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| Magdalo: Mission Improbable? By Antonio C. Abaya Written Jan. 24, 2006 For the Standard Today January 26 issue On the surface, it would be difficult to disagree with Navy Lt. SG Antonio Trillanes IV, detained tactical head of the Oakwood mutineers of July 2003, when he was allowed to speak to media during a court appearance last week. Said Trillanes: �It�s time for all of us to decide which side we�ll take, whether we are for GMA or for change�..If you choose GMA, that means you are content with your situation now and that you can abide her until 2010 onwards�.That means they are waiving their stake in the future to those who would want to decide. When that happens, whatever is the outcome, they should just accept it�..They have no right to complain because they have decided not to participate in that historic moment� �If you choose change, it means you want, and you are hoping that your quality of life, and that of your fellow Filipinos, will be better, or somehow you have hope that there will be peace and progress in our country�..Now don�t be afraid because whatever your decision may be, wherever the people will go, so will the AFP. The decision is for the people to make. �What they can expect from us is that we will do the right thing, that we will do what we have to do.� (Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jan. 19). Not to be outdone, 12 junior officers of the Air Force, also detained for their participation in the Oakwood mutiny, sat around a table at Villamor Air Base that had been painted to replicate the flag of the Magdalo faction of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo during the heyday of the Katipunan in the Revolution of 1896. But, as if to muddle things up, the most senior in the group said they preferred to be called �Magdiwang,� after the faction led by Andres Bonifacio. We all know that the rivalry between the Magdalo and Magdiwang factions led to an intramural war in the revolutionary movement and the arrest, trial and execution of Bonifacio and his brother, in rugged hills of Cavite. Aguinaldo�s Magdalo prevailed in 1896, only to be co-opted and betrayed by the Americans in 1898, during the mock battle for Manila. Almost 100 years later, a schism also developed in the communist revolutionary movement and split the revolutionaries into Reaffirmists (who remained loyal to Joma Sison) and Rejectionists (who challenged the wisdom of his Maoist strategy), and led to the assassination of leading Rejectionists such as Popoy Lagman and Rolly Kintanar. Even revolutions have a way of becoming corroded by some kind of tropical dry rot in these lugubrious latitudes. It must be the bagoong. The Inquirer of Jan. 22 did not publish the statement, if any, of the 12 Air Force officers other than �You may call it (presumably the use of old revolutionary symbols) defiance, but the word evokes a lot of anger or aggressiveness. For us, it simply shows our consistency in holding our views.� The timing of these public displays of defiance with the escape of four of their comrades from detention the previous day at Fort Bonifacio, and the escape of another mutineer-officer while being transported to or from court one month earlier, do suggest that there is ferment in the military, especially among junior officers. Add to this the sudden visibility (or, to coin a new word, decibility) of the Magdalo�s acknowledged Kuya, the smooth-talking Gringo Honasan, who was interviewed by Ricky Carandang on ANC and then invited to speak (with Randy David) before the burgis gathered at the Manila Polo Club. Something was/is definitely going on. Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez even had a date for D-Day: January 20 to 21. But nothing happened on the appointed date, other than a warning from Malacanang, that they will �fight fire with fire.� Haven�t we gone through this before? I was led to believe that a coup was going to take place during the last week of November. I was even advised to expect a coded message that would signal the start of the operation. (Before November, the coup was supposed to occur in July.) But the coded message never arrived. Instead, I received daily prayers from one Marianito Hernandez, who despite seven requests from me to turn off the spiritual spigot, persisted in his daily efforts to sanctify me. I finally found a way to shut him up. Every time he sent me a prayer, I sent him the most vivid pornography in living color. He finally got the message that his focused (on me) display of piety was not welcome. (But this response will not be repeated. Those who will now send me prayers, in the hope of getting pornography in return, will be disappointed. But I digress.) What do these repeated rumors of coups and their repeated postponement tell us? They tell us that a) the same group of people are most likely behind these persistent efforts; b) the coups are continuously being postponed because the plotters cannot recruit a critical mass of military officers to carry it out; and c) there is no avalanching public outcry from among the middle class in support of such an enterprise. Individually, the Magdalo officers may be motivated by the purest and the most patriotic of intentions to bring about substantive changes and reforms in the Philippine military and in Philippine society as a whole. But they need to think through the implications of what they are trying to achieve and