Senga warns of more coup attempts by Left, Right, rebels --www.inq7.net

Senga warns of more coup attempts by Left, Right, rebels

First posted 02:28am (Mla time) Mar 23, 2006
By Dona Z. Pazzibugan
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on Page A1 of the March 23, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


EXPECT more coup attempts against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The warning came from Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Gen. Generoso Senga who said that the alliance between the military and leftist rebels to oust Ms Arrroyo has already taken root.

"We may have not seen the last of the attempts at a power grab," Senga said in a speech before members of the Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa) on Tuesday.


Media blamed

Senga partly blamed the media for portraying rebel military officers and soldiers as "messianic figures."

He said Ms Arroyo's critics "will always find allies in opportunist personalities who will not hesitate to bankroll" plots to oust her from office.

"We were fortunately able to blunt the ever-closer leftist-rightist alliance for the time being ... Now is not the time to relax our vigilance. This alliance has been deepening for over two years now and will not be uprooted in a single stroke," he went on.

Senga complained that their attempt to counter further military uprisings "is further made difficult by the propensity of certain sectors of the media to romanticize erring officers and soldiers, portraying them as messianic figures that they are certainly not."

"This is not helping the AFP heal past wounds of divisiveness and in fact indirectly encourages our younger officers to adopt the wrong values and warp their perspectives," he said.

The military leadership foiled a plan by the Marines, Scout Rangers and the Philippine National Police Special Action Force on Feb. 24 to withdraw support from Ms Arroyo, who has been accused of cheating in the 2004 elections.

Ex-Scout Rangers chief Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and Marine Col. Ariel Querubin disclosed their plan to Senga, apparently hoping to convince him to withdraw support from Ms Arroyo as former AFP chief of staff Angelo Reyes did in 2001 to then-president Joseph Estrada.


Final takeover

Senga said the plan was for military elements to announce a withdrawal of support for President Arroyo on Feb. 24 when the Edsa People Power II anniversary rallies had reached a "critical mass," and then march to Malacañang and hold vigil there.

Then, "the real plan would unfold: Sympathetic units from the AFP would make military strikes that would allow the plotters to seize power, culminating in a final takeover of the seat of government," Senga said in his speech.

To reports he was offered to head the so-called transition government after Ms Arroyo's ouster, Senga declared he would never agree to such a setup.

"I will resist the establishment of a "military caretaker government" or a "transition council" even at the cost of my own life, if that is what circumstance demands of me," he said.

"I am not so presumptuous as to believe that I know what is best for this country, not do I believe I know who does, outside free elections. The military leadership are neither kings nor kingmakers," he went on.

Senga said the military should never again intervene in the nation's political troubles, bringing to mind how the AFP chief of staff's withdrawal of support from Estrada allowed then-Vice President Arroyo to assume the presidency in 2001.


Never again

"Never again will the AFP be used for ulterior political motives," vowed Senga, who was the military spokesperson in 2001.

He said the military should stick to the chain of command to avoid the "nightmare" of soldiers shooting one another, as happened in the 1989 coup d'état staged by the Young Officers Union led by Lim and Querubin, when rebel Marines shot at fellow Marines at the Camp Aguinaldo general headquarters.

"It was the bloodiest incident in the 1989 coup attempt. That incident must not happen again. It should never happen again," stressed Senga, as he pledged to prosecute those involved in the Feb. 24 foiled coup before military and civilian courts.

Lim and Querubin and other YOU rebels were granted amnesty in 1995 along with the Reform the AFP Movement (RAM) rebels led by former colonel Gregorio Honasan.





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Affirming a tyrannical rule --Isagani Cruz ; Effectively 100% anti-coup? --W.Monsod

Separate Opinion : Affirming a tyrannical rule

First posted 01:40am (Mla time) Mar 18, 2006
By Isagani Cruz
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on Page A12 of the March 18, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


ONE of the worst decisions rendered by the martial law Supreme Court was Garcia-Padilla vs. Enrile, 122 SCRA 472, written by a cherished friend of mine whose identity I will not reveal here for old times' sake. Only six of his colleagues fully agreed with him, with another five concurring only in the result, meaning they agreed with the conclusion but not with the arguments. One was on official leave, and Justice Claudio Teehankee dissented.

The "ponencia" [written decision] was in my view slavish in nature, stodgy in language and deficient in logic, but it was the law of the land during that regimented period and, unfortunately, is still so even now in this supposedly freer time.

Shorn of its lengthy obsequiousness, it ruled (to dispense with all its whereases and wherefores) that rebellion was a continuing crime and so did not need a judicial warrant to justify the arrest at any time of persons suspected of the offense or any connected crime. The flimsy but pretentious reason was that the suspected rebels are deemed in the actual commission of the continuing offense, or as we lawyers say, "in flagrante delicto," whatever they might be doing at the time of their arrest.

The decision also held that suspected rebels and associated subversives should not be treated as ordinary criminals but as enemy combatants in armed conflict with the government as in a state of war. As such, they were not entitled to the usual guarantees embodied in the Bill of Rights.

I had expected that the totally indefensible doctrine would be among the first abuses to be expunged after Edsa People Power I, but this was not to be. In fact, it was expressly affirmed and applied in the leading case of Umil v. Ramos, 187 SCRA 311, decided in 1990, after the Freedom Constitution had earlier called for the eradication of "all iniquitous vestiges of the previous regime."

The Umil Case, resolving several habeas corpus proceedings filed by suspected insurgents, justified their warrantless arrests on the same shallow ground sustained in the Garcia-Padilla Case. The reorganized Supreme Court repeated with approval that rebellion was a continuing offense that did not require the prior obtention of a warrant for the apprehension of any person suspected of the crime.

The new decision was rendered "per curiam" [by the court] to spare the "ponente" [decision writer] from possible reprisals from the subversive groups. It was concurred in by 13 members of the Court, with only Justice Abraham Sarmiento and me dissenting. When it was received with widespread dissatisfaction, four other justices changed their minds and joined us in supporting the motion for reconsideration, I think more for self-levitation than juristic persuasions. The motion was denied just the same and the public remained unconvinced.

In my dissent, I focused on the reaffirmation of the Garcia-Padilla doctrine that our Court had quoted extensively although it was acknowledged-somewhat stealthily, I thought-only in an unobtrusive footnote. I said:

"I dissent insofar as the ponencia affirms the ruling in Garcia-Padilla vs. Enrile that subversion is a continuing offense, to justify the arrest without warrant of any person at any time as long as the authorities say he has been placed under surveillance on suspicion of the offense. That is a dangerous doctrine. A person may be arrested when he is doing the most innocent of acts, as when he is only washing his hands or taking his supper, or even when he is sleeping, on the ground that he is committing the 'continuing' offense of subversion.

"Libertarians were appalled when that doctrine was applied during the [Ferdinand] Marcos regime. I am alarmed that even now this new Court is willing to sustain it. I strongly urge my colleagues to discard it altogether as one of the disgraceful vestiges of the past dictatorship and uphold the rule guaranteeing the right of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures. We can do no less if we are really to reject the past oppression and commit ourselves to the new freedom.

"Even if it be argued that the military should be given every support in our fight against subversion, I maintain that the fight should be waged honorably in accordance with the Bill of Rights. I do not believe that in fighting the enemy, we must adopt the ways of the enemy that are precisely what we are fighting against. I submit that our more important motivation should be what we are fighting for."

I added on the motion for reconsideration that the suspected rebels subjected to the doctrine had not been recognized as belligerents under the laws of war and so should remain under the jurisdiction of our municipal laws and not be treated as enemy combatants.

As usual, I spoke in vain. And now Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's soldiers are making warrantless arrests against suspected rebels as permitted under the oppressive Garcia-Padilla vs. Enrile doctrine that was affirmed and applied in Umil vs. Ramos by the succeeding supposedly liberated Supreme Court. "Tuloy ang ligaya!" [The fun continues!]





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* * *


Get Real : Effectively 100% anti-coup?

First posted 01:55am (Mla time) Mar 18, 2006
By Solita Collas-Monsod
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on Page A12 of the March 18, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


IN the latest Pulse Asia nationwide survey, the question was asked (roughly translated): In your opinion, which of the following scenarios will best serve the national interest? Ten separate scenarios were then presented -- five on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's resignation; two on her continuation in office; two on a coup; and one on intervention of a foreign government.

Based on the responses, Pulse Asia reported that 59 percent of Filipinos (those who chose any of the five scenarios involving her resignation) opine that the most beneficial political scenario would be President Arroyo's resignation. For good measure, it was also suggested that the percentage of those who want Ms Arroyo out goes up to 65 percent if one adds the percentage of those who want her removed from office, through a coup (4 percent) or intervention of a foreign government (2 percent). Evidently, the analysts did not consider the possibility that the foreign government could intervene to keep Ms Arroyo in power.

That is one way of looking at the responses. But one can also take those responses as a basis for the following analysis:

The 10 possible "most beneficial" scenarios presented in the survey, and the percentage of those who chose them (totaling 99 percent of respondents, probably due to rounding-off errors) are as follows:

(1) Arroyo resigns, and a special presidential election is held -- 16 percent;

(2) Arroyo resigns and Vice President Noli De Castro becomes president -- 14 percent;

(3) Both Arroyo and De Castro resign, and the Senate president takes over until special elections are held -- 12 percent;

(4) Arroyo resigns and is replaced by a "junta" until the election of a new president or prime minister -- 10 percent;

(5) Arroyo resigns and De Castro temporarily leads while preparing for a new government under a new Constitution -- 7 percent;

(6) Arroyo completes her term -- 23 percent;

(7) Arroyo continues until the Constitution is changed and a parliamentary government is established before 2010 -- 11 percent;

(8) a coup takes place, and military and police decide who will govern -- 3 percent;

(9) a coup takes place, and the military and police themselves take over -- 1 percent; and

(10) a foreign government gets involved and installs in power its Filipino allies -- 2 percent.

From the above, one can as well say none of the 10 possibilities got a majority vote. This shows there's no clear consensus. However, scenario 6 -- in which the President continues in office until 2010 -- was chosen by a significantly (statistically) higher percentage of the respondents than the other possibilities. The five next highest choices at 16, 14, 12, 11 and 10 percent respectively, were, by the way, not significantly different from one another.

Those who persist in saying that there is a "clamor" for the constitutional change should note that scenario 5, in which a new constitution will bring in a new government, is considered as best by only 7 percent of the respondents; and even with the added enticement that a parliamentary government takes over before 2010 -- scenario 7 -- constitutional change still gets only an additional 4 percentage points, or a total of 11 percent.

There is also a message for those who are pushing for a 1,000-day provisional government or junta. The scenario closest to that is scenario 4, in which a junta takes over only for the purpose of immediately electing a new president or prime minister. That gets only 10 percent of the vote -- but what is interesting is that an equal percentage of respondents (9 percent, which is not significantly different) thinks that the scenario is the most inimical political scenario!

Another important message from the Pulse Asia survey results has to do with the two coup scenarios. For those in the military/police who want to be powerbrokers, and those in the political opposition and civil society (including businessmen) who have been playing footsies with them, if not actively encouraging them, please take note: the percentage of respondents who think a coup of this kind is the most beneficial is all of 3 percent -- which is, because the survey's margin of error is also 3 percent; this is like saying that the percentage of respondents in favor of the so-called "withdrawal of support" could be a big fat zero.

And for the more ambitious soldiers -- those who want to wield the power themselves -- the message is at least as stark: the percentage of Filipinos who are in favor of it is effectively zilch (1 percent). One, who is not aware of the margin of error, may be tempted to point out that more Filipinos prefer a foreign government getting involved in the country's affairs than a military/police takeover.

