Far From Neutral Notions - Philippine politics, culture and stuff

Stop. I want you to close your eyes, I’m gonna tell you a story. Well, my story.

There’s no ending yet, and not much of a beginning. It’s mostly just now.

Look around, wherever you may be. I’m in an office somewhere in Makati; right now the boss isn’t here so I can talk to you. I have a bunch of deadlines hanging over my head but that’s ok.

Outside my window I can see people walking, some running. They’re out on their lunch break, the lucky ones. Those not as lucky are walking away, holding their resumés, Preoccupied. Just another day in the Makati, I suppose, but I wouldn’t really know.

Today’s the first time I actually looked.

There are people outside the door - co workers, I suppose I should call them - that I never said two words to. I don’t even know their names.

It’s almost sad.

On my usual route home - MRT to GMA7, jeep to the church, short walk down the street - I see them. People. There’s a store by the corner street where I always get off, I buy my cigarettes there because they sell for only 29 pesos. Further down there’s a design studio - clothes, I’m assuming - that’s almost always empty. Then there’s the condominium I’ve heard is owned by a former actor, lots of people coming in and out. There’s a souped up, funkified, electrified, pimped out Ford Expedition with lime green metallic paint and fire decals with a government plate, and I wonder how the government can afford to pimp their rides sometimes. Further down the street is another sari-sari store that I don’t buy from much because they always run out of my cigarette brand. Then there’s the house with the two old ladies always sitting by the gate, watching, and I sometimes wonder what’s going through their minds, how it must feel like to be that old, and what they think of me and the other passer-by. Then there’s the house with the motion detectors and high walls whose spotlight illuminates the street at night whenever someone walks by.

I don’t know their names, but sometimes I wonder what their lives must be like, what their arguments are about during dinner, and the dreams they dream when the nightmares of being awake are over.

These are, as the song goes, the people in my neighborhood. Ordinary for the most part, extraordinary because they are living, breathing, loving, thinking beings. And I love thier lives, I love their uniqueness, I love their hopes and their dreams and their passions and ther thoughts.

And everytime I think about how the world - their world, your world, my world - might change with one woman’s insatiable lust for power, I am afraid. Not of the change, but of the crushed hopes and dying dreams and onset of despair that can’t help but come. I fear the dying of our shared yet individual reality, the magically mundane perception of our now.

We live in a Macondo of our own, where we are doomed to repeat past and forgotten mistakes and with it’s own tragedies and triumphs. It is not abstract ideals, slogans that politicians can twist left and right according to the circumstances, that I fear for. It is not the dying of freedom, or of liberty, or of democracy. No righteous rage against the dying of the light. None of these.

It’s actually very simple and very selfish. I fear for the characters in my story - that when I turn to the next chapter their future might be ashes - and I fear for my own future. I fear for the people in my neighborhood, becuase I’m one of them.

And I fear the epilogue that GMA will write.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Or why I don’t think GMA will declare Martial Law

Activist and former man of the cloth Ed de la Torre once argued that Marcos declaring martial law wasn’t feasible. Marcos would not declare martial law, de la Torre said, because he did not have to. He had alternatives which were so much better. He had this to say:

Prophetic words, albeit 33 years off - in fact, de la Torre’s logic seems mirrored not by the dictator of his time, but by the current resident of Malacañang. Kids, it is the year 2005, but while the trechearous Decepticons are nowhere to be found, there is plenty of treachery and deceiit going around.

If there is anything about GMA that I have come to understand, it is that she is a student of history as much as economics. Where freedom would die thrashing under the boot heel of oppression and tyranny the first time, it would boil slowly this time.

Cruicial differences: 1972 and 2005

In 1972, nobody believed it could or would be done. While some were prepared for it, martial law, as an immediate thing, was for all intents and purposes, not. Barely 50,000 strong, the military was fighting a two pronged war: with the NPA in the north, and the Muslim rebels in the south. It was stretched too thin on those two fronts, and inviting a revolt in the heart of the capital was plain lunacy. Or so many thought.

