Category: military

Firing Torre

Read “Big questions on Torre’s ouster” by lawyer Joel Ruiz Butuyan.

A reading of the laws governing the Napolcom (Republic Act No. 6975 as amended by RA 8551) does not show that Napolcom possesses the power to review and overturn the PNP chief’s assignment of police generals to top brass positions, as claimed by the agency. The powers of Napolcom are primarily for “policy and program coordination” and administrative disciplinary proceedings against erring police officers. Its “administrative control and operational supervision” over the PNP are clearly for the limited purpose of developing policies and promulgating rules and regulations,” which do not include the power to review and reverse designation or transfer of officers made by the PNP chief to high-ranking positions occupied by colonels to generals, contrary to Napolcom’s claim.

… However, the President’s decision to remove Torre as PNP chief is valid because the President has absolute discretion to appoint and remove the PNP chief. But there are big and gnawing questions: Was the President misled into believing that Napolcom possesses the power to review and overturn the PNP chief’s designation of top officers, and that Torre blatantly violated the agency’s exercise of its powers? Did Napolcom overturn Torre’s reassignment of officers upon direct orders of the President?

Makes you wonder what’s really going on and if there’s any truth to The PH Insider story shared by MaxDefense Philippines on Facebook that Torre’s sudden removal has to do with his “refusal to sign a Request for Endorsement and Budget Support to Congress for an additional Php8 billion funding for the PNP for the acquisition of 80,000 units 5.56mm assault rifles for FY2026”?

The justification for such acquisition was said to be due to the PNP now focused on taking-over internal security operations from the Armed Forces of the Philippines, in which the PNP currently has capability gaps in terms of many aspects including firepower, and that its current inventory of rifles are insufficient.

The report said Gen. Torre refused to sign as he believe the acquisition is excessive for a civilian agency like the PNP, which had him in disagreement with Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Sec. Jonvic Remulla.

Meanwhile the DDS are on celebratory mode, which makes you wonder if firing Gen. Torre is some kind of concession to the Duterte camp that heartily hates the fired PNP Chief for the Quiboloy and Digong arrests.

REGINE CABATO:
Facebook 26 August 

The DDS are having a field day with news of police chief Nicholas Torre’s dismissal. My disinformation-related take: Not only does it send mixed signals about the Marcos administration’s commitment to human rights-related reform, but they have also thrown to the trolls one of its most high profile officials capable of tackling the pro-Duterte disinformation machine.

Just last week, Torre exposed an organized smear campaign against the police. He pointed to a coordinated attempt among DDS vloggers spreading viral video to depict “lawlessness” in the Philippines. But these videos were from Indonesia and Vietnam, and the one video from the Philippines was taken out of context. What does this mean? There is an organized attempt to make crime in the Philippines look worse than it actually is, all toward: 1) campaigning for a Duterte return to power, and 2) spreading the ideology of killing, as opposed to reform, as a solution for crime.

Torre’s publicity stunt against Baste Duterte last month was another rare moment: he was seen as standing up to a bully, successfully fundraised some PhP 20 million for flood victims, and won some amor among soft Duterte supporters. (I’ve seen comments going: ‘I’m a DDS, but Baste was wrong this time…’)

Torre has proven himself to not only be efficient in tasks that few others would have gamely executed — particularly the arrests of Duterte and Quiboloy — but in a skill so many of our public figures lack: seizing the narrative in a Duterte-driven information ecosystem.

He turns defense into offense, and it sends DDS trolls scrambling, which is why they dedicate so much of their time making transphobic video reels that liken Torre to social media influencer Diwata, in an attempt to emasculate and undermine him. The flooding of laugh news reactions on news items about his dismissal, and the gleeful comment of senator Imee Marcos about karma, show that the Duterte disinformation machine does not rest.

Torre being out of the way after pushing for the takedown of 1,000 fake news posts allows the Duterte machine to recuperate, and the curtly worded dismissal letter gives trolls and vloggers another bullet for their smear campaign. This also raises questions about whether the next police chief will make similar commitments to information integrity among and affecting its ranks.

The smear campaign against Torre should not be taken in isolation: it is part of broader smear against career officials in law enforcement, including the military and coast guard, because the DDS machinery wants Duterte loyalists in these positions instead. The script against Torre is also being levelled against AFP chief Romeo Brawner, PCG spokesman Jay Tarriela, and so on. This script includes accusing them of being foreign hacks or sympathizers, using distraction to undermine reform, and it comes from the same influencer talking heads of the DDS sphere. The accusation that Torre, et al are ICC or U.S. puppets is especially hypocritical and ironic, given that these pro-Duterte networks have been found to have ties to China.

