War of perception’
JUST as the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA) and its front organizations in Congress, along with their political allies in the opposition (read: ‘1Sambayan’) and in the mainstream media, are all running out of credible explanations over the murder of two civilians in Masbate last June 6, 2021, along came Fatou Bensouda, the outgoing chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Bensouda would be wrapping up her job at the ICC by the end of this month and yet, this did not prevent her from throwing another jab at the Duterte administration by coming out with a statement last June 14, 2021, asking for ICC “authorization” to “proceed” with an investigation of the Philippines in the context of Pres. Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs,’ a social menace that he has vowed to stamp out from Day One of his administration.
Unsurprisingly, that statement was immediately lapped up, like dogs who have found their bones to lick, by the CPP, its front organizations and their allies in the political opposition and repeated and twisted to suit their agenda by their allies in the mainstream media.
And we are not surprised at all that up to now, most of the mainstream media are still squeezing Bensouda’s statement in any shape or form that they can to bury the horrors of what happened in Masbate and turning the table against the administration.
That at the end of the day, Bensouda is just merely propagandizing on behalf of the communists—whether she is aware of this or not—cannot be denied on closer scrutiny; it came at a time when the CPP is already reeling from the Filipinos’ collective expression of anger and hate over the Masbate incident and other terrorist acts perpetrated with impunity by the CPP-NPA-NDF where most of the victims are civilians.
Significantly, Bensouda entered the scene at the very moment that the Philippines is already preparing to file its own case of ‘crimes against humanity’ and seeking condemnation against the CPP-NPA-NDF before the world community for the latter’s repeated violations of international humanitarian laws (IHLs).
And if there is one area that the CPP-NPA can be envied by the government or anyone for that matter, is their ability to create the fiction outside of our national borders that theirs is a “just cause” and that they are engaged in a “war of national liberation” on behalf of the suffering Filipino masses. In short, they are not what they truly are: an organization of terrorists.
In other words, the situation has become a “war of perception” before the eyes of the international community; the entry of Bensouda into the picture can be considered a “triumph” of the CPP’s “ISL” (international solidarity work), which they have carefully nurtured and now mastered after over five decades of dominating any narrative concerning the situation in the Philippines.
At the end of the day, Bensouda’s statement’s only “value” is as a propaganda against the government that has gained traction because the administration, in its early days, allowed the communists and the critics to again dominate the discussion on the War on Drugs. It is now reaping the result of that error.
And unless the government takes serious effort in regaining the upper hand in this ongoing war of perception, it would be again conceding the result to the communists’ effort to the divert the issue of gross human rights violations and impunity back to the government.
