Marcos redux

 

 

Noted Filipino historian Teodoro Agoncillo once wrote that the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II caused a big spike in crimes. Due to the harshness of the economic conditions, many Filipinos were driven to criminal activities, which continued even with the restoration of the Commonwealth government and the inauguration of the Republic in 1946.

 

Agoncillo observed that “morality had gone down since many people did not care whether they violated the laws of the country provided they earned enough money. Also, relatives and friends of unscrupulous politicians were not afraid to commit crimes because they knew their political-friends would protect them.”

 

When Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, it was the same lame excuse that he used to justify his decision – rise in criminality including crimes of rebellion and insurrection. The promise of the New Society that Marcos peddled around, however, did not solve or mitigate the upswing in criminality. Instead, criminal behaviour was accelerated by his own dictatorship and crimes against the people. He sheltered and protected his business cronies from prosecution of the law so they prospered at the same time that his family amassed their stolen wealth.

Philippine Independence Day as traditionally celebrated on June 12.

Modern-day Philippine independence should be celebrated from the day the Marcos dictatorship ended, which seems to offer a better and clearer perspective of national freedom. Never mind the 1898 declaration of Philippine Independence that was outlived by American colonization at the turn of the 20th century. Besides being a mere aspirational quest for self-determination, the Philippines never really became independent after the Philippine-American War nor during the brief Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945.

 

Ferdinand Marcos disturbed the peace of the independence years from 1946 to 1972 with his dictatorial rule, which, as a matter of historical fact, was merely a period of nominal independence from American colonial rule.

 

To reckon our independence from the time Marcos was forced out of Malacañang is indeed a more significant celebration of the triumph of people power. It also sends a strong message to the Marcos loyalists that their political era is just a sad chapter in Philippine history, a miserable interregnum that brought large-scale oppression of civil liberties and gave almost a license for those involved with the dictatorship to ransack the country of its wealth with impunity.

 

If history is to be taught so that important lessons can be learned, we should start teaching our children that modern-day Philippine independence commenced from the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship until democracy was restored in 1987. It may not be the ideal democracy the people wanted, but it was the stepping stone of our country’s struggle for genuine political and economic rights.

 

The former enemies of Philippine society are now resurrecting the bankrupt ideals of the new society under Marcos. They are attempting to rewrite history to portray Marcos as a benevolent dictator who cared for the Filipino masses, who built more roads and bridges, hospitals, schools, and centres of culture and entertainment than any of his predecessors and successors combined. As if his achievements in concrete are the best measure of his greatness, when the truth is, these infrastructure projects bound our people with debts so enormous that people wallowed in poverty not only during his presidency and continue to do so to this day.

 

They are spreading the big lie that Marcos instilled discipline and a genuine respect for the law when the honest truth is that his cronies and friends ignored the law for their own personal benefit without fear of apprehension. Those who opposed his government became victims of repression.

 

They crow about his oratorical skills and decisiveness compared to the bungling incumbent in Malacañang who could not even stand up against his fellow leaders in the region. That he would never have allowed our neighbours to bully us just because we are a smaller nation.

 

The biggest enemy our country has faced in its struggle for independence was not its colonizers, whether it was Spain, the United States or Japan. Its biggest enemy was within and one of its own.

A caricature of former president Ferdinand E. Marcos, first and only
dictator of the Philippines, 1973 to 1986.

An American writer visiting the Philippines during the early period of struggle against martial law in 1984 interviewed a plantation owner in Mindanao who happened to be a former supporter of Marcos. The plantation owner said: “The most humiliating thing about dictatorship is not the repression; it is that you wind up a collaborator yourself. It all seems so easy at first. You smile; you say nothing; you give money when they ask for it. Then something happens that makes you see the truth. I realized three things: that the whole Marcos system was rotten, that I was as much a part of the system as any soldier or spy, and that enough was enough. I had to do something.”

 

Many others have suffered their private humiliation at the hands of Marcos and his agents and turned their fear into loathing the government. That kind of outrage was enough to galvanize an entire nation, to transform the private humiliations of millions into a national upheaval of defiance and pride. That moment happened when millions marched on EDSA to demand Marcos to step down, braving a convoy of soldiers and tanks and aircraft hovering above. That should be the day we should commemorate our independence.