These DDS online reactions are not, of course, a clear indicator of the true pulse of public opinion. But they are an indicator that Marcos is losing the optics war.

 

Si Marcos daw ang “true hero” of EDSA ?!?

SABI-SABI NG MGA MARCOS #2

Si Marcos daw ang tunay na bayani ng EDSA.

Kung hindi daw kay Marcos, tiyak na dumanak ang dugo at maraming sibilyan ang nasaktan nuong apat na araw ng EDSA.

Malinaw daw ang utos ni Marcos kay Ver on nationwide TV: “My order is to disperse the crowd without shooting them.”

MALINAW PERO HINDI TOTOO

Behind the scenes, nung sinasabi niya kay Ver na my-order-is-not-to-shoot, sunud-sunod ang order ni Army Gen. Josephus Ramas kay Marine Col. Braulio Balbas sa Camp Aguinalo na bombahin na ng artillery ang Camp Crame.  May order din sa jet bombers ng Air Force na pasabugin ang kampo.  All orders were cleared by Marcos.

Mabuti na lang, kitang kita ng Marines at ng jet bombers ang sandamakmak na tao sa EDSA at sa Crame grounds.  Minabuti nilang huwag kumilos kaysa makapatay ng unarmed civilians.  Bahala na kung ma-court martial o makulong sila for not following orders.

IT WAS THESE SOLDIERS WHO SAVED EDSA FROM CARNAGE WHILE THE WORLD WATCHED. 

Unlike Air Force Col Antonio Sotelo na nag-defect bitbit ang 15th Strike Wing sa Crame, ang Marines ay bumalik sa barracks at tumulong na lang sa defense ng palasyo, samantalang ang jet bombers ay sa Clark Air Base nagpalipas ng rebolusyon.

Lahat sila, ke nag-defect a la Sotelo, ke nag-back to barracks a la Tadiar at Balbas, ke nagtago sa Clark Air Base a la jet bombers – lahat sila BAYANI na dapat ay naipagbunyi at taos-puso nating napasalamatan nung napaalis na si Marcos.

Sila ang unsung heroes of EDSA.   Mas bayani sila kaysa mga rebeldeng sundalong nag-defect only to hide behind the skirts of nuns and other civilians.

MARCOS FAIL

There was no way Marcos could have come out of EDSA smelling like a hero.  Bukung-buko na ng  taongbayan ang kanyang big-time panlilinlang at pangungulimbat habang pahirap nang pahirap ang buhay ng nakararaming Pinoy.

Tapos eto na naman, huling-huli na nandadaya, ayaw pa ring umamin, at ayaw magbitiw.  Kinailangan pa siyang takutin ng People Power bago mag-alsa balutan. Heroic ba yon?

There was never anything heroic about Marcos.  Brilliant and self-serving, yes, but heroic?  Wala siyang binatbat kay Ninoy.  Wala siyang  panama kina Tadiar, Sotelo, at Balbas.

WHAT IF

What MIGHT have been heroic, I dare think, ay kung (1) umamin si Marcos na nandaya siya, (2) nagbitiw siya nang kusa sa pagka-pangulo, at (3) iniuwi niya sa Ilocos ang kanyang buong pamilya, never again (any of them, born and unborn) to return to politics.

Imagine. What if.

Imbis na nagpondo ng mga kudeta, imbis na siniraan si Cory at ang EDSA, imbis na nag-ambisyong makabalik sa palasyo, WHAT IF nag-retire na lang silang lahat from politics at nagkawanggawa na lang, bilang pasasalamat na buhay pa sila, or something classy and remorseful like that ?!?

Tiyak, mas maayos ang Pilipinas ngayon.

Tiyak, hindi ako tumutol nung ilibing siyang bayani.

The Unbelievable Irwin Ver (updated)

Being reposted on Facebook is Esquire magazine’s 2017 essay “Strange Bedfellows: A Martial Law Love Story” by Aurora N. Almendral. It’s about the romance of the author’s mom, Gemma Nemenzo (sister of Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, high-ranking communist in the ’60s and ’70s) and former colonel Irwin Ver (son of Marcos’s AFP chief of staff Gen. Fabian Ver in the time of martial law).

