Among the most polished skills of the Left are seduction and deception which it employs to convince those gullible enough to take up arms against the government.

The common denominator of the revolutionary movement — be it on the legal front or the underground — is the toppling of the existing democratic system and replacing it with a so-called “proletarian dictatorship” where a select few will take control.

Retired Brig. Gen. Parlade Jr., whose name is synonymous with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), said the communist rebellion has moved to urban areas through its legal fronts due to the success of the localized anti-insurgency drive.

With the terrorist New People’s Army (NPA) fronts relegated to four remote areas, the guerrillas are now capitalizing on the legal fronts to keep their radical ideology alive.

The strengthening of their arm in the legislature is part of their strategy which puts those who harbor the party-list fronts of the communist movement in danger of abetting terrorism.

Parlade, who is a former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) deputy chief of staff for civil-military operations, said the NPA lost its mass support after the military went after it.

With the rural folk rejecting them, NPA fighters and supporters took cover by becoming members of so-called “progressive groups.”

The Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives, which is now allied with the majority, was a key element in the rebellion’s shift to the legislative arena, commendable if its members renounced the NPA and its goal of overthrowing the democratic system through armed struggle.

In 2018, Parlade bared the Communist Party of the Philippines-backed “Red October” designed to oust then President Rodrigo Duterte after he terminated Cabinet members with communist links.

The ouster plot against Duterte triggered the unlikely alliance of the anti-government forces, including the right-wing Magdalo group of destabilizer Antonio Trillanes IV.

Prior to the communist movement-led destabilization effort was the convergence of all the enemies of the former president under Tindig Pilipinas which plotted the “Aklasan” that would have been launched 21 September 2018 if not for Duterte pre-empting it by exposing it.

Among the conspirators were the left-wing Movement Against Tyranny and Trillanes’ Magdalo.

Duterte bared the merging of the yellow mob and the Reds in the plot to oust him, which scuttled the plan.

The Red October government takeover attempt happened on 11 October 2018, which was the start of the filing of certificates of candidacies for the 2019 midterm elections.

The groups in the plot simply scampered away like frightened rodents after the president announced that he was aware of it. Members of the yellow faction distanced themselves from the alliance.

In a one-on-one interview with then Presidential Legal Adviser Sal Panelo, Duterte said the government had evidence of the plot.

“(CPP founder Jose Maria) Sison, Magdalo, and all those who do not like me ever since the election, they have combined. And we have the evidence and we have the conversation provided by a foreign country sympathetic to us,” the former president said.

Rody then dared the Armed Forces of the Philippines to join the conspiracy through Trillanes’ Magdalo group. “I urge you to go to Trillanes, go to them and stage a mutiny or revolution or whatever,” he said.

Trillanes was then hiding in the Senate for fear of arrest after his amnesty for leading three mutiny attempts against former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo — the Oakwood mutiny in July 2003, the Marines stand-off in February 2006, and the Manila Peninsula incident in 2007 — was invalidated by Proclamation 572.

The track record of the Makabayan bloc and Trillanes are a fair warning of what may result from flirting with them for whatever cause since their hidden agenda is far deeper than their being mere paid hacks.