Unlikely revolutionaries
December 1st, 2002
If any of the generals and other military officers present were uncomfortable, they didn’t show it. But one could imagine them wincing inwardly, but only for a moment.
The commander in chief had actually used the “R” word! Taking a page from one of her father Diosdado Macapagal’s less forgettable speeches when he was President of the Republic, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo enlisted the Armed Forces in completing “the revolution” during her remarks at the turnover of the AFP command to Lt. Gen. Dionisio Santiago from retiring general Benjamin Defensor.
Mrs. Arroyo was concluding a part of her speech in which she attributed the weakness of the Philippine Republic to the control of the “dominant classes”—a phrase and a thesis the military Establishment associates with the Marxist enemy.
It wasn’t Marxist, however, but more like latter-day social democratic revisionism:
“Our State is weak if the dominant classes or sectors control it or shape its policies especially those dealing with the economy. This is our decades-old fundamental weakness. From Bonifacio in Balintawak to Cory Aquino and FVR on Edda, we have struggled to correct this weakness by bringing power to the people.”
Mrs. Arroyo should have excluded Bonifacio from that list, because he was still fighting for the Filipino State to come when he was assassinated by the elite faction of the Katipunan. As far as EDSA 1 and 2’s “bringing power to the people” (a phrase which sounds more like an electrification program than a political process) is concerned, Mrs. Arroyo was equally inaccurate.
EDSA 1 turned out to be no more than a restoration of elite rule, and EDSA 2 more of the same. But she could be right in arguing that even those disappointing exercises were part of a progressive process.
Bonifacio, Aquino and Ramos had the same goal, said Mrs. Arroyo—to continue “the progressive advancement … to transfer power over the State from the traditional, economic and political bosses, to the people.”
Her father didn’t quite put it that way. In a November 30, 1963, speech (November 30 was at the time National Heroes’ Day) called “The Unfinished Revolution,” Diosdado Macapagal argued that the Philippine Revolution had not achieved its primary aims of national liberation and social revolution.
Widely regarded as another unreconstructed pro-American President just like his predecessors, Macapagal pleasantly surprised nationalists. In the context of the period, his reference to the incompleteness of the struggle for independence could only have referred to the country’s dependence on the United States. The social revolution, on the other hand, referred to the unfinished task of land reform as a key element in the remaking of Philippine feudal society.
Nationalists had emphasized the achievement of these twin goals of the Revolution of 1896 for decades as the keys to national progress and development. They still do today.
The Macapagal speech was of course ghostwritten—and by someone from nationalist ranks (it would be interesting to know if Mrs. Arroyo knows who was the ghost- writer). But Macapagal did read it and by doing so made it his own.
He followed this speech with one on foreign policy, in which he outlined his intention to reorient the country’s foreign relations toward greater involvement with its Asian neighbors—and implicitly, away from its dominant focus on relations with the United States.
Neither of these speeches sat well with the military Establishment, and certainly not with the United States. In keeping with its traditional policy of not putting all its eggs in one basket, the US supported both Macapagal and his rival for the presidency in the November 1965 election, but leaned heavily in favor of the latter—who happened to be Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The US mission in Manila presumably knew that, among others, the nationalist and progressive Salvador P. Lopez, Macapagal’s foreign secretary, was central to the “180-degree turn” in foreign policy Macapagal had announced.
Macapagal had backed that foreign policy declaration with the establishment of Maphilindo—the regional grouping among then Malaya, the Philippines and Indonesia. His call for finishing the social revolution, on the other hand, he had backed with a land reform law, one of the first in the seven the Philippines eventually adopted.
That the Macapagal land reform law was flawed has been often laid at his door, but it was due mostly to a landlord-dominated Congress, whose members introduced into it the usual loopholes.
At our most charitable, it would seem that Macapagal’s daughter has done nothing to “complete this revolution” except to half-heartedly urge the most backward institution in this country, the military, for an undefined involvement in that process. What’s closer to the truth is that she has done precisely the opposite.
Mrs. Arroyo has single-handedly discarded the most crucial achievement of the last 20 years toward the completion of the Revolution: the removal of US troops and military bases from Philippine territory.
The key to this process has been her unequivocal support for America’s so-called war on terror, which early this year became the excuse for the return of US troops (they’re still in the country, despite their supposedly being here only temporarily), and the signing of the Mutual Logistic Support Agreement (MLSA) on November 22. Both restore the military relations that, since the US conquest of the Philippines at the turn of the century, have been crucial to the country’s colonial and semicolonial captivity.
There has been no Arroyo initiative to address the social inequity in this country, except through inadequate housing and welfare programs. Land tenancy, despite the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, remains as problematic as ever and is still the most formidable barrier to social change.
Mrs. Arroyo’s “our task is to complete this revolution” line to the Armed Forces was understandably half-hearted. Figures. Maybe the leftist apostates in her inner circles can only lie to some extent. They can’t possibly believe that the country’s officer corps can ever help complete a revolution the Philippine military was precisely established by the United States to pursue and eradicate.
Organized by the US and officered mostly by former Spanish civil guards, the Philippine Constabulary, the forerunner of the police and the army, hanged one of the last generals of the Philippine revolution, Macario Sakay, as a bandit early in the 20th century.
It was “bandits” then; it’s “terrorists” now. Using the same metaphor of Dionisio Santiago’s predecessor, Benjamin Defensor, Mrs. Arroyo was far more aggressive in urging the AFP to “untie” (those familiar with the myth would have said “cut”) “the Gordian knot” of terrorism and insurgency.
Since 2001 the Arroyo government has made no distinction between one and the other. The “insurgency” of course refers to the armed struggle being waged by the New People’s Army under the leadership of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines—the program of which is preceded by an analysis of Philippine society as dominated by the big bourgeoisie and the landlord-comprador classes—the very dominant classes Mrs. Arroyo was blaming for the weakness of the Philippine State.
From one unlikely revolutionary to another; from one representing “the dominant classes” to those supporting them: no wonder the Philippine State is weak, and, despite all the noises Mrs. Arroyo is making about the “strong republic,” will continue to be weak.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, November 30, 2002)