Red-tagging and vilification of progressive parties and candidates not only continue as the 2025 mid-term elections fast approaches, these have become more brazen, complained Bayan Muna partylist.
It is letter to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on May 6, Bayan Muna said the terrorist tagging against them, fellow Makabayan Coalition parties and Senate aspirants are getting worse, both on the ground and online.
Bayan Muna said Comelec should act on the complaints “with utmost dispatch and action, as the campaign period winds up for the May 12 midterm elections.”
The progressive party said that it receives reports of red-tagging activities against them on an almost daily basis.
“Our campaign posters were paint-sprayed with marks of ‘NPA’, our logos were modified and reproduced with the word ‘terrorist’; hand-painted campaign materials were also seen directly linking Bayan Muna with the CPP-NPA-NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front),” the party’s letter to the poll body reads.
The letter also identified a group called Sambayanan-Negros to have held an open activity boldly tagging Bayan Muna and other party-lists of being terrorists.
Another organization, Kalinaw – Southeastern Mindanao, peddled lies through a publication and openly campaigned that Bayan Muna and other Makabayan party-lists are terrorists, it says.
Bayan Muna said that the attacks against them violate Comelec Resolution No. 11116 banning unjust labelling of parties and candidates as an election offense.
On social media, the party said it monitored an average of two vilifying posts every three days, mostly linking its nominees to the CPP-NPA-NDF.
Bayan Muna submitted a list of 34 social media pages or accounts who lead the red-tagging against the party, some of which it said can be considered as dummy accounts.
“However, a few of them seem to be from legitimate accounts of certain individuals and/or whose names can be linked to institutions such as the so-called ‘Civil Military Information Campaign’ on Facebook,” it wrote.
Bayan Muna complained that troll-operators also flood the comment section of reports from legitimate media outfits with vilification.
“[W]e would like to inquire if the COMELEC has already conducted any investigation – and, what are its findings and action taken, if any — of the massive and widespread black propaganda perpetrated against Bayan Muna and other affected party-lists and candidates, as we have previously complained,” the party asked.
Bayan Muna first filed a similar complaint last March 10.
It also asked the poll body if it undertook actions on complaints its regional chapters have submitted.
“BAYAN MUNA still earnestly hopes that fair campaigning would still be possible in the Philippines. We trust that the COMELEC can still do something about the vicious labeling attacks against BAYAN MUNA and other affected party-lists under the mandate of its Resolution No. 11116.” # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
