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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| How Not to Win
By Antonio C. Abaya Written March 20, 2007 For the Standard Today, March 22 issue Against the Communists, that is. Arrest a top Communist leader, like Satur Ocampo, rouse him from bed at 3:00 in the morning while in detention, in full view of at least one TV news camera, hustle him to the airport to a waiting private eight-seater Cessna plane (said to belong to a brother of DILG Secretary Ronaldo Puno), fly him to Leyte to face murder charges for an alleged crime committed there 22 years ago, then have the plane turn back to Manila before it could reach Leyte, into a waiting crowd of reporters, photographers and TV cameramen What�s wrong with this picture? Everything. It made no sense initiating the operation at three in the morning, and at the same time allowing at least one TV news camera to cover the caper for the noon and evening newscasts. If the intention for the early morning transfer was to keep the operation secret, then why was a TV camera allowed to record it? Or was there an ulterior motive all along? Such as, was Gauleiter Puno thinking of doing a Ninoy Aquino-type tarmac reception in Tacloban, with the TV camera recording the hit to prove his police had nothing to do with it, and putting the blame, instead, on the relatives of Ocampo�s alleged victims, out to avenge the murder of their kin 22 years ago? The March 20 issue of the Daily Inquirer reported that in the town of Hilongos , Leyte where Ocampo was going to be tried, �about 30 people gathered in a gym with placards reading .�Satur killer!� and �Satur demonyo!� The crowd also shouted,�(Satur) should be lynched,� when a tout rhetorically asked what should be done to him. I raise this point because, according to the Daily Inquirer, �At one point in the 12-hour drama, or tragicomedy, police officials asked Ocampo to put on a bullet-proof vest, for his own safety, as they waited for the Cessna to take off from the Manila domestic airport for Tacloban City. �I rejected it,� Ocampo recounted. �I told them, who will shoot me? You are all here.�� Recall that in August 1983, Ninoy Aquino was also advised by his friends to put on a bullet-proof vest, which he did during the Taipeh-Manila leg of his flight home. But he is said to have remarked that, even with a bullet-proof vest, he would still be vulnerable to a gunshot to the head, which in fact was what happened as he stepped down the gangway in the company of his armed military escorts (one of whom had assiduously shielded his face from the TV camera as they fetched him from his airplane seat.) President Marcos protested that Ninoy had been shot by Rolando Galman in the hire of �the communists.� But everyone else with half a brain believed that Ninoy was shot by his military escorts. Ocampo�s flight to Leyte was aborted while the plane was over-flying Masbate, supposedly because the Leyte judge who was going to hear his case ruled that Ocampo could stay in Manila for the time being, until the Supreme Court issued a ruling on a legal point this Friday. In the absence of any other plausible reason, we will have to take this explanation at face value. But I have a cynical mind that views with suspicion anything that this government does or does not do. Did Malacanan and President Arroyo know anything in advance of this caper? Who knows? It does not prove anything that that President Marcos probably did not know how his military was planning to welcome Ninoy in 1983. This latest brouhaha comes at a time when the Arroyo government is reeling from the negative impact of both the Melo Commission�s and the United Nations� reports on the wave of extra-judicial killings, as well as the US Senate�s inquiry into it, which put much of the blame for it on the military Add to this the recent judgment of the PERC survey of expat business executives that the Philippines is the most corrupt country in East Asia. Unwittingly making Ocampo a martyr and a media celebrity over this bungled episode adds fuel to the perception that neither President Arroyo nor the Philippine security agencies are capable of defeating the Communist insurgency in two, three, six or ten years, as both have pompously claimed they would. It has in all likelihood made the Communist movement even stronger and harder to squash, as the unpopularity of both President Arroyo and her government rises in direct proportion to their miscalculations and outright misdeeds. Which should cause some concern among those worried about the future of this country. According to the results of a nationwide survey conducted by Pulse Asia from Feb. 28 to March 5, the most popular party-list groups competing in the May 14 congressional elections are the Communist-fronts: Ocampo�s Bayan Muna (which was chosen by 11.9 percent of respondents), Crispin Beltran�s Anakpawis (8 percent), and Liza Maza�s Gabriela (6.4 percent). The leftist but not Communist Akbayan of Etta Rosales and Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel got 7 percent. The fact that 26.3 percent of the electorate (versus an estimated 7 percent of the population deemed influenced by the Communists in the 1980s) are planning to vote for Communist front party-list organizations this May shows eloquently the bankruptcy of our American-style liberalism that has given the Communists the freedom to organize, mobilize and proselytize against the state, while their armed component, the New People�s Army, wages a bloody revolution to overthrow that state. This turn of events would not have been allowed in South Korea , Taiwan , Singapore , Malaysia , Thailand or Suharto�s Indonesia . Onli in da istupid Pilipins. And we have been on this wishy-washy liberal track even during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who allowed the Communist labor militants of the KMU to stage strike after strike against foreign locators in the country�s fledgling export processing zone in the 1970s, until the foreigners got fed up and left and moved their factories elsewhere in the region, leaving thousands of Filipino workers jobless. We continued on this liberal track in 1980s when the walking-saint Cory Aquino, sanctified by People Power, freed from detention the highest ranking Communist leaders whom the military had captured, including CPP founding chairman Jose Maria Sison. Sison returned the favor by going into self-exile in Europe and waging a campaign, through the National Democratic Front headquarters in Utrecht ( Holland ), to malign her liberator Cory Aquino in Europe �s generally leftist media for �human rights abuses,� thus wrecking her chances for the Nobel Peace Prize, for which she had been nominated. And this na�ve liberalism continued in the early 1990s when President Fidel Ramos had the Anti-Subversion Law repealed by his Lakas-dominated Congress, thus decriminalizing membership in the CPP and setting the stage for Sison�s two-pronged - Sword and Shield - strategy against the bourgeois state. The Sword (the NPA) to rain blows on the enemy; the Shield (the �legal� fronts of the NDF) to parry the blows of the enemy against the Warrior that is the CPP.. Again, this would not have been allowed to come to pass in South Korea , Taiwan , Singapore , Malaysia , Thailand or Suharto�s Indonesia . Is it any wonder that only the Philippines among the countries of East Asia is still saddled with a communist insurgency, and is now actually losing against it? The sad history of this country in the past 30 years suggests a serious flaw in the national character, institutionalized by what I call �American-style liberalism.� I am referring to our apparent inability or reluctance to come to grips with a serious problem and wrestle it to the ground until that problem is resolved. As the wishy-washy attitudes of Presidents Marcos, Aquino and Ramos show, we are not morally capable of resolving life-and-death situations. We prefer to dance around a problem, make copious jokes about it to get everyone smiling for the TV camera, and do everything except resolve it, hoping it will just go away. Even with his vast authoritarian powers, Dictator Marcos permitted communist labor unions to undermine the economy and communist fronts to command the streets, even as he allowed his military to assassinate some of the movement�s leaders. Walking-saint Cory Aquino set free the highest-ranking communist leaders in detention, apparently in the hope that they would also be forgiving towards her and abandon their armed struggle. Never happened. The NDF deliberately ruined her chance at the Nobel Peace Prize and the NPA grew to its highest strength ever, 27,000 armed fighters, during her watch. Fidel Ramos, a.k.a. as Steady Eddie, was motivated by a manic desire to sign �peace agreements� with everybody: communist insurgents, military rightists and Muslim separatists. While it proved that he was a man of peace, it also left problems unresolved. Under its �peace agreement� with Steady Eddie, the MILF, then a small splinter group from the MNLF, was allowed to have one camp, Camp Abubakar in North Cotabato, which steadily grew into a major military installation, with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons said to be more modern than the AFP�s, and its strength steadily grew to 20,000 armed fighters who spilled over into 21 additional camps. Compare this with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. In the mid 1990s, a Muslim fundamentalist sect, the al-Arqham, had become very popular and had hundreds of thousands of members, with their own madrassa schools and their own business enterprises. When he received news that al-Arqham was training a group of 300 (note, only 300) armed fighters in the jungles of predominantly Muslim southern Thailand, Mahathir, who is a devout Muslim, outlawed al-Arqham, closed its schools and seized its business assets, without signing any �peace agreement� with anyone, and arranged with the Thai government for the extradition to Kuala Lumpur of the al-Arqham leader, whom he promptly threw in jail. End of problem. ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �How Not to Win� More Reactions to � Wash SyCip Asks� More Reactions to �Idiot Candidates� More Reactions to �From GO to GAGO� Hi Tony, Allow my equally cynical mind to posit another theory. Is it possible that the handling of Satur Ocampo is actually driven by the military, with only partial knowledge and consent of Malacanang? Here's another scenario: Satur is brought to Leyte, is assassinated, triggering massive civil disturbance which prompts the military to step in, declare that the Arroyo government has lost control of the country, and promptly assume full control. Why not? With the military now in an awkward situation given the international spotlight on extrajudicial killings, and the Arroyo administration in a possibly awkward situation judging by the recent pre-election surveys, they might figure that the only way for them to keep the hold on power that they have effectively achieved within the framework of the Arroyo government - is to seize it outright. They would also surely be inspired by the goings-on in Thailand . Just my two devalued centavos' worth. Regards, Tonton Mapa, (by email), March 25, 2007 MY REPLY. Your devalued two-cents worth are probably close to the truth. In the original print edition of this article, I suggested something similar to your scenario, but I changed it in the online version because I didn�t have enough indicators to support it. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww In a circus, what do you expect circus performers to do? Here's another circus freak for you. Thanks for sharing. Bobby Manasan, (by email), March 25, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya, You wrote: �.we are not morally capable of resolving life and death situations... �� You are absolutely right. Witness the bursting 88 million population. The government is scared to face the Church in this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. We know that the Church cannot provide education, jobs, social security, etc, but they continue to oppose the government in its program, and what's the government�s response ? They chicken out. What's the use of a higher GNP, GDP, and all that if its being neutralized by this humongous population figure ? The Communist situation ? It has been solved long ago by Suharto, why can't the government do it ? Onli in da pilpins.... Sincerely, Auggie Surtida, (by email), Tigbauan, Iloilo , March 25, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww This article says that onli in da pilipins do we have cretin-brained mammals leading its own people to perdition. AL Jose Leonidas, (by email), March 25, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Mr. Abaya: Thank you so much for furnishing me a copy of your recent article. (I do read the Standard, but missed out on said article since I've been out of the country these past three weeks, having just come back last night.) I found it very insightful and thought-provoking, as with most of your writings. More power to you. Ramon L. Dolor , (by email), March 26, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony, Thanks for your email. I do read you regularly and I agree with you one hundred percent. By the way, i have been promoting your IWANAN SA SIMBAHAN advocacy. More power... George Sison, (by email), March 26, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED BY PROBLEM-SOLVING, AND PROBLEM-SOLVING STARTS WITH COMMON SENSE. WE DO NOT HAVE COMMON SENSE, THEREFORE: WE CANNOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS. ONLI IN DA PILIPINS IS THERE NO COMMON SENSE. AND THE COMMUNISTS AND MUSLIMS ARE HAPPY TO THRUST A DAGGER. TV CAMERAS, GET READY. Rod Gabuya, (by email), Rolling Hills Estates, CA, March 26, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww I strongly believe that the Philippines is in its present condition because the people want the country to be exactly what it is, otherwise the people whether the majority or handful would change the government, the way of life or leave the country. In 1986, Marcos who was in power for two decades was overthrown. People know the laws and the attitude is "kung makakalusot lang.." The simplest laws are traffic laws, people follow traffic laws inside, and break