Let me summarize the alternative analysis thus:

(1) there may be 59 percent of Filipinos who want Arroyo to resign, but until they can agree on one -- instead of four or five -- post-Arroyo scenarios, they can kiss a successful resignation move goodbye. Their different choices get trumped by the scenario that has a significant plurality of the votes: the Arroyo-stay scenario.

(2) Even if all 59 percent agree on a post-Arroyo scenario, effectively 100 percent of Filipinos do not want her to be removed through military intervention. (It amazes me how the anti-Arroyo groups criticize her use of the military, but do not seem to think anything of their own attempts to do the same).

You want her out? Do your homework toward an impeachment. And toward ensuring that the 2007 elections take place under a reformed Commission on Elections.





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Serbs Snub Milosevic for Ruining Nation ; Belarus' Lukashenko Vows to Stop Takeover

Serbs Snub Milosevic for Ruining Nation

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 17, 4:44 PM ET



BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro - His arriving coffin was left in the rain while airport officials signed paperwork. Its muted public display has drawn a fraction of the huge crowds he commanded in his heyday.

Slobodan Milosevic's memory and legacy are being unceremoniously snubbed by countrymen who blame the late Serbian leader for ruining the republic.

"Thank you for all the deceits and thefts," read a bitterly worded newspaper death notice published Friday, the eve of his burial, amid several pages of tributes in the pro-government daily Politika.

It also "thanked" Milosevic, who died of a heart attack March 11 while on trial for genocide and crimes against humanity before a U.N. tribunal, "for every drop of blood spilled for you by thousands, for the fear and uncertainties, wasted lives and generations, for dreams we never realized, for the horrors and the wars which you — without asking our permission — led in our name, for all the burdens you placed on our shoulders."

"We remember the tanks on the streets of Belgrade, the blood on its pavement," it said. "We remember those killed, wounded, bereaved, the refugees. We remember our destroyed lives."

Opponents of Milosevic were sending a flurry of cell phone text messages Friday calling for a rally Saturday afternoon on Belgrade's Republic Square, where massive student-led demonstrations led to his ouster from power in October 2000. The rally was being timed to coincide with his funeral and burial in his hometown of Pozarevac, about 30 miles southeast of Belgrade.

Officials said his widow, Mirjana Markovic, who lives in self-imposed exile in Moscow, was unlikely to attend because she fears arrest on charges of abuse of power during her husband's 13-year rule. At her request, gravediggers dug a double-wide pit for Milosevic in the backyard of the family estate — beneath a beloved linden tree where the couple first kissed — so she can be reunited with him when she dies.

Some 70,000 weeping supporters have filed past Milosevic's flag-draped coffin in Belgrade, and thousands more were expected to be bused by Milosevic's Socialist Party to the capital for a "final farewell" ceremony Saturday and to Pozarevac for the burial.

But the turnout has been muted in comparison to the masses who cheered him a decade ago, and many of the mourners are elderly leftists who espouse a nostalgia for Milosevic not widely held in Serbia.

The public repudiation was foreshadowed by the coffin's ignoble return to Serbia this week: The plastic-wrapped casket emerged from the plane's cargo hold behind a baby stroller and a jumble of suitcases, then sat for 10 minutes in an icy rain while documents were signed.

Milosevic's family was not granted permission for a state funeral in Belgrade, leaving his Socialists to scramble to make the most dignified arrangements possible. Serbian television, however, broadcast only a few live snippets of the coffin's display before switching back to midafternoon soap operas.

"The whole chain of events is becoming a farce," said Brace Grubacic, a political analyst in Belgrade.

"Politically, Milosevic died five years ago when he was sent to The Hague. From that point on, he was history," he said. "He destroyed his own state, he destroyed his own family and in the end he destroyed himself."

Responding to allegations that Milosevic may have been poisoned, the U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands said Friday that an autopsy and tests found no evidence of toxins or drugs in concentrations that could have killed him. Milosevic's former legal adviser, Branko Rakic, denounced the report as a "huge array of falsehoods."

Underscoring how Milosevic's warmongering legacy still affects ordinary Serbs, disabled military veterans of the 1990s wars he started in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo staged a rally in the capital Thursday to protest spending cuts that are making it difficult for them to get artificial limbs, wheelchairs and health care.

Among those scorning Milosevic was Nedjeljko Canak, 57, a one-time staunch supporter until he wound up as a refugee twice — once when he fled Croatia in 1995 for sanctuary in Kosovo, and again in 1999 when he had to flee Kosovo.

Today, he sells socks, cheap cigarette lighters and other bric-a-brac at an open-air stand in a gritty, communist-era block of apartments in Belgrade.

"Why would I go to pay tribute to that monster? He and his thieves were directly responsible for my ordeal," Canak said.

"He does not deserve a funeral. He deserves to be disposed in the garbage dump of history."

___

Associated Press writers Aleksandar Vasovic, Dusan Stojanovic and Katarina Kratovac contributed to this story.




* * *

Belarus' Lukashenko Vows to Stop Takeover

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 17, 5:21 PM ET


MINSK, Belarus - Authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, facing the prospect of mass protests after this weekend's election, vowed Friday that his opponents would not be able to seize power by force.

Lukashenkos's main opponents have called on supporters to hold demonstrations if they consider the results of Sunday's vote to be fraudulent. Authorities have banned any such gatherings, setting up the possibility of violent confrontations between protesters and police.

Similar protests in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan — ex-Soviet republics like Belarus — helped bring opposition leaders to power over the past two years. Lukashenko, shunned by the West which has dubbed him Europe's last dictator, has repeatedly alleged that the opposition to his hardline rule is plotting similar moves.

"I guarantee that an overthrow of the government in our country will not take place. There will not be a forceful seizure of institutions or the blocking of squares and streets," Lukashenko said in a nationally televised address. "Today everything is being done to prevent even the smallest threat to the security of the people."

Lukashenko, who is seeking re-election to a third term, made the comments following an array of allegations that plans to forcefully unseat him have been discovered. Many of the allegations involve Georgians, whose country's "Rose Revolution" of 2003 inspired later protests in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Nine Georgian lawmakers who were to join an international elections monitoring mission were detained at the Belarusian capital's airport, and an official said Friday they would be sent back to Georgia. The lawmakers were to have been part of the monitoring mission led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

A spokesman for the Belarusian border guards, Vasily Kiptenko, said they were detained Thursday because "they were not desirable on our territory."

Also Friday, the Belarusian KGB said it had arrested a Georgian citizen on suspicion of funding the opposition.

The KGB on Thursday accused a Georgian lawmaker and employees of Georgian embassies in neighboring countries of plotting subversive actions during Sunday's vote.

Lukashenko has increasingly tightened his grip on the country since taking office in 1994, but many Belarusians credit him with improving the economy and bringing stability.

The government has banned election day demonstrations, and KGB chief Stepan Sukhorenko has warned that any protesters Sunday could be charged with terrorism. Lukashenko vowed swift action against any foreigner trying to sow chaos.

"God forbid one of them should try to do something in our country. We will twist his head off immediately — like a duckling's," he said in comments broadcast on television.

Responding to a warning from Belarus' foreign minister that the opposition and its foreign supporters would bear responsibility for any election violence, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said any violence against peaceful protests "would meet with a strong international reaction."

Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, who led freedom movements that helped topple communist regimes in Poland and Czechoslovakia, on Friday lambasted Belarus' government as the "last undemocratic regime" in Europe.



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PINOY KASI: Why Filipino

Pinoy Kasi : Why Filipino

First posted 11:35pm (Mla time) Mar 14, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the March 15, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


FOR some time now, we've been hearing educators and government officials -- all the way up to the President herself -- lamenting the deterioration of English in the Philippines and how this will affect our international competitiveness. All kinds of solutions have been proposed, from the exclusive use of English as a medium of instruction to "English-only" zones in schools.

Last week, the Department of Education released results of the latest National Achievement Test (NAT) administered to high school seniors, and reported that proficiency in Filipino had deteriorated. Specifically, average scores decreased from 61.3 percent (meaning "near mastery") in 2001 to 42.5 percent ("below mastery") in 2005.

What has been the public's response to these latest test results? In stark contrast to the frequent expressions of dismay over alleged deterioration in English proficiency, there has been silence over the NAT findings for Filipino. Many of my fellow professors at the University of the Philippines even missed the story, which appeared in the Inquirer albeit on the upper left hand corner. Several shook their heads in slight dismay; others shrugged their shoulders.

I have different interpretations of these responses. With so many pressing problems of leadership and governance in the country, proficiency in Filipino seems almost like a trivial problem. I suspect many Filipinos actually think it's a language that doesn't even have to be taught because we are, after all, Filipinos. We think all Filipinos will pick up the language almost instinctively, at home, in the streets, through mass media. And if that doesn't happen, it doesn't really matter since we think we don't need Filipino to achieve the Filipino dream, which is to live abroad.


Ice cream slips

I agree that English is important -- I've certainly benefited from a fairly good command of the language in terms of international consultancies. But I also know what it means to lack proficiency in a national language.

I belong to a generation, and class, of Filipinos where Filipino was actually prohibited in school. We alternated between an English and Mandarin Chinese week, when we would be punished if we didn't speak the prescribed language. That meant being punished for speaking in Tagalog (the term "Filipino" was almost never used). Not only that, we were rewarded for squealing on classmates who dared speak the unspeakable -- the stool pigeons given ice cream slips that they could accumulate to get popsicles and ice cream sandwiches.

Did that system work? No. I have classmates who went through that ice cream slip system but didn't get to master English or Mandarin Chinese. Languages can't be forced. But neither can they be learned through classrooms alone. We had Filipino classes in high school, but it consisted of boring lectures on grammar. I eventually learned Filipino when I entered the University of the Philippines; in my junior college year and even today, while fairly comfortable with spoken Filipino, I still have problems with reading and writing.

And I am ashamed about being a Filipino who is not so comfortable with Filipino. And yet, I know I am not alone, and sometimes it isn't just a matter of class. Filipinos in general have suffered from the neglect of a language policy, with tremendous losses in all spheres of public and private life, economically, politically, culturally. I will even argue that we lose international competitiveness because of lack of mastery of our national language.


Schizophrenia

We've suffered a kind of linguistic schizophrenia. The Department of Education, as well as individual schools, kept vacillating about the language to use for teaching, lacking clarity and consistency. We've tried an English-only policy, then Filipino-only, then bilingualism.

It didn't help that Filipino itself, decreed by President Manuel L. Quezon in 1935 as a Tagalog-based national language, developed in fitful spurts. An Institute of National Language was supposed to enrich this language by bringing in words from all our languages, but did this with mixed success, hobbled by disagreements among linguists. In the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, riding on a wave of nationalism, purists tried to create "indigenous" words. If the purists had their way, a school dean would now be called "gatguro," and department chairpersons, well, that would have been problematic because "chair" had been translated as "salumpuwit," the holder of the ass.

After 60 years of a Tagalog-based Filipino, we're not quite sure yet about what we have. The other week at a meeting of department "salumpuwits" in the University of the Philippines, we grappled with the theme for our college recognition ceremonies. A committee had proposed "Patuloy na paglinang ng kahusayan para sa kaunlaran ng bayan." It was promptly torn apart, word by word, as grammatically imprecise, and now reads: "Pagpapatuloy na paglinang sa kahusayan para sa kaunlaran ng bayan."

But that only shows how difficult it is to craft a national language. Tagalog uses a lot of duplication of syllables, which the Visayan languages don't. Note though that grammar doesn't always correspond to colloquial use. Even a native Tagalog speaker like news anchor Mike Enriquez of GMA Network 7 was once criticized for thanking viewers, at the end of each newscast, for their "pagtiwala" [trust]. He has since changed that to "pagtitiwala."


