S1L10 – Desperate NEA Resorts to Red-tagging Mia Magdalena
In July 2018, the Philippine government deported 71-year old Australian Missionary nun Sister Patricia Fox, oblivious of the fact she had lived in the Philippines for more than 27 years. She spoke Cebuano, Ilonggo, Waray, Hiligaynon, Chabacano and Tagalog more fluently than even President Duterte himself.
The Bureau of Immigration carried out the deportation, on orders of Malacañan, which relied on the recommendation of some national security council officials, who relied on a report of some central command military generals, who relied on information submitted by some regional intelligence officers, who based their information on the narratives of some provincial special agents, who received the data from some city undercover assets, who bought the information from some barangay informant on the streets, who put the narrative together from what he heard from Juan and Pedro, who were having a drinking spree at the streetcorner sari-sari store of Aling Petra, who told them she knew that Sister Patricia Fox owned a red scarf.
So for months, the national security apparatus kept busy red-tagging the poor old nun, describing her as a highly-dangerous foreign agent who was an existential threat to national security and someone who poses an imminent danger to public order and safety.
Give me a break.
The woman was SEVENTY-ONE years old then (74 now) with arthritis, osteoporosis and cataracts in both eyes. You could sling a bazooka on her neck and put a grenade launcher in her hands—and she STILL won’t be a threat to anyone. She doesn’t even have the strengrh to “lock and load” and pull the trigger. She might very well take out the wooden stock of the rifle though and use it as firewood to cook “lugaw” to feed some poor farmer’s malnourished child—which is basically what she had done for the last 27 years.
But just on the capricious rumor-mongering of some dimwit looking to peddle some spurious “intel” fairytale, she was exiled out of the country—and we are the poorer for the loss of a post-modern Mother Teresa who was all too briefly in our midst.
That is the total picture of what this idiotic RED-TAGGING is all about and the profound damage it inflicts on all of us.
Now they’re doing it again. This time they are red-tagging member-consumer-owners (MCO’s) of BENECO just because their spirited opposition to NEA’s botched takeover is causing a nuclear-grade embarrassment for Malacañan.
Of course the fight is not over and the odds are still stacked overwhelmingly against BENECO. There are still eight months to go before a new president evicts the country’s top mafiosi—a lot of malevolent things can still happen. This boatload of shady characters lurking in the halls of the Palace are still mumbling, “if we can remove a Chief Justice, we can remove a GM. But hurry we only have eight more months to do it!”
The problem are these stubborn and hard-headed Baguio and Benguet consumers who just wouldn’t quit. Their numbers are swelling and their commitment ever deepening. The conventional strategy of simply wearing their patience thin may not work against them. It’s time to start demoralizing them by crippling their leadership—not that they’re easy to identify. So if targeted sniping cannot work, how about a shotgun approach—don’t be choosy, just red-tag EVERYBODY!
First ones on the target list are the social influencers with big followings—and I won’t name them here so the “intel” people would have to do more research than just eavesdropping on Juan and Pedro.
They’ve zeroed in on one, in particular, whose Facebook page is followed by almost 9,000 people and whose Twitter tweets are read and thumbs-upped by 15,000 followers. That’s 24,000 individuals. Even if only half of them were heads of households who can influence just 5 more people each, why this unidentified bubbly nurse sporting a Demi Moore hair style could influence and literally deliver 60,000 votes singlehandedly!
No wonder NEA hates her with a passion and tries very hard to spook her using troll accounts—how long have these people been stalking her?
These pea-brained trolls post stolen screenshots of her and—although I admit I didn’t really pay too close of an attention—what looked to me like crudely-Photoshopped images of her joining the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the Cry of Balintawak with Andres Bonifacio in 1896.
Alright, I can give a little bit more clue as to her identity that intelligence people would still find hard to figure out—her second name starts with “M” and ends with “agdalena.”
She may be taking this all in stride, but it’s still no laughing matter. Red-tagging is vicious and—responsible people be warned—is an indictable offense. These trolls are VERY EASY to trace if you just throw 10 manhours into the effort. Prosecuted in earnest, we can put them away for twelve years.
I encourage her friends and supporters to keep up the peptalk, she needs the moral support. For our part in the legal practice, I told her not to worry, “nu idarum da sika, agdidinnanog kami nga abugado nu sino’t agrepresentar kaniam.”
So the next time you see me in a sauna suit jogging around Burnham Park, jumping rope or shadow-boxing, you know what I’m preparing for.
You won’t have a hard fime spotting me either because when I do pushups, I count out loud, “one…two…three…,” then when a shapely jogger whizzes by, “hundred four…hundred five…hundred six!”
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”