the laws outside, Subic . The church leaders should focus their attention on church matters. Commandments are also broken "kung makakalusot lang." People make choices. The Filipino people chose the kind of life or government. Filipinos abroad commenting on the sad situation of the Philippines should help in educating those very poor but otherwise deserving students in the Philippines . [email protected], March 30, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Analysts: No End in Sight for Philippines ' Communist Revolt By Fabio Scarpello | Bio | 26 Mar 2007 World Politics Watch http://worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=655 DENPASAR, Indonesia -- While most of the world has discarded the idea of communism, the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is still fighting for a "people's dictatorship" in the Philippines , arguably Southeast Asia 's most westernized country. As the 38th anniversary of the NPA draws nearer, analysts agree that there is no end in sight for the war that has killed over 40,000 "For the foreseeable future, it looks like a pattern of protracted people's war and counterinsurgency going on and on inconclusively," said Soliman Santos, Asia coordinator of the South-South Network for Non-State Armed Group Engagement, a group that seeks to involve armed groups in Asia, Africa and Latin America in peace talks. "Only a breakthrough paradigm shift would allow for an honest-to-goodness peace process, which could lead to a fair resolution of this armed conflict," he added. The latest peace talks were suspended in 2004, after Manila 's refusal to pressure the United States and the European Union to remove the CPP-NPA from their lists of foreign terrorist organizations, to which it was added in 2002. The stalemate prompted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to launch an all-out war against the NPA, pledging to finish it by 2010. Yet, CPP-NPA resilience and adaptability makes her promise look far-fetched, at best. The NPA has its roots in the "Huks," a guerrilla group organized by the now defunct, Soviet-oriented Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) to fight against the Japanese during WWII. After the war, the Huks was demobilized, then resurrected, and later abandoned by the PKP. The authorities declared it illegal and most of its members descended into banditry. A notable exception was Bernabe Buscayno, alias "Kumander Dante," who chose a different path: He took some fighters and soon after joined forces with a group of young radical intellectuals, led by Jose Maria Sison, who had abandoned the largely passive PKP and founded the CPP on Dec. 26, 1968. On March 29, 1969, when Buscayno's group officially became the NPA, a revolution was born. In brief, the CPP-NPA's ideology is based on Mao Zedong. The CPP-NPA considers the current Filipino government "semi-feudal, elitist and a puppet of the imperialist U.S.A. " It aims to overthrow it and install a Maoist regime instead. To achieve this, the rebel group conducts a "protracted people's war that from the countryside aims to encircle the cities, until the government collapses." Despite its ups and downs throughout the years, the NPA still counts on an estimated 7,000 to 12,000 armed men. Its ranks are filled by young, unhappy peasants that are disgruntled at the state of the Philippine economy and the country's social disparities. "The continuing conditions of poverty and mis-governance are the structural causes of the rebellion," Santos said. A 2006 World Bank report stated that the Philippines is making progress in the war against poverty, yet it is still far from enough. Official data show that 35 million Filipinos -- or 42 percent of the population -- survive on less than $2 a day. The report also highlighted a widening income gap, with poverty remaining an overwhelmingly rural phenomenon. In the Philippines , 75 percent of the rural population is considered poor. The peasants' unhappiness is compounded by the government's reluctance to carry out agrarian reform, which has been dragging since independence in 1946. Just 2 percent of the landowners in the Philippines control 36 percent of farmlands. In the meantime, corruption is rampant. Transparency International consistently rates the Philippines among the world's most corrupt countries, while, in its latest corruption perception index, the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. rated the country to be the most corrupt in East Asia . At the national level, the political system is dominated by a few family dynasties, while at the local level small-town politicians and warlords control private armies. Santos' analysis is largely shared by political observer Antonio Abaya, who, nonetheless, added Manila 's "American-style liberalism" -- or