 

But instead, we choose to continue to celebrate our independence from Spain, reducing the rite into a symbol without substance and meaning. We stage marches and parades, hold festivities like fiestas and beauty pageants, which do not give full meaning and significance to our celebration.

 

To many of us, our independence day celebration has become shallow and empty. The declaration of independence by our revolutionary heroes in Kawit was not the culmination of our national struggle for self-determination. American colonization made it impossible for us to be a free nation. Japan gave us “independence” when its army drove the Americans to win the sympathy of Filipinos, to show that they were better than the Americans. When the Americans finally granted our independence in 1946, they tied us to a string of dependency that allowed them full rights to exploit our natural resources and used our waters for their military bases.

 

Then Ferdinand Marcos took our freedoms away in 1972. He was worse than a colonial ruler or a modern-day monarch. When the people drove him away to the islands of Hawaii in 1986, it marked the first time that we were free again to restore our democratic rights. But the nature of politics that we inherited from the colonial past and the tight control of the economy by our oligarchic elite remain the biggest stumbling blocks to the full realization of our democracy.

 

We may not be totally free as what a genuinely free society should be. But at least, we should be free to choose a date when to celebrate this freedom, a time to remind us that our freedoms are still fragile, that we cannot be complacent in the face of a significant threat from collaborators of the Marcos dictatorship in our midst to attempt a comeback.

 

Our history has been hitherto a history of one oppression after the other. Rizal’s death transformed him into a national hero and triggered a rebellion against the Spanish autocracy. Two years after Rizal's execution, the Spanish-American War broke out, and U.S. forces quickly ended more than 300 years of Spanish rule in the islands.

 

The Americans proclaimed themselves liberators; they turned out to be oppressors. After having conquered the Philippines, the United States decided it had no stomach for empire. In 1935, the islands were granted commonwealth status, and the United States promised the Filipinos independence within ten years. The Japanese, too, said they came as liberators when they invaded the Philippines in 1941. Finally, we became an independent republic in 1946, only to be shattered once again in 1972.

 

Ferdinand Marcos destroyed the country’s democratic institutions. But then Marcos was repeating an old Philippine pattern. Proven or not as to his complicity with the assassination of Benigno Aquino, he made possible the rise of another nationalist icon like Rizal that would be responsible for inspiring mass demonstrations and protests leading to his downfall in 1986.

 

Now the stirrings of a comeback of the Marcos era are just beginning. Our national independence is being threatened again.

 

Never again, we should say to this cabal of Marcos loyalists. What better time is there to express our collective will as a nation but during this independence day celebration.

Measuring greatness

 

 

In his book, King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership, University of Kentucky emeritus professor Arnold M. Ludwig studied virtually all the rulers in the world during the previous century who had a major impact on their countries, as well as those who had not. Ludwig observed that whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, people eventually want one person at the helm whom they can identify as their leader.

 

There is nothing fanciful in putting so much importance to a single leader. Ludwig, who is a psychiatrist by profession, asserts that this seems biologically and psychologically rooted in our being. “It is part of the genetic blueprint that governs our lives,” Ludwig writes.

Professor Arnold M. Ludwig in his book, King of the Mountain, writes that leaders
of nations tend to act like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern,
and rule.

We probably inherit the desire for a single ruler or leader from the apes who could be man’s closest relative in his evolution. In his classical study of mountain gorillas, G. B. Schaller has demonstrated the central role of the leader in the gorilla community, and the importance of a leader to mountain gorillas also applies to humans.

 

We have just gone through another election in the Philippines and, by the looks of it, people are already speculating who would possibly run for president in 2016 when President Noynoy Aquino steps down. At this early stage, a rematch is shaping up between the frontrunners, incumbent vice-president Jejomar “Jojo” Binay against President Aquino’s anointed heir apparent and losing running mate in the 2011 presidential elections, Mar Roxas.

 

But another big name from the past looms large in the horizon. Bongbong Marcos, now a senator of the Republic and the only son of the previous dictator and his namesake, has also been the subject of speculations on presidential wannabes. Whether Ferdinand Marcos, the son, also rises on the political chain has already aroused some serious and emotional debate on the legacy of his father’s presidency.