analyze the direct beneficiaries, intended or otherwise, of their course of action. Whether they like it or not, because of their Oakwood caper, they are associated in the public mind with the efforts of disgraced President Joseph Estrada to return to power. Erap�s fingerprints are all over the Oakwood mutiny. (See my article �Erap�s Fingerprints,� Sept. 17, 2003) Would the cause of reforming Philippine society be served by putting back into power someone who does not know much beyond whoring, gambling and drinking, who when he held the reins of power chose to surround himself with criminals: a fugitive being hunted by the FBI, a stock manipulator being sought by police in Australia and Europe, an embezzler with seven pending swindling cases against him, big-time smugglers and mega-gamblers, and assorted Chinese mafia types who built luxurious mansions for his many concubines but, we are expected to believe, wanted nothing in return? Granted that the moral climate in the Malacanang area has not moved closer to Heaven�s since 2001, do the Magdalo officers really want to risk their lives and the lives of others, as well as the future of an entire country, to restore to power a criminally inclined ignoramus, just because he is idolized by a large segment of the squealing proletariat? And granted also that the smooth-talking Kuya has a vision of a New Jerusalem that he wants the Magdalo to implement, one has to wonder who the proximate or ultimate beneficiaries of his supposedly idealistic maneuvers really are. In 1987, it was Juan Ponce Enrile. In 1989, it was Danding Cojuangco. In 2003, it was Joseph Estrada. Who will it be in 2006? Erap again? In the interview with Ricky Carandang, Kuya assured the TV audience that the Magdalo officers do not intend to grab power for themselves, but will return to barracks after they hand power to a civilian �transition council�. Which civilian �transition council�, he did not say, but anyone who has followed the shifting loyalties of these would-be messianic liberators can come to only one conclusion: The Magdalo officers will likely install the junta being stitched together by Boy Morales, with the bland and colorless Renato de Villa as figurehead, but with the real power in the hands of Kuya himself, like Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser behind Gen. Mohammed Naguib in the Egypt of the 1950s. The junta will likely include three committed communists. Four, if you include Morales. No wonder Joma Sison publicly endorses this junta. Excuse me, transition council. Morales was co-founder in 1972 of the National Democratic Front (NDF), the political arm of Joma�s Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Satur Ocampo was spokesman of the NDF when he was captured in the 1980s, with his wife, the equally committed communist Bobbie Malay. The KMU�s Crispin Beltran and the CPP�s Joma were two of the few in the entire world who publicly applauded the massacre of hundreds of student demonstrators by the People�s Liberation Army on Tienanmen Square in Beijing in June 1989. Dodong Nemenzo was an associate member of the Politburo of the pro-Soviet Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in the late1950s and was the designated PKP liaison with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The mild-mannered, uncontroversial �Mr. Nice Guy� De Villa would have absolutely no idea on how to deal with these ideological machos in his �transition council.� And the first executive act of the junta will most likely be the restoration of Erap to the presidency, so that he can unilaterally clear himself of the plunder charges pending against him. After which, he may resign, or be forced to resign, and go into luxurious exile abroad with his favorite concubines, like a latter day Maharajah of Moolah. Thus Kuya will reign happily ever after. Until the communists betray him, or he betrays the communists. It could go either way. It is an article of faith among committed communists, even after the auto-collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that the ultimate victory of Communism is (still) historically inevitable, �even if it takes hundreds of years,� as publicly promised, on separate occasions, by ex-NPA amazon-warrior Nelia Sancho and a PKP co-founder, the late Dr. Jesus Lava. This self-fulfilling prophecy is what motivates committed Filipino communists, whether or not they still carry membership cards, especially since the festering socio-economic-political conditions in the country seem to bear out the premises of that prophecy. The journey that may �take hundreds of years� must start now, and here, such as in Boy Morales� junta. Excuse me, transition council. It is the irony of ironies that the Magdalo officers of a traditionally anti-communist army would be directly instrumental in installing what potentially could be the last communist government on God�s earth. Mission impossible? Nothing is impossible in Disneyland. Only probable or improbable. ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles in www.tapatt.org OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Reactions to �Magdalo: Mission Improbable� Sir: Those so-called Magdalo soldiers make me weep. If these are the "cream of the crop" of officers in the Philippine military, we have really deteriorated far down the abyss. These people simply mouth clich�s and motherhood statements. Nothing new or insightful in what they have to say. They sound like schoolchildren who have memorized a declamation piece by rote. Their spiel may have its dramatic and stirring moments, but it is so obviously programmed and rehearsed. And, oh, so boring! What they say doesn't come from the heart, and it shows. Their Kuya Gringo, who has recently ventured out of his bonsai garden, has come out spouting his sophomoric philosophies on TV. He must have buried himself in some library these past few months and recently discovered Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. He speaks of national salvation with the messianic zeal of one who recently discovered religion. Von Clausewitz has now been replaced by Engels. To paraphrase Holden Caulfield: What a phony! Junior Kilat makes more sense than this guy. At least Junior Kilat is being himself. If the rest of the nation were as na�ve and as malleable as those young Magdalo officers, we would surely be in even deeper trouble. Or do these officers now call themselves Magdiwang? Perhaps when they grow up they will find out whether they are fish or fowl, or simply accept whatever their Kuya says they are. Juan Deiparine, [email protected] Toril, Davao City, Jan. 26, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Sir: Events in the Middle East and South Asia this year will affect us much more than we think. The Iranian defiance on the nuclear plant and Israel's typically paranoid reaction should unfold into more than just mere brinkmanship. Then, there is Hamas wresting control of the Palestianian homeland. Oil prices should be even more volatile this year, putting our economy right back into the front burner. By that, I mean that our economy should be getting FVR's famed "bibingka" treatment. Not a pleasant prospect to look forward to. Furthermore, Islam has become more aggressive and belligerent. America has not moved forward in Iraq and Al-Quaeda still has much of its sting left intact. When you add these to the Iranian and Palestinian complications, American paranoia about Islamic inroads in our part of the world will only increase. There will be more important events to watch than Gringo and his puny band of followers. They will just be a hiccup compared to the potentially earth-shaking events that are to come. In the end, the economy makes or breaks us. For all of Ninoy Aquino's fabled martyrdom, it could not have resulted in EDSA were it not for the 1983 IMF default and the resulting economic firestorm that ensued. With the peso at 1/3 of it's former value (from about P7/$1 to more than P20/$1) and interest rates at over 50%, the middle and upper classes were economically singed. Fixed income and wage earners immediately lost 2/3 of their purchasing power. Businesses could not make ends meet with the sky-high interest rates and tight monetary policies. The situation was unbearable. No wonder Makati became ground zero for the protest movement and was soon filled with the yellow confetti that rained from the high-rise offices. Now, aside from worries about the economy, we have to worry about religious intransigence and terrorism. And we happen to be right smack in the middle of one of the hotbeds of this religious/ economic war. So, Gringo Honasan and his pedantic band of dwarves can spew all the pretentious rhetoric that they want. They are of no consequence in the current hierarchy of contingent events. Like most of us, Gringo and company will just be bystanders, certainly in no position to take the mantle of leadership in these perilous times. In the end, what happens in the Middle East will have more bearing on our future than this band of self-styled saviours. So why bother with them? Carl Cid S.M. Inting, [email protected] Cebu City, Jan. 26, 2006 MY REPLY. I agree with you that Hamas and Iran are serious threats to the stability in the Middle East and thus to our economy because of our dependence on Middle East oil. But I would put that threat in the medium term (six to 24 months). A military mutiny, whether by the Magdalo or some other group, is a more immediate event (one to six months) and cannot be ignored, no matter how lowly they may be in our regard.. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Methinks communists are people first with hearts before they are ideologues with minds. (And Jesus' compassion primarily goes towards people whom the educated and the moneyed condemn). How I wish all of them will lay down their arms and go back to the mainstream in order to help work out a peaceful but long-term societal transformation, not for the filthy rich capitalists and trapos but for the struggling and suffering majority. I too dread to live in a uniform society controlled by a know-it-all communist party. The failure of Soviet communism and the opening up of socialist countries to the market ideology are too eloquent a fact to be ignored. But in my very comfortable academic comfort zone I feel I don't have the moral ascendancy to impose such a wish. Who among us the comfortable is willing "to lose one's life" (to quote whom Christian believers of the first century called the Way) for the sake of others? Unless it's for pecuniary considerations - and we're even willing to kill to protect private economic interests � which seems to me pretty much more capitalist than socialist. For I agree with the observation of many analysts that the elite have miserably failed the masses. And there are still people in the Church who do not feel morally compelled to preach against