an excessive freedom of political expression inherited from Washington, its former colonial master -- to the factors that fuel the communist rebellion. "In the Philippines , communists and pro-communists are allowed to organize, mobilize and proselytize for their cause, thanks to our American-style liberalism. In effect, they are allowed to lead a simultaneous underground revolution and a legal political action," said Abaya, who chairs TAPATT, an independent political watchdog. "Add this to the failures of the government to improve the life of the population, and there is no reason to believe that the insurgency can be defeated in three, 10 or more years," he added. The CPP-NPA's struggle attracts sympathy from a wide range of non-violent political parties, NGOs and militant groups that have a left-leaning ideology. Manila has defined these leftists as the "legal front of the CPP-NPA." Since President Arroyo rose to power in 2001, some estimate more than 800 such leftists have been killed in extrajudicial political killings, carried out by government forces (see "Philippines Reeling From Revelations of Extrajudicial Killings"). The killings have shamed Manila in the international arena and, some analysts argue, provided a rallying cry for CPP-NPA recruitment efforts. Fabio Scarpello is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for the Italian press agency AdnKronos International. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Reactions to � Wash SyCip Asks� Hi Tony: The fact the many people are contributing valuable comments to the articles you are writing shows that you are raising valid issues that people are discussing in private. Thanks very much that you have decided to publish your views to provoke more open discussions on what is really wrong with our Philippine society. In fact, when you stopped sending me your commentary-emails, I was wondering what had happened to you. Perhaps, I thought, you must have passed away, but the good Lord has extended your life so that you could continue on with your wonderful work of raising issues dear to every Filipino. (The reason is more prosaic. My computer crashed in 2005 and 2007, wiping out my address book. Fortunately, I had an old back-up copy, where your email address was apparently stored. ACA) Very truly yours, Ramon A. del Gallego, (by email), March 31, 2007 wwwwwwwwwww I missed a lot of your mails. I somehow am on your list again. I'm glad. (See explanation above. ACA.) Each of your articles, and most of the feedback, is interesting, and thought provoking. This latest barrage of responses, is thought provoking indeed. My two cents worth: Q.>"What are the roots of our problem? Is it an overdose of democracy, >Western style? When poor citizens sell their votes, do we not have a >democracy of the upper class who have the money to buy the votes." A. Lack of education. No democracy can function properly, if the people who have the power to vote do not have the capability to choose wisely. That is absolutely BASIC. What needs to be done, is to push the educated people to move for educational reforms. I don't think this is an impossible goal, further, it is a legal way to fix the problem. The more educated people are, the less likely they are to stomach graft and corruption, the more likely they are to demand justice, and have the wherewithal to get it. I don't agree that: �the main root is the moral degeneration in our society as a whole - the preponderance of graft, corruption and greed and apathy.� This is not a "Filipino problem" it is an international problem. And look at the different "democratic" countries, the less educated the people are, the more problems they have choosing good leaders. Preponderance of graft and corruption is a condition that arises from lack of law enforcement, which will happen in any democracy, when people are uneducated and unable to stand up for their rights, because they don�t know how to stand up for them legally. The other "successful" governments in the region are spending in education. I think they realize its importance for maintaining stability and the move towards a more democratic style of government. Ultimately, democracy is the way to go. As you said, Democracy was handed to the Philippines on a silver platter. I don't believe we need to go two steps back, in order to move one step forward. Q.