 

Ferdinand Marcos, the senior, was president of the Philippines from 1965 until 1986, when the first so-called EDSA People Power Revolution toppled him and forced him to go on exile in the United States. The older Marcos ruled with an iron fist, declared martial law when he could not legally run for a third term as president until he could install what he conveniently called a regime of “constitutional authoritarianism” under the auspices of a New Society.

 

It appeared to be the trend that had swept the region during his time that Ferdinand Marcos took advantage in establishing a government based on authoritarian rule. Other countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand were all being governed by one-man rule.

 

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s prime minister for thirty-one years and whom many have considered a great leader and a paragon for others to emulate, had been successful in overseeing its separation from Malaysia in 1965. Lee was able to transform the new nation from an underdeveloped colonial outpost of the British Empire despite its lack of natural resources into a “First World” Asian Tiger. Compared with the older Marcos, Lee’s dictatorial methods appeared benign and less contemptible because of his ability and success in tending to the economic welfare of his subjects.

 

What others didn’t know, however, as Ludwig described in King of the Mountain, was Lee believed that governing a nation was too important to be left to the uninformed and ignorant populace. Lee didn’t buy into the conventional notion that too much powers corrupted leaders. Instead, he subscribed to the reverse notion that ordinary people could not be entrusted with powers because it corrupted their judgment as voters.

 

Despite ushering Singapore to prosperity in three decades, Lee’s legacy has been tainted by authoritarian rule and intolerance of dissent. He would sue political opponents and newspapers who expressed an unfavourable opinion of his government. One of Lee's abiding beliefs has been in the effectiveness of corporal punishment in the form of caning which he has utilized in a range of crimes. Lee also introduced caning in the Singapore Armed Forces, and Singapore is one of the few countries in the world where corporal punishment is an official penalty in military discipline.

 

While Lee succeeded as an authoritarian ruler, Ferdinand Marcos was a dismal failure, not due to his lack of stomach for dictatorship but because of runaway crony capitalism, wanton government corruption, and widespread human rights abuses that reached a tipping point in the EDSA People Power Revolution in 1986. It’s true that Marcos built more infrastructure like highways, hospitals and schools than his predecessors and successors combined, but that is not a true measure of greatness. We cannot certainly ascribe the genuine greatness of leaders like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi to the number of construction projects or lack of it that they pursued and forget the lofty and noble ideals they fought for.

 

To finance his grandiose economic development projects, Marcos mortgaged the country for large amounts of loans from international lenders. The country’s external debt ballooned from $360 million (US) in 1962 to more than $28 billion in 1986, with a sizable amount going to the Marcos family and his business cronies. These loans were assumed by the government and are still being serviced by taxpayers up to today and several generations into the future.
 

Known as the conjugal dictatorship, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda,
ruled over the Philippines from 1965 to 1986.

In the 2004 Global Transparency Report, Marcos appeared in the list of the World's Most Corrupt Leaders, ranking second behind the late President of Indonesia, Suharto. Marcos was said to have amassed between $5 billion to $10 billion in his 21 years as president of the Philippines.

 

In the face of an imminent candidacy of Ferdinand Marcos, the son, for the presidency of the Philippines in either 2016 or 2022, there are now attempts toward a revisionist interpretation of the Marcos years in power and the impact of his vision of a New Society. All this talk about how great the presidency of Ferdinand the elder is obviously aimed in rehabilitating the Marcos name and portraying him as a benevolent autocrat who made the country great again. This would pave the way for the popular election of Ferdinand the younger when his time comes up in 3 or 6 years.

 

There is still a legion of Marcos followers who are in awe and greatly impressed by the so-called achievements of the Marcos presidency, especially when they compare him to his mediocre and middling successors. These Marcos diehard loyalists, however, refuse to accept that the damage Marcos had inflicted on the country is still very much with us.

 

Ludwig wrote that the problem in judging the political genius of rulers is knowing what they should get credit for. It is very difficult to judge the merits of one’s presidency even if we can identify the achievements that bear their personal stamp – laws, construction projects, executive decisions, or economic policies, for example.