Inferiority complex

But the quibbling is all too often over form, rather than substance. We've lagged behind our neighbors in developing a national language. After Indonesia declared independence in 1945, a wise Sukarno chose Malay, a language spoken by a small minority, as the basis for their national language, Bahasa Indonesia. He could have chosen Javanese, which like Tagalog was spoken by the political elite, but this would have created resentment among hundreds of other ethnicities. Today, Bahasa Indonesia is a true national language, used in homes, schools, offices.

I'm afraid we've never really taken our languages seriously. We still call them dialects, the "vernacular," sometimes with an almost derisive tone. When Filipinos migrate, they drop Tagalog or the other "dialects," almost as if the language reminds them of the poverty and deprivation they left behind. The inferiority complex we have with our languages reflects a broader national inferiority complex.

And we're paying the price for that. A group of graduate students in my linguistic anthropology class reported the other day on the Metro Manila Development Authority's Filipino traffic signs, and said that non-Tagalogs, as well as some Tagalogs, actually could not understand some of the signs.

Now if our Filipino is inadequate for communicating with each other on traffic rules, how can we even begin to talk about national values and concepts like nationhood and nationalism?

On Friday, I'll explain why our lack of nationalism, in language and all other spheres of public life, actually makes us less competitive in this age of globalism.





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Pinoy Kasi : Why Filipino (2)

First posted 01:41am (Mla time) Mar 17, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the March 17, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I'M HERE in Cebu where, earlier this morning, I met Gov. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo of Aurora province, who mentioned that they needed to produce health education materials in different local languages. I was surprised and asked, "But isn't Aurora a Tagalog province?" The governor had to explain that the province now has numerous migrants, mainly Ilocano, but now also including people from as far as the Visayas.

That conversation highlighted just one of the many problems that come from our lack of a national language. Even worse, we seem to be moving backwards, what with the recent Department of Education findings that high school seniors' proficiency in Filipino drastically dropped over the last few years.

Last Wednesday, I looked into our long history of neglecting the development of a national language. We seem to associate Filipino and our other languages with poverty and backwardness. Accompanying this linguistic inferiority complex is an over-valuation of English, which we think provides the key to national development, mainly to export more Filipino workers.

I'd question that assumption, and argue that our neglect of Filipino and our unrealistic expectations of English decrease our competitiveness in the global market.


Nationalism

Our more economically developed neighbors rightly recognize the need to balance nationalism with globalism, and this is reflected in their language policies. In the post-colonial period after World War II, many developing countries pushed hard to craft a national language.

Some countries, like Thailand, were more fortunate because they already had a common language spoken by most of its citizens. Others, like Indonesia and the Philippines, had a more daunting task because of great linguistic diversity. Indonesia was, however, able to develop Bahasa Indonesia while we lagged behind in our development of Filipino.

Some of the reasons for a national language were quite practical: you needed a common language for education, public health, agriculture, industry.

But the most important reason for developing a national language was that of developing a national identity that transcended class, caste, ethnicity, religion. It was important to have a common language to tell the story of a nation, and pass this from one generation to another. And, with time, our neighbors began as well to develop fine literature, written in the national language, capturing the dynamism, the exuberance, as well as the anguish and angst, of national life.


Globalism

A nationalistic policy toward language did not mean xenophobia. Japanese, for example, is peppered with borrowed English words, from home furnishings to high-tech jargon. The Chinese, on the other hand, drew on existing words to describe the wonders of the new technologies: the train is a "fire horse," a computer an "electric brain."

Gradually, our neighbors began to use their national language to open the world to their citizens. Visit bookstores in China, Indonesia or Thailand, and you'll find hundreds of books-the world's finest literature, as well as computer manuals, self-improvement books, textbooks in the social and natural sciences-translated into the local national language.

These countries have come to accept the importance of English and other languages of the world and encourage citizens to learn these languages, through their national language. In a Thai bookstore, you'll find Thai-English, Thai-Japanese, Thai-Chinese, Thai-French dictionaries, to name a few, both in book and electronic forms, the latter with speech synthesizers so you hear the proper pronunciation of foreign words.

Again, the reasons for doing this are very utilitarian: you learn a foreign language not because it's required but because it serves a purpose, often related to national development. So when the Chinese learn English, it's to be able to read the original technical books, or to communicate with visiting technicians. Their goal is to plug into the world to reap its benefits for the home country.

No wonder the West is running scared-the Japanese did it, the Chinese are doing it now, using just enough English (or German, or French) to learn new skills and technologies, which they then copy, often with great improvements.


Talking back

What's happening in the Philippines? We've neglected Filipino and our other languages. Only recently did we recognize that maybe the way to go in schools is to have the local language (e.g., Cebuano) used in the first years of primary school to teach Filipino and other basic subjects, including, for older kids, English.

And even as we laughed at our neighbors for their resistance to English, our own proficiency in that language has stagnated. I often suspect we're not actually seeing a deterioration of English in the Philippines. What's happened is that for most Filipinos, the level of English has remained pretty much the same from the colonial period, just enough to understand the instructions of the boss. Which is why we had such a perfect fit for a particular segment of the overseas labor market.

Now that new opportunities are emerging, such as in the call centers, we're realizing we don't have enough Filipinos who can speak English in a more interactive way, offering information and advice. And when it comes to the most lucrative high-paying jobs and consultancies, we have only a handful of Filipinos who have the ability to analyze problems in English, and to propose and explain solutions.

To capture that market, it won't be enough to just learn English. Filipinos have to be able to use the language spoken at home and bring this to tackle the complexities of the outside world. But since we neglected both Filipino and English in our schools, we have many young Filipinos who just can't communicate.

I despair over the way students in the University of the Philippines grope for words: "Kasi, sir, you know, the ano of the ano is, well, you know it's all very complex." Alas, at the rate we're going, we won't need English or Tagalog. We'll need to teach mind reading in schools.

Proficient neither in Filipino nor English, our worlds will remain limited. We will continue to export Filipinos, but mainly in low-pay service occupations. At home, we suffer too from not being able to develop science and technology, so we end up buying other countries' consumer products.

As we search for solutions to our national aphasia, we might heed the advice of Mahatma Gandhi, who once said Indians have to learn Hindi to speak with each other, and English to speak to the world. I would say we should go for as many languages as possible so we can discover the world, but meantime, let's develop our own languages, too, and our sense of identity, so we can indeed speak with the world, and not just be spoken to. It all boils down to a simple matter of respecting ourselves, so that when the world talks to us, we can talk back.





Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Why is the military restive? --The Daily Tribune

Why is the military restive?
By Col. (retired) Guillermo Cunanan, PMA, Class of 1966

03/08/2006
(Part 1)


Today we are facing another crossroad in our country’s history. We are looking at the prospect of experiencing a repeat of two momentous events that happened in 1986 and 2001 when we saw two of our Presidents being forced by our own people to vacate the highest seat of power. The events on the third weekend of February confirmed that there exists a restiveness among our military officers and men that is aimed at toppling the President and reforming the country’s political system.

Why we have to experience two revolutions and be confronted with the prospect of experiencing a third in a span of 20 years makes us wonder what’s wrong with our people. Why does the military which is charged with the task of maintaining peace become a major player in toppling our leaders?
Let me attempt to give some answers.

Courage, loyalty, integrity —

These are values that the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) is tasked to instill in the minds and hearts of every cadet who enters its portals.

These are values that are meant to bring upon the cadets not only a high degree of self-respect but also the highest sense of professionalism and love of country.

To perform this task, the PMA provides the cadets an honor system that requires them to live with a standard of integrity and honor higher than what any other institutions of learning provide their students.

Any cadet who commits any act that is in violation of the honor code is asked to resign and if he refuses he is ostracized by the whole cadet corps and is officially tried in a court martial. Also, any cadet who observes any violation of the honor code and does not report it to the authorities is deemed as guilty as the offender.For four solid years a cadet is taught to live a life of honor and love of country.

After graduation, when the cadets join the regular officer corps of the Armed Forces they are expected to continue to live with that high level of commitment to the same values of courage, loyalty and integrity. Soon as they are immersed in the realities of the life in the fields, however, they realize that living by the same standards of values as they were taught in the academy is not easy.

As young lieutenants, lest they be considered an oddity and branded as naively impractical, they are forced to look the other way as their superior officers violate the same rules of integrity that military officers are supposed to live by. A few who dare learn early that fighting against overwhelming odds is foolhardy. Within themselves, they ask why and do not get any answer.

This conflict between values and reality happens as they expose their lives to enormous risks while on duty in the name of patriotism. As they are introduced to the gruesome experience of confronting danger, they see their classmates and other comrades in arms dying at their side. Here, the seed of rebellion begins to take life.

As they grow older in their profession and get assigned to higher positions, they get exposed to even more serious cases of turpitude. This time they realize that they are slowly being drawn into participation.

Faced with the growing needs of their families that their meager income cannot meet, and the more convincing thought that idealism has no place in a country that is hopelessly mired in corruption and so controlled by well-entrenched vested interests, many are lured by the comfort that such participation can bring to themselves and their families. As they find participation in corruption more materially and professionally rewarding, they become part of that corrupt system.

Others, however, continue to live in a struggle between values and needs. To this group belong the officers who dance gracefully with the situation, carefully keeping their image acceptably professional while they ensure that the needs and comfort of their families are satisfied.

These are the same officers who learn and play expertly the art of compromise in a highly politicized government where the highest positions in the military organization are dispensed only by political leaders.

Some others whose roots of idealism have grown stronger, however, remain steadfast and refuse to be involved. But they could not do much except to console themselves with the promise that their time to set things right will eventually come.


(To be continued)



* * *


Why is the military restive?
By Col. (retired) Guillermo Cunanan, PMA, Class of 1966

03/10/2006
(Part 2)


Some others whose roots of idealism have grown stronger, however, remain steadfast and refuse to be involved. But they could not do much except to console themselves with the promise that their time to set things right will eventually come.

At every period in our country’s history, the ranks of the military officers in varying proportions and degree of commitments are divided among these kinds. From time to time, the country experiences periods of great conflict when the military is called upon to play a part. Each class responds to these situations according to their appreciation of the conflicting elements and the values they live by.

In our recent history, one such conflict happened in February 1986 when the country experienced for the first time a revolution that toppled a president. While a lot of our politicians would have us believe that the military was an instant participant in that event, an accurate record of history would show that the young officers, for a number of years before that revolution, have been planning to oust Marcos. Those of us who are old enough to remember may recall that in 1983, during the graduation at the Philippine Military Academy, a number of young officers while in an alumni homecoming parade dramatically brought out banners on which are written the statement “WE BELONG.” To them WE BELONG means they belong to that group of officers who steadfastly refused to be absorbed by a corrupt system in the Armed Forces. Subliminally kept is the message that they are tired of politicians using the Armed Forces to destroy the institutions of democracy they have been taught to protect. The fact is the young officers’ involvement started over four years before Edsa I. These are the same young officers who finally lit the fire that burned the structure of dictatorship that kept the country captive for 24 years.

Of course we remember that following Edsa I was a number of unsuccessful attempts to topple President Cory Aquino. In all those coup attempts, there were a number of idealistic officers and men who participated — part of those who worked to topple Marcos — but because the justification to topple a popular and untainted president was not present, all their efforts failed.

