Teaching Iraqis “democracy”
February 4th, 2004
Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert told the media last week that the Philippines had volunteered to help train Iraqis in democratic governance. The training would be part of the Philippine contribution to the rehabilitation of Iraq, and was among the commitments the country made during the International Donors’ Conference to rebuild Iraq that the United States called last October 23-24 in Madrid, Spain. That conference was held to solicit the help of the international community in sharing the costs in both funding and manpower in Iraq with the United States.
“I attended the Madrid Donors’ Conference for Iraq,” said Secretary Albert, “(where) we offered to share our experience in democratic governance.Very shortly,” said Albert, “we hope to make a formal announcement on a training program in the Philippines for Iraqi government officials.”
Secretary Albert did not say if the US occupation forces—the real rulers of
Iraq—have accepted the Philippine offer, or whether the offer belongs to that category of help from other countries that the United States would rather do without. In the realm of what’s best for other countries, the US after all thinks it knows best, and better than any other country including—perhaps even most especially—the Philippines. The aim of the Madrid Donors’ Conference was to raise money and to obtain troop and other manpower commitments from other countries, not help in training for democracy (or what the US says is democracy).
The idea was to ease the financial burden on the US government and to take some of the pressure off its troops who’ve been constantly under attack from Iraqi resistance groups since June last year. There is also the fact that at least two US non-government organizations with close links to the US government—the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute—are supposedly already providing Iraqis training in “democracy” and civics.
If indeed the Iraqi officials’ Philippine training does go through, however, I hope it won’t take place during the current political season. I suggest that the Philippines wait for a decent interval after the May elections to pass before it holds the training sessions here. Otherwise, I can imagine the Iraqis asking their Filipino trainers in democracy puzzled questions like what the various candidates for office this May stand for, whether it’s necessary in a democracy to first be a TV personality, an actor, or a basketball player to run for national office, or whether it’s an established democratic principle to change parties as often—or even more often—than one changes his or her underwear.
Given current fears over what can happen before, during and after May 10, however, I’m not too sure that holding the training even after that date would lead to the prospective trainees’ enlightenment on democratic practice, as this is supposedly best exemplified by elections.
The Iraqis are no strangers to elections, having gone to the polls many times in the last 30 years. The problem was that they could only vote for Sadam Hussein and other candidates from his Baath Party. Theoretically, a campaign period in a regime that calls itself democratic would best illustrate that crucial democratic imperative lacking in the elections during Saddam’s time, free choice.
This election period, Filipinos supposedly have several choices for president. There’s a former police general who’s been accused of murder, drug dealing and money laundering, and who recently admitted in national TV his involvement in torture; a Christian evangelist who has vowed to bring God into government as if all those Santo Niņo images in the foyers of even in the most graft-ridden agencies were not enough; a former senator who has promised to bring hope to the electorate but who has so far kept his plans for doing that a secret; an actor who has steadfastly refused to say anything about what he’ll do with the government the minute he’s elected; and the incumbent, whom her civil society partisans have described as the most experienced—and “the least evil”—among the candidates.
Of course there are all those other candidates—the ones the Commission on Elections is about to declare nuisances because they don’t have the money to wage what the Comelec coyly refers to as “a credible (read money-driven) campaign,” the ranks of which include a woman who says George W. Bush asked her to run, and someone who’s promised to give every Filipino a million tax-free pesos each once he’s elected.
If I were an Iraqi trainee, I could be asking if having to make a choice from this sorry field, and on the basis of who’s the least evil, is what free choice means in a democracy.
It’s arguable if it’s worse or better in the contest for the vice presidency, in which the real winner may not be either of the leading contenders, but the power company and the country’s biggest network, and you can’t remember who the other candidate is.
As far as the Senate contest goes, you can’t blame our prospective Iraqi trainees for getting even more confused. If they had been here last Saturday they would have seen the photos of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and one of her worst, most virulent former critics, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, grinning from ear to ear, locked in embrace, or whispering to each other on the front pages of practically every Manila broadsheet. The occasion was Santiago’s formalization through an alliance of her People’s Reform Party with the Liberal and Lakas parties her candidacy in the ticket of the women she once loved to hate.
Our Iraqi trainees would be equally confused to learn that not only is former administration pillar—and Senate majority leader—Loren Legarda running for vice president of the opposition coalition KNP headed by Joseph Estrada pal Fernando Poe Jr. So are other ex-administration mainstays like Ernesto Herrera, in 2000 one of the congressmen who filed the impeachment case against Estrada.
As confusing as all of this is even to Filipinos by now used to the putrid practices of some of the worst politicians ever to infest the planet and to give politics a bad name, the danger in all of this is that our hypothetical Iraqi trainees could end up getting the wrong ideas instead of merely being confused. They could conclude, and it’s not difficult to do so, that the key element in the Philippines’ “experience in democratic governance” and its handmaiden, its politics, is advancing elite self-interest at the expense of the country’s.
That’s a conclusion not difficult to make, not only because Saddam Hussein practiced the principle to the fullest, but also because the people in the US-created and supervised Iraqi Governing Council mostly belong to the same category of people who’re either in power in the Philippines, are running this May, or both.
The Iraqi Council is headed by a long-time US client who had not been to Iraq for decades, and who is widely regarded as a likely candidate for the country’s highest post, thus his collaboration with the US occupation. The other members of the Council are equally regarded as non-representative of the Iraqi people, being businessmen, clerics, and high-level professionals the US can trust to do its bidding.
The way things are shaping up in Iraq, any objective observer comparing its situation with the Philippines could do worse than predict that the Philippine present could be Iraq’s future. Just like Iraq, the Philippines was invaded by the United States, which then tutored it in “democracy” for 50 years, which the United States defined as the right of Filipinos to do what they want so long as it didn’t conflict with US interests. In Iraq as in the Philippines in the 1930s, the United States has also announced the eventual handover of sovereignty to Iraqis in a “democratic” Iraq—but with the continuing presence of US occupation troops and US military bases.
These similarities make the Philippines’ training Iraqi’s in “democracy” logical and appropriate—except that if you define democracy the way it should be defined, which is the right of the majority to freely decide its destiny on the basis of free choice, it would only be hilarious.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, January 14, 2003)