What Marcos had on his side was the element of surprise, because while people knew intellectually that it was in the offing, they couldn’t imagine it. For the more perceptive ones, while they knew it was coming, they never realized it would come so soon. Even Ninoy Aquino was surprised by its suddenness; this even though he exposed Oplan Saggitarius the very same week Marcos would declare martial law. It just wasn’t possible, or even rational. Marcos had the constitutional convention at the palm of his hand. Indeed, as de la Torre mentioned, Marcos didn’t need martial law yet.

And by taking the opposition, and the nation, by surprise, the Police Constabulary was able to round up most of the people in their order of battle, mostly members of the opposition and journalists. Which leads to Marcos’ second advantage: he was able to take out key commuications facilities and establishments within the next 24 hours, thereby leaving the rest of the country ignorant as to what was happening. In a nation with the most free press, having no newspaper to read or radio commentator to listen to the first thing in the morning came as a great shock.

Marcos’ gamble worked; the people were too stunned to mount any form of resitance. The communists, Muslim rebels and warlords were, for a time, rendered inutile. Even crime was virtually nonexistent. The whole thing was frighteningly efficient, but it only worked because information, and the flow thereof, was very centralized. Take out Metro Manila and you pretty much leave the rest of the country in the dark.

For a short time anyway. What Marcos eventually found out is that you can only push a people so far. Indeed, when the initial shock wore off, martial law did the recriuting for Joma Sison and Nur Misuari for them.

GMA knows this. She doesn’t have the element of surprise; as poor a racial memory as we Filipinos have, it’s not that poor. We can smell a martial law declaration a mile away, and she can’t shut down communications with impunity, what with the internet and cell phones. So what Marcos did with broad strokes, she will do with small ones. What Marcos did boldly, with Proclamation 1081, GMA does subtly, with EO464, CPR and the new anti-terror law. Slowly and inexorably, she is stripping us of the rights that we hold dear, as surely as Marcos ever did.

Staring at us in the face

Will we even know when we’ve been transported to the Orwellian 1984? She won’t declare martial law, but she sure as hell is implementing it. Come on, Mrs. Pidal! Call a spade a spade. The CODAL’s analysis hit the nail right on the head when it noted: “… Any demonstration or rally creating serious interference and intended or threatening to force the Arroyo government to step down is terrorism under the bill. Opposition figures demanding the “resignation of Pres. Arroyo otherwise she will be ousted through people power” are now considered ‘terrorists’. This practically makes the very authors of the Bill, namely Rep. Dudut Jaworski, Rep. Roilo Golez, Rep. Ace Barbers and Rep. Imee Marcos liable for terrorism subject to the extreme penalty of death if they participate in rallies or another EDSA people power.”¹

They go on to add that “the bill criminalizes workers’ strike or any form of strikes such as ‘jeepney strikes’ for causing ‘serious interference’ in public service with the intention of coercing the government to ‘roll back oil prices’. Any labor strike is intended to disrupt the services of a ‘private’ facility with the intention of forcing (intimidating or coercing) the employers in order for the workers to get their demands for higher wages or better working conditions. Strikes and demonstrations are basically coercive tools of the people, respected under the Constitution and international human rights law and are deemed necessary components in the exercise of civil and political rights. They become terrorist acts under the Bill.”²

This is tantamount to declaring martial law, but disguised in legalese even Marcos and Johnny Enrile would drool over. In this, GMA has read the Filipino people well. By not declaring it outright, she is throwing the country in lukewarm water and slowly heating the pot. This is why people are slow to react, our instinctive rage at the dying of the light dulled: there is very little to react to. But the danger is clear, it is present, and it is staring us in the face. Like martial law was in 1972, what we face today is a totally new animal, catching us with our pants down, and we find ourselves without reasonable options.

Kabayan: our biggest problem?

Another large part of what holds us back is the very frightening thought of Noli de Castro succeeding her. Should a true People Power revolution succeed, we would only be replacing the devil we know, De Castro being at best an unknown quantity, at worst yet another crony. And this is where the basic concept of People Power fails us, or rather, where we fail it.

