By Joyce Pangco Pañares

THE government’s top security official yesterday appealed to the Communist Party’s founding chairman, Jose Ma. Sison, to refrain from ordering another bloody purge amid reports a faction was working for his ouster.

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said that if reports of the anti-Sison movement within the party were true, it was highly likely that the communist leader would order a purge, as he had in the past.

“We are still verifying these reports,” he said.

“But if these are true, I can only appeal to Joma [Sison] not to start killing his colleagues just to consolidate his power base.”

The party yesterday issued a statement urging its armed wing, the New People’s Army, to expand its revolutionary war and to broaden its areas of influence.

The party claimed a 5-percent growth in membership in the NPA, particularly in Mindanao.

Earlier, Avelino Razon Jr., deputy director general at the National Security Council, said he had received intelligence reports that the anti-Sison faction was being led by party spokesman Gregorio Rosal and former Central Luzon official Caridad Magpantay.

Razon said the main issues raised by the splinter group were Sison’s luxurious lifestyle in Utrecht; their preference to pursue a parliamentary instead of an armed struggle; and the non-remittance of revolutionary taxes to the central committee allegedly led by Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma Austria.

Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo on Wednesday confirmed that Sison no longer called the shots in the movement, but denied reports of a faction led by Rosal, dismissing them as wild speculation.

But yesterday, Gonzales said the murders of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara easily came to mind, noting that the wives of the slain breakaway communist rebel leaders had already filed cases against Sison for ordering their assassination from Utrecht, where he has lived in self-imposed exile since 1988.

Sison has repeatedly denied the charges, even as he claims that his former colleagues were working as security consultants of the military and that Kintanar, in particular, was sent to Utrecht by the government in 1999 to assassinate him.

When asked for comment through e-mail Wednesday, Sison did not reply and instead sent a statement from National Democratic Front negotiating panel spokesman Fidel Agcaoili, who accused Gonzales and Razon of disinformation.

“Gonzales has been responsible for feeding the United States and Dutch governments with false information that professor Sison is the active chairman of the CPP central committee and commander-in-chief of the New People’s Army, and as such is responsible for all operational details in the CPP and NPA, including the killing of the two military agents, Rolly Kintanar and Arturo Tabara,” Agcaoili said.

“But according to the news report in the Manila Standard yesterday, Dec. 31, Gonzales states that professor Sison has been merely the symbolic leader of the CPP since 1988, and that Benito Tiamzon has been in fact the acting chairman of the CPP central committee, while Wilma Tiamzon is the general secretary.”

Agcaoili also described reports of the Rosal-Magpantay faction as “absurd,” saying Magpantay and her partner, Luisito de la Cruz, left the movement in 1998 because they opposed the party’s policies, and that Rosal remained a “staunch leader” of the party.

But Gonzales said there was no contradiction even if Tiamzon was, indeed, the new chairman, since the order to kill Tabara and Kintanar still came from Sison.

Gonzales said that if Sison was proven to be Armando Liwanag, the nom de guerre used over the years by whoever led the communist movement, then he was also guilty of the double-murder and purge during “Kampanyang Ahos,” which killed more than a thousand CPP and NPA members suspected of being deep-penetration government agents.

Sison has repeatedly denied ordering the bloody purge, saying he was still in prison when the campaign was being waged within the movement.

Ruth de Leon, executive director of the NDF’s information office, took exception to claims by Gonzales and Razon that Sison had been living a luxurious life in Utrecht while CPP and NPA leaders here continued to suffer in the countryside.

“Professor Sison is depicted as living in luxury contrary to the fact that the Dutch government has banned him from working and has deprived him of social benefits,” she said.

“Professor Sison is now living on the limited budget of his wife and small loans from friends. [He] is not living in luxury. In fact, he lives a far more austere life than most Filipinos abroad who are allowed to work.”

De Leon said that when the United States and the European Union included Sison in their terror list, the Dutch government also cut off his social benefits such as living allowance, housing, insurance, and old-age pension.