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Number 23, November 2003
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 23, November 2003
GEORGE
& GLORIA: TWO OF A KIND
- Murray Horton
Presidents George Bush and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have
got plenty in common. Both are the children of
Presidents. Neither won an election to become President.
Bush stole his, with the help of a friendly Supreme Court
and the State of Florida, whose Governor is his brother.
Gloria stepped up from Vice President, also with the help
of the Supreme Court, when People Power 2 deposed the
heroically corrupt President Joseph “Erap”
Estrada. Both were sworn into office on the same date in
January 2001 (although not on the actual same day, as the
International Date Line means that the US is a day behind
the Philippines). Both have been haunted by
election-related scandals - Bush by contributions made by
Enron (the huge corporation which collapsed in a miasma
of scandals); Gloria is linked to money laundering
allegations. They both like waging war on
“terrorists” - or whoever gets in the line of
fire. And both plan to run for re-election in 2004.
It’s a marriage made in Heaven.
Gloria’s interim Presidency invokes a Constitutional
grey area. To prevent a recurrence of the
self-perpetuating dictatorship of the 1966-86 Marcos
regime, the 1987 Constitution limits Presidents to a
single, six year, term (which is how long that Presidents
Aquino and Ramos held office). When Gloria replaced Erap,
in 2001, he still had more than three years to run of his
1998-2004 term. The accepted wisdom was that as Gloria
was unelected, and was simply fulfilling her Vice
Presidential role in replacing a President who could no
longer do the job (because he was, and remains, in
custody), the years 2001-04 inclusive would constitute
her single term.
She and her supporters floated the idea that she should
be able to stand for re-election at the 2004 Presidential
election. As her term in office very rapidly went the way
of all other Philippine Presidents (war, corruption,
poverty, instability, etc., etc.) she agonised about
whether she actually wanted the job. A devout Catholic,
she regularly asks God for guidance on what to do.
Apparently He told her to chuck in the towel. Right at
the very end of 2002, she announced that she would not
run again in 2004, so as to devote herself to working on
the numerous problems facing the Philippines, without
facing the pressure of an election campaign. Indeed she
foresaw a role for herself as a sort of Mother of the
Nation (all Filipina traditional politicians have this
conceit, the repulsive Imelda Marcos being the most
recent to go clucky). “Her husband, Jose Miguel
Arroyo, explained the decision more colourfully:
‘She got fed up with all these constant threats. Now
she can tell these people - F--- you, I will do what is
right for the people’” (Time, 13/1/03,
“The Long Goodbye”). The ungrateful nation
heaved a sigh of relief that she preferred being its
Mother rather than its President.
Born To Run
However, God must have changed His mind (which goes to
prove that He’s definitely in touch with His
feminine side). And, so, in October 2003, Gloria
announced that she was reversing her decision and will
indeed stand for re-election in May 2004. The only
surprise for Philippine commentators was that she made
her announcement before, not after, George Bush’s
visit to Manila that same month. It had been predicted
that Bush would endorse her and that she would announce
her candidacy whilst basking in the afterglow. If she is
re-elected, her actual Presidential term will be more
than nine years.
Commentators concluded that the decisive event in
changing her mind was the rather strange July 2003
military mutiny, when several hundred crack soldiers
seized a shopping centre in Makati (the ritzy business
district of Manila) and then - did nothing. The
intervention of the military into Philippine political
life is nothing new, of course. President Ferdinand
Marcos imposed martial law for 14 years; there were a
whole series of attempted coups against his successor,
Cory Aquino. Some were bloody, some merely comic but they
succeeded in making ordinary Filipinos very jittery
indeed. Every time there is an unexplained incident (such
as a major power cut), the first conclusion is that
there’s been a coup or that martial law has been
declared. (The causes of Filipino power cuts can be very
exotic indeed, such as huge numbers of jellyfish being
sucked into a power station intake and shutting it down).
