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Issue Number 32, October 2009
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 32, October 2009
IT’S ALWAYS GROUNDHOG DAY
Philippines 09
- Murray Horton
Nothing ever seems to change from year to year during the
interminable Presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In
Kapatiran 29/30, May 2008, I wrote what Filipinos call a
“situationer”, entitled “Philippines 08:
Half A Step Forward, Two Steps Back” (online at http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo29n30/Kapart29n30/art136.htm). It was very
detailed and I refer you to that. Great chunks of it
could be transplanted holus bolus into this (much
shorter) 2009 situationer.
Clinging On To Power
The Presidential election is scheduled for May 2010, by
which time Gloria will have been in power for nine years.
A Presidential term is supposed to be only six years but,
by dint of being his Vice President, she served the final
three years of the 1998-2004 term of her predecessor,
Joseph Estrada, who was overthrown by People Power 2 in
2001. She initially announced that she would not run in
the 2004 election but then decided that she liked the
power and wealth too much to let it go, being re-elected
in an outrageously rigged election. And she shows no sign
of actually relinquishing power in 2010 despite the minor
handicap of being constitutionally obliged to do so (a
President is limited to a single six year). For years now
Gloria and her cronies (with her family to the forefront,
as they’ve all done very nicely out of her being in
power) have tried to “restructure” the
Constitution to allow her to stay in office, in one form
or another. This issue is called Cha Cha (short for
Charter Change) and it is an all consuming obsession of
the Filipino ruling class (Gloria has offered all elected
officeholders a bribe in the form of a proposal to
unilaterally extend their terms). It is pointless
detailing all the variants on this theme, because it is
all still very much up in the air. One suggestion is that
she do what Vladimir Putin has done in Russia and get
around the term limit by becoming Prime Minister with a
reliable ally to become President and do her bidding (the
Philippine system doesn’t actually include a PM, so
the Constitution would have to be changed to create one).
Gloria gave her “final” annual State of the
Nation Address in July 2009 and, conspicuously, she
didn’t say goodbye or give any indication that she
will be stepping down in 2010.
Corruption
When former President Cory Aquino died, in August 2009
(see my obituary of her elsewhere in this issue) there
was fulsome praise heaped on her from the most unlikely
source, namely the militant Left, including the
Communists. Their aim was obviously to score contemporary
political points and to unfavourably compare the
Philippines’ second woman President (Gloria) with
its first (Cory). Actually, as my obituary makes clear,
Cory was no friend of the Philippine people, quite the
diametrical opposite. But Gloria is even worse in many
areas. For example, she and her family are personally
profligate and corrupt (which is something that Cory
wasn’t). The Arroyos and their mates have enriched
themselves to a sickening degree. Indeed, one of the
reasons why Gloria is so keen to stay in power is because
as long as she’s in office she’s immune from
prosecution and she knows that once she is a private
citizen, she can be prosecuted for her abuses of power
and wealth (as has happened to former leaders of
neighbouring countries, such as Taiwan and South Korea,
where former leaders and their families have been jailed
for corruption and human rights abuses). Occasionally
this profligacy is so mindboggling as to force its way
into the Western media. For example, in August 2009,
while the country was in mourning for Cory, Gloria and
her entourage managed to spend $US20,000 on a single meal
in a ritzy New York restaurant. She was quite
unapologetic, pointing out that the Philippine taxpayer
hadn’t paid for it – the bill was picked up by
one of the richest Congressmen, who also happens to be
Imelda Marcos’ nephew.
Systematic State Terror
Human rights abuses continue apace. Political killings
have decreased, because of a flurry of critical
international scrutiny in the past three years (PSNA
played our small role in that) but trumped up charges
against political activists, imprisonment, torture and
disappearances are depressingly common occurrences. The
culture of impunity means that none of the mysterious
hooded men on motorbikes who carry out the murders or the
hooded men in vans who snatch people in broad daylight
has ever been prosecuted. These killers and kidnappers
overreached themselves in 2009 when they snatched a group
including an American citizen, Melissa Roxas. She had to
be hastily surfaced (having been tortured) and released,
because the US does not approve of the death squads
targeting its citizens (not a good look). She was
libelled as a Communist guerrilla but was brave enough to
complain through the official channels and won a pyrrhic
victory (the courts accepted that she had been abducted
but said there was no proof as to who had done it).
Others who have been abducted have not been lucky enough
to have such protection – see elsewhere in this
issue for Joe Hendren’s article on the 2008
abduction of James Balao.
