LuisTeodoro.com

There is hardly any arguing with the main points raised by the Citizens Committee on the National Crisis (CCNC). The problem is in the “solution” it’s proposing.

The CCNC is the group that has called on the Armed Forces to “temporarily” take over the government and stop the holding of the May elections. Those elections, said the CCNC, “are going to be the dirtiest and the most dishonest since 1945…”

According to a CCNC statement quoted in Today by one of the group’s members, economist Alejandro Lichauco, “There is no point (in) proceeding with elections under these conditions because elections would be a sure formula for chaos and anarchy that could develop beyond the capacity of even the Armed Forces to control.

“…the overriding fact is that hunger and not only poverty now grips the majority of the nation’s households,” said the statement, and the reason for this are “the so-called representatives of the Filipino people [the members of Congress]” who “in truth and in the main have functioned as docile and colluding agents of transnational and global (sic: foreign?) interests…”

Congress, said the CCNC, is made up of traditional politicians “who don’t represent any particular sectoral interests such as labor, industry and the like,” and “hasn’t been able to anything about the economy and the plight of its constituents… (The members of Congress) have only succeeded in converting mass poverty into mass hunger, and that’s why the system and the trapos must go.”

When it called on the Armed Forces, specifically on AFP Chief of Staff Narciso Abaya, to take over the government a week ago last Saturday, the CCNC also listed among its justifications the failure of the candidates for president to address the problems “that are tearing the nation apart.” In fact, continued the CNCC, any civilian government elected under the 1987 Constitution will only lead the country toward “hunger, dismemberment and civil war.”

In taking over the government, the military’s tasks would be to “reassert the sovereignty of the State, (and) establish the foundations of (a) real democratic government (in which) civilian authorities committed to independence and sovereignty and the welfare of the people shall be supreme at all times.”

These are formidable tasks for any institution. They have been made even more formidable by the fact that the hollow sovereignty of this country, and the poverty and hunger now rampant among the people, is a reality and has occurred not only with the consent, but also with the active collaboration of the Philippine military.

With very, very rare exceptions, every military organization from Genghis Khan’s to George W. Bush’s has served as the primary means of coercion in behalf of the status quo. The Philippine case is not an exception.

For the last 100 years since the United States colonial government created the Philippine Constabulary, the very institution the CCNC believes can solve the problems of the political system has functioned to preserve that system and enhance the powers of its overlords even if it be at the expense of the people’s welfare.

The mandate of the Philippine military is not change, but permanence. That mandate is most clearly evident in its history as, first, an instrument of colonial rule during the American period, and second as the bulwark of opposition to change during the volatile period from 1946 to the 1950s.

This role was most tellingly evident during the martial law period. Essentially an attempt to halt demands for change in the political, economic and social systems as manifest in the demands of the demonstrations of the early 1970s, martial law could not have been possible without the military’s enthusiastic support.

The Philippine military has also been the most dependable and enthusiastic government ally of the United States throughout its history. It was the key element in the support for the US military bases, military “cooperation” with the United States, and in keeping the country’s defenses within the US “security umbrella,” which since 1946 has prevented the development of its capacity to defend the country. It has never wavered in those commitments. This is evident in its training, its orientation, and its generals’ loyalty to US policy not only in the Philippines but abroad as well.

As far as corruption—one of the CNCC’s concerns—goes, the Philippine military is also among the most corrupt of government institutions. This is the testimony not only of the Magdalo group, but also of many of its former and active officers.

To expect the military to “reassert” Philippine independence—which has remained an elusive goal more than a hundred years after the 1896 Revolution, thanks to a dependency primarily sustained through military means—is to expect the impossible. But to imagine that it can weed out corruption, establish a government that will henceforth have only the people’s welfare in mind, and then give up power is absurd.

It is also an invitation to a disaster in which the proposed “solution” would be worse than the problem. “Temporary” arrangements in which the military assumes power tend to be permanent. Few military organizations once in power have willingly surrendered it. Despite promises of early elections, a military junta is still in command in Myanmar. It took three decades for Suharto of Indonesia to surrender power, and he had to be overthrown by a popular movement after years of repressive rule. Only in 1992 did the military rulers of Thailand surrender control of the government, and only because of widespread internal opposition and intense international pressure.

Why is the CNCC nevertheless calling on the military to carry out tasks totally alien to its orientation, history and interests? Primarily out of desperation, but also because of Article 11, Section 3 of the 1987 Constitution, which describes the Armed Forces as the protector of the State and the people.

This particular provision has been variously interpreted as a license for the military to intervene in political matters, and as endowing it with additional powers. The CCNC call not only assumes both. Worse, it also assumes that the military has the duty as well as the right to seize control of the government and to oversee the reconstruction of the political system.

Both interpretations and CCNC’s not only assume that the military has the capacity, the ethical commitment, and the patriotism to do so. They would also transform the military into the most powerful institution in the country—and courtesy of the 1987 Constitution, too!

These interpretations are certainly mistaken, given the context in which the 1987 Constitution was drafted. The members of the 1986 Constitutional Convention were laboring in the shadow of fourteen years of repressive rule. The military played the most crucial role in establishing and preserving that rule, and that was a lesson presumably fresh in the minds of the drafters of what became the 1987 Constitution.

For 14 years, the liberal members of the Convention who were in the majority had seen that, far from protecting them, the military had attacked, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered the people in defending the Marcos tyranny. It is thus extremely doubtful that these members’ intention was to further enhance the military’s power, and what’s more, give it a license for intervention, and thus worsen its already disastrous politicization.

What is more likely—and the CCNC can do worse than ask some of them—is that the framers of the 1987 Constitution included Section 3 in Article 11 as a permanent reminder to the military of where its loyalty had been in the past, and where it should henceforth be. Article 11, Section 3 must be seen in the context of the times. No one among the members of the Convention was likely to have endowed a politicized and corrupted Armed Forces the powers various groups are now attributing to it.

One can grant, for the sake of argument, the validity of the CCNC’s analysis of the political situation—including its tenuous assertion that no one in Congress represents any sectoral interest in society other than, presumably, those of landlords and big businessmen. (At least some of the party-list groups now represent such sectoral interests as peasants, workers, women, etc. The elections this May could also see a further influx into Congress of such other interests as overseas workers, urban poor and youth, among others.)

The CCNC’s proposed “solution” is another issue altogether. The military is not part of the solution. It is part of the problem.

(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, January 31, 2003)

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