But the July 2003 mutiny only lasted 19 hours, nobody got
hurt, nothing got damaged, the soldiers returned to their
barracks and Gloria won a standing ovation from Congress
for the way she handled the crisis and for ordering an
inquiry into the mutineers’ demands. She blamed
Erap’s supporters for being behind it and ordered
several to be arrested (for his part, Estrada denied any
involvement). The veteran coupmaster of the Aquino years,
Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, now a Senator, also
went into hiding after the mutiny was quashed (one of his
attempted coups was also staged in Makati). I’ll
come back to the July 2003 mutiny, because there was
rather more to it than meets the eye.
Uncle Sam’s Loyal And Faithful Servant
It is nothing new for a Philippine President to be a
loyal servant of the US. Every Presidential election
features at least one candidate designated by the media
to be the “AmBoy” (Americans’ Boy). But
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is in a category of her own. Her
whole background is one of privilege. She is literally to
the manor born - her father was President, and she grew
up in Malacanang Palace. Educated in the US as an
economist, she is neo-liberal to her toes, and personally
signed up the Philippines to the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT, which is now the World Trade
Organisation). As Estrada’s Vice President during
the popular upheaval that saw him overthrown, she had to
pretend to be a progressive, and she consulted with those
on the Left of the mass movement that toppled him. But
once in office as President, she reverted to her true
colours and committed her Government to neo-liberalism
and all-out war against its internal enemies - the Muslim
separatists in the South and the Communists throughout
the archipelago. Human rights abuses have continued
unabated - from 2001-03 inclusive, KARAPATAN (Alliance
for the Advancement of People’s Rights) documented
1,709 cases, including multiple murders, torture,
abductions, displacements, etc., etc. The electoral
success of the Leftwing Bayan Muna party has seen its
officeholders and activists systematically targeted by a
campaign of murder and intimidation.
The September 11, 2001, atrocities in the US and
President Bush’s subsequent declaration of an
endless and borderless “war on terror” served
only to further deepen Gloria’s slavish devotion to
George. She was one of the very first world leaders to
declare support for the US and, basically, she reopened
the Philippines to the US military (it had been nearly a
decade since the huge US bases were forced to close,
after one of the most epic anti-bases struggles in 20th
Century history). The whole plethora of post-2001
military agreements and US military “exercises”
in the Philippines has been detailed in the last few
issues of Kapatiran. In March 2003 there was a
scheduled deployment of US troops to the extremely
sensitive Muslim island of Sulu (part of the chain of
islands between Mindanao and Borneo), where they were
planned to take part in joint operations with Philippine
forces waging the war against the Abu Sayyaf bandits.
This proved so controversial (the locals have not
forgotten the American atrocities committed nearly 100
years earlier during the Americans’ war of
subjugation of Sulu, and there was talk of revenge for
blood debts) that it was cancelled until another venue
could be found.
US forces were in Mindanao in early 2003, training the
Philippine military during the annual Balikatan
(“shoulder to shoulder”) joint exercise.
Mindanao Senator Aquilino Pimentel told the Bangkok
Post (5/3/03): “They want military presence in
our country without the bases. And one way of doing that
is to run after the terrorists because the search for
terrorists is a never-ending quest. Nobody is a terrorist
until he commits an act of terrorism. So that is an
endless pursuit”. The whole issue of US troops
engaging in combat on Philippine soil is not merely
controversial but illegal under the 1987 Constitution. It
led to such a public uproar that the proposal to directly
involve the US military in the Philippines’ internal
wars was dropped - at least for the time being.
For his part, Bush has simply rewritten the history of
the Philippine/American relationship. In his October 2003
speech to the Philippine Congress, he said: “America
is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino
people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines
from colonial rule. Together we rescued the islands from
invasion and occupation”. This completely ignores
the fact that the US forcibly succeeded Spain as the
colonial power in the Philippines, waged a particularly
bloody war to suppress nationalist opposition (nowhere
was the war bloodier than against the Muslims in the
South) and occupied the Philippines as a colony for half
a century.
Gloria’s doglike devotion extends far beyond the
Philippines. She was one of the few world leaders to
support Bush’s illegal invasion and colonisation of
Iraq, in 2003. In September 2003, at the United Nations
General Assembly, leader after leader denounced the
American-led war and refused to help clean up the
Americans’ self-inflicted mess. Not Gloria. She
offered more help to the US (the Philippines had already
contributed about 95 military observers and personnel to
Iraq), and urged the UN to play a bigger role to help the
Americans. She said that she didn’t consider a UN
mandate to be essential for Philippine military
involvement in Iraq.
“A Major Non-NATO Ally”
All of this has made Gloria a darling of the US
Establishment (she is one of the favourite cover subjects
for Time Asia). In October 2003 President Bush formally
designated the Philippines as a “major non-NATO
ally”, which established the legal foundation for
broadening US military and security aid to the country.
The members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) are the closest allies of the US - after the
September 11 attacks, they, for the first time, invoked
the mutual defence clause of the NATO Treaty and declared
war on those responsible. In the past decade, in places
such as the former Yugoslavia and currently in
Afghanistan, NATO has been alongside the US in waging
wars and imposing occupations. By being designated
“a major non-NATO ally”, the Philippines joins
the next tier of US allies, countries such as Australia,
Japan, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, Thailand and
Argentina. These countries enjoy a privileged security
relationship with the US. They are eligible for priority
delivery of defence materiel and the purchase, for
instance, of real nasty weaponry, such as depleted
uranium anti-tank rounds. They can stockpile US military
hardware, participate in defence research and development
programmes and benefit from a US Government loan
guarantee programme, which backs up loans issued by
private banks to finance arms exports. But the
designation does not afford them the same mutual defence
guarantees enjoyed by NATO members.
Bush gave the Philippines this designation just before
his visit to Manila, in October 2003. The Philippine
military announced that it was seeking advanced US combat
helicopters and tens of thousands of US M16 rifles, to
fight the Muslim separatists in the South. As it is, the
US is spending $US68 million to help train and equip a
Philippine light infantry battalion and a rapid reaction
company, as well as to improve the Army’s
intelligence gathering capabilities. In addition, the
Pentagon is maintaining in the Philippines what it calls
“critical tactical mobility platforms” (Borneo
Bulletin, 8/10/03; “Bush designates Philippines
a major non-NATO ally”), including helicopters,
transport aircraft, heavy trucks and patrol boats. These
could be used in case of major US military operations in
the region. The US is quite open in wanting to use the
Philippines as a platform to project US military power
into both South East and East Asia. Admiral Thomas Fargo,
the head of the US Pacific Command, told the US Congress
that “the security situation in the Philippines
needs continued improvement to attract investments and
promote economic stability” (ibid.).
Dirty Tricks
An examination of the “war on terror” in the
Philippines quickly reveals that all is not as it seems.
And this is where we come back to that rather naïve and
peculiar military mutiny, in Makati, in July 2003. The
mutineers (who named themselves after 19th Century
revolutionaries in the independence struggle against the
Spanish) demanded that Gloria resign, the grounds cited
being corruption (one that could be levelled against any
Philippine President) and collusion with the Muslim
rebels that the military are fighting in Mindanao. One
mutineer said: “I spent eight years of combat duty
in Mindanao. I saw my friends die, but did their deaths
have any value? I say, they died for nothing” (Press,
28/7/03; “Revolt rocks Manila”).
The mutineers’ accusations of Government dirty
tricks in Mindanao were damning in their details. In
early 2003, there was a series of terrorist bombings in
Mindanao, which killed 38 people (including the odd
American, so it made the news in the Western media). The
Government promptly blamed the Moro* Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF), whose guerilla army has been waging a war
of independence for decades. The MILF denied the charge
absolutely, saying it doesn’t attack civilians and
that it was observing a ceasefire while a peace agreement
was being negotiated.
The mutineers claimed that:
• Senior military officials, in collusion with the
Government, carried out the March 2003 bombing of the
airport at Davao City, the main city of Mindanao, in
order to get the MILF labelled a terrorist organisation
and secure military aid from the US. *Moro is the
name applied to Filipino Muslims. Ed.
• The military habitually sells weapons and
ammunition to its enemies.
• That members of the military and police helped
convicted terrorists escape from prison. The most
notorious example was the July 2003 escape by Fathur
Rohman al-Ghozi and two Abu Sayyaf members from
Manila’s most heavily guarded prison. al-Ghozi was a
notorious bombmaker with Jemaah Islamiah, the South East
Asian Islamic terrorist group held responsible for the
fatal 2002 and 03 bombings in both Bali and Jakarta,
Indonesia.
• And that the Government was on the verge of
staging a new string of bombings to justify declaring
martial law.
Once Gloria promised to investigate these claims, the
mutiny ended without violence. Significantly, the
Secretary of Defense and the Chief of Army Intelligence
both resigned shortly thereafter (strenuously denying all
the claims, of course). The mutineers’ claims
garnered a lot of media and public support. Corruption is
so rife in both the military and police that the sale of
weapons and ammunition to the armies of their enemies
hardly raised any eyebrows. For its part, the New
People’s Army of the Communist Party of the
Philippines said that it doesn’t buy weapons from
the Armed Forces of the Philippines, but gets them by
capturing them in battle.
It was obvious that al-Ghozi would have needed inside
help to have escaped from custody. Indeed, by a happy
coincidence (for the Government) this most wanted
terrorist was shot dead by police and military, in
Mindanao, just before President Bush was due in the
country. The National Security Adviser, Roilo Golez,
hailed the killing as a victory in the war on terror.
“He denied speculation that al-Ghozi had been
arrested earlier and killed while in custody, possibly to
prevent him from talking about his jailbreak that was
reportedly arranged by corrupt officers” (Press,
14/10/03; “Top terror suspect slain in
shootout”). Suspicions were deepened by the
statement, from the police chief of the town where
al-Ghozi was allegedly killed that, neither had there
been any gunfire in the area at the time nor was al-Ghozi
shot there.
CIA Involvement In Terrorist Bombings
Setting off bombs that kill and maim numbers of people
and claiming them to be atrocities committed by your
enemies is not new. I suggest that you go to your local
video store and hire that masterpiece “The Battle Of
Algiers”, to see how the French military did exactly
that to discredit the Algerian independence struggle in
the 1950s. The mutineers were not the first to accuse the
Government of being responsible for the bombing of Davao
City’s airport, plus other places there. Days before
the mutiny, a coalition of church groups, lawyers and
NGOs launched a factfinding mission to investigate. The
involvement of the US in these highly suspicious bombings
was given credence by a bizarre incident back in May
2002, when an American called Michael Meiring was badly
injured when explosives blew up in his Davao City hotel
room. Meiring had been in the Philippines for about ten
years, being based the longest in Mindanao. He developed
close ties with a number of the key players on that
volatile island, including Abu Sayyaf. He armed and
taught a lot of people about how to use explosives. There
was no suggestion that he was a victim of terrorism,
rather that he was a State terrorist, blown up by his own
malfunctioning bomb. The Philippine media accused Meiring
of being an agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), who was involved in the rash of bombings
throughout Mindanao in 2002. Before any of this could
really blow up (pardon the pun), US government agents
whisked him out the Davao City hospital to the US Embassy
in Manila and thence to a US Navy base in California.
“Local officials have demanded that Meiring return
to face charges, to little effect. Businessworld,
a leading Philippine newspaper, has published articles
openly accusing Meiring of being a CIA agent involved in
covert operations ‘to justify the stationing of US
troops and bases in Mindanao’. Yet the Meiring
affair has never been reported in the US press. And the
mutinous soldiers’ incredible allegations were no
more than a one-day story. Maybe it just seemed too
outlandish: an out-of-control government fanning the
flames of terrorism to pump up its military budget, hold
on to power and violate civil liberties. Why would
Americans be interested in something like that?” (Guardian,
15/8/03; “Stark message of the mutiny: Is the
Philippine government bombing its own people for
dollars?”; Naomi Klein). While you’re in the
video store, also hire “The Quiet American” to
learn how the CIA staged murderous bombings to justify
the US getting involved in South Vietnam, also in the
1950s.
There’s nothing new about covert (or overt) American
meddling in Philippine affairs. The US continues to
regard the Philippines as still an American colony, even
if it is no longer in name. It sees the Philippines as
vital to its plans to project US political and military
might into Asia. And the Philippine military, and
Government, has a powerful incentive to lure the US
military back to fight its internal wars for it, by
dressing them up as part of the all-embracing,
all-consuming US “war on terror”. So George and
Gloria both need each other. The Filipino people, on the
other hand, would be well rid of both of them.
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