 

Unlike the creative works of artists, we can evaluate them by their originality, compositional structure, narrative quality, usefulness, beauty or universal appeal. The validity of scientific theories can be tested through experiments. Or we can measure the performance of athletes by their times, distances or scores, or the skill of surgeons in mortality rates.

 

There are no universally agreed-upon ways to assess the accomplishments of rulers. People of different political persuasions often interpret the results of these policies differently. Even if they agree at one point, they may disagree at another, which has been the crux of debate among intelligent members of a social and political forum that I know. Up till now they are still debating whether Ferdinand Marcos is the greatest president the Philippines has ever had. Edifices vs. democratic governance: which is a full measure of success?

 

According to Professor Ludwig, people may choose to ignore their animal heritage by believing their behaviour is rational and socially purposeful, all of which they would account to the fact of being human. But people also masticate, fornicate, and procreate, much as chimps do. Thus, there is no cause for people to get upset if “they learn that they act like other primates when they politically agitate, debate, abdicate, placate, and administrate, too,” says Ludwig.

 

If there’s any consolation, the results of Ludwig's eighteen-year study suggest that leaders of nations tend to act remarkably like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern, and rule. That perhaps would explain in full what the legacy of Ferdinand Marcos is all about.

Saving face

 

 

The Filipinos’ knack to poke fun at themselves is beyond belief. Self-ridicule seems almost a justification for all and everything, whether it’s for misery or bliss.

 

We indict ourselves for our inability to follow the “rule of law” as the rationale for where we are now as a society or a nation, perpetually struggling to move up as others have already left us in the dust. As one blogger wrote: “Filipinos cannot progress if they cannot follow even simple guidelines.”

 

Where is the truism in this?

 

Yet, traditional Filipino culture reflects an enduring and time-honoured reverence for family values such as respect for elders and people in authority, in the spirit of bayanihan (cooperation), and the fruits of hard work. The Christian faith has also taught Filipinos to be eternally hopeful and to show their faith not only in the observation of church rituals but also in helping and serving others in need.

Manila compared to "gates of hell" by American author, Dan Brown.

With respect to laws, Filipinos have always lived under a regime of a law of rules since time immemorial, whether in the larger and narrower sense of the law as it relates to limits and sanctions on social and individual behaviour. Whatever violations or aberrations exist either as often or once in a while, these are common occurrences that are not solely endemic to Filipinos. After all, the crime rate in the Philippines is still lower than in Chicago or Detroit, for example. Or the chances of getting killed by guns are higher in Iraq or Afghanistan or even in the U.S. than in the Philippines.

 

Filipinos, in general, are slow to anger and not too easy to be aroused to rebel against their government to seek redress for grievances even if these would be sufficient to stir a civil war or widespread rioting in other societies. That despite corruption in government and dishonesty of its elected officials, Filipinos have kept their trust in their political system and continued to go through the periodic rituals of national and local elections even though these have not benefited them directly through greater access to social services such as education and health or to opportunities for a better life.

 

Where else in the whole world could we find people who are as easygoing as Filipinos, as if their social problems don’t really matter? Or where the capital city is described by a foreign writer like the gates of hell and yet would accept it as a matter of fact, not pure fiction, and even make fun of it? Or where the incompetence of their politicians is vividly displayed on television in competition with regular soaps but even this would not raise hackles enough to jolt the entire country?

 

Or where could you find various forums or discussion groups, whether on Facebook and other forms of social media, which provide an enlightened free-wheeling exchange of opinions on what ails the nation – from lack of sanitation and sewage system to urban planning? Or where else could you find so many pundits and newspaper columnists who never run out of ideas on how to run the government or change society in general?

 

Our society as a whole seems to have been infected by the virus of intellectualism that every hub where people gather or chat can boast of a discussion group bursting with good ideas.

 

Our country is an oddity in itself, an abnormal exception to the rule. It is not because Filipinos cannot follow guidelines or subject themselves to the grand imperial reign of the rule of law. But perhaps, because we have so much of these rules already, that we have been paralyzed to suffer in silence and acquiescence. Or is it simply, we are just a people who love to talk, talk, talk.

