MAKATI Mayor and United Opposition president Jejomar C. Binay yesterday lashed out at the Arroyo administration for raising the communist bogey to justify Executive Order 739 that he said effectively neutralizes local executives and strengthens the hand of internal security forces at the local level.

Binay said EO 739 emasculates local officials in the months leading to the 2010 elections, with its threat of sanctions for supposedly sympathizing with communist rebels, and the creation of Internal Security Converge Office in each region.

"In the short term, EO 739 sends a chilling effect to local officials, especially those who are perceived as political enemies of Mrs. Arroyo and those who may switch party loyalties in 2010," Binay said.

"If you are a local executive and you have the internal security office breathing down your neck, what options will you have?" he added.

Binay said in the long-term EO 739 appears to be part of the wide menu of options for extending President Arroyo’s stay in power beyond 2010.

"We have the allies in the House of Representatives making a final bid for Charter Change, the renewed hostilities in the South triggered by government’s evident bad faith in dealing with the MILF and an executive order that resurrects the communist threat that the administration had earlier declared as on the verge of collapse," Binay said.

"The convergence of options bolsters the belief that Mrs. Arroyo has no intention of giving up power in 2010, and is plotting to extend her rule indefinitely," he said.

Binay said administration officials and the Armed Forces of the Philippines had earlier claimed that the communist rebellion has been contained, and is now limited to certain areas.

"If such is the case, then why go to the extent of reorganizing the National Peace and Order Council into a super body that is almost the exact replica of the National Security Council? Why put on the national agenda a rebellion that is confined in only a few regions?" he asked.

Binay, a human rights lawyer during martial law and a former political detainee, said Ferdinand Marcos used the communist insurgency to justify the imposition of martial law in September 1972. At that time, the communist movement was confined mainly in Central Luzon, he added.

"It is indeed ironic, or a cruel joke, that as we commemorate the imposition of martial law, the administration is resorting to the same tactics used by the dictator. And the goal is to extend the stay in power of someone who was not democratically elected," he said.

Binay also took issue with one of the premises of EO 739 that cited the communist insurgency as a stumbling block in the country’s aim of moving to First World status.

"It is not only misleading but a misstatement of facts. What prevents us from making gains in our economy and society is the culture of corruption, mismanagement and political repression under the Arroyo administration," he said.

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno denied that his office was vested with special powers under EO 739.

Puno was reacting to the concerns raised by Sen. Mar Roxas on Sunday about EO 739.

Roxas has warned about the creeping authoritarianism embodied in EO 739 as it gives sweeping powers to Puno to enforce security around the country as head of the reorganized National Peace and Order Council (NPOC) and in the process making him (Puno) as a co-president to Arroyo.

"The President has not vested any special powers on my office that will make myself, as Senator Roxas had claimed, co-president," Puno said.

"The DILG secretary has always been the chairman of the NPOC since the time of then Secretary and now Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr."

As for the concern aired by Roxas over the alleged sanctions that could be imposed on local chief executives providing support to communist insurgents, Puno noted that the provision concerns POCs and not the secretary of the DILG.