Inquirer columnist Amando Doronila’s Aug. 24, 2007 column piece entitled “Politics of Violence” contains a most unfair accusation against the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Doronila — former president of the National Press Club, former editor-in-chief of the Manila Chronicle and currently editorial consultant at the Inquirer — alleged in his column that:

Later evidence showed the rejuvenated Communist Party of the Philippines under Jose Ma. Sison was responsible for the Plaza Miranda massacre.

which was not different from Dean Jorge Bocobo’s slander on the same issue.

Just like Bocobo, Doronila failed to present not even a hint or a speck of the so-called “later evidence” of CPP complicity in the Plaza Miranda bombing. But in a fashion that violates the Filipino journalist’s code of conduct adopted by the NPC, Doronila went on to hypothesize based on the anti-CPP slander that:

It was meant to split the contending political elites (represented by the Nacionalista and Liberal parties) to hasten the communist revolution. The strategy succeeded in splitting the elites, but failed to accelerate the social revolution.

We owe it to ourselves to be honest. Journalists owe it to their readers and the public to be accurate and truthful.

Doronila was not being accurate or truthful: No case or investigation against Jose Maria Sison and the CPP pertaining to the Plaza Miranda bombing has prospered. As I have pointed out in an earlier post, the Manila City Prosecutors trashed the police charge against the CPP leaders for lack of sufficient basis.

The recent rebellion charges against the Batasan 6, scores of legal and underground left leaders — an obvious politically-motivated prosecution dismissed with finality by the Supreme Court — included the charge about Plaza Miranda bombing.

There is something dangerous in what Bocobo, Doronila and other detractors of the Left are saying and doing. The demonization of the Left through blatantly baseless and discredited charges such as the alleged CPP order to bomb Plaza Miranda is helping deodorize and prettify the stinking political elite, including the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. They may not know it but these so-called journalists and opinion-makers are rehabilitating a tyrant by disgracing the names and organizations of persons who were freedom-fighters at the time.

Congressman Bongbong Marcos, his sister Imee and mother Imelda are perhaps so elated over the slow but sure vindication. The Arroyo government is compromising with them, and the likes of Bocobo and Doronila are cleaning up their bloody record through revisionism.

Photo of Doronila courtesy of Inquirer corporate website.