 

Because we love to talk, we also love to denigrate ourselves. We enjoy exposing our frailties and shortcomings; we don’t mind if foreigners like the writer Dan Brown would paint an ugly picture of our capital city, or Hollywood actors such as Claire Danes could dismiss Manila as “just f--king smelled of cockroaches,” or in more graphic terms, “There's no sewage system in Manila, and people have nothing there. People with, like, no arms, no legs, no eyes, no teeth.... Rats were everywhere.”

 

Our martyr complex numbs us to embrace these condescending remarks as the harsh reality of our fair city and forget that such horrible characterizations could also apply to other cities of the world, not just to us. But while other societies are apt to revolt, Filipinos would just shrug their shoulders and accept their travails as ordinary humdrum occurrences. If Manila were the gates to hell, then everyone passes through its gates before entering the afterlife.

 

Kidding aside, our country has progressed since we deposed that dictator Ferdinand Marcos. That’s a fact, not fiction. But not very much, though. The martial law years put our country back in the throes of the dark ages and we have not fully recovered from our false attraction for a strong leader. Little did we know that a leader could only be as strong as the people like them to be.

 

In 1987, the country ratified an important piece of document, a body of rules we ought to follow as a nation, which we call our Constitution. In this document, safeguards against a dictatorship or a return to an oppressive system of government were installed which are popularly known as the democratic provisions of the Constitution.

 

If we want change, we don’t have to start big, in the hopes that if we are successful, the many little things that we nitpick and grumble about daily will disappear. Neither do we have to be too ambitious.

 

Let’s just start with the basics. With what we have right now. Yes, with these so-called democratic provisions and see how far we could go. After all, it’s been 26 years since the 1987 Constitution was ratified and none of these so-called democratic provisions ever saw the light of day in the form of practical pieces of legislation.

 

What are these democratic provisions of the 1987 Constitution?

 

The Constitution speaks of prohibition against political dynasties in Section 26, Article II. There has been no successful initiative in Congress to define and implement this prohibition against political dynasties so far but it has been a hot political topic every election year.

 

Article 5 of Article VI provides for a party-list representation, a mechanism of proportional representation in the election of representatives to the House of Representatives from marginalized or underrepresented sectors of society. Although this provision has been implemented as early as the May 14, 2001 elections, the party-list law is so murky and unclear that its implementation by Comelec is far from being adequate and effective or questionable if it truly serves the mandate under the Constitution.

 

A system of initiative and referendum is provided under Section 32, Article VI whereby the people can directly propose and enact laws or approve or reject any act or law passed by Congress. This provision apparently recognizes the effectiveness of referendum in advanced democracies, but so far, this remains untouched and has not been translated into law.

 

Another popular innovation in advanced democracies—a mechanism of recall—found its way in the 1987 Constitution, Section 3, Article X, but is only applicable to local government-elected officials. It is a positive step towards democratization of local politics but Congress has remained silent or simply uninterested in enacting an enabling law.

 

Lastly, and this has been controversial and has raised several questions before the Supreme Court, the 1987 Constitution in Section 2, Article XVII has allowed for amendments of the Constitution through a people’s initiative, in addition to calling a constitutional convention or holding a constituent assembly.

 

All these provisions are in the Constitution. They are there to recognize and uphold the bedrock democratic principle of government that sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them, as declared under Section 1, Article II of the Constitution.

 

If President Noynoy Aquino is r-e-a-l-l-y serious about his presidency and historical legacy, he could direct his attention to these democratic provisions in the Constitution for the remainder of his term. The demand and public clamour already exists, but our leaders in Congress have remained deaf or intentionally playing dumb to listen.

Philippine President Noynoy Aquino ponders about the legacy
of his presidency.

It was during President Cory Aquino’s tenure that the 1987 Constitution was ratified, an important milestone in the country’s history. The country had just been liberated and was rising from the ashes of repression during the martial law years. President Noynoy Aquino, the son, could now complete the country’s ultimate return to democracy, if only he has the political will to do so. Completing his mother’s greatest legacy could be a crowning achievement of his presidency rather than the vacuous “daang matuwid” philosophy of government he’s been selling from day one.

