Government of exclusion
January 15th, 2003
In countries riven by armed conflict, the reasons for creating a government of national unity are urgent enough. The most compelling is the need to end political violence so the country involved can go on to the business of reconstruction. The fundamental aim is to have a basis for a new beginning. Such a beginning, however, can only be meaningful if there is a real effort to wipe the slate clean, and if antagonists work together as equals.
The need to address the causes of conflict so that it may not break out again is far more important, however, than that immediate aim. A government of national unity thus enlists major protagonists in the effort to forge the policies that would root out the bases for the disaffection of those groups that have taken up the gun.
An authentic government of national unity is thus founded on, among other assumptions, the understanding that the causes of armed rebellion are rooted in an unjust social order and a political structure that excludes certain classes, ethnic groups and even races.
But governments of national unity are also usually crafted by those groups that, after a long struggle against oppression, exclusion and persecution, have seized power and are willing to share it. This was the case in South Africa, for example, where after decades of armed struggle the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela and its allied groups managed to create the critical mass to dismantle apartheid.
The resulting realignment of forces led to the creation of a unity government meant to reconcile warring groups on the basis of a common program. Not one group, however, unilaterally put this program together. All the groups involved contributed to it, thus strengthening their unity further.
None of these two conditions exist in the Philippines. Although it pays customary lip service to it, recognizing the legitimacy of the social, political, economic and cultural grievances of the groups that have taken up arms against the Philippine government is repugnant to the political elite.
Accepting into the government the representatives of those groups as equals (and therefore sharing power with their constituencies among the poor and powerless) is absolutely unthinkable not only to the political elite. It is equally unacceptable to the other power centers in the Philippines, among them big business and the military.
On the other hand, the would-be sponsors of a government of national unity, mostly those in Congress, do not represent a revolutionary government. They are indeed part of a government that did come to power in 2001 through a people’s uprising. But that government represented a change only in some (not even all) of the persons in government, and not of systems, orientation or policies.
To expect this same elite to share political power is to expect the impossible. That is why the proposal of House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. was almost immediately reinterpreted, redefined, diluted and eventually shot down by his fellow legislators and by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Although it does urge the inclusion of the traditional opposition, what distinguishes the de Venecia proposal is its recognition that a government of national unity can only be so described if representatives from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Communist Party of the Philippines are part of it.
Though not the only groups engaged in armed struggle against the Philippine government, the MILD and the CPP represent constituencies that have historically had little or no voice at all in government (i.e., the Moro people, and the workers and poor peasantry).
It was this part of the proposal which predictably elicited the most violent opposition. The de Venecia proposal has been described as a recipe for chaos by those in the media victimized by their own efforts to demonize insurgent groups. Opposition senators and congressmen also opposed representation by those groups that in other countries are regarded as crucial to any government of national unity.
Most opposition people naturally agreed to their right to be in such a government, despite their already being in Congress and even in the Cabinet. Only one opposition senator, Sergio Osmeņa III, pointed out the obvious—that the opposition was already cooperating with the administration in many areas.
On the other hand, the Arroyo Cabinet immediately imposed conditions for involvement in the de Venecia plan. These were obviously intended to exclude those groups a government of national unity should be including.
The Cabinet demanded allegiance to the Constitution and to the rule of law. Since the armed Moro and revolutionary movements are by definition acting outside the Constitution and Philippine law, those conditions were terms of surrender. The Cabinet was saying that the groups a unity government should first of all be reaching out to need not apply unless they abandon what they have been fighting for. That makes the “national unity government” the first of its kind on the planet to demand the surrender of what should be among its principals as a condition for participation.
Thus redefined and pummeled into a shape unrecognizable from the original, the de Venecia proposal is turning into its very opposite: into another conspiracy among the very same politicians representing the very same interests to keep their stranglehold on power in this country. It is now just another version of the same formula of political exclusion which for decades has fueled the Moro and revolutionary armed movements.
Although a radical departure from previous formulas of “reconciliation” and the usual lip service to addressing the causes of rebellion without really doing anything about them, the original de Venecia proposal is also turning into one more vehicle for the usual trapo politicking.
Given the country’s political history and the congenital inability of its politicians to transcend the narrowest interests (meaning their own), one could have predicted that it would develop into precisely such a perversion. Especially noteworthy, however, is that President Arroyo is right in the center of this grotesque display of trapo politics.
Although supposedly not a candidate for 2004, Mrs. Arroyo is in fact acting and talking like one once again, conveniently under the umbrella of forging “a government of cooperation.” Her attempt to dislodge administration Sen. Franklin Drilon from the Senate presidency, for example, was another fine example of the exquisitely creative trapo politics for which she has become justly notorious.
Cloaked in the supposed need to obtain congressional cooperation in passing the bills that will supposedly usher in the new Eden in the Philippines between now and June 2004, her promising Sen. Edgardo Angara Drilon’s post looks exactly like the same politicking she was doing when she lured Blas Ople into her Cabinet.
The Senate is already in administration hands, which makes the stated reason for wooing Angara puzzling unless the real reason is to enlist his help in what administration Sen. Joker Arroyo suspects is a plan for constitutional amendments in 2004, and the postponement of the election.
Meanwhile, the convening of the group that calls itself “12:30,” which made it a point to, as usual, exclude the only groups i.e., the groups critical of Mrs. Arroyo, including the Left and its allied organizations, that have anything to propose about making government policies meaningful to the poor and powerless smacks of the same politicking.
Having run out of superlatives to describe the supposed decision of Mrs. Arroyo not to run in 2004, this group convened not to discuss, hammer out and present alternative policies (the “peace groups” in it, for example, were totally dumb about the still ongoing total-war policy). It convened instead to support existing government policies (“the Arroyo agenda”), on the mistaken assumption that uncritical “cooperation” rather than principled discussion and debate among equals is what makes a unity government.
This same group also conveniently boosts Mrs. Arroyo’s political support in the name of national unity. The government (and the policies) it’s supporting, however, is apparently still the same government of compromise, acquiescence and surrender to a predetermined course that could very well include no election by the time 2004 comes around, and the extension of noncandidate Mrs. Arroyo and company’s terms. This is the same government of exclusion and division that has brought the country to its present state of ruin.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, January 14, 2002)