ILOILO CITY, April 5 (IslamOnline.net) - Suara Bangsamoro Party, a political party of Filipino Muslims running for three seats in the legislature, denied Monday, April 5, that it is a front organization of the Communist Party of the Philippines as claimed by the Philippine National Security Adviser.

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales “is blabbering malicious and unfounded accusations. We condemn this political persecution to the strongest terms,” Amirah Ali Lidasan, one of the three nominees of Suara Bangsamoro said in an official statement.

She added that “as spokesperson and stalwart protector of the reactionary ruling elite, Mr. Gonzales is seeking for the disqualification of legal and genuine peoples’ organizations that carry the true sentiments of the oppressed Moro and Filipino people.”

Lidasan further said Gonzales’s statement as a form of “political maneuvering” that is a “blatant” contradiction to the essence of the electoral party-list system.

“With his words and actions, Mr. Gonzales is gradually showing himself as an enemy of the people. There is no denying this time that Norberto Gonzales and his masters are hell bent on frustrating the true representatives and servants of the people to have a seat in congress.

“The party-list system on its own allows only a minority 20 percent in Congress but the genuine party-lists of the people remain steadfast in its endeavor to bring the struggle in this democratic process. Maneuvering party-list groups out of the May elections is depriving the Filipino people of the opportunity for their marginalized voices, such as the voice of the Bangsamoro people, to be heard in Congress,” Lidasan protested.

In last Friday’s meeting of the National Security Council, Gonzales proposed for the filing of disqualification suits against Suara Bangsamoro and five other party-list groups - Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Anak ng Bayan, Migrante and Gabriela - for being “legal fronts” of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Gonzales claimed that funds allocated for public projects channeled through legislators have been funneled to the coffers of the communists. Among the six, Bayan Muna (Nation First) has representatives now seated in the lower house of the Philippine Congress. The rest are participating in the May 10 polls for the first time.

Former representative Crispin Beltran of Bayan Muna, and now nominee of Anakpawis, slammed Gonzales saying, "We did not work exhaustively all these months just to be disqualified by a paranoiac with an anti-communist fixation."

Beltran said that he was not afraid of Gonzales' charges, and said that he was prepared to thrash out the issue with him in any court, not just in the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

But he pointed out that Gonzales's accusation was also a serious threat against the safety and very lives of Anakpawis members and supporters, and those of the five other parties.

"Gonzales's accusation is signal fire to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to intensify attacks against civilians who choose to support our platform for the politics of change and the politics of the masses. Gonzales should be held accountable for any more attacks against the human rights and lives of our members," he said.

Beltran added that “Gonzales is so obsessed with the communists he's seeing them crawling out of the woodwork. His accusations are old hat - they've been flung at us before, and to be honest, we're all getting a little sick and tired of them.”

The Communist Party of the Philippines, meanwhile, said Gonzales is replicating “the wicked and destructive anticommunist witch-hunt that the infamous Joseph McCarthy launched in the United States in the early 1950s.”

CPP spokesperson Gregorio Rosal said in a statement sent to IslamOnline.net Monday that “the new McCarthyist witch-hunt and Red scare that clerico-fascist Gonzales is viciously launching now against progressive party-list organizations only reveals his dread of progressives winning a significant number of seats in the coming elections and collectively becoming a major bloc in national politics.”

McCarthy, a U.S. Congressman, headed a committee that launched a wicked witch-hunt throughout the U.S. in 1953-54 victimizing hundreds of respectable progressives whom he accused without sufficient bases to be communists. Most of McCarthy's victims have later turned out to be innocent victims of his Red scare and many were posthumously vindicated.

"[President Gloria] Arroyo, Gonzales and their ilk are very worried that a significant number of progressive party-list representatives in the Philippine Congress would become a formidable stumbling block against U.S.-dictated economic and military policies," Rosal said.

Rosal categorically denied Gonzales's charge of congressional fund diversion to the CPP armed wing, the New People’s Army. "The NPA has in fact not received funds from congress. It thrives and grows mainly due to the support of the people. In contrast, the AFP and PNP cannot survive without the funds and surplus weapons provided by the U.S. government."

He said further that “Gonzales only pretends to be a social democrat but is actually nothing but a small-time clerico-fascist, a corrupt bureaucrat and an ardent pro-imperialist who was able to worm his way into Arroyo's inner sanctum through unscrupulous wheeling-and-dealing and is now trying hard to prove he is more militarist than his military predecessors.”

Rosal warned, “The Red scare Gonzales is venomously spewing could serve as a signal for the military and fascist forces to attack the progressives and their parties as well as innocent people.