In 2001 at the height of our people’s demand for the ouster of President Estrada, the military once again intervened. The events went so quickly, however, that the young idealistic officers did not need to take part. An attempt to enlist their participation was still beginning when the top leadership in the military decided to withdraw their support for President Estrada. Coming from the presidency of President Ramos when the military had been relatively quiet, issues closer to their hearts were not heart-rending. Before the young officers could band together and decide what to do, the revolution was over.

Our observation of recent events in history has given us a few lessons.

First: That at any time in our country’s political life there are these idealistic officers who are ready to rise up in defense of our democratic institutions — in their true sense. Most of these are the younger officers whose involvement in such conflict situation between comfort and promotion to the highest positions in the military against idealism and love of the service and country has not yet been most challenging.

Second: During regular times, these officers who receive meager salaries selflessly perform their missions in the fields of battle with courage and conviction.

Third: These officers have more than an ordinary respect for democracy’s goals in society and its institutions and will always be loyal and standing ready to protect them.

Fourth: These young officers, while idealistic, realize that certain amount of irregularities in government is unavoidable and for as long as there is still reasonable hope that the country’s democratic goals can still be served, maximum tolerance has to be exercised.

At certain times in the recent past, a number of these idealistic officers took it upon themselves to unilaterally make a negative judgment on the viability of the current democratic systems and rose up in defiance of the government. They were defeated and lessons were learned. Now they realize that such exercise should take place only with the highest level of selfless discernment and unity among themselves. Decision to rise up must be based on solid and well-established grounds that the people can understand and accept. They also realize that such exercise which may put themselves in great danger and possibly put the country into turmoil may only be worth the risk if victory means much of the ills of society can be addressed and the country be placed along the right path.

From what we had recently seen the idealistic young officers have completed their discernment.

Do they have enough solid grounds to rise up? Surely, yes, they have.

We have a sitting President who cheated massively to retain her position. They know and we know.

They know because many in their ranks were utilized for the cheating. We know because signs and evidence are too numerous to be hidden. If they did not serve as legal bases for official determination of the truth, it is because the rules have been mangled and the institutions have been subverted through bribery and threat. A great majority of our people no longer deny that the rules were perverted to keep the election investigation and impeachment processes from proceeding fairly and justly.

Aside from cheating in the process of counting votes, the sitting President used tens of billions of government funds to generate votes. We saw with our own eyes the millions of “Kalsada natin, alagaan natin” signboards with the name and face of GMA displayed in the streets all over the land and the millions of street sweepers wearing T-shirts with the same marks during the election period. This campaign gimmick cost the government P8 billion. We know of the billions of funds used to provide voters healthcards with GMA’s Nora Aunor look-alike pictures, again during the time of elections.

We now are well aware of the nearly a billion pesos distributed to politicians during the election period to buy liquid fertilizers that never reached the farmers and for which they would not have any use.

Providentially, evidence of election anomalies has been revealed through the Garci tapes and virtually admitted by the President. Unfortunately, the men and women in our institutions of democracy have been so corrupted to be reliable protectors of truth.

But the problem of a fake President is only a minor part of our bigger and more socially and economically debilitating problems. They are certainly difficult problems we have to address through an overhaul of the political system if we want to avoid a social revolution.

No less then GMA in her 2004 State of the Nation Address admitted that “our political system has degenerated to the extent that it is difficult for anyone to make any headway yet keep his hands clean.”

We can only disagree with her in the sense that it is not difficult but impossible for our people to make any headway under our degenerated political system.

How can it be possible to make any headway under a system where virtually all our political leaders spend huge amounts of money to be elected? When a politician has to spend huge amounts to win an election, he necessarily has to steal an even more enormous amount from the government to recover his expenses. Even worse, those who help fund a politician’s campaign have to be compensated generously.

It is through this aberration that our political system is subverted to the point where the interest of the people is relegated to the bottom. Because of this anomaly, we have a system where governance is held under the control of the few who fund the elections of our leaders. No wonder our laws and systems of governance favor these groups whose vested interests know no morals. No wonder the resources of the country is concentrated in the hands of only 20 percent of our people while more than 50 percent live in poverty and 17 percent are actually experiencing physical hunger for lack of money.


(To be continued)



* * *


Why is the military restive?
By Col. (retired) Guillermo Cunanan, PMA, Class of 1966

03/12/2006


For some concrete demonstration of the effect on our fiscal system and the effectiveness of governance, let us look at some figures.

Every congressman, as is popularly known, has to spend no less than P50 million to win the elections. Given that there are about 240 congressmen in the country, the total amount that all the congressmen spend in every election goes to a minimum of P12 billion. On the other side of the legislative branch, each senator spends over P100 million to get elected. Thus, the twenty-four senators collectively spend over P2 billion and P400,000 in the elections. The total expenditure, therefore, of our legislators amounts to about P15 billion.

That’s only talking of the expenses of our legislators. How about the President, the governors, the mayors, the provincial board members, the municipal councilors and the barangay officials?

We may now ask, if the cost of electing our legislators and other government officials is that enormous, how much will it cost our people to pay for the election expenses of our government officials? Twice, three times, four times.

No. Not twice. Not thrice. Not four times. It is costing us everything that is important in a society: our values, our culture, our whole future.

When our political leaders steal to recover their expenses, they have to rely on the bureaucrats to steal for them. Every bureaucrat who is involved in corruption would have some for himself. As we now see reality, most of our bureaucrats are hopelessly mired in the habit of stealing.

Ngayon, ang malinis ay gago, ang mabuti ay tanga, ang natatakot sa Diyos ay mahina.

How ironic — being good is now bad!

When most of our bureaucrats are corrupted, what do you think happens to the contractors dealing with government, the taxpayers, the importers — the citizens as a whole? They all become either corrupt or tolerant.

What percentage of our society still does not accept corruption as a way of life?

As one priest I heard in his homily say, “Sa ngayon, ang taong magsoli ng perang kanyang napulot ay isang bayani, a rare exception.” It is no longer the norm to return what is not yours.

It can no longer be denied that we urgently need to reform our political system.

Mrs. Arroyo, no less, has accepted it and most of our political and business leaders are saying the same thing.

But who will institute change? Should it be our current political leaders? Should we entrust the reformation of our political system to the same individuals who destroyed it?

GMA and her congressional allies are doing their best to ensure that a new Constitution — one that would carry the rider that GMA will be President until 2010 — is passed by June. Congress, with or without the cooperation of the Senate, will ram through the passage of a new Constitution.

June is an important month and a critical deadline for the GMA allies because in July the impeachment case that was filed last year by the opposition against GMA is set to be refiled. That impeachment case will certainly spell big trouble for the GMA presidency and by all means it has to be stopped.

What can be a better way to stop it than obtaining a new mandate for GMA through a new Constitution? In GMA’s equation, a new Constitution that will legitimize her mandate to rule till 2010 will make impeachment moot and academic.

What we will have, if GMA and her minions in Congress will have their way, is a Constitution that is hastily written, rushed and rammed through for ratification by the very people who are causing most of our problems. All for GMA’s survival.

The Constitution is the heart of a country’s governance system. It is the fundamental law of the land. It is the solemn document that defines the most important and fundamental relationships within our society.

To most of our countrymen, a new Constitution can be the only means by which the social inequity and injustice that binds many of our countrymen to poverty and the abuse of our political leaders can be alleviated.

What GMA and our congressmen are doing is madness driven by unconscionable greed.
Should we wonder why our idealistic military officers and men who long for reform are restive?

To answer, let me recall these words from Albert Einstein:

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”





Courtesy of The Daily Tribune


The Daily Tribune © 2006

China and ASEAN: Endangered American Primacy in Southeast Asia --The Heritage Foundation

China and ASEAN: Endangered American Primacy in Southeast Asia
by Dana R. Dillon and John J. Tkacik, Jr.,
Backgrounder #1886

October 19, 2005



China is rapidly becoming the predominant power in Southeast Asia. Beijing’s diplomats have effectively translated China’s burgeoning economic clout into political influence, leaving in question the U.S. role and commitment to the region, even with traditional allies and friends.

If the United States hopes to avoid the emergence of a Beijing-dominated Southeast Asia, Washington must quickly and firmly re-engage the region on the diplomatic, economic, and defense fronts. To shore up America’s eroding influence in Southeast Asia, Washington must give priority to new free trade agreements (FTAs) in the region, fuller participation and leadership in other pacts such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and stronger bilateral anti-terrorism and disaster relief cooperation.


A Sino–Southeast Asia Trade Bloc?

Beijing has already made significant progress on the trade front. At a Beijing-inspired summit meeting in Vientiane, Laos, in November 2004, China, Japan, South Korea, and the 10 member states of the Associ­ation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reached a consensus on an “ASEAN+3” trade framework. The outcome of the Vientiane summit was an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework that pointedly excluded the United States.[1]

The new architecture came in the form of China’s proposed Free Trade Area with ASEAN countries, which invites each ASEAN nation separately to nego­tiate a bilateral FTA with China rather than leaving it to ASEAN as a whole to negotiate multilaterally with China.[2] This individual negotiation strategy enabled Beijing to “divide and conquer” the ASEAN states, with the pro-China countries, such as Thai­land and Burma, moving ahead with separate deals and others like Malaysia and Vietnam going along because they feared Chinese retaliation.

In essence, the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area grants a period of duty-free entry for each ASEAN country’s goods into the Chinese market—gener­ally a three-year period known as “early harvest”— after which time Chinese goods will have reciprocal free entry. As one ASEAN diplomat pointed out in 2003, this means that a particular ASEAN partner will be granted three years to compete in China’s market in raw materials, agricultural products, and minerals, which China does not produce. However, after the early harvest period, China’s manufac­tured goods will have full tariff-free access to the markets of its Southeast Asian partner.

The likely result of this arrangement would be to strengthen China’s economic hand in Southeast Asia. The trading relationship would tie the region closer together, advancing China’s political objectives.

Economically, the deal is a clear winner for China. It secures access to needed raw materials while removing barriers to China’s exports. The economic center of gravity in Asia would move further away from Japan and the United States and closer to China. Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, looking for a silver lining to Chinese economic pre­dominance in the region, suggested that ASEAN use the challenge as a “time for action” to adapt and implement regional economic integration.[3]

After the close of the East Asia Summit prepara­tory meeting, the Chinese state media ominously announced that, “in the near future, there will also be talks on the development of political coopera­tion and also some military cooperation [with ASEAN countries].”[4] How the EAS develops after 2005 will define whether it becomes an East Asia Community like the European Union or remains a collaborative community, which involves dialogue and consultation but respects the independence of individual member countries and encourages flexi­ble cooperation.

In comparison, American efforts are bilateral and tepid. The United States has an FTA with only one ASEAN country—Singapore, which was already one of the world’s freest economies. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has begun negotiations looking toward an FTA with Thai­land, but no other FTAs are in process with coun­tries in Southeast Asia.

Besides FTAs, policymakers have other eco­nomically significant agreements available, including trade and investment framework agree­ments (TIFA) and open skies agreements (OSA). A TIFA is a consultative mechanism for the United States to discuss trade issues, and an OSA creates free markets for aviation services. Regrettably, like FTAs, TIFAs and OSAs are underutilized in South­east Asia.

A regional TIFA with ASEAN would be advanta­geous in the context of the legal restrictions on trade with Burma. A TIFA is just a framework for discussion, and Burma gets no direct benefit. In the end, as long as Congress retains sanctions on Burma, Rangoon would be unable to take advan­tage of the TIFA’s trade-harmonizing effect. Although there are bilateral TIFAs with Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, there has been no effort to conclude a regional TIFA with ASEAN.

The same problem exists with OSAs in the region. There are bilateral OSAs with Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and Thailand, but the United States has not attempted to negotiate a regional OSA with ASEAN. The United States needs to take advantage of all of its available tools, not only to increase trade and wealth, but also to increase American influence in ASEAN.


