CLARK FREEPORT – News spread that Jose Maria “Joma” Sison, founding chairman of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) anonymously flew into the country via the Clark International Airport (CIA).
The news even provided a little more detail: he arrived last Jan. 20, sporting the name Renato Malaya.
Officials of the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) were swamped with calls on this report yesterday, but after a thorough check on records of arrivals at the airport last January and even as of yesterday this month, neither Renato Malaya nor Jose Ma. Sison surfaced.
“Our search for the entire month of January and even February did not reveal any such names,” said CIAC vice president for operations Reynaldo Catacutan.
Armed Forces spokesperson Col. Arnulfo Burgos also dismissed the report, saying that only yesterday morning a Manila-based radio station was able to interview Sison who had been in the Netherlands where he sought political asylum during the term of former Pres. Corazon Aquino.
The rumor on Sison was apparently triggered by a forum in pinoyexchange.com wherein someone posted a thread claiming he heard from a radio program of one Prof. Erik San Juan that the communist leader has indeed arrived via Clark.
The post even theorized that the arrival was with the blessing of the US government purportedly as part of a plan for a revolutionary government in the Philippines.
Sison was chairman of the CPP Military Commission that founded the New People’s Army on March 29, 1969.
In representation of the CPP, he co-founded the National Democratic Front of the Philippines on April 24, 1973 as an underground united front organization against the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