 

If nothing of this sort happens, then the Filipino people should put President Aquino on notice, that they are seceding from the republic and forming a new government. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is about to form their own Bangsamoro nation, thanks to President Aquino, so why can’t the people do just the same? If nothing happens, we might as well all head to the hills and join the rebels.

 

President Noynoy Aquino can still save his derrière by acting as a true leader now—meaning, TODAY.

America’s arrogance

 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has remained the last one standing among the world’s superpowers. The U.S. is still in a class of its own, economically and militarily. Though more powerful than ever, the U.S. has never been more reviled however.

 

Majority of the people in the Middle East, for example, believe the U.S. war against Islamic terrorism is in fact meant to secure oil or even achieve world domination. The American invasion of Iraq and the consequent grand plan to promote freedom and establish democracy has long been suspected by other countries, including America’s allies, as a convenient smokescreen to control Iraq’s oil resources.

 

Former U.S. President George W. Bush used to say “that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom.” But that is not true. People in the world have always admired the American free society. Everyone wants to be in America as the song suggests in West Side Story. What they don’t like is American arrogance and indifference to world opinion that is inherent in so much of its foreign policy, and which some of the time is also hypocritical and unjust.

 

This is not just a modern-day gripe against America. Early on during the 1950s to the 1960s, it is exactly how countries in Latin America had felt when their people were treated by Gringos sent to oversee American banana plantations or other American interests. There was hostility everywhere against the Americans – not just because of the size, wealth and good fortune of the United States. D. H. Radler called this the American talent for offending people in his article in the 1961 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

 

“With few exceptions, they (Americans) usually manage to make enemies instead of friends,” Radler wrote. “We do this acting as if we are better than anyone else,” he added.

 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is one fine example of American arrogance. He wanted President Barack Obama to be more bellicose in showing outrage and condemning the recent attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and to stop apologizing to the perpetrators of the violence that killed an American ambassador and three of his staff. The “apologizing” stuff was a misleading staple of the Romney political campaign attack for nowhere did Obama apologize for the Libyan incident or in any of his foreign policy remarks in the past.

Violent Muslim demonstrations have spread in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia over film
mocking Islam and its Prophet Mohammed. Photo by Abd Raouf/Associated Press.
Click link to view "Martin Luther King Jr.'s Speech About America's Arrogance,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY82kmlaWH8

Romney like all recent Republican presidential wannabes seems to suffer from the “Tolstoy syndrome.” In the 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Scott Norton described this group of war-hungry individuals as claiming to have a vision but is in fact blind. “They think they know all the answers, so they neither see nor listen. And the consequences of their misrule have been staggering,” Norton wrote. Norton was criticizing the Bush war in Iraq at that time and the belligerent positions of the Republican presidential primary aspirants over jihadist extremism, from the hawkish John McCain to the auditioning fear monger-in-chief Rudy Giuliani.

 

Fareed Zakaria of Time Magazine wrote that the problem with America today is not because it is too strong. But rather the U.S. is seen as too arrogant, uncaring and insensitive. There is a popular feeling that the United States is too obsessed with its own notions of terrorism and has stopped listening to the rest of the world.

 

Our recollection of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq can’t be effaced from our memory during an interview of then Vice President Cheney by ABC News’s Good Morning America. Cheney was reminded that the American public, by a margin of two-to-one, opposed the war in Iraq. Showing his arrogant indifference, Cheney responded, “So?”

 

Mitt Romney’s criticism of Obama’s response to the Libyan incident is not so much different from his friends in the Republican Party. It is perfect arrogance, plain and simple. When criticized afterwards for his inept remarks, Romney would evade very serious question and let his spinmeisters repair the obvious damage by referring to the overall weakness in Obama’s Middle East policy, a tenuous criticism as well.

 

There have always been extremists in the Middle East, before and after the Arab Spring revolution that toppled three long and brutal dictatorships. Through foreign aid, the United States has attached strings to countries that will embrace American values, and reward them for protecting political and religious freedom. But much of the U.S. foreign assistance was either hijacked by the ruling despots to build their personal cache or spent in strengthening their military might. This includes humanitarian aid which hardly went to the people who were direly in need of assistance such as food, water and medicine.

