to the suspension of face-to-face classes.
But instead of publicly and strongly condemning this act of NPA terrorism, given its terrible impact on the efforts of the Department of Education (DepEd) to remedy the education problems, ACT masterfully redirected the public’s attention from Masbate to its outrageous suggestions to hire 30,000 public school teachers and construct new classrooms to address the education crisis in the country.
According to Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte, “ACT Teachers would have publicly and strongly condemned this act of NPA terrorism, given its blistering impact on the efforts of DepEd and our partners to remedy the education problems. But the group has masterfully redirected the public’s attention from Masbate to its outrageous suggestions for DepEd.”
Excerpts from the official statement of the DepEd:
“The suggestions of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) for the Department of Education to hire 30,000 public teachers and allocate a budget of P100 billion per year for classrooms are obviously deceptive maneuvers deliberately designed to counter the Marcos administration’s solution to the problems hounding the education sector.
“The call could not be coming from a place of genuine concern for the future of our learners and the welfare of our teachers. Instead, it is a call motivated by the group’s fascination for demands and goals that are unrealistic and impossible — placing the government in a precarious situation that will ultimately end in failure.
“The timing also betrayed ACT Teachers’ true intentions. The call came at the height of the NPA-initiated violence in six towns of Masbate that affected over 55,199 learners and 2,815 school personnel.
“ACT Teachers, while silent about the NPA operations, apparently needed to come up with something outrageous to divert the public’s attention away from the damage that the NPA attacks caused to our Masbate learners.”
And that, folks, is the “red herring” we are talking about. One can’t help but notice the irony of a group so “terrified” of “red tagging” doing a “red herring”.
We then segue to some other recent incidents of a different nature but obviously very much related:
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) Legal Cooperation Cluster (LCC) hailed the conviction of a cashier of a non-government organization on terrorism financing charges as a victory of justice.
Last March 27, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla announced the first conviction under Republic Act 10168 or the “Terrorism Financing and Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012.”
Angeline Magdua, one of the two cashiers of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines – Northern Mindanao, was convicted by the Iligan City Regional Trial Court on 55 counts of violating Section 7 of Republic Act 10168, which penalizes an accessory to the crime of financing terrorists.
Magdua was found guilty of receiving donations from unsuspecting foreign organizations and distributing these funds to the CPP/NPA/NDF. (PNA 3/292023)
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It seems something’s afoot in the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.
The UP Diliman Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs refused the request of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to join in a recent job fair.
Meanwhile, Gabriela, League of Filipino Students, Kabataan and other front organizations of the CPP/NPA/NDF are freely recruiting naïve students, discretely of course, with the university’s officials seemingly turning a blind eye.
As expected, the “useful idiots” a.k.a. student activists in UP Diliman did their usual childish tantrums when the UP Board of Regents selected UP College of Law Dean Edgardo Carlo Vistan over pseudo communist Fidel Nemenzo as the new Chancellor of the UP Diliman campus.
All these nonsense and tantrums in the name of “academic freedom” and “critical thinking”, my ass!/PN
