Both Senate President Manny Villar and Senator Mar Roxas yesterday aired their opposition to the bid of the Arroyo administration to revive the Anti-Subversion law.

Villar said there is no need to resurrect the "entombed" Anti-Subversion Law as current laws, such as the Human Security Act, already provide adequate protection to the State under siege.

"Reviving RA 1700 is retrogressive. It is like going back to the primitive years when we label people as 'communists' and 'insurgents.' It will be a throwback to the Jurassic era when mere membership in a group is ground for punishment when what should be sanctioned are overt illegal acts and not mere organizational affiliation," Villar said.

He warned that an official proposal to revive the law would carry with it the tacit admission that we have a government that is constantly being subverted that it has to ask Congress for this kind of legislation.

Roxas, on the other hand, said he is urging the administration to drop this idea.

"Reviving the Anti-Subversion Law is to turn the hands of time to an era where might is right, and freedom is defined, not by one's ability to think and act freely, but by espousing only the ideas and actions that were most acceptable to the powers-that-be," he said.

"The days of the Cold War have long ended. That we still have the longest running communist insurgency in Asia is a function of poor governance, widespread injustice, and too much corruption," Roxas said.*

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