No offense meant to Gemma, whom I met in 1983, Sesame days  (she was the media liaison of the Philippine Sesame Street Project), but Irwin Ver’s pronouncements about Ninoy Aquino and the dictator Ferdinand Marcos are nakaka-offend, being clearly of a piece with Bongbong Marcos’s flippant dismissal of anything negative about his father. In effect, Irwin and Bongbong paint their fathers innocent of any crimes and unjustly ousted by the people.

ON NINOY’S KILLING 1983 | “No, I don’t think he was involved”

Irwin’s story is that, like his father the general, he was at home when Ninoy was shot.

He was watching TV when his father barged into his quarters dressed in pambahay, to tell him something had happened at the airport.

“If he knew that something like that would happen,” Irwin said, to me, to my mother, to my mother’s friends and family, to everyone who has asked him, “he would have been in uniform. He would have been at his office, monitoring the situation. But he was as shocked as the rest of us. No, I don’t think he was involved.”

But But But. According to the Agrava Fact-Finding Board, at around 1:30 PM, AVSECOM commander Gen. Luther Custodio  “reported the incident [read assassination] by telephone to General Fabian Ver who was at the time in his office at Malacañang Park.”

There is no doubt that Gen. Ver was monitoring the situation. Two days previously, August 19, his order to Custodio was to “return Aquino to his point of origin on board the same aircraft he took in coming in.” He must have realized after that there was no way China Air Lines could simply immediately turn around and fly Ninoy back to Taipei. Early on the morning of August 21, he revised his instructions, ordered Custodio to: “Arrest Aquino and turn him over to the Military Security Command in Fort Bonifacio.”

That the general was nakapambahay lang, as Irwin claims, means nothing. It was a Sunday, after all, and his office was right next to his home in Malacañang Park (correct me if i’m wrong). How he was dressed, or not, has no bearing on whether or not he was monitoring the situation. Unless it was deliberate, if true, to give the impression, in case the shit hit the fan, that he was off-duty and completely uninformed and uninvolved and innocent, or something silly like that.

In November 1984 the Agrava Board’s Majority Report (that so displeased the dictator) unequivocally named Fabian Ver (and 25 others) indictable for the “military conspiracy in the premeditated killing” of Ninoy Aquino.

ON MARCOS IN THE TIME OF EDSA 1985 | “He did not want to kill his own people”

Irwin’s kuwento is that he was at the Palace sometime after Marcos’s high-noon oath-taking.

The same day, Colonel Irwin Ver, head of the presidential guard, favored son of General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s most loyal aide and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, was at Malacañang Palace. Irwin saluted Marcos, who was still dressed in the barong he wore for the cameras. Despite the oath-taking performance, Marcos seemed to have already accepted defeat. Irwin had not. Our position is still defensible, Irwin reported, ready to fight off an attack from the rebels. “No,” Marcos said. He did not want to kill his own people. Irwin recalled seeing the sadness in Marcos’s eyes, and for a moment he feared that he himself might cry.

Drama queens. Question is, what were they so sad about?  Were they sad about not killing their own people? Or were they sad because their officers were defying orders to kill the people.

Surely Irwin Ver remembers the very eventful morning of February 24, Day 3 of the four-day EDSA uprising. By then, Enrile and RAM had left Camp Aguinaldo and joined Ramos in Camp Crame.

Early that morning, according to Alfred McCoy [Veritas Special Edition, Oct 1986], Fabian Ver gave the signal for an all-out attack on Camp Crame by riot police using tear gas, Marine artillery, helicopter gunships, and low level jet bombers.

Riot police teargassed the human barricades in Libis / Santolan and cleared the way so that two battalions of Marines led by Col. Braulio Balbas were able to enter Camp Aguinaldo, from there to take positions within sight of Camp Crame.

Meanwhile, Sikorsky gunships were ordered to fly to Camp Crame and bomb two helicopters parked there to prevent Enrile and Ramos from escaping by air. Instead Col. Antonio Sotelo led the 15th Strike Wing’s seven gunships bristling with rockets and cannon to Camp Crame and defected wholesale.