>Those who fought using violence and died for our original independence in >1896 - warriors as well as writers subversive of the status quo - are too >far removed in time, and have effectively been erased from our collective >memory by a soulless media, to have any influence on the present >generations. Who could possibly disagree with that? (That last question was posed by a reader, not by me.ACA.) I Do. The schools do teach kids about these "heroes". Unfortunately, I think maybe the more educated students find out later that some of the people who set up the first Philippine Republic were self- centered, cowardly despots who wanted to enslave their own people, and had no qualms about being turncoats themselves, when the chips were down. They were not above killing or jailing other "comrade heroes" or sending them to a certain death on the battlefield.. We do have heroes, but can we trim some of them off the list, please? Peter Capotosto, (by email), March 31, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Sir, I�m just thinking. You said that the Philippines cannot have a strong middle class without industrialization. What basically is your definition of middle class? I thought that this was a group whose income is in the middle (not too high, not too low). I do hope it is not so, because if it is, I think GMA has found the solution to achieve a middle class without industrialization � by sending Filipinos abroad to work. Thanks a lot and best regards, Bong L. Alba, (by email), April 02, 2007 Corporate Engineering, URC wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Reactions to �Idiot Candidates� Excuse me again Mr. Abaya, Aren't those 15,305 respondents of the online poll you cited the very same people who elected the idiots that are the subject of your ire? Perhaps they should be the ones and not the prospective candidates who should take your proposed eligibility test. Rudy Asercion, (by email), April 02, 2007 MY REPLY. It is far easier to test one idiot candidate than 15,305, almost all of whom are not running for any public office anyway. --- [email protected] Wrote: >> Excuse me, Mr. Abaya, The "idiot test" that you are proposing as a condition for eligibility to run for office will presumably preclude the candidacy of that Filipino boxer who poses the following skills. >> Ability, Agility, Fortitude, Cunning, Strength, Discipline, Determination, Concentration >> Americans of Filipino descent recognize and acknowledge that these traits are characteristics of a champion - something that the Philippines is sorely lacking in their politics. >> >>Rudy Asercion, (by email), March 06, 2007 --- Antonio Abaya <[email protected]> wrote > A champion in boxing is not necessarily a champion in politics. Some Filipinos can apparently tell the difference. According to an online poll in the website mannypacquiao.ph, 91% of 15,305 respondents said they do not want Pacquiao to pursue his bid for a congressional seat in South Cotabato, 4% said they want him to, and 4.7% said they didn�t care, one way or the other. (Philippine Daily Inquire, March 03, 2007). Pacquiao has recently been booed in several public appearances. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Sir: What you say about Manny Pacquiao and other clueless candidates won't wash unless and until a wholesale change in the way we elect our leaders and legislators is made. Seriously, what makes Manny Pacquiao more inferior to any of our legislators? What have any of them done to improve the welfare of the country? Manny Pacquiao may do no better. But he can do no worse. Sincerely, Erineo Cabahug, (by email), The Bronx, New York City , April 05, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Reactions to �From GO to GAGO� Dear Mr. Abaya, I've been reading your columns, but not being as wise about the Philippines , I thought they were allegorical tales about some members in the U.S. Senate and in my state of Michigan - primarily from the Republican Party. Here it's GOP to GAGO. (Grand Old Party to Idiots.) All your concerns could easily be applied to a lot of the behavior of many American legislators who are also for sale to the highest bidder. Money talks now in America , with our legislators, much more strongly than that of the voters, reducing our quality of life, to benefit corporate patrons. Sound familiar? Jeff Jenks, (by email), Michigan , April 06, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony, Happy Easter (advance)! Only one thing that I am certain of is that�candidates who tried to overthrow the Arroyo government will never get any vote from me. I am not ANTI or PRO but maybe Filipinos should consider her accomplishments. Let�s as well think more than 100X�s before casting our votes in May. For me, I will surely NOT vote for Trillanes, Honasan, Oreta, Sotto�to name a few. Thanks. Gilbert Meneses, (by email), Saudi Arabia , April 06, 2007 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Thanks, Tony, That was a good cross section of a variety of opinions, etc. Some could qualify as 'From Go to Gago,'. while a few could surpass them as 'Tanga na, Gago Pa ' Jaime Calero (by email), Sydney Australia, April 06, 2007 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |