A political prisoner’s song

 

 

For Toni Morrison, an African-American writer and Nobel prize winner for literature, the crucial distinction is not the difference between fact and fiction, but between fact and truth. “Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot,” she writes.

 

History tells us that repressive governments never waver in denying the truth, until they come crushing down in defeat to the forces of change. Wherever there is repression, there is always a cover-up by those who are culpable. The amazing truth is they almost believe their infallibility, that their crimes against the people would never be exposed.

 

Take the case of the state of political prisoners in the Philippines, for example.

 

President Benigno Aquino III has steadfastly maintained that the present government has no official policy on human rights violations. The spokesperson for President Aquino, Edwin Lacierda, speaking on behalf of his boss, said this is so because there are no political prisoners in the Philippines. Remember that this was also the official line of the Marcos dictatorship from 1972 until 1984 when more than 70,000 political prisoners were arbitrarily detained during the martial law period. The same position was duplicated by President Aquino’s predecessors, from his mother Cory Aquino to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KpNCGgv6Uo to view
"Tanikala at Talinhaga (Chained Metaphors), a doucmentary on artist-
political prisoners in the Philippines, featuring the segment on poet
Ericson Acosta.

Denial has always been the customary practice of repressive governments or states that have no respect for human dignity. Argentina, Chile, Cambodia, Burma and other states that went through a period of repressive rule had denied the existence of political prisoners in their countries. To these despotic regimes, there was only one category of prisoners: prisoners held under criminal law.

 

Without charging anyone for complicity with rebellion or treason or for participation in any political activity that opposed the government, these prisoners were held for common crimes such as murder, assault, robbery, kidnapping, illegal possession of firearms, disturbing the peace, and other garden-variety infractions.

 

Karapatan, a human rights non-governmental organization in the Philippines, has found almost 447 documented victims of illegal arrests under the present Aquino government from July 2010 to September 2012. These were farmers and indigenous peoples rounded up by the Philippine military in the fields and forests on the pretext that they were New People’s Army (NPA) soldiers or supporters. During that same period, Karapatan also documented some 401 political prisoners, with 123 persons arrested and detained by the Aquino government.

 

But the Aquino government deemed these individuals as mere common criminals, who committed crimes against the law, and therefore, must be put in prison. So far, from the time martial law was imposed in 1972 until now, those who have opposed or criticized the government of the Philippines, or who might have participated in political activity opposed to the government whether by peaceful means or resistance, could spend time in jail as common criminals. Yet as common criminals, the irony is they are deprived of their right to a speedy trial to which they are entitled under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. In fact, they could be detained for as long as the government wants. After languishing in jail, they are released with the charges against them dropped without going to trial.

 

This was the lasting legacy of martial law under Ferdinand Marcos. A legacy that engendered a culture of impunity by the state – from illegal arrests and detention to torture to forced disappearances and extra-judicial killings. Cases upon cases have been documented by Karapatan and other human rights organizations, yet the government continues to deny that there are political prisoners. Only common criminals, the government insists.

 

Very recently last week, President Noynoy Aquino must have suffered from a change of heart. He ordered the creation of an Inter-Agency Committee (IAC) to handle cases of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other forms of human rights abuses committed under the previous administration. Note that documented cases of abuses and violations of human rights under the Aquino administration are not covered by this new human rights body.

 

But why create this human rights “superbody” in the first place?

 

A month ago in Phnom Penh, leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that included President Aquino adopted a human rights declaration that purportedly would enshrine human right protections for the region’s 600 million people. Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario called it as “a legacy for our children.” Immediately, the ASEAN agreement came under fire from various critics including the United Nations rights chief, Navi Pillay, who asked that the pact be postponed because of concerns that it might undermine universal rights standards by allowing loopholes for governments.

 

This didn’t stop President Aquino from jumping the gun and ordering the creation of his government’s new human rights “superbody.” But here’s the catch. Aquino appointed the heads of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) as members of the Inter-Agency Committee (IAC). How could we then expect the IAC to be an independent body when the chiefs of the AFP and PNP are involved in investigating and resolving cases of human rights violations carried out by their own members? How is this body different from the Melo Commission during the Arroyo administration? Recall that despite evidence pointing to members of the military and the police as perpetrators of human rights violations, the Melo Commission exonerated them of any complicity or responsibility for crimes against human rights.

 

Critics of the ASEAN human rights pact are right in stating that the declaration only lowers human rights standards by creating new loopholes and justifications ASEAN members can use to justify abusing the rights of their citizens. Aquino’s Inter-Agency Committee, other than a mere publicity stunt for the administration’s avowed seriousness in defending human rights, is just another new loophole for the government to absolve the military and the police of abuses and violations of human rights.

 

If President Aquino is truly sincere with his promise three years ago to uphold human rights, he can begin with a declaration of amnesty to all political prisoners who are languishing in various prisons in the country. But first, he must admit that there are political prisoners in the Philippines. The recognition of political prisoners is essential to a democratic and national reconciliation process. Denial of their political status is a denial of their human dignity.

December 3 marks the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners as
detainees around the world raise awareness of their plight and longing for freedom
through poetry reading. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SVLRtgjqrE
to listen  to Anakbayan-Toronto as they read on Radyo Migrante "Awit ng Bilanggong
Politikal/Political Prisoner's Song,"  a poem written by peasant advocate, Axel Pinpin.

Last Monday, December 3, political prisoners from all over the Philippines commemorated the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners with a reading of a poem about the longing for freedom. The poem, “Awit ng Bilanggong Politikal” (Political Prisoner’s Song) was written by Axel Pinpin, a peasant advocate imprisoned during the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. Pinpin was arrested in Tagaytay City along with four others and spent more than two years in prison before being released without trial for alleged crimes.

 

Originally written in Filipino, the poem has been translated in seven languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. Pinpin’s poem was read by political prisoners in Quezon Provincial Jail, Laguna Provincial Jail, Camp Vicente Lim, Batangas Provincial Jail, Bicutan Detention Center, Philippine National Police (PNP) Custodial Center at Camp Crame and other detention facilities in Bicol and Samar. High-profile political prisoners in other countries, including journalist Mumia Ali-Jamal, the Cuban 5, punk band Pussy Riot and Kurdistan revolutionary leader Abdullah Öcalan also joined the poetry reading.

 

Here’s Axel Pinpin’s poem:

 

Ang pader ko’y di lamang malamig at malagkit,

Nakakwadro rin dito ang latay ng pasakit.

Ang sahig ko’y di lamang marumi at maganit,

Nakaratay din dito ang tisikong inip.

Ang rehas ko’y di lamang kalawang ang galis,

Naglangib na rin dito ang paglayang nais.

 

(My wall is not only cold and unkempt,

Framed on it is the welt mark of torment.

My floor is not only dirty and roughly done,

Laid on it is my sick boredom

My prison bars do not only have rust for scabs,

Crusting on it are wounds of longed for freedom.)

 

Wisikan ng tula ang langib ng paglaya!

Wasakin, wasakin ang rehas na sutla!

Wakasan, wakasan ang salot ng pagdusta!

Bumangon sa dilim na ngitngit ang tanglaw!

Banggain, banggain ang pader na ampaw!

Banggain ang karsel na pagtakas ang hiyaw!

 

(Wash with the salve of poems the wounds of freedom!

Bash, bash down the smooth bars of prison!

Smash, and smash down the pestilence of oppression!

Rise, rise up in the night with the raging light!

Break, break down the weak walls of repression!

Fight, fight back incarceration with cries of emancipation!)

Elections not measure of real change

 

 

In his recent column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Conrado de Quiros talked about the wisdom behind universal suffrage. According to de Quiros, had the right to vote been limited to those who have education, we would not have reforms or change, in government or in society at large. “Wealth and power would have remained with the landowners, the slave-owners, the gun-owners, the caciques, the compradors, the owners of fabricas and companias, with no end in sight,” de Quiros wrote.

Election festival in the Philippines. Click link to view "Politics as Entertainment:
Covering the 2010 Philippine elections," a project of the University of the Philippines
Open University, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST39L7jqFg0 

That’s putting too much unnecessary weight on elections being the most predominant feature of Western democracy. We have often heard American politicians pontificate that the United States should spread the concept of free elections in countries where democracy has not yet gained its foothold. As if elections were the only thing that matters in a democracy.

 

Before elections became fashionable, political reforms or social change, as history would tell us, was only achievable through the barrel of a gun, not by the ballot box. The revolutions in France and America and the U.S. civil war brought about radical changes that have become the bedrock of their democracies, and models for the rest of the world to adopt. New independent republics were born through people’s armed uprisings against their colonizers or despotic rulers. Wealth and power, in the political and economic sense turned to be more easily redistributable once revolutions changed societies and restructured the ordering of social relations.

 

But of course, as nations became more civilized, the rule of law has been established as the foundation of governance, for the majority of countries that have opted for the democratic system. So we have elections to select our leaders and representatives, and this process constitutes the hallmark of our democratic government.

 

Whether modern-day elections continue to serve the purpose of achieving great political and social reforms remain questionable, however, or at least dependent on how the process is put into practice. The gruesome Maguindanao massacre on November 23, 2009, that was perpetrated by the Ampatuan clan is a grim reminder of how political warlords could subvert the electoral process by means of their private armies, wealth and power. That this kind of aberration in a democracy had actually happened and its recurrence still threaten the so-called free electoral process in the Philippines only shows that elections are a double-edged knife, that it could be both a good or bad thing depending on how it is used.



The massacre of 34 journalists in Maguindanao in November 2009 shocked the
world. What really happened that day; why has so little light been shed on the
killings? Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dbvgyS6dms to view
"Turning a Blind Eye -- Philippines."

It was in this context that Senator Miriam Santiago made her sardonic commentary on Filipino voters in a talk before a Manila university which then became the subject of Mr. de Quiros’s column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Senator Santiago did not mince her words when she said that majority of Filipinos are “not educated for voting.” That majority of candidates are “not educated for serving” too, she added. The lady senator gave the example of movie stars getting elected in Congress because of the “ignorance of the Filipino electorate.”

 

Senator Santiago, however, was wrong to ridicule the Filipino masses for being not educated (or schooled, perhaps) for voting, which Mr. de Quiros rightfully debunked. But if Senator Santiago was referring to a level of education (completion of college education perhaps) which she thought every Filipino voter must have achieved before being allowed to exercise the right to vote, then, she could probably be right. With the pervasive level of poverty in the Philippines, way more than a majority of the population have not reached tertiary education or have completed at least a secondary education. But criticizing them for not knowing how to vote only reveals how ignorant even a highly-educated senator like Miriam Santiago could be in appreciating the limits of the electoral process.

 

The right to choose leaders or representatives in government is not predicated on one’s possession of higher education. If the right to vote is inherent in a democracy, it should be given to all those who have earned that right, regardless of whether a voter is a moron or an intellectual. Every citizen of voting age is a member of a democratic society and should be given the right to exercise the right to choose his or her leaders or representatives in Congress. Attainment of legal age and residence should be enough to qualify a citizen to the right to a democratic vote, all other factors are irrelevant.

 

This talk about Filipinos not being educated enough to vote is akin to the concept of voter suppression, or disenfranchisement. It has happened during the recent U.S. presidential elections. In Florida, the Republican-dominated state legislature tried to reduce the number of days for early voting, prohibit Sunday voting, and impose a 48-hour time limit on third-party voter groups to register new voters. It was criticized as making voting more difficult, a decision meant to disenfranchise African-Americans and Latinos who were leaning to vote for the Democratic Party. The decision backfired against the GOPs on Election Day as thousands and thousands of voters lined up to vote and had to be accommodated until the following day while the rest of the votes from the other states had already been counted. When the final vote was counted, Florida ended up voting for Obama instead of Romney, but the Florida vote didn’t matter anymore because the election had already been decided by the other states.

 

In Pennsylvania, the state legislature passed a law requiring voter-identification, which was criticized by some civil rights groups as having the effect of suppressing mostly poor or minority voters—a demographic more inclined to vote Democrat. Photo ID requirements have been opposed by minority, handicapped and elderly voters who don’t normally maintain driver’s licenses.

 

Senator Santiago is barking at the wrong tree. Instead of putting down the electorate with her condescending remarks, she should sponsor a law in Congress that would tighten the qualifications of candidates for public office, prohibit political dynasty as envisioned in the Constitution, impose stricter and effective term limits, and limit campaign financing to level the playing field. Every candidate for public office must not only be beyond reproach, but must be able to represent or mirror the needs and issues of his or her constituency. If we must have a functioning representative democracy, the leaders and representatives we elect must stand and speak for the interests of their constituencies, not for their own selfish reasons or for the wishes of the special interests that help them get elected.

 

We have a dysfunctional electoral system that could easily be manipulated by special interests and professional politicians or “trapos.” The level of apathy or a disengaged electorate is a result of the ability of the elite and special interests to control the elections; it’s never the by-product of an uninformed or uninvolved electorate because it is not well-educated enough to vote.

 

In The Idea of Justice, the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen wrote: “… in understanding the roots of democracy in the world, we have to take interest in the history of people’s participation and public reasoning in different parts of the world. We have to look beyond thinking of democracy only in terms of European and American evolution. We would fail to understand the pervasive demands for participatory living, on which Aristotle spoke with far-reaching insight, if we take democracy to be a kind of a specialized product of the West.”

 

The old Athenian democracy, where balloting emerged in a particular form, used a process called sortition where nearly all government offices are filled by lottery of full citizens rather than by election. Women, slaves and aliens had no say. Candidates were almost always male, Greek, educated citizens holding a minimum of wealth and status. Yet, even Plato attacked this system which he criticized as putting the state into the hands of ignoramuses unable to distinguish between right from wrong.

 

How is this different from the system we have now?

 

We have a senator who plagiarizes and unabashedly maintains his innocence, senators who are children elected on account of their father’s “splendid” legislative record, a congresswoman who was wife to a former dictator and mother to a sitting senator, or movie stars who continue to “act” in their roles as representatives of the people, or a “know-nothing” or “can-do-all” president (depending on which side of the aisle you stand on) elevated to the highest office in the land on the political legacy of his parents. Is this circus the desire and hope of the people who elected them?

 

“Democracy’s capacity to shock has been its own demise,” wrote A. C. Grayling. We could only wish, for heaven’s sake, the kind of revenge our democracy will bring upon us next time. Perhaps not through the electoral process, and we could just imagine how those who abuse or shamelessly make a mockery of their democratic responsibilities will enjoy being out of power or less in control than they used to be.