The belligerent
responses of Major General Antonio Parlade and Undersecretary
Lorraine Badoy to IBON’s filing of an administrative case against
the two and Secretary Hermogenes Esperon only bolster the case
against them, said the research group. Speaking from their positions
of authority, Maj. Gen. Parlade still insists on made-up facts while
communications Usec. Badoy’s runaway imagination weaved a fantastic
tale.
IBON on Monday filed
administrative charges against Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)
Southern Luzon Commander Maj. Gen. Parlade, Presidential
Communications and Operations Office (PCOO) Undersecretary Badoy and
National Security Adviser Esperon for their relentless and unfounded
terrorist-tagging of IBON.
Respondents Parlade
and Badoy are members and Esperon is vice-chair of the National Task
Force to End Local Communism and Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Citing
provisions from the Ombudsman Act of 1989 and the Code of Conduct and
Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, IBON asked the
Ombudsman to hold the respondents answerable for their malicious
abuse of authority and negligent performance of duties as public
officials, among others.
The responses of
Parlade and Badoy are rife with simple factual errors, said the
group. “They insist that IBON’s textbooks “radicalize children
and incite them to rebel against the government”. Parlade, for
instance, is fond of saying that IBON tackles the Jabidah Massacre to
discredit the AFP yet none of the textbooks we publish even mentions
this.”
Parlade repeats that
spouses of the insitution’s Editorial Board are Communist cadres or
members of the New People’s Army (NPA), added IBON, yet each of
them are fully-documented and quite visibly living and working in the
cities. “He also insists that it is the International League of
Peoples’ Struggles (ILPS) that red-tags IBON and identifies it as a
communist front, when the ILPS does no such thing in its website or
voluminous documents,” said the group.
IBON also said that
for her part, Badoy weaved a tale of the research group being at the
center of a huge secret conspiracy to overthrow the Duterte
administration and, among others, funding terrorism and implicated in
teaching 5-year-olds to be “child warriors” and 8-year-old
“killing machines”. The group added: “She also again accuses
IBON of biased and inaccurate data and “manufacturing ‘imperialist
statistics’”.
The group further
said, “Badoy’s errors, false accusations, and fantasies are too
many to refute one-by-one but it is notable that she could not even
get IBON’s organizational structure, filed at the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), straight. She erroneously refers to “IBON
Foundation and IBON Philippines (plus IBON International)” when we
are simply IBON Foundation and IBON International. Usec. Badoy only
exposes herself to further ridicule with her wild unsubstantiated
claims.”
“The statements of
Parlade and Badoy are malicious and, indeed, already clearly
libelous”, IBON said. “We are however refraining from filing a
libel case on the principle that the criminalization of libel has
been used by the government against advocates of freedom of the press
and freedom of information, as many friends in media will attest to.”
IBON said that it still hopes that the respondents to their complaint
will cease with their baseless accusations, but takes solace in how
the outbursts of Parlade and Badoy provide additional evidence for
the Ombudsman of the officials’ misdeeds and misconduct. ###