 

To most Arabs, particularly among the youth, the appeal of fundamentalist Islam was intoxicating. Religion became a powerful medium to express their anti-American sentiment. While there was love-hate relationship between these young Arabs and the United States, nevertheless they have also embraced even some American political ideals of liberty and democracy, which became hugely popular during the tumultuous Arab Spring uprising. Even the former radical Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has mellowed and adopted the democratic promise of parliamentary reforms over continuing their violent confrontation with the state. The ouster of Gaddafi was a boon to America for it gave the flicker of hope that democracy was possible in Libya.

Anti-American demonstrations by Muslims have caught fire after killing of
American Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya. Photo by
Hatem Moussa/Associated Press.

 Writing for The Independent, Robert Fisk wrote that “With the help of our wonderful new technology, it only takes a couple of loonies to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world within seconds.” Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his diplomat colleagues in Benghazi have paid the price for those provocateurs for choosing to raise the ire of the Muslim world through a deliberately abusive film that denigrated Islam’s prophet. That Muslims around the world are so culturally averse to criticism of their religion is not the issue. It is not the Muslim religion that is on trial, but to allow the work of some crackpot to be used by extremists to light up the flames of anti-Western sentiment just crosses the line.

 

Sometimes America’s arrogance in international relations has also rubbed off on the minds of a few zealots who would behave like they have been bestowed with America’s power, like its allies in Southeast Asia. The Philippine government, for one, has taken the high road in pushing its sovereignty claim over territories in the South China Sea by renaming the sea as the West Philippine Sea, delineating the waters and islands in the sea as part of Philippine territory. President Benigno Aquino III and his foreign policy advisers know full well that such a unilateral move could be taken as provocative and not in keeping with its demand for an official code of conduct between the claimant countries. For one thing, the dispute is not about who has sovereignty over the waters, but the land formations over and under the water which are still unresolved.

 

The Philippine government is behaving as arrogantly as the United States which has recently announced its pivot to Asia and the Pacific as the focus of its new foreign policy and military strategy. Part of the new American initiative are basing rights and rotating military presence of U.S. troops in the Philippines, which by all means is a surrender of sovereignty. Has this foreign policy pivot and military realignment by the United States strengthened the defence of the Philippines? Is this what is prompting the Philippines to be more assertive of its claims in the South China Sea (or in the West Philippine Sea as it prefers to call it), having been reassured of U.S. military support?

 

But as it stands, all claimant countries in the South China Sea are on equal footing. No one claim is superior or more valid than the other. If there is a window for a diplomatic solution of the impasse, the Philippines should stop behaving arrogantly like its former colonial master.

Mob rule in disguise

In the February 15th issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, columnist Conrado de Quiros outrightly dismissed as frivolous the growing trepidation that the ongoing Corona impeachment trial in the Senate might bring about a constitutional crisis. “What crisis?” de Quiros wrote.

His argument is very simple. Public opinion cannot be ignored, de Quiros said, because it’s the people who are the foundation of government. The people “are the air the three branches of government breathe.” He concluded his column by saying that “there is no constitutional crisis where there is People Power.”

De Quiros further wrote: “What makes the omission, or exclusion, of the people from all this talk of a constitutional crisis particularly glaring is that we are at the heart of the People Power months. Edsa II took place in January and Edsa I in February. February 25 particularly blazes forth like a huge neon sign in that respect, the date that most embodies or symbolizes People Power. It’s time we flocked once again to the Edsa Shrine, or to Padre Faura, or to the Senate Building, and made our sentiments known. And made our will known. And made our power known.”

Catholic nuns dare soldiers to lay down arms, EDSA Revolution 1986.
Reposted  from Le Montage Photo Courtesy of  princesse_laya.

While de Quiros is right about the people being the true source of political power, he forgot, however, to mention that we also now live in a so-called representative democracy, where the people have transferred their right or power to those they elected through the electoral process. That in making their decisions, our representatives must follow the letter of the law and obey the Constitution, without of course disregarding the weight of public opinion. So if our elected leaders follow the law, then they are presumed to be acting on behalf of the people. And if they don’t, a constitutional crisis is triggered that could lead to a public rebuke of the incumbent government or stir up some militant segments of society to break the impasse by violent means. This is all possible, but de Quiros is invoking people power as the ultimate and only solution, which is messy and chaotic.

