AFTER Jose "Linggoy" Alcuaz, founding member of the Silent Protest Movement, revealed last week at the "Kapihan sa Sulo" forum that Vice President Gloria Macapagal "is leading the establishment of a civilian-military junta" (See Malaya, April 2), one can’t fault Malacañang for panicking and giving her an ultimatum to either declare for the administration or get out of the Cabinet.

Malacañang’s panic, however is misdirected. If a coup should take place installing a civilian-military junta, Macapagal isn’t likely to survive the event. The coup, if it is to make sense at all and command popular appeal, will be directed at the politicians who brought the nation to this mess. And Macapagal has much to account for, along with her colleagues in Lakas-NUCD.

Macapagal can’t possibly stand a scrutiny of her record – as well as the record of her party – and the role which she and her party played in the making of the mess.

Any junta installed by a coup will have to put the politicians on trial, along with the drug lords, smugglers and the criminals of society, if its to command public support. And if the proposed civilian-military junta does that, it will be wildly cheered, and Gloria’s popularity rating will not be able to save her.

If Malacañang should panic, it should be over the designation of Ramon Binamira as spokesman for the protest movement. That’s the real ominous development for Malacañang. And if the Palace wants to know why, it should lose no time picking up the book Portrait of a Cold Warrior (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1976) by Joseph Burkholder Smith.

Smith was Philippine case officer of the Central Intelligence Agency in the ‘50s, and his book is a kiss-and-tell story of how the agency manipulated our politics and politicians during that period. He worked undercover as a civilian Air Force employee of the 13th Air Force Southeast Asia Regional Survey Unit.

For the purpose of this piece, it is what Smith has to say about Ramon Binamira that should concern Malacañang.

Smith’s main assignment came with the death of Magsaysay. His mission was, in his own words, "to find another Magsaysay."

When Smith began his assignment, Binamira was a rising star in the government’s community development program. That program was, along with land reform, the centerpiece of Magsaysay’s drive to regain for the government the permanent loyalty of the rural areas. Understandably, the program was given topmost priority by the CIA, which was a much determined to quell the rural insurgency as Magsaysay was. In fact community development effectively became a joint project of the Philippine government and the agency.

Central to the implementation of the program was the creation of the off ice of the Presidential Assistant for Community Development (PACD) and the US aid mission was directly involved in the creation of this office. In fact the PACD, from Smith’s account, and Binamira was appointed to head PACD in 1956 at the insistence of the agency.

We now come to the most interesting aspect of the PACD.

As recounted by Smith, in 1956 – two months after Binamira’s appointment to the job -- an agreement was made to train PACD workers at the University of the Philippines Agricultural College of Los Baños."

The purpose of the training program? "The ambitious goal," according to Smith, "was to train more than 7,000 PACD workers, with 2,700 of them located in rural barrios, the rest filling municipal and provincial coordination posts."

To train for what? Train barrio-level workers in techniques "to take complete control of these basic units of Filipino society without the peasants or the old-style political bosses realizing what was happening."

One side-advantage provided by the PACD to the CIA was that applicants for rural development work were required to take competitive examination. Thus in the words of Smith: "Hundreds of application forms were filed by young Filipinos providing the delight of an intelligence officer’s life – hundreds of dossiers to pore over looking for potential agents."

And as Smith further put it: "We provided Binamira with the flexible funds for manipulating the training program." Repeat, "manipulating the training program."

Binamira, of course, wasn’t the only Filipino functionary who has worked with the CIA: and in all fairness, there’s nothing in the book which even suggests that Binamira was a paid agent of the agency. But that he did directly collaborate with the agency on projects that were of common interest to the Philippine government and the agency is beyond question.

The really important point is that Binamira brings with him, as spokesman for the Silent Protest Movement against Estrada, an expertise at community organization, mass mobilization and indoctrination, not to mention a long record of having worked directly with the agency.

So impressed was the CIA with Binamira that, in Smith’s impression, the agency was convinced that in Binamira, "we had another future Philippine president in our grasp."

He was that good – and that’s why Estrada has much to fear.

Whether the CIA is involved in the resign/protest movement is actually a futile question because the agency has always been involved in the making and unmaking of Philippine presidents. It would be naive to presume that it isn’t involved in what now appears to be an organized move to have Estrada step down.

From the logic of America’s perceived national interest, it is possible to make a good case for the view that Estrada should simply be persuaded to step down at this time, although it wouldn’t necessarily follow that Macapagal should automatically succeed.

Macapagal is part of an international movement aimed at making free trade a universal rule of conduct among nations. But, as Seattle indicated, there are powerful elements in the United States, both within and outside the government, who realize that universal free trade isn’t necessarily working out in favor of America’s interest, both national and geopolitical.

As for the Church? Do you know that a long line of Vatican encyclicals has consistently and vigorously maintained that free trade and liberal capitalism are as evil as communism?

GATT and Macapagal can’t be supported by the Church without the Church’s turning its back on its encyclicals. Cardinal Sin and Cory Aquino had better take note of that because neither seems aware of the encyclicals.

By the books of the Church, free trade and the liberal capitalism promoted by globalization are about as evil as abortion.

But that’s another story.

(For more on Binamira read Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 10, 2000.)