CAMP AGUINALDO ► Looking down from the high ground of Aguinaldo’s golf course, Balbas had awesome firepower “boresighted” on the rebel headquarters only 200 meters away: 3 howitzers, 28 mortars, 6 rocket launchers, 6 machine guns, and 1000 rifles. [McCoy]

CAMP AGUINALDO, 9:00 AM ► General Josephus Ramas gave Balbas and his Marines the “kill order.” With his artillery ready to fire at pointblank range, Balbas lied to Ramas. “We are still positioning the cannons and we are looking for maps.” Ramas: “The President is on the other line waiting for compliance!” [McCoy]

CAMP AGUINALDO, 9:20 AM ► Ramas again barked the command through the radio: “Colonel, fire your howitzers now!” Balbas replied, “Sir, I am still positioning the cannons.” [Cecilio T. Arillo. Breakaway. 1986. page 77]

At some point Balbas radioed Tadiar, made certain that the order had been cleared with / by  Marcos. But even so, the Marines could see that even Camp Crame’s grounds were teeming with people.  Balbas just could not order his men to fire. “We will be hurting a lot of civilians,” he said to Tadiar.

Just about then, over at the Palace, a Sikorsky gunship sent by rebel chief Fidel Ramos to rattle not harm the Marcoses, fired six rockets on the Palace grounds. Damage was negligible but the Marcoses and the generals freaked out.

CAMP AGUINALDO ► Balbas got a “frantic call” from Col. Irwin Ver, Commander of the Palace Guard, ordering a “full attack” on the rebels. Lying boldly, Ver said the Palace was hit and they suffered 10 casualties. [McCoy]

Yes, Irwin Ver himself, who would have us believe that Marcos did not have the heart to kill his own people.

That Malacanang presscon where Marcos tells Ver that his order was NOT to attack Crame? That was pure palabas. As in moro-moro. Dramarama sa umaga. The dictator saying one thing and doing the opposite. Messing up the narrative, as always.

ON FABIAN VER & MARTIAL LAW | “It felt like a war situation”

As a son, Irwin is loyal to his father’s memory and defends his reputation. … He knows there were many regrettable abuses of power at the lower levels of government, but insists that Marcos never ordered foot soldiers to commit arrests, torture, and disappearances. “It felt like a war situation, a combat situation. We were both on the offensive and the defensive. It is not uncommon that would happen,” said Irwin, “that some soldiers would act on their own.”

True. Marcos had nothing to do with foot soldiers, but he had everything to do with the generals who lorded it over the police and military forces, the Rolex 12—topped by Ver, Enrile, and Danding–in particular, who implemented his orders and  benefitted greatly (got rich) in / over the 14 years of martial law.

General Ver became the fall guy for the Marcoses. He went into hiding and spent his life on the run, using fake passports and assumed identities, in part because he could not afford defense lawyers for the cases the American and Philippine governments were mounting against him. He died without seeing his family again.

… In the accounting of misdeeds after the fall of Marcos, General Ver was associated with the corruption that came with unfettered power—and his sons have inherited an on-going case for plunder.

Irwin would have us believe that his Dad didn’t share any secrets with the family. Like, who was the mastermind of the Ninoy murder?

Irwin believes his father did find out, but he took the knowledge to his grave. “It’s better you don’t know,” General Ver told him, “You’re still in your military career.”

And yet Irwin Ver has stories that make me wonder. Take this one about Marcos and Ninoy in Inquirer‘s “Marcos: ‘My best successor is Ninoy'” by Fe Zamora back in August 2008:

On at least four occasions before May 8, 1980, Marcos sent his most trusted officer, AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian C. Ver, to deliver a note to Aquino at his detention cell in Fort Bonifacio. On the last two visits, Ver asked his son, Col. Irwin Ver, commander of the Presidential Guards, to join him.

Ver told his son they were to bring a letter to the detained senator. The younger Ver expressed surprise; he thought all along that Marcos and Aquino hated each other’s guts. Ver explained that Marcos actually admired Aquino, that Marcos even saw him as “brilliant enough to be president someday.”

Selective sharing? Propaganda? Anything to help along the story that Marcos could not have ordered Ninoy killed because he admired Ninoy, Ninoy was his friend? Anything to help Bongbong get elected in 2022? Anything to bring back the happy days when the Marcoses reigned supreme and the Vers, too, in their own fashion?

I wonder how the Nemenzos really feel about that. #NeverAgain #NeverForget

*

Sources

“Strange Bedfellows: A Martial Law Love Story” by Aurora N. Almendral. Esquire Magazine. Sept 22 2017. https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/notes-and-essays/strange-bedfellows-a-martial-law-love-story-a1999-20170922-lfrm3

Reports of the Fact-Finding Board on the Assassination of Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Mr. & Ms. Publishing Co. 1984. pp 205, 40.

Veritas Special Edition. “Coup!” by Alfred McCoy, Marian Wilkinson, Gwen Robinson. Oct 1986. http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/day3.php

Chronology of a Revolution 1986. Vol. 1 of DUET FOR EDSA. Published by Eggie Apostol (1996). Edited by Lorna Kalaw-Tirol.  http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/

 

red joktober

jok as in joke.  not to make light of the threat, because it IS  a threat, allegedly from the communist left in coalition with other leftists and oppositionists right and center.  but it is funny that instead of doing something about it, nipping it in the bud, ika nga, the military brass is making them sumbong to us, the public.  and it is funny that no one seems to know anything about a wondrous coalition happening anytime soon.  unless katrina and i are so out of the loop?  if yes, that’s really hilarious, and kinda pathetic.  if no, and wala talagang any opposition-coalition cooking, then we should wonder why the military brass refuses to drop it.  we should wonder why it is in the interest of the military to put us all on red alert, so to speak.

“Ang nakikita namin (What we are seeing) is the President is being dragged to declare martial law nationwide, [and] most probably a revolutionary government,” Galvez said during a Senate hearing on the budget of the Department of National Defense.

that’s afp chief of staff carlito galvez, PMA class ’85, who leads the intense information campaign vs all opposition to and criticism of the duterte administration, including film showings and plays depicting the military as killers and torturers.  galvez has no problem facing the cameras and spinning a tale of conspiracy and chaos to come, in effect telling us to brace and prepare ourselves, something’s going down.

i remember galvez from the 1989 coup attempt, one of the young officers who was with honasan (in coalition with marcos loyalists) in staging the bloodiest attempt to topple cory aquino.  reported were ninety-nine (99) killed and 570 wounded.

Participants of the December 1989 coup later blamed perceived deficiencies in the Aquino government in areas such as graft and corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and lenient treatment of communist insurgents as the reasons for the coup. [Davide Commission Report 470]

to my mind, every one of those coup attempts in the time of cory was either enrile-RAM and/or marcos-loyalist instigated to undo the mistake enrile made in EDSA of supporting cory’s claim to the presidency instead of just grabbing the power.  wala lang sa kanila ang bloodshed, okay lang, as we saw in ’89.  galit na, pa, rin sila noon sa komunista and they hated cory for not heeding enrile’s and FVR’s advice not to release all political detainees, joma and ka dante in particular.  and they hated that there were leftists in cory’s cabinet.

it’s been almost 30 years, the amnestied galvez is now AFP chief of staff in the time of duterte.  his latest sumbong is really a lament about the image of the military.

The propaganda that there is a “looming dictatorship” under Duterte is delivered to the students through film showings and plays in the campus, he said.

“Nakikita natin na parang they are branding the government. May dramatization na ‘yung martial law nung Marcos regime, then they associated it to the current administration,” the AFP chief said.

Galvez admitted that the military committed “many abuses during the 1972 declaration of martial law,” but assured the public that the institution has “changed a lot.”

“It’s very unfair for us. ‘Yung tinatawag nating martial law ngayon, pinag-iigi namin,” he said.

“Nakita natin during the Marawi crisis, we declared martial law Mindanao-wide. Talagang ‘yung rules of engagement, ‘yung human rights talagang we are promoting it,” he said.

so, is the good general advocating censorship?  and does he really think marawi is anything to brag about?  and what exactly is general galvez warning us about here in the metro?  expect a bombing here, a bombing there, an ambush here, an ambush there, that duterte will blame on the communists, sabay impose martial law nationwide, and declare a revolutionary government thereafter a la cory?  and then, what?  annoint a successor, and then step down?  bongbong takes over, backed by a military junta?  ito ba ang pinapangarap ni galvez at ng sandatahang lakas?

it’s like galvez and his ilk are caught in a time warp, aching for the good old marcosian days when the military reigned violently supreme.  as though EDSA never happened, as though we have not seen for ourselves that soldiers can be disarmed by great numbers of unarmed people ready to die for country.

galvez et al should have taken the cue instead from FVR who considered EDSA a way of atonement for his role in martial law.  EDSA could have occasioned a reinvention of the military as a force in the service of the people and not in the service of a repressive oppressive state.

level up naman, mga sir.  hindi komunista ang matinding kaaway kundi kahirapan at korupsyon, economic and environment policies that favor the rich, foreign policies that favor foreign interests, at kung anoano pang systemic flaws begging for change.

konting nuance please, mr. general.  ano ba talaga ang agenda?  ma-so-solve ba ang inflation, high prices, falling peso?  dumadaing na ang bayan.  pahirap nang pahirap ang buhay.  we’re not in the mood for bad jokes.