injustice when they receive big donations from the filthy rich. I continue to hold the view, however na�ve it may seem, that communism is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem, and communism is not THE issue in our country... And if GMA does the impossible of doing a Saul thus paving the way for a transition government, and eventually a more stable one, who is afraid of the communists in the government? In the present Lower House are there leftist and/or communist congressmen whose position has been tainted by charges of graft and corruption? Are there leftists and communists who have been accused of using their position in order to enrich themselves? For me their presence in congress represents not ideology, but a small victory for the masses who have been historically betrayed by the unsatiable greed of the elite and traditional politicians. Each time they give a little to the people, they get much more in return. Yes to more socialist (basta makabayan, makamaralita, makaDiyos, makakalikasan) presence in the government which recognizes the blessings of capitalism, no to a party-controlled political system either dominated by theoretical atheists (like unbelieving communists or practical atheists like church-going but true-to-life-atheist capitalists) Lenny Levaria, [email protected] Jan. 26, 2006 MY REPLY. You ARE na�ve. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Don�t know what to say, Mr. Abaya. In the meantime, the firefights between the NPAs and the government soldiers continue. Cesar Torres, [email protected] Jan. 26, 2006 MY REPLY. How about saying: The Russians had �communism� for 74 years, the Eastern Europeans (among the most skilled and best educated in the world) for 44 years. But they couldn�t make it work and, of their own volition, finally abandoned it. After 30 years of Maoism, the hard-working Chinese re-embraced capitalism. What makes Filipino communists think they can do better? wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww You wrote: ��But the coded message never arrived. Instead, I received daily prayers from one Marianito Hernandez, who despite seven requests from me to turn off the spiritual spigot, persisted in his daily efforts to sanctify me. I finally found a way to shut him up. Every time he sent me a prayer, I sent him the most vivid pornography in living color. He finally got the message that his focused (on me) display of piety was not welcome�.� I guess he didn't want to wait to see the body of Christ, eh? oops. Actually the zealot has also been mail-bombing me. Your technique is worth trying out... Alan C. Robles, [email protected] South China Morning Post, Jan. 27, 2006 MY REPLY. I spoke too soon. He has resumed his daily prayer crusade. I think he likes the pornography. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww I guess these 'thinking, young, idealistic officers' need to rethink their alliances. While money, which is most difficult to raise, easily pours from those who seemingly pose for the people, gold is no substitute for girth and idealism and a burning authentic love for country. Cesar Sarino, [email protected] Jan. 28, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The following article was emailed to us by the office of former Senator Herrera Filipino Call Center Agents Outclass Indians By Ernesto F. Herrera, General Secretary, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines January 26, 2006 Filipino call center employees work harder, are easier to train, have better language skills and are more devoted than their counterparts in India, according to a survey cited by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP). Based on a survey by a global staffing firm and a market research outfit, TUCP general secretary and former Sen. Ernesto Herrera said transnational business process outsourcing (BPO) providers prefer Filipinos call center employees because of their superior work ethics and higher language skills. Herrera enumerated the findings of the survey: � Filipino employees average only eight days of sick leave each year, while Indian workers report sick for 15 days; � Filipino agents are also considered more loyal, spending an average of 19 months with their firms, while Indians spend only 11 months; � Filipino personnel need only 19 days to fully train, whereas Indian staff take 24 days to train, thus forcing employers to spend more money for training; and, � Filipinos have better language skills, with 64 percent of Filipino agents able to speak more than two languages, while only 40 percent of Indians have multilingual skills. Michigan-based Kelly Services Inc.* and Singapore-based ACA Research Inc.