IT did not pass notice of the intelligence community the spate of bomb threats in many campuses and universities in recent weeks.
Avoiding linking the threats to reported efforts to destabilize the government, the Philippine National Police (PNP) still intensified security nationwide ahead of another big rally on November 30, Bonifacio Day.
PNP acting chief Lieutenant General Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. also ordered an “intensified police visibility and other proactive responses in areas of convergence” to strengthen security operations amid what appears to be “a series of coordinated hoaxes.”
These “hoaxes” started slowly, but they seemed coordinated and an offshoot of the recent riots that marred the September 21 rallies against corruption.
These riots, police sources said, were instigated by groups funded by parties opposed to Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s leadership.
These groups, albeit community-based and without a national leadership, penetrated the various parties, including activists and religious amalgamations which were the legitimate organizers of the rallies.
It’s not a coincidence, though, that government leadership has long been fractured by the departure of Marcos’ vice, Sara Duterte, from their much vaunted “uniteam.” Sara is the daughter of the past president Rodrigo, who is now jailed in the ICC in The Hague for crimes against humanity.
The riots rooted from this split.
Among the first to receive such threats were two campuses of De La Salle University, and the Diliman and Manila campuses of the University of the Philippines. The bomb threats then shifted from Luzon to the Visayas and Mindanao in the last couple of weeks, with nine bomb threats recorded in Iloilo in a day.
That these threats have intensified soonest after the supposed “three-day anti-corruption rally” organized by the Iglesia ni Cristo was called off by the organizers on the second day appears not as a coincidence, too.
The INC rally, or so the buzz went, was intended to be used by certain groups to force some members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to drop support of the administration. They would have sat Sara, who herself is being accused of massive corruption, as president.
Church officials apparently did not allow the INC to be used for this and called off the rally.
Another anti-corruption rally is set Sunday, a day traditionally reserved for the more progressive forces of Philippine politics yet once nearly besmirched by the ultra-right-wing elements of the AFP in 1989.
These forces, sources say, are at it once again.
This time, a caretaker government is being floated by some retired generals whose political umbilical cords are tied with the Dutertes.
They have asked, supposedly, a leading business figure who had abruptly turned them away soon after he was asked to lead a junta.
Then came Senator Panfilo Lacson’s admission. A former police general, himself, Lacson said he was offered to be part of a “civil-military junta.”
What these former generals want, however, is not to “restart” the Philippines but simply to cleanse their patrons of their involvement in the massive corruption that has rocked the government’s flood control and other projects.
It’s their Plan B after various efforts to bring Marcos down have failed.
Filipinos are tired of extra-legal and unconstitutional ways of changing government leadership.
They would rather see Sara impeached first (and never allowed to seek public office again), then call for Marcos’ resignation.
That’s the best scenario acceptable to the people.