Another statistic is sobering – 68 journalists have
been murdered during Gloria’s term (as of July 09),
the worst number of such murders under any Presidency
(including the Marcos martial law dictatorship). During
our six week Philippines family holiday at the end of
2008, I had first hand contact with those who have
suffered human rights violations under Gloria. On our
first weekend we attended a glitzy fundraising dinner for
a major human rights organisation headed by Marie
Hilao-Enriquez, who is also Becky’s Aunty Marie (I
hadn’t seen her since I spent a fortnight
accompanying her around NZ on her 2004 PSNA speaking
tour; my report on that tour is in Kapatiran
25/26, December 2005, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo25n26/Kap25n26Art/art115.htm. Marie is a high
profile figure. While we were in Manila, in December 08,
a newspaper devoted a whole column to attacking her as a
“Communist’). Human rights work is a very risky
occupation – the evening paid tribute to the 34
murdered members of the organisation. But it was
primarily an evening of celebration, of music, song and
dance, featuring some of the country’s top
progressive musicians. We caught up with many old friends
and Marie looked after us very well – she made sure
that I was seated next to two of the country’s most
high profile Leftwing Congressmen, neither of whom
I’d met before.
One of them, Satur Ocampo, was the spokesman for the
underground National Democratic Front (which includes the
Communist Party of the Philippines and its New
People’s Army, which has waged a 40 year long armed
struggle, with no end in sight) in the 70s and 80s, a
high profile political prisoner under Marcos and the
NDF’s lead peace negotiator after Marcos was
overthrown. In 2006 he and his five Congressional
colleagues (including our old friend, Congressman Crispin
Beltran, universally known as Ka Bel) were charged with
rebellion – which carries a mandatory life sentence.
Only Ka Bel was arrested and spent 16 months in custody
– the other five were given sanctuary in the
Congress Building by the Speaker. Having failed to nail
Ka Satur for rebellion, he was arrested in '07 and held
in prison for a fortnight on a historic
“murder” charge dating from his time in the
Communist armed struggle (inconveniently for the current
regime, at the time of the “murder” he was a
Marcos political prisoner in solitary confinement). The
most dangerous time of his '07 spell in custody was when
the cops literally dragged him from prison and put him on
a small plane to take him to the province where the
“murder” allegedly occurred, and where a lynch
mob had been assembled by the military. An emergency
court hearing resulted in that plane being ordered to
turn back to Manila. Murder is a non-bailable charge, so
you can draw your own conclusions from the fact that
after a fortnight in prison, a judge released him on
bail. He told me that he remains “on bail” for
that and a more recent historic “murder” charge
filed against him. The only restriction is that he’s
not allowed to leave the country. There is no trial in
sight; this is just part of the State harassment of its
political opponents, those who are too high profile to be
murdered. Legal Left politics in the Philippines are not
for the fainthearted – it was an absolute privilege
to meet him, as I had been aware of him as one of the
heroes of the Philippine revolutionary struggle for
decades.
Wars Continue
The 40 year war with the Communist guerrillas continues
with no end in sight (the 40th anniversary of the
Communist Party and New People’s Army was given
front page coverage by the mainstream Philippine media,
in December '08). Peace talks were scheduled to resume in
Norway, in August '09, after a break of five years but
were stillborn after the Government failed to fully
honour an agreement to release political prisoners who
were needed by the Communists for the negotiations.
Gloria has ordered the military to defeat the Communists
by the (nominal) end of her term of office, in May 2010.
That has never looked likely. And in Mindanao and the
islands to the south of it, the decades-long war with
Muslim separatist guerrillas continues unabated. In 2008
it actually looked like there was going to be a major
breakthrough - all sorts of dignitaries, including the US
Ambassador, were assembled in Malaysia to witness the
signing of a previously unannounced agreement granting
ancestral domain to the Muslims represented by the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). But, at the last minute,
details were leaked, outraged Mindanao Christian
organisations rushed to the Supreme Court, which declared
it unconstitutional. Gloria pulled the plug, some MILF
commanders led their men on a rampage into Christian
areas of Mindanao (which has the distinction of having
the highest number of internally displaced refugees
anywhere in the world), and the war resumed with a
vengeance. Some pundits made a shrewd case that the whole
exercise was a cynical attempt by Gloria to get Charter
Change in through the back door (i.e. the Constitution
would need to be changed to make a peace deal with the
Muslims, so why not make a few more constitutional
changes at the same time).
US Military Back; Land “Reform” A Sham
The US military is firmly ensconced back in the
Philippines, in the form of a permanent presence of
Special Forces in southern Mindanao. They are supposed to
be “training” the Philippine military but a
former Philippine officer has gone public to expose that
they are playing an active role in combat, and that they
treat their Philippine military “allies” like
dogs. The 20 year old sham Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP) expired in December 2008, without ever
having delivered land to the vast majority of Filipinos
who are landless peasants. An extension of a few months
was granted by the rich landowners who dominate the
Congress and Senate but any transfer from owners to
peasants would be entirely voluntary. And people continue
to be the Philippines’ major export, with the
earnings sent home by those working overseas still the
single biggest component of the economy. Gloria
continually flies around the world pimping her
country’s vast pool of cheap and skilled labour to
do the dirty, dangerous and lowpaid jobs that the host
countries’ workers can’t or won’t do.
There is a never ending succession of breathtaking
corruption scandals, which are basically reported as
another branch of the entertainment business (some of
them are indeed very cartoonish). Several of these
dominated the news in the few weeks that we were in the
country.
State Violence Is Daily Reality
Official violence, corruption and glaring inequality
permeate every aspect of ordinary Filipino life. For
example, nearly 1,000 “criminals” and street
kids have been murdered in Davao City, Mindanao during
the past several years by the shadowy Davao Death Squad.
These murderers, reliably known to be cops and guns for
hire, operate with total impunity and the outspoken
support of the Mayor and local businessmen’s
associations. To its credit, the previously toothless
Commission on Human Rights bravely undertook to
investigate this systematic slaughter of undesirables and
held public hearings in Davao City in 2009.
People expect absolutely nothing from the State except
corruption and violent oppression. Take just one example
of the State in action, which occurred while we were
there over Christmas. The cops are basically just another
branch of the military and behave accordingly. They
ambushed a notorious and murderous gang of bank robbers
en route to their latest job. So, on a residential street
in Metro Manila, they opened fire with maximum firepower
and shot to kill, as they always do. The crooks shot back
and a fullscale battle raged for 40 minutes (the crooks
were heavily armed, including with items such as rocket
propelled grenades which they use to blow open banks and
armoured cars, and routinely killed people during their
robberies). When it was over 16 people were dead –
crooks, cops and innocent bystanders, including a father
and his seven year old daughter gunned down by the cops
who “mistook” them for the robbers (80 bullets
were found in their two bodies and van alone). The
official response? “Too bad if some people are in
the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Further details emerged. The father and daughter were
killed by Navy Intelligence agents (there is a dizzying
array of covert Special Forces and Intelligence agencies;
this Navy unit has a bad reputation for abducting,
“disappearing” and framing political
activists). They were there unbeknownst to the cops (who
blew the whistle on them to the media, resenting being
blamed for killing seven year old girls). The Navy boys
meant business – they’d set up a machinegun in
the middle of the street. Their motive for getting
involved? They had an “asset” inside the gang,
one who had stopped communicating with his handlers and,
even worse, who was no longer giving them their share of
the robbery proceeds. So the Navy unit decided to
“eliminate the asset” – the man and his
daughter got in the way. There have been several such
“shootouts” and mass killings in recent months
– one coldblooded execution of a
“criminal” was even captured on a closed
circuit TV camera and splashed across the media. Poverty
is endemic and there is no such thing as a free or
subsidised public health system. I experienced this
personally, because I got crook while over there (a chest
infection which made me the sickest I’ve been in
years) – two visits to a doctor and prescription
drugs set me back around $NZ300. This wasn’t the
price for foreigners, this is what everyone has to pay,
which puts health care hopelessly out of reach for the
vast majority (that sort of cost would have the same
effect on a large chunk of NZ’s population if we had
to pay it here). People literally die, or go into
crippling debt, because they can’t afford health
care. We personally encountered a couple of such cases
while we were there.
Genuine People Power Is What Is Needed
I realise that this paints a pretty bleak picture.
Don’t get me wrong. Filipinos are among the most
resourceful, resilient, politically perceptive, good
humoured and funloving people on Earth. They know how to
enjoy themselves, as I experienced at the big family
birthday party we went there for, and at Christmas and
New Year (which was like nothing else I’ve ever
experienced). But they deserve so much better than the
murderous greedy thieves who have a stranglehold on the
political system and wealth of their country. So my
conclusion to this 2009 situationer is the same as for
the 2008 one (and any other number of years stretching
into the past) – the Philippines needs systemic
change, not just a change of President. People Power has
twice delivered the country its two female Presidents,
Cory and Gloria. But merely swapping job titles and perks
among the traditional ruling clans is a travesty of
democracy and a guarantee that the only people to benefit
from such a “democracy” are those who have
always plundered and terrorised the country for their own
benefit. Even if Gloria does step down in 2010 (and
“if” is very much the operative word there), a
new President won’t make any difference. Genuine
People Power is what is needed. ¦
Murray Horton is Editor of Kapatiran and
Secretary of PSNA. He has visited and lived in the
Philippines several times over the past two decades, most
recently in 2008/09.
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