** conducted the survey. "There is no question our call center workers, mostly young women, are outsmarting and outperforming their Indian counterparts," Herrera said. "More important, the survey clearly shows that Filipinos are more cost-effective call center personnel. At the end of the day, worker productivity and overall cost-efficiency are the factors that matter most, in order for a labor-intensive, technology-enabled service operation to succeed financially," Herrera added. Herrera, meanwhile, said TUCP is endorsing initiatives to reinstate English as the medium of instruction in all school levels. "English proficiency is a core human resource competency that we have to strengthen if we are to attract more BPO providers, particularly call center operators that deal with the customers of large American firms," Herrera pointed out. "In order to stay competitive, it is absolutely imperative for us to reinforce the English skills of young Filipinos joining the labor force each year," he said Even citizens of highly developed and technologically advanced countries such as South Korea are "passionately studying English," according to Herrera. "In fact, thousands of young Koreans visit the Philippines to get either formal or informal crash courses in English. This is why South Korea is now our biggest source of foreign tourists," he added. India and the Philippines are fierce competitors in the global BPO market, particularly in call center operations. Earlier this week, Amsterdam-based ING Group N.V., a global financial services company that provides an array of banking, insurance and asset management services in over 50 countries, bared plans to establish a major back-office operation in Asia. The company said it would choose either India or the Philippines as the location. The local BPO industry, which currently employs 233,000 workers, is expected to generate 103,000 new jobs this year, mainly in call centers, according to a Business Processing Association of the Philippines forecast. The booming industry expects to generate $3.8 billion in revenues this year, 52 percent higher than last year�s revenues of $2.5 billion. By 2010, the industry is expected to fully employ some 1.2 million Filipinos and generate up to $12.4 billion in annual revenues.***** *Kelly Services Inc. is a Troy, Michigan-based Fortune 500 company that globally provides staffing solutions. **ACA Research Inc. is a full service market research agency that conducts a wide range of projects across a broad range of industries. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The following was emailed to us by Vick Anthonio, [email protected], supposedly as a �rejoinder� to my article �Learning from Iceland� (Aug. 14, 2005) CEBUANO CITED FOR INVENTING COCO FUEL BY MARS W. MOSQUEDA JR. MANILA BULLETIN DECEMBER 3, 2004: P. J-3 Cebu City ? Cebuano Vick Anthonio Medel, who invented the ?vegetable energy,? is this year's Zetan Top of the Year Awardee. Medel will receive the awarding during the 13th Top of the Year Award ceremony yesterday (Dec.2) at the Grand Hotel Astoria in Zamboanga City with the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the honorary presentor. Medel Invented Enkoco Eco-Dynamics Energy from coconut oil to power diesel engines and as a catalytic to two strokes. Zetan Foundation chairman Danny Barrios asked Medel to receive the award during the ceremony ? to give us the opportunity to say thank you for the serving our city and people faithfully and well?. Medel said the Zetan Foundation and the people of Zamboanga City have expressed their gratitude after he recently launched his Enkoco Eco-Dyanmics Energy products in the area. Medel's invention obtains more than 20 by-products from raw coconut, including oil, which can be easily catalyzed into diesel, gasoline and lubricating oil. Medel's invention, which is vegetable energy, will generate close to 15 products out of raw coconut, including oil that can be used for fuel. Ultimately however, Medel said he would venture into producing diesel and gasoline hoping to ultimately free the country from its dependence on foreign oil. ?If the President is looking for a legacy, we hope this would be it, ? he added.***** MY REPLY. Sorry to rain on your parade, but �vegetable energy� was the subject of the cover story of Newsweek magazine about six months ago. Ethanol, derived from sugar and other carbohydrates, has been widely used in Brazil for about 30 years now. Ethanol is also a form of �vegetable energy.� During the Japanese Occupation (1942-45), diesel trucks and buses in the Philippines used coco-diesel, or diesel fuel mixed with coconut oil. It, too, is a form of �vegetable energy.� All of these � ethanol, coco-diesel, other forms of vegetable energy � are organic compounds, meaning they are carbon-based. When they are burned in internal combustion engines, they emit carbon dioxide, the most common of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. What Iceland has pioneered is an economy that is not fueled by energy from carbon-based sources. Iceland is the first and, so far, only country in the world that has specifically chosen to source its energy ONLY from hydro power, geothermal power, wind power, solar power and hydrogen-based fuel cells, none of which emit carbon dioxide. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Revolution? Ever since we always have a revolution against the Spaniards and Americans. Against Marcos, against Joseph, even against Aquino. But still what happened to our country? What we need is not to change the leaders, we need all Filipinos to change. Siguro nasa ugat na natin ang pagiging corrupt. Lahat na may hangaring maganda when still don�t have the power. Pero pag hawak parang sakit sa dadaoo sa katawan nila. Pinalayas natin ang Americano pero lahat na pilipino gusto sa America even the descendants of those fight who nagainst American and Japanese. Now let all think about it, sir. Kayo ba Sir, if you become a leader can you guarranty you will be an honest leader.? Ayaw natin ng cha cha, ano ba talaga ang dapat. Subok na natin lahat, ano pa ang hindi natin nasusubukan. Alexander Carranceja, [email protected] Kuwait, Jan. 31, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww |