Philippine election: Is Leni Robredo allied with ‘communist terrorists’? No, former military spokesman says

The presidential candidate has been the subject of many ‘scurrilous’ rumours linking her to communist insurgents, retired Major General Domingo Tutaan Jnr said

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Leni Robredo, current Philippine vice-president and a presidential candidate, speaks during a campaign rally in Quezon City, Metro Manila, earlier this year. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:40pm, 4 May 2022Updated: 10:52am, 5 May 2022

Does Philippine Vice-President Leni Robredo plan to form a coalition with armed communist rebels if she wins the presidency on May 9? Retired Major General Domingo Tutaan Jnr finds the claim to be laughable.

“These accusations are all scurrilous,” the former spokesman for the Philippines’ armed forces said on Saturday in an exclusive interview with This Week In Asia. “This is just a very funny thing that these claims are coming out.”

Robredo has, in fact, been consulting “a group of retired generals from the armed forces and the Philippine National Police about national security and our defence posture,” said Tutaan, who once commanded an army brigade in an area of southern Mindanao where communist New People’s Army (NPA) guerillas were active that included Davao City.

Major General Domingo Tutaan Jnr speaks at a press conference in 2014 while he was still spokesman for the Philippines’ armed forces. Photo: AFP

“It’s not in her platform that there will be a coalition government with [communist insurgents],” Tutaan said, calling the allegations “very malicious, very conduct unbecoming of a public official … especially when you say it using your position but you are not presenting any facts.”

The rumours stem from a rally Robredo held in Cavite, south of Manila, on March 4. Some 47,000 people were at the event – more than expected – leading several local officials, who support Ferdinand Marcos Jnr becoming president, to claim without evidence that NPA rebels were among the crowd.

What gave the accusation legs was the Philippines’ own anti-communist task force, which put out a statement attributed to spokeswoman Lorraine Badoy that accused Robredo of “lying about a deal with members of the Communist Party of the Philippines” as well as the NPA and connected National Democratic Front.