ASEAN Security Relationship

ASEAN countries already have a number of secu­rity fora, but China is proposing a series of initia­tives that appear to be designed to increase Beijing’s influence over security relationships in Southeast Asia. Existing regional fora include the ASEAN Regional Forum, a foreign ministers conference that discusses regional security issues, and the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum for defense ministers organized by London’s Interna­tional Institute for Strategic Studies beginning in 2002. China is invited to attend both of these con­ferences but stopped attending the Shangri-La Dia­logue in 2004, apparently believing that Asians, not Westerners, should organize and lead regional security mechanisms.[5]

In November 2003, China circulated a concept paper at the ARF that proposed an ARF Security Policy Conference, which involves the member states’ vice-minister–level defense and security offi­cials. The first meeting of the new conference was held in Beijing in November 2004. A second was held in Vientiane, Laos, in May 2005. Although the conference nominally invites all current ARF mem­bers, many regional observers interpret the new proposal as an attempt by Beijing to gain control over the forum.[6] Similar to its proposals for ASEAN+3, the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area, and the East Asia Summit, the ARF Security Policy Con­ference seems to be part of a broader Chinese strat­egy to establish political preeminence in the region.

China is also expanding its military relationships in Southeast Asia. It has developed a number of military-to-military initiatives, including joint mil­itary exercises with Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand; is training ASEAN officers at People’s Lib­eration Army (PLA) military courses; and is provid­ing Chinese language training. Singapore hosted a 14-nation sea exercise that included most of the ASEAN countries and China.

In contrast to China’s focused expansion of dip­lomatic and security relations with Southeast Asia, the U.S. Department of State is actively downgrad­ing the security relationship with ASEAN coun­tries. Despite the fact that no Secretary of State has missed an ARF meeting since 1982, Secretary Con­doleezza Rice skipped the July 25–29, 2005, meet­ing in Laos (her first opportunity to attend an ARF meeting) and sent her deputy instead.

Secretary Rice’s absence was widely criticized in the region. ASEAN leaders noted that China’s for­eign minister attended most of the ARF meeting and did not press them on a host of difficult issues, such as the war on terrorism, human rights, eco­nomic openness, and Burma’s accession to the chairmanship of ASEAN. Compounding Secretary Rice’s absence in July, no U.S. representative appeared at the ASEAN economic ministers’ meet­ing in September. American absence from repeated ASEAN meetings has reinforced the feeling in the region that Washington places a low priority on relations with Asia.


China Pressures ASEAN Countries

To get them into the habit of siding with China, Beijing is selectively applying pressure on ASEAN countries, even on minor issues. For example, in January 2001, Singapore’s Changi Naval Base ber­thed the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. It was the first time a U.S. carrier had been given pierside access to port facilities in Southeast Asia since the United States closed its naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1992.[7] The move was seen as an effort by Singapore to align itself with the United States in the face of a growing Chinese military pos­ture in the region.[8] Yet in 2004, China began to pressure Singapore over its long-standing military cooperation with Taiwan and, indirectly, for its increasingly intimate security relationship with the United States.

In July 2004, Singapore Prime Minister-desig­nate Lee Hsien-loong visited Taiwan as a private citizen. Breaking with all earlier practice, China formally protested the visit and threatened punitive economic measures if the new prime minister did not apologize immediately for his “transgression” and promise not to do it again. While he resisted initially, Lee quickly relented when China cancelled a major Singapore trade show in Shanghai. Within a month, the prime minister was forced to state publicly that “if a war breaks out across the Straits, we will be forced to choose between the two sides…. But if the conflict is provoked by Taiwan, then Singapore cannot support Taiwan.”[9]

The following day, quite pleased with Singapore’s new obedience, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman reported with satisfaction that, “we have taken note of the Singaporean leader’s speech, reaffirming support for the ‘one-China policy’ and resolutely opposing ‘Taiwan independence.’”[10]

As with its security relationship with the United States, Singapore has a quiet but sophisticated mil­itary relationship with Taiwan, including thou­sands of Singaporean military troops that train on the island. Because of Singapore’s tiny size, the rel­atively large Taiwan bases are critical for training its armed forces. The Taiwan–Singapore military rela­tionship includes a host of reciprocal agreements. In March 2005, however, Singapore abruptly can­celled a port call by two Taiwan naval vessels, apparently at China’s insistence. Although Sin­gapore restarted naval visits with Taiwan a month later, the fact that China was able to influence Sin­gapore on an issue vital to Singapore’s security is a clear warning to American policymakers.[11]

Singapore’s Changi Naval Base is the only port in Southeast Asia capable of supporting U.S. aircraft carriers. It is essential that U.S. forces maintain a strong cooperative relationship with their Sin­gaporean counterparts. At some point in the future, the United States should expect Beijing to exert pressure on Singapore to restrain its security rela­tionship with Washington, jeopardizing U.S. air and naval operations in the region. This may be particularly true if the American military presence is interfering with Chinese military operations against Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

China is also gaining influence in the Philip­pines. Following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Philippines in 1992, the U.S.–Philippine alli­ance atrophied for 10 years. After September 11, 2001, however, terrorist cells active in the Philip­pines received urgent attention from the Pentagon, alerting U.S. policymakers to the necessity of coun­terterrorism cooperation with the Philippines.

Since then, however, relations between Manila and Washington have improved markedly. Presi­dent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was one of the first world leaders to declare solidarity with the U.S, immediately after 9/11. Manila was soon receiving more than $100 million per year in economic and security aid to fight the war on terrorism. Philip­pine and American armed forces cooperated in a series of operations against the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, driving it from its home base on Basilan Island. In return, when Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched in 2003, the Philippines participated by dispatching a 60-man medical unit to Baghdad.

Although President Arroyo looked great from Washington, bad economic policies, tax increases, and allegations of corruption and vote rigging at home seriously damaged her reputation and ability to govern. When a Filipino civilian was kidnapped in Iraq in 2004, President Arroyo tried to win back her flagging popularity by abandoning the long-standing Philippine policy of not negotiating with terrorists. She withdrew the contingent in Iraq to win the release of the Filipino truck driver. Many American commentators denounced Arroyo’s capitulation to terrorists, and Congress decreased American foreign aid from the $130 million autho­rized for 2005 to $96 million in 2006.

In a tactic that Beijing is perfecting around the world, China stepped in to aid the beleaguered Arroyo. “Within six weeks of pulling out of the Iraq coalition,” one senior Administration foreign policy official lamented, “our Filipino ‘allies’ sent Presi­dent Gloria Arroyo to Beijing, completed reciprocal visits for their and China’s defense ministers, and signed a confidential protocol with China on exploitation of South China Sea resources.”[12]

Additionally, China offered the Philippines $3 million in military assistance to establish a Chi­nese language-training program for the Philippine military, donated engineering equipment, invited the Philippines to participate in naval exercises, and opened five seats for Filipinos in Chinese mil­itary courses.[13]

At first glance, Chinese military aid is minuscule when compared to American largesse, but Beijing has achieved its goals. Arroyo committed the Phil­ippines to supporting China’s view on the one-China policy and agreed to allow China to explore for oil inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ).[14] The South China Sea oil agreement is a remarkable reversal of former Filipino opposi­tion to Chinese activities in the South China Sea. In 1995, when China seized Mischief Reef, an under­water reef well within the Philippine EEZ, and established a navy base, the Philippines boister­ously led ASEAN in forming a unified position against Chinese aggression.

In summary, China has demonstrated a remark­ably deft ability to use its policy tools, literally maneuvering the United States out of its seat at a growing number of international fora. Further­more, China has become an important provider of security assistance, and the presence of its military far from home is becoming commonplace. If Beijing has its way and Washington continues to neglect Southeast Asia, American military and security guarantees will soon be redundant to the Chinese presence.


Refocusing on Southeast Asia

The U.S. must redouble its political, economic, and security efforts in Southeast Asia to thwart the Chinese juggernaut. In fact, Singapore Prime Min­ister Goh Chok Tong has publicly chided the U.S. for its disengagement from Southeast Asia. In June 2005, he said that in the past decade, China has successfully launched 27 separate ASEAN–China mechanisms at different levels, while 28 years after the U.S.–ASEAN dialogue was formalized in 1977, “there are currently only seven U.S.–ASEAN bodies and they meet only infrequently.”[15]

ASEAN is the most important multilateral orga­nization in Asia. An economically strong ASEAN, sure of American support for its member coun­tries’ independence, can stand up to China and preserve their economic, security, and political independence. American foreign policy should make strengthening engagement with ASEAN a priority. In order to accomplish this goal, the Pres­ident should:

* Send the Secretary of State to the ARF and send an appropriate American representa­tive to all invitational ASEAN meetings. Downgrading the ASEAN Regional Forum to the level of the deputy secretary sends the mes­sage to Southeast Asia that the U.S. does not see the region as a priority. This is also the same message that China is conveying.

* Formalize the Shangri-La Dialogue. The cur­rent forum is informal and managed by a non-governmental organization (NGO). The Secre­tary of Defense should meet regularly and for­mally with his counterparts in ASEAN to harmonize disaster relief response, search and rescue, and anti-terrorism operations. These talks also will help to coordinate the growing number of multilateral military exercises and security for hotspots such as the Malacca Strait.

* Increase the number of U.S.–ASEAN diplo­matic and trade mechanisms. For example, the State Department and the USTR should negotiate a TIFA and an OSA with ASEAN.

* Open talks on a U.S.–ASEAN–Australia free trade area. The United States has signed FTAs with Singapore and Australia and is negotiating an FTA with Thailand. The Philippines and Indonesia also have expressed interest in FTAs. So far, the USTR has been negotiating individual trade agreements with ASEAN partners, but a broad regional agreement would better reduce regional trade barriers, increase U.S.–ASEAN trade, and advance American security interests.


Conclusion

Despite well-intentioned efforts by American diplomats, there is a sense in Southeast Asia that the U.S. is passively relinquishing its leadership to China. Gaining lost ground will require cultivating alliances, establishing new relationships, and strengthening trade and investment commitments in the region.

It is not too late to regain the trust and confi­dence of Southeast Asia and reaffirm U.S. commit­ment to its security and economic development, but that trust must be earned through a compre­hensive, consistent, and determined foreign policy in the region.






Dana R. Dillon is Senior Policy Analyst for South­east Asia and John J. Tkacik, Jr., is Senior Research Fel­low in China Policy in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.





http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/bg1886.cfm



© 1995 - 2006 The Heritage Foundation
All Rights Reserved.

Crisis in the Philippines: What does it mean for the U.S.? --The Heritage Foundation

Crisis in the Philippines: What does it mean for the U.S.?
by Dana R. Dillon
WebMemo #799

July 18, 2005 | |



Caught on tape discussing her reelection with an election official, and with her husband allegedly involved in a gambling scam, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is in political hot water and may not finish her term. Ten members of Arroyo’s Cabinet, including key members of her economic team, recently resigned from their posts, urging that Arroyo follow their lead and put an end to the economic and political turmoil plaguing the country. The opposition in the Philippine Congress has already filed a motion to impeach Arroyo, which will be debated when Congress reassembles at the end of July.


Manila’s descent into political chaos presents the United States with three major concerns:



1. The war on terrorism will continue to take a back seat to the political mess in Manila. The southern Philippines is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism where two Muslim insurgencies, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), are based. Philippine military operations in the southern Philippines have been dwindling, despite persistent claims that the ASG, MILF, and Jemaah Islamiyah—all with al Qaeda connections—are training and operating there. President Arroyo’s commitment to the war on terrorism came into question when she withdrew a 60-man military medical team from Iraq after a Philippine citizen was kidnapped. Since 9/11, Arroyo’s support for the war on terror has waned, and there has been little substance to her rhetoric. Now faced with probably the gravest peril of her political life, it is unlikely that the war on terrorism will be given a renewed priority in her agenda.