What has people power, Philippine-style, really accomplished?

EDSA I brought down a dictatorship and re-installed democratic institutions of government, including the three branches of government we have now, and of course the continuation of oligarchic control of government. EDSA II deposed a corrupt president, but replaced him with a more corrupt one, and of course, perpetuated the rule of oligarchs.

The lives of Filipinos did not change much after both EDSA I and EDSA II. The poor remain stuck in poverty, the economy as whole did not take off and catch up with the economies around us, and corrupt politicians continued to run amuck.

And what will another EDSA People Power accomplish as envisioned by de Quiros? It will destroy the democratic institutions of government that were restored by EDSA I, resulting to the return of authoritarianism where the executive branch or the President and his cabal of advisers will yield uncontested political power. In short, President Noynoy Aquino will tear down everything his mother Cory helped build.

We all know what happened during the martial law regime—civil and political liberties were suppressed, and the oligarchy consolidated its grip on political power and control of the economy. Conrado de Quiros understands this fully well. As a young and brilliant writer, he was a member of the Malacanang think-tank that propped up the New Society under Ferdinand Marcos. He was one of those aspiring writers and artists shepherded by Malacanang to serve the aims of the Marcos repressive government.

Now, de Quiros is at the service of a dictator in the making. In calling for another EDSA uprising, de Quiros is invoking the mob to get out on the streets and push the country into the precipice of another black period in its history.

Tanks roll in during EDSA 1986. Reposted from Le Montage .Photo Courtesy of
princesse_laya. Click link to view "The 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution
is a Big Hoax," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL0lM3abUQE&feature=fvst

Read the following transcript of a conversation recorded on the Internet on February 2010, before the presidential election that catapulted Noynoy Aquino to the presidency (loosely translated from Pilipino):

“You might be eating your own words later. Conrado de Quiros vehemently criticized the Aquinos after the Hacienda incident (referring to the Hacienda Luisita massacre in 2004). But after Cory's death, he was the first to support Noynoy. That’s because it’s easy to criticize even though you lack information. The problem is, you don’t even know the entire story.” [Reply to Prison Break]

“Who knows what Noynoy promised de Quiros when they talked to each other. Maybe he would become press secretary when Noynoy is elected president. You find out the truth in your story which has no value. There’s nothing free anymore today, there is an exchange for de Quiros’ support. It appears you never learned anything.” [Reply to Ellen (Tordesillas) is a moron].

Does it still surprise you why de Quiros is now an avid Noynoy Aquino supporter?

One-hundred-and-seventy-five years ago, in 1837 to be exact, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in his address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, strongly expressed his opposition to mob rule, over the issue of the perpetuation of American institutions.

In his speech, Lincoln reminded his audience that if there was any danger to the established institutions, it would not come from abroad. Lincoln said, “If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

But Lincoln was more worried about the prevailing disregard for law in the country during that time. He was referring to the “growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse-than-savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.” Lincoln, of course, was referring to accounts of outrages committed by mobs from New England to Louisiana which were spreading like wildfire throughout the land.

To dramatize the danger of mobs in many of the states, Lincoln said “the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment, they thus become absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations, and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.”

Because of the growing strength of the mobs, Lincoln admonished that “the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the people.”

How do we fortify against the rule of the mob? Lincoln’s answer is simple.

He said: “Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of ’76 did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honour. Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colours and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”

Abraham Lincoln was echoing the genuine voice of the people, not the foolish idea of a mobocracy as Conrado de Quiros seems to evoke by challenging us to revive the spirit of EDSA I and EDSA II as their anniversaries are bearing upon us.

Whatever the outcome of the Corona impeachment trial, the Filipino people should respect the decision of the senator-judges. Should the Senate finally come to grips with reality that the ongoing impeachment trial is useless and will not bring any good to the nation and decide to put a stop to the charade, so be it. Let no one, including President Noynoy Aquino flaunt the threat of another EDSA revolt every time he senses defeat of his needless assault on the constitutional foundations of our government.