We tend to see it as a quick fix: just get rid of the one in power and move on; we’ll worry about the replacement later. But it should not stop there. Knowing as we do that we have a false leader in Malacañang, it should not be enough that we call for her resignation. In this I echo the sentiments of a PDI columnist in clamoring for new elections - and make sure not only that the person who wins actually sits in the Palace, but that he/she behaves as well. As Thomas Jefferson once said, eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Popularity: 2% [?]

AMID renewed threats of attacks, the House of Representatives’ joint committees on justice and foreign affairs approved Tuesday a bill to combat terror as the Philippines’ chief law enforcer admitted terrorism is now the country’s top security threat.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

And if Miriam is to be believed, it’s not mine

First the facts: my favorite loony-toon of a Senator, Miram Defensor-Santiago, recently unveiled a plot to oust GMA by former president Corazon Aquino and Senate President Franklin Drilon. The plan supposedly has provisions to assasinate GMA as a last resort. This just in: Defense Minister Enrile barely survived an ambush today when several men armed with AK-47’s perforated his vehicle while he was on his way to a cabinet meeting.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

The welfare of the people is the highest law

In the final analysis, this is for me the only axiom about law that makes sense. John Locke used the phrase in his Second Treatise (On Civil Government) to describe the proper organization of government, quoting Marcus Tullius Cicero’s “De Legibus”. So what happens when the welfare of the people is not held in the highest consideration?

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Can ASSO’s be too far behind?

President GMA issued yesterday Executive Order 464, requiring cabinet members, police and military generals, senior national security officials, and “such other officials as may be determined by the President” to first seek her approval before appearing before any inquiry of the Senate or the House of representatives.¹

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Norberto Gonzales, that means you

The Senate didn’t have to cite National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales for contempt - Heaven knows it’s unsettled some people. And I don’t particularly blame them; this is a committee, after all, that has somebody named Jinggoy in it. So yes, maybe Gonzales’ impersonation of Bill and Ted got the better of our Senators, and they may have overreacted a bit. After all, it was fairly obvious what the panel was after - namely, Gonzales incriminating GMA. No, they didn’t get that.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

GMA and Marcos

While worlds (and decades) apart, the similarities between the two are strinking:

1. • During the time of Marcos, the US was neck deep in cold war paranoia. In fact, crying “Communist!” was Marcos’ favorite ploy to get more funds from Uncle Sam, particularly in the late 70’s when the export industry was failing - in large part due to the mishandling of the coconut, construction and sugar industries by Imelda, Kokoy, and a myriad of other cronies. Add to the fact that, after the fiasco that was the Vietnam War, the Philippines was the US’s biggest (and often only) ally in Asia; America’s image was taking a beating. So Marcos used that paranoia to full advantage - getting loans, money and arms.
   • After the 9/11 tragedy, GMA has taken US President George W. Bush’s call to arms against terrorism (seemingly) to heart, issuing calls for unification against the terrorist threat. There has been heightened security in almost all public areas, particularly after the Valentine’s Day bombings this year, and the escape (and subsequent ‘rubout’) of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Al-Ghozi in 2003. Defense spending has been rising for some time now, mostly thanks to GMA crying ‘Terrorist!’ every so often, even when there is reason to belive that some of these attacks are being faked. GMA is using the US’ paranoia to get more aid from the states.
2. • Marcos and Imelda were very good at making things up and doing whatever it takes to get what they craved - power, recognition, money - including massive election fraud.
   • Apparently, so is GMA.
3. Both have an annoying habit of disregarding what their actions and expenditure may do to the country.
4. • Marcos was once described as a man riding a wild tiger (I think it was one of the Lopezes, but I’m not too sure - I’ve heard tell it was Luis Taruc describing something else entirely, but… *shrug*) who can’t get off lest the tiger eat him.
   • With all the trouble GMA is in, the analogy seems rather appropos.
5. Both seem to have an insatiable lust for power.
6. • Marcos has a history of, well, taking political opponents out of commission.
   • Just wait, GMA may well do just that too.

Creepy? I definitely think so. I just hope she’s not TOO similar. On a sidenote, just so you can see how similar today’s situation is to the Martial Law years, check this out.

Popularity: 2% [?]