2. Economic development and reform and trade expansion will be delayed as politicians focus on Manila politics. Under President Arroyo, inflation has risen, corruption is unchecked, and government spending has increased, which, combined with low tax revenues, has led to massive budget deficits. Foreign direct investment in 2004 leveled off at $680 million, well below the $3 to 4 billion average of other ASEAN countries. Amid accusations of electoral fraud, Arroyo took preliminary steps to ease the corporate tax burden and root out corruption, hoping to attract overseas investors. Nevertheless, the Philippines’ credit rating was recently downgraded from “stable” to “negative” by two major ratings agencies due to political uncertainty. Arroyo’s efforts have fallen short of expectations, and economic concerns will continue to be unaddressed due to the current political turmoil.

3. Chinese influence will continue to expand while Arroyo fights for her political life. China has developed and refined a policy of helping regimes in trouble by offering considerable political and economic support. This will become true for the Philippines, as China moves away from threatening rhetoric on territorial disputes in the South China Sea and employs a new approach. Beijing offered Manila $3 million for the establishment of a Chinese language-training program for the Philippine military, donated engineering equipment, and invited the Philippines to participate in naval exercises. Moreover, in the midst of stern U.S. criticism of the withdrawal of the Philippine medical team from Iraq, President Arroyo signed a confidential protocol with China on the exploitation of South China Sea resources. With her presidency in dire straits, Arroyo will gladly accept more largesse from Beijing.


Despite these concerns, however, there seems little chance Arroyo will be successfully impeached. Political observers believe that Arroyo supporters in the House have sufficient strength to block an impeachment. Although her popularity has hit rock bottom, and is the lowest of any Philippine president ever, her detractors are not taking to the streets to oust her through public protests in the same numbers as they did for Marcos in 1986 or her predecessor, Estrada, in 2001.

Vice President Noli de Castro, Arroyo’s would-be successor, has loyally promoted Arroyo’s version of economic development and her close cooperation with China, which suggests that there will be little departure from the current policy direction if he takes over the presidency. De Castro is widely seen as an intellectual lightweight and political novice. The opposition sees him as just as bad as Arroyo and routinely demands both Arroyo and de Castro resign.

The good news is that the scandal has forced both the Philippine Congress and the President to begin the process of reforming the Philippine constitution. President Arroyo’s July 25 State of –the Nation address is expected to call for a constitutional convention. It’s about time. The post-Marcos constitution is overly detailed and includes numerous restrictions that retard economic development. Furthermore, it established an election process that created a disincentive for Senate lawmakers to participate in the legislative process.

Expectations are that the constitution will be modified through a convention or a constituent assembly. The President and the Senate are expected to favor a convention. The House wants a constituent assembly, mostly because it would be cheaper.

Whether Arroyo stays or goes, efforts to encourage economic development and fight the war on terrorism in the Philippines are weakening. The United States has long been devoted to promoting both of these agendas, but Filipinos will view any American involvement in the current political crisis as meddling. Therefore, U.S. efforts to help should advance the process without crossing the boundaries of Philippine sovereignty, responsibility, and leadership:

*Statements from Washington should be measured expressions of support for the Philippine people, constitutional processes, and the rule of law and should avoid any appearance of partisanship;

*If requested, assistance should be in the form of commissions or delegations of constitutional scholars, Philippine experts, and former U.S. lawmakers to assist with constitutional reform; and

*If requested, and considered appropriate, financial assistance should be restricted to the administration of the convention.


The Philippines is a treaty ally of the U.S., an important link in the U.S. strategy in the war on terrorism, and potentially an important trading partner. It is in America’s interest that the current political crisis pass without damaging U.S.-Philippine relations.



Dana R. Dillon is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation. Ji Hye Shin, Research Assistant in the Asian Studies Center, contributed to this paper.





http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm799.cfm

Now it can be told series --www.inq7.net

Now it can be told: Why 'withdrawal' plot failed

First posted 01:02am (Mla time) Mar 11, 2006
By Tony S. Bergonia
Inquirer
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=68994


Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the March 11, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


(Editor's Note: For obvious reasons, sources for this story would have to remain unnamed. But they are known to the editors to be in a position to have had first-hand knowledge of the events leading to the Feb. 24 aborted "withdrawal of support.")

THE country came close to being run by what its architects want to describe as a military caretaker group that planned to take over government briefly and force the immediate holding of elections amid the continuing crisis over whether President Macapagal-Arroyo had really won the May 2004 election.

Sources close to a group of generals and colonels who drew the blueprint for the takeover said the plan called for a bloodless maneuver with the highest officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines doing only one thing—withdrawing support from their Commander in Chief.

The source, an AFP insider, said all the major service commanders—the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force—were briefed about the plan.

All, but one, expressed either willingness to be considered in, or to wait on the sidelines. The only service commander who would have nothing to do with the plan was Army chief Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, according to the source.

"He (Esperon) was afraid that when a new government is in place, he would be investigated for his role in the "Hello Garci" scandal," said the source.

Esperon was one of the military officers whose names were mentioned in the Hello Garci tapes, a compilation of wiretapped phone calls of Virgilio Garcillano, former commissioner of the Commission on Elections.

Ms Arroyo's opponents alleged that the wiretapped conversations provided proof that massive fraud was the key to her victory in the 2004 presidential elections.


Crucial meeting

The source, an AFP insider, said that the day before the plot was to be executed on Feb. 24, a secret, crucial meeting took place among three officers who were in on the plan: Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, head of the Scout Rangers Regiment; Col. Ariel Querubin, head of a Marine brigade based in Camp Ranao, Marawi City; and Marine commandant Brig. Gen. Renato Miranda.


VIP visitor

The three officers had one very important visitor on that day—AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Generoso Senga.

"He said he was in," said one source privy to the meeting.

Contacted by the Inquirer, Senga said, "I have not heard of that [military takeover]. It's the first time I've heard that. I have not even talked with them. Aren't those things planned over a period of time, planned over several years? So how can I be part when I have not even talked with them."

A few days before D-Day, Feb. 24, when the plan would be executed, junior officers who were part of the plot had been greeting each other in military camps-"Malapit na (It's getting near)."

"It's not a coup," said one source. "And it's not a junta."


Power-packed meeting

Lim, the source said, had to deny that there was a coup when apparently, the plan leaked and he got a call from former Rep. Jose "Peping" Cojuangco, who asked if something was afoot.

Respected business leaders and influential Church officials might have had an inkling of the military plan because on Feb. 22, they held what was described as a low-key meeting at the Manila Peninsula. But those present packed a lot of wallop.

Aside from members of the Hyatt 10, the meeting was also attended by businessman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, El Shaddai leader Mike Velarde, former President Corazon Aquino and other prominent business leaders.

"There is a sense of urgency that the political crisis has to be resolved at the soonest time possible because the constitutional avenues for resolving this crisis are narrowing down and we don't want to be left with extra-constitutional alternatives," former education secretary and Hyatt 10 member Florencio Abad was quoted as saying in a phone interview on the day the Manila Peninsula meeting was held.

The source said the military plan was for Senga to head the caretaker government but on condition that he declare the holding of elections immediately.

The plan also was to keep the two houses of Congress intact—the House of Representatives and the Senate.

"So how can you call that a coup? Or a junta? Congress will not be shut down," said the source.


Power-packed meeting

The plan, as had been previously reported, was for members of the Scout Rangers and the Marines to walk out of their camps to join the Feb. 24 marches to celebrate the 20th Edsa I anniversary. They would be wearing their uniforms and with two distinct markings—white patches and their long firearms with their muzzles down.

It was a plan rich in theatrics, but definitely wanting in firepower, said the Inquirer sources.

The stage that was chosen was the rally at Ayala Avenue in Makati City as it was the site selected for the protest-cum-Edsa celebration.

There, as the Rangers and Marines marched with protesters, the plan was for Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim to walk up the stage and declare his withdrawal of support for Ms Arroyo.

A video of Lim talking about the withdrawal of support and explaining the decision was allegedly taped and copies prepared for distribution and airing to key TV stations as Lim stood on the Ayala stage.

This part of the plan, however, was aborted for fear that a copy of the video would leak.

The next step after Lim declares his withdrawal of support for Ms Arroyo on the Ayala stage was for someone to call Senga next. A speech had been prepared for Senga to read. It had the same message as Lim's—withdrawal of support for Ms Arroyo.


Call for election is key

The military officers who planned the drastic move (they insist it's not a coup) were aware that a junta, or a military-run government, faces strong resistance from the people, according to the sources.

"That was why the call for immediate elections was key," said one source.

The architects of the plan knew that it would violate the rule of succession in which Vice President Noli de Castro was to take the place of Ms Arroyo, according to the source, "but the elections would be called immediately and everyone would be busy campaigning."

"Besides, the military has the barrel of the gun," said the source.

The officers also toyed with the idea of having Senate President Franklin Drilon head the caretaker government, should circumstances show that resistance to the caretaker period having a purely military face was overwhelming.


Other changes

Aside from taking over government while the elections are being held, the architects of the plan were also planning some major changes.

One was to put former Special Action Force head, Chief Supt. Marcelino Franco Jr. whose reputation was untarnished as a police officer, as chief of the Philippine National Police.

According to the sources, there were signs that Esperon was entertaining the idea of taking part in the plot, or simply allowing the plan's execution.

Before the meeting of the three officers that Senga dropped in on, Esperon had met with Ms Arroyo, and met with Lim shortly after meeting the President.


'All systems go'

No details of Esperon's meeting with Ms Arroyo could be obtained by the Inquirer but another source said Esperon disclosed the results of the meeting in his conversation with Lim.

On the night of Feb. 23, "it was all systems go," said one source.

But as Esperon's reluctance grew and turned into resistance, the plan had to be aborted and Senga backed down and reported the plot to Ms Arroyo.

An exit plan was quickly prepared and put into action. Senga placed Lim under his custody.

Senga said that on the night of Feb. 23 he was only talking to Lim and Querubin. "They expressed a readiness, willingness to go to the rallies because they can't control their men anymore," recounted Senga.


Different version

He added that it was only Miranda who was around when Senga called the service commanders to dissuade Lim and Querubin from going ahead with their plan of withdrawal."

Michael Defensor, Ms Arroyo's chief of staff, has a different version of what happened.

In a phone interview, he said it was Lim who was trying to convince Senga to join the move to withdraw support from Ms Arroyo.

Defensor said the negotiations for Senga to join the plot to unseat Ms Arroyo went on until at one point, Senga put his foot down and told Lim that if the officers who planned to join the coup wouldn't back down, he would be forced to fight it with force.
"That's why he (Senga) arrested Danny (Lim)," said Defensor.

Defensor insisted that there was an alliance between Lim's group and the Left, as proven by the arrest of Magdalo leader Lt. Lawrence San Juan who was to meet with communist leaders in Batangas when government forces captured him.


No Red alliance

But Lim vehemently denied entering into an alliance with the Left. He said the Scout Rangers are fierce enemies of communist guerrillas and wouldn't even entertain thoughts of forming an alliance with them.

"The Rangers have suffered painful casualties in the hands of communist rebels. And the Rangers have inflicted so much harm on them. An alliance is out of the question," said one source.

"I'm surprised why Danny (Lim) keeps on denying the alliance with the Left," countered Defensor.

