Rebel with a new cause

The man who is leading the Armed Forces of the Philippines in its fight against the communist rebellion has revealed that he too was once a communist and he had a secret crush on his commander-in-chief, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

'I was a communist before,' Hermogenes Esperon Jnr, chief of staff of the armed forces, said. 'But you must be stupid if after seeing the world you're still a communist. Print that.'

The swarthy, stern-faced general, built like a boxer, is the government's point man in its renewed war against communist rebels. He is President Arroyo's ninth and longest-serving military chief. Just before appointing him to the top post in July last year, Mrs Arroyo ordered the military to 'wipe out' the communist threat by 2008, when General Esperon, 55, reaches retirement age.

General Esperon has come under mounting local and international criticism for an increasing number of unsolved killings of left-wing activists whose organisations General Esperon claimed were 'communist fronts'.

He strongly denied charges that soldiers were the perpetrators and instead insisted that the communists were killing their own.

What the general has not until now revealed to the public, though, is that he was a left-wing activist in his youth. His best friend in high school, Lazzie Silva, was killed by soldiers after becoming a commander of the communist New People's Army and a classmate named Pastor Mesina Jnr died in a mass action.

He put his activist days down to 'the flame of youth ... you have idealism if you are growing up. During those times it [student activism] was quite strong, plus of course you're in the middle of it,' he said.