By Ina Alleco Achieving Happiness 4 December 2010 Former press secretary of the Gloria M. Arroyo government and Inquirer columnist Rigoberto Tiglao came out with a review of the Mario Miclat’s “Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions: A Novel” (Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2010), a book which attacks the Communist Party of the Philippines, its members, and what they have struggled for all these years. The same day, a separate review came out wherein the lies peddled in the Miclat book were exposed and the book author’s own self-serving motives for coming out with such a memoir of twisted recollections were laid bare. Now I don’t know who Mario Miclat is apart from what I’ve read about him in both Tiglao’s column and the book review; but I will admit that I know Jose Ma. Sison (whom Miclat attacks and vilifies in his book) and what he has done for the national democratic movement and the struggle for genuine freedom and democracy in the Philippines. This personal knowledge of who Jose Ma. Sison and all that he has fought for and continues to fight for is what immediately caused me a measure of annoyance and even anger after reading Tiglao’s column. Attacks against JMS are nothing new, and the man is used to it, I suppose. I bet he even laughs whenever reading anything that slanders him and paints him in the most unlikeable colors. But even if JMS himself shrugs off this sort of thing, people who believe in him, who are grateful for all that he has done in service of the cause of national liberation in the Philippines, people like me, well, the attacks feel like they’re also leveled against me to some degree. They feel quite personal. Why? Because JMS is a revolutionary I look up to; and [more]
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