He said AFP officers loyal to Ms Arroyo, under Senga's instruction, have been keeping track of plots to unseat the President.

Lim's move, he said, was part of Oplan Hackle. With a report from Dona Pazzibugan





Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





Now it can be told: Who's who in civilian council

First posted 01:05am (Mla time) Mar 12, 2006
By Fe B. Zamora
Inquirer
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=69074


Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the March 12, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THE military plan to withdraw support from President Macapagal-Arroyo was described by Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan as a "constitutional rescue" resorted to because "the democratic institutions" had failed to resolve the political crisis spawned by basically two issues: The alleged cheating in the May 2004 elections and the "Hello Garci" tapes.

"It was not a coup or a power grab. It was a constitutional rescue which the Armed Forces would exercise in accordance with its constitutional mandate as protector of the state and defender of the people," Balutan, who testified at the Senate late last year over the 2004 poll fraud in Lanao, told the Inquirer.

A former Marine battalion commander, Balutan faces court-martial for disregarding a ban on government executives testifying at the Senate last year without Ms Arroyo's approval.

Inquirer sources in civil society and military groups involved in the planned breakaway on Feb. 24, confirmed that a "transition council" was to have assumed the functions of the "leadership" of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government immediately after President Macapagal-Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro were toppled.

The sources clarified that "only the leaders (of the executive, legislative and judicial branches) would be removed, the civil servants would stay.

The Inquirer sources' disclosures coincided with a report by the Philippine Army about a broad-spectrum leftist-and-rightist conspiracy to oust Ms Arroyo and replace her with an interim council.

According to one of the Inquirer's military sources, the council would have been "headed by General Senga, if he agreed."

(Senga has strongly denied that he would be in charge of a "caretaker government." He said he was not capable of running the government.)

President Arroyo's former executive secretary, Renato de Villa, and former Cabinet official Oscar Orbos, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, former Sen. Gregorio Honasan, former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, defeated presidential candidate Bro. Eddie Villanueva were considered for the council.

But De Villa, a former AFP chief of staff, reportedly threatened to quit if exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison were allowed to sit in the council to represent the Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP), the Inquirer source said.

"E di kayo na lang diyan," the source, who was among the troops who planned to join the Feb. 24 march, quoted De Villa as saying.

According to the sources, Lacson was also in a bind because "he wanted to run in the snap election," violating a condition prohibiting council members from seeking elective posts as proof of their "purity of intentions."


Advisers

To complete the new interim administration, a group of advisers, possibly comprising former President Corazon Aquino, former President Fidel Ramos, retired Maj. Gen. Fortunato Abat and even former President Joseph Estrada, in case he was cleared of the plunder charges, would also be created


First edict

For its first edict, the council, composed (initially) of three to five members, would rule the results of the May 2004 election "null and void," declare the positions of President and Vice President vacant and call for a snap election at the earliest date possible, the sources said.

The declaration would be followed by a cleansing of the bureaucracy, especially the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to ensure fair and honest elections, the sources said.

"That is the patriotic intention of the council," the source said, adding that the "work agenda was more important than the personalities."


'Get her out first'

He said the idea of a "collective leadership" was the result of a study and consultation made by the various groups who agreed to join the movement against Ms Arroyo.

"The important thing is to get her out first," he said.

The source said the effort to bring in Senga to head the council started days before Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim reportedly bared his plans to Senga that he was joining the people's march on Edsa on Feb. 24.


Primer on council

"General Senga was given a primer on the transition council with the program of government for the first 100 days. We don't know if he read it," the source said.

A former Arroyo official who crossed over to the opposition said that De Villa and Orbos "talked" to Senga about withdrawing support from Ms Arroyo.


Just like Angelo Reyes

It would be reprising what the then AFP chief of staff Gen. Angelo Reyes did. His breakaway in January 2001 resulted in the ouster of President Joseph Estrada.

"There is no law that says withdrawal of support is a crime," the former Arroyo official, who is also a lawyer, told the Inquirer.

He said this would explain why Lim was "so confident" in telling Senga about the plans of the junior officers to march at Edsa on Feb. 24, and his own plans to join the march.

De Villa, who had already denied a role in the so-called conspiracy, declined an Inquirer request for an interview, saying he needed to focus on his sick wife.

In the event that Senga refused to head the council, then a military oversight committee would be created along with the council, the sources said.

The military faction did not "realize the extent of infiltration" until the Feb. 26 standoff at the Philippine Marines headquarters.


Fair trial for GMA et al.

Aside from the snap election, another top item on the agenda was a "fair trial" for Ms Arroyo, Virgilio Garcillano, Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn "Joc-Joc" Bolante and others who have been linked to the corruption and electoral fraud scandals under the Arroyo administration.

The sources said the trial of former President Estrada and the Oakwood mutineers would continue and would be resolved also within a given date.





Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





Now it can be told: Esperon was the 'key'

First posted 01:03am (Mla time) Mar 13, 2006
By Fe B. Zamora
Inquirer
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=69169



Editor's Note: Published on Page A1 of the March 13, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


A SHOOTING WAR BETWEEN THE group that planned to withdraw support from President Macapagal-Arroyo and the military faction loyal to her would have pitted elite units against each other.

On one side--according to officers interviewed by the Inquirer--were the Philippine Marines under Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda and Col. Ariel Querubin, the Scout Rangers under Brig. Gen Danilo Lim, and the police Special Action Force under Chief Supt. Marcelo Franco.

On the other side were Army chief Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., the Special Operations Command (Socom) and the Special Forces Regiment under Col. Arturo Ortiz, beefed up by troops under Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan of the 7th Infantry Division, and all the military assets in the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) under Lt. Gen. Romeo Tolentino.

In the middle stood AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Generoso Senga, balancing the forces and the events precariously.

In the end, it was Esperon's preemptive moves that tilted the balance in Ms Arroyo's favor.

One officer said the two factions, while ranged on opposite sides, had a "gentleman's agreement" that they would try to avoid bloodshed in order not to divide the Armed Forces.

Accounts about the configuration of military forces opposed to and supporting Ms Arroyo came from interviews with officers of various ranks. The officers did not want to be identified, citing a military directive restricting them from talking to the media.


Go-for-broke guy

Former Ambassador Roy Señeres, who helped the opposition link up with the military, conceded that Esperon's role was crucial.

"Esperon was 'go-for-broke' while Senga was vacillating," Señeres said.

Accounts by military insiders said that on the afternoon of Feb. 23, Lim and Querubin went to the office of Brig. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang, AFP deputy chief of staff for intelligence, for "a social call" and to answer questions about their links to rumored coup plots.

Maclang was told about the plans of junior and mid-level officers to join a people's march scheduled for the next day. Lim and Querubin also told Maclang they intended to join the activity.


Meeting of the generals

From Maclang's office, Lim and Querubin went to Senga and told him that they could not stop the young and mid-level officers from joining the march.

Senga did not oppose the plan, one source said.

After Lim and Querubin left, Senga called Esperon, Air Force chief Lt. Gen. Jose Reyes, Navy chief Vice Admiral Mateo Mayuga and Marine commandant Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda for a conference.

Lim, Querubin and even Franco were asked to attend the conference at GHQ.


Follow the leader

Senga disclosed the plan of the young officers as told to him by Lim. Senga then asked the generals for their positions, according to one account.

Reyes, Mayuga and Esperon said they would "follow the decision of the chief of staff," the source said.

But Esperon also asked Lim to "make sure the critical mass is there before the military joins the people at Edsa," or he would oppose them, the source added.


Malacañang alerted

Lim, Esperon and all the generals present agreed to avoid bloodshed or any move that would "split the AFP," said the source.

Esperon also informed Malacañang about the planned breakaway, and alerted Tolentino and Palparan to "stop" any movement of troops coming from camps in Luzon to Manila.

Col. Art Ortiz, chief of the Socom and the Special Forces Regiment, was also ordered to account for his troops and make sure his unit was intact.


Chain of command

Esperon also ordered the Army in Fort Bonifacio to barricade the Marine headquarters and prevent the Marines from leaving.

It was checkmate for Lim and Querubin, who found themselves immobilized by Esperon's actions.

Esperon has denied involvement in any plot and said the chain of command was solidly behind Ms Arroyo.

Mayuga told the Inquirer it was not only Esperon but all the other service commanders who opposed the "withdrawal" plan, and stressed that the military leadership had always been behind the chain of command with Ms Arroyo as their Commander in Chief.

A "constitutionally grounded" officer, Reyes, for his part, "will never do anything" to violate the chain of command, the Air Force said.


All over

By the early morning of Feb. 24, Senga advised Lim to place himself under AFP custody and to remain in Maclang's office while awaiting instructions.

A few hours later, Ms Arroyo announced that her forces had thwarted a coup plot. She also declared a state of national emergency.





Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.




Now it can be told: Why 'withdrawal' plot failed -- PART I

Now it can be told: Who's who in civilian council -- PART II

Now it can be told: Esperon was the 'key' -- PART III





High Ground : Two military actions had their own transition councils

First posted 03:55am (Mla time) Mar 15, 2006
By William Esposo
INQ7.net
http://news.inq7.net/viewpoints/index.php?index=2&story_id=69442&col=69



THE Inquirer and INQ7.net ran a very interesting series that gave insights into the events surrounding the Feb. 24 aborted military action and the imposition of Proclamation 1017, which placed the country in a state of national emergency. The first of this “now it can be told” series, which ran from March 11 to 13, was written by TJ Bergonio. The second and third parts were written by my friend and former INQ7.net associate editor, Fe Zamora.

The contents of the three stories jibe with the information I had picked up from my own sources in the various civil society groups and the military -- sources that I’ve developed during my incumbency as chairman of the Council on Philippine Affairs (COPA). I relinquished my chairmanship and membership in COPA in November 2003 in order to focus on projects that are closer to my heart, which I’m now undertaking with the Focolare Movement. But the experience with COPA has provided me with invaluable and very reliable sources of information that I now benefit from as an INQ7.net columnist.

COPA had put together the broad coalition of forces that staged what eventually led to EDSA People Power II -- a coalition that spanned the forces of the Right (police and military) all the way to the forces of the Left, with the exception of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army. Joseph Estrada’s scandalous presidency and now Madame Gloria M. Arroyo’s regime of lies, repression and obfuscations are themselves the biggest factors in welding even diverse sectors to unite against the perceived evil before them.

Fe Zamora’s “Who’s who in the council” article of March 12 told about a plan for a transition council that was to be composed of (though not necessarily limited to) former vice president Tito Guingona, former executive secretary Rene de Villa, former senator Gringo Honasan, Senator Ping Lacson, former Cory Aquino Cabinet member and Pangasinan provincial governor Oscar Orbos and evangelist Brother Eddie Villanueva.

My own sources say, however, that there were two different courses for two separate military actions that were coming from two different groups. Each group had its own plan for a transition council. I believe that the transition council mentioned in Fe’s March 12 article was the one that pertains to the military action associated with Honasan.

There was another transition council that was planned by various civil society groups. I believe that this is the transition council that would have been aligned with the aborted military action of Feb. 24, the action that is now being linked with Brigadier General Danny Lim and Colonel Ariel Querubin.

This is also the transition council that was recently discussed over Ricky Carandang’s “The Big Picture” public affairs show on cable channel ANC, with former University of the Philippines president Dodong Nemenzo and Representative Risa H. Baraquel as guests.

The resistance to Madame Gloria M. Arroyo’s regime has developed into a very wide spectrum of opposition forces. There are the forces of the Right, the Moderates and the Left. The Left was notably absent when Ferdinand Marcos was removed. Then there are those who prefer to use constitutional processes in ousting her as well as those who are willing to take the extra-constitutional route to attain the same objective. Add to that the consistent 80 percent of respondents in surveys who believe that Madame Arroyo stole the 2004 presidency and the over 65 percent of survey respondents who want her ousted.

Contrary to claims of the Arroyo regime enjoys the support of the silent majority because of the absence of massive People Power protests, there is an overwhelming number of Filipinos who want Gloria M. Arroyo removed. The only reason this has not taken place is that people are wary about what and who will fill up the void once she is gone. Government is so blatantly and patently corrupt and people tend to think that anyone coming from government assures only that there will just be more of the same. On the other hand, nobody has emerged to provide acceptable leadership that can make a difference, given the present circumstances.

The political players opposed to Madame Arroyo know how many Filipinos want a regime change and are thus encouraged to press for her ouster. However, they fail to provide an acceptable package that the country will want to rally behind. This package includes the answers to the what, the "who" and the "how" questions that are foremost on people’s minds. People are seeking a genuine reform package, under a credible leadership via an acceptable change process.

Thus, it is not surprising that two separate military actions developed, with each having its own prescription for the composition of a transition council.

Ricky Carandang’s discussion with Nemenzo and Baraquel provided very good insights on the other transition council, which had the following features:

1. There will be no politician in the transition council.

2. The objective is not just leadership change but also system reform. The University of the Philippines' "Blueprint for a Viable Philippines: was cited as a starting point for the system reform.

3. The transition council will be civilian in nature and will not be a junta.

From these three features alone of (let’s call it the ‘No-politico transition council’ for identification purposes) the No-politico council, it is easy to see that this is distinct from the transition council with former politicians de Villa, Orbos, Honasan, Guingona, Villanueva and incumbent senator Lacson (De Villa and Villanueva ran in the 1998 and 2004 presidential elections, respectively, and lost) as members.

I have also good reason to believe that the junior officers gravitate towards the No-politico council rather than the Honasan et al. council. In all the previous pronouncements of the junior officers, they were consistent in stating that:

1. They want system reform.

2. They want to end not just the Arroyo regime but also the reign of the traditional politicians who are integral to the Philippine elite’s current monopoly of political and economic power.

The Arroyo regime has benefited from people’s general lack of understanding. This includes members of the middle class who should really be the pivotal force in steering the nation into meaningful system reforms. It is not surprising too that the regime appears intent in adding to the confusion by calibrated obfuscations.

Most notable of these ‘programmed confusions’ are as follows:

1. No distinction is made from that “Operation Hackle” military action that was exposed in early February and the Feb. 24 planned soldiers' protest march and withdrawal of support. I doubt if the regime is not aware that these are two different plans with different players behind them. I think that the regime purposely combines these threats, passing them off as one, in order to justify their overreaction in issuing Proclamation 1017 and the continued repression.

2. While there are many leftist groups opposing Gloria M. Arroyo, the regime intentionally links the armed CPP-NPA extreme Left with these civil society groups. This adds fuel to most Filipino’s knee-jerk panic over anything that hints of Communism. Majority of Filipinos do not realize that most of the leftist groups that operate legally are espousing ideas that are also accepted in many Western democracies and have been integrated into Western government policies. In truth, most of those who are considered Left are not communists. But most Filipinos do not know this and the Arroyo regime, just like the Marcos regime before it, capitalized on this ignorance.

3. Just as the regime points to all Leftists as Communists, they also attempt to make it appear that all military actions are coups. The Feb. 24 planned military action was not a coup, and it had nothing to do with the CPP-NPA. Generals Generoso Senga and Hermogenes Esperon Jr. have confirmed this.

The Feb. 24 plan was a "non-coup" and if ever the proponents of it are guilty of something, then it is of non-coup plotting.

The Feb. 24 plan had all the features of the EDSA People Power II script that placed Gloria M. Arroyo in Malacañang and was ruled then as constitutional. The Feb. 24 plan called for civil society groups and the military to converge at the EDSA Shrine and there the military would announce their withdrawal of support for Gloria M. Arroyo.

The same process was legal when it was used on Jan. 21, 2001, to install Gloria M. Arroyo as president. But the same process is now considered illegal when it was to be used last Feb. 24 to remove her.





Copyright 2006 INQ7.net. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





Lacson confirms offers to join transition body

First posted 04:24am (Mla time) Mar 13, 2006
By TJ Burgonio
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on page A2 of the Mar. 13, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


OPPOSITION Senator Panfilo Lacson yesterday confirmed he was asked to be part of the transition council that would have run the government immediately after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was ousted from power.

But Lacson said that he rebuffed the offers which were made by four separate groups, including one from the military.

"It's true I was approached by certain groups interested in ousting GMA (Ms Arroyo) to be part of a transition council, but I declined," he said in an interview.

According to Lacson, the groups from different sectors made the overtures between late October last year and early February this year. The last offer was for him to head the council, he said.

Lacson, who ran a well-oiled presidential campaign but lost to Ms Arroyo in the 2004 elections, said he consistently rejected the overtures because, in his view, such a council was "doomed to fail."

"In my book, it will fail. I don't want to be part of a failing group. That's what I told them," he said.

With its members coming from a broad spectrum of society, the council would be locked up in debates on individual concerns rather than focused on gut issues like reforms in government, Lacson recalled telling the groups.

"I argued that a council running the government would simply not work. It would not be better than a debating club continuously arguing on how to resolve even the most minor issues," he said.

The council, to be composed of 15 members at most, was supposed to rule for "1,000 days" or shorter, the senator said, quoting the groups' proposals.

Inquirer sources earlier disclosed that Lacson was among the personalities considered to be part of a transition government after Ms Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro shall have been toppled and until snap elections were called.

The others were AFP Chief of Staff General Generoso Senga, former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, former Senator Gregorio Honasan, defeated presidential candidate Brother Eddie Villanueva and former Executive Secretary Renato de Villa.

The formation of the council was supposed to follow the planned withdrawal of support from the administration by key military officials on Feb. 24 and the subsequent resignation of Ms Arroyo and De Castro.





Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





Lacson, Villanueva confirm report on transition council

First posted 02:50am (Mla time) Mar 15, 2006
By Philip C. Tubeza, Christian V. Esguerra
Inquirer



Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the Mar. 15, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


OPPOSITION Senator Panfilo Lacson yesterday confirmed an Inquirer report that a group of military officers had asked him to join a transition council that would have taken over President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's administration, but said he turned down the offer.

Lacson told the Inquirer that he turned it down, not because becoming a member of the council would have prevented him from running should a "snap" election be held, but because such a body could not "run the country effectively."

"It would be reduced to a debating club," he said. "Even in the most minor issue, the council members would have to first consult their groups before making a decision. And in the first place, how can [the military officers] assume that power will be given to them [later]?"

For his part, Brother Eddie Villanueva, leader of the Jesus Is Lord (JIL) Movement, said certain military officers had invited him to sit in a planned "caretaker government" or transition council.

The invitation was aired in a series of meetings from October 2005 to January this year, he said.

Villanueva, who lost in the 2004 presidential election, said he politely declined the offer of a seat in the council each time it was made.

For one, he said, he feared that the military officers in the council would be "intoxicated with power" and set up a military junta a la Burma (Myanmar).

For another, he said, it appeared to him that the plan was unclear, if not in disarray.

"I saw that it wasn't heading anywhere," Villanueva told the Inquirer yesterday. "My feeling was that there's no unity among the various opposition groups. Many, but not all, wanted to be the leader."


'They're many' in AFP

Lacson said the military officers were one of "at least four groups" that had sought his opinion on joining a transition council.

Two weeks after the purported coup plot of Feb. 24, he said, there was still "very widespread" restiveness in the Armed Forces, with the officers who spoke with him still undetected despite the ongoing crackdown.

"They're still inside and they're many. Maybe they are the residual threats that [Ms Arroyo has been mentioning]," said Lacson, a former Philippine National Police chief and a 1971 graduate of the Philippine Military Academy.

"[If the administration] sleeps on the job, [it] might be surprised that the restiveness is still very widespread. It's not yet over," he said.

Lacson said the restive military men were mostly "mid-level and junior officers."

"Their basic complaint is election cheating. They said the AFP was used during the elections, and they were asking why the generals involved were promoted while those who refused [to take part] were punished," he said.

Lacson said these officers had "first-hand" information about election cheating because some of them were "offered money" to participate in the alleged fraud, "but they refused."


Seizing power

While the major complaint of the officers was the alleged use of the AFP in election fraud, they have varying ideas on how to resolve the crisis and "how to go about seizing power," Lacson said.

He said that while some of them wanted to institute reforms only within the AFP, others wanted a hand in reforming political institutions should they come to power.

More ominously, Lacson said, some officers have "given up on politicians" because of what happened after the 2001 uprising that put Ms Arroyo in Malacañang.

He added: "They're asking, 'Why give power to politicians after what happened in 2001?' They feel that they were had. They turned over power to politicians, but nothing happened.

"What happened to [the reforms in] the AFP? Nothing."


Uncoordinated efforts

Villanueva said he still was not sold on the idea of allowing Ms Arroyo to complete her term amid allegations that she cheated in the 2004 presidential election.

He said "a simple yet seemingly elusive solution" was to have a clean and credible "snap" election, and for the winner to be supported by all.

"Many believe that Ms Arroyo's victory is a product of a stolen election so she doesn't enjoy a genuine mandate," Villanueva said. "The solution is to bring back to the Filipino people the right to choose their own leaders."

During the three-month period that several groups met with him, all aspired to end the political crisis, Villanueva said.

He said it appeared to him that such efforts were not coordinated but were coming from various opposition groups, including "8 to 10" active and retired military officials, such as a general and a colonel.

Villanueva said these military men had "no plan to sit in the caretaker government" because they knew that they had "no competence to manage the government."

He said the plan was to seize power from the Arroyo administration and eventually transfer it to civilian authority.


60, 90, 1,000 days

Villanueva said the groups' proposals for the holding of a "snap" election ranged from 60 to 90 to 1,000 days after Ms Arroyo's ouster.

There was also a commitment that whoever would sit in the council would be barred from running "in the next immediate election," he said.

Still, Villanueva declined: "I didn't want to be dragged into something that might unwittingly lead to bloodshed. I didn't want to sin before God."

He said the invitations he had received were ostensibly part of an effort to consolidate the groups and sectors seeking Ms Arroyo's ouster.

He was also an attractive choice for an ally, given that he commands the support of the three-million-strong JIL movement, the Bangon Pilipinas party and the Philippines for Jesus Coalition Movement, a network of around 4,000 born-again churches.

Villanueva said he had told the groups of his reservation that a "snap" election might not be forthcoming once they had wrested power.

He said he told them: "What guarantee do we have that there would be genuine change, that we would return to constitutional democracy? Who are these people who will sit in the caretaker government? Are they incorruptible and of proven integrity?"


Whole story

Malacañang is confident that once the "whole story" of the purported coup plot of Feb. 24 is revealed, the public will appreciate why Ms Arroyo declared a state of national emergency.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Ms Arroyo was standing by Presidential Proclamation No. 1017 which, the opposition and legal experts had said, lacked factual basis for the grant of emergency powers to make warrantless arrests and crack down on a critical newspaper.

"We respect what people have to say about the declaration of the state of emergency, but we are certain that as the whole story unfolds about the broad conspiracy to tear down the democratic government, they will understand that the President acted just in time and in commensurate measure in the interest of national security and stability," Bunye said.

He urged the people to "trust our system of laws and the institutions that continue to serve them with complete sincerity and concern for their welfare." With a report from Gil Cabacungan Jr.





Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.