Born in 1932 into the political dynasty that had controlled the politics of the Central Luzon province of Tarlac for decades, Ninoy Aquino has been described as a politician who knew even from childhood what he wanted to be, and that was President of the Philippines.

Aquino already knew the role the media could play in Philippine politics long before the rise of politicians elected to public office through exposure in television and film. His decision to interrupt his college studies to pursue a high-profile journalistic career by covering the Korean War in 1945 as well as other Southeast Asian countries has been widely interpreted as an attempt to get into the national limelight for the sake of a future career in politics. Only 22 years old, Aquino was a young man in a hurry who knew what he wanted.

If calculation his pursuit of a journalism career was, it was one that paid off, as the Manila Times, then the most widely circulated newspaper in the Philippines, published his dispatches first from Korea and later from Vietnam and Malaya to a readership to which his byline became one of the most popular. Later he exclusively covered, and also claimed credit for negotiating, the surrender of HMB (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan–the New Peoples’s Army forerunner, Army for the People’s Liberation) leader Luis Taruc, thus boosting his popularity further.

Aquino began his political career as the governor of Tarlac province in 1963, or at the age of 31, and was elected a senator of the Republic four years later (1967) at 35. From the Senate, where he soon became one of the most visible members of the opposition (Marcos had been elected President in 1965), the road seemed clear to the Presidency of the Republic. Aquino rapidly became one of the most popular political figures in the country by, among other calculated means, appealing to the younger sectors of the electorate by taking up their most urgent concerns.

In an era when surveys were almost unheard of, Aquino relied on public opinion polls to guide him in discovering and addressing the issues that most appealed to the majority of the electorate. Not only the surveys guided him in the enterprise of stoking his popularity, however. He also had the sound instincts for the public pulse of someone who knew how to use current sentiments to his advantage.

This meant, between the years 1967 and 1972, active criticism of Marcos, who soon enough knew that Aquino was fast rising as his worst, because most popular critic. On the eve of the declaration of martial law in 1972, Aquino, reelected senator in 1971, told an interviewer that Marcos, for most of the electorate, had become the issue according to the surveys he had commissioned, which was why it was as a critic of Marcos that he was likely to gain the presidency.

There is almost no doubt that if the presidential elections of 1973 had taken place, Aquino would have won over any candidate from the Nacionalista Party, the rival for power of Aquino’s own Liberals (Marcos would have been disqualified from running by the 1973 Constitution). Aquino reached that level of popularity through the usual paths of cultivating a populist image through media that was both youthful as well as
businesslike and knowledgeable. It was a path his rival Ferdinand Marcos had taken himself, and which included, among other means, marriage to attractive, prominent women– Aquino to Corazon Cojuangco, and Marcos to Imelda Romualdez.

Aquino’s path to the presidency was blocked by Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972. But martial law was an event that forced Aquino, the traditional politician who would be president, into the thoughtful leader the opposition groups needed. One of the first to be arrested upon the imposition of martial rule on Sept. 21, 1972, Aquino’s detention as a high security prisoner seems to have given him not only the opportunity to read, but also to see himself in a new, historical light as the most visible symbol of opposition to martial rule, and as the political and social system’s last hope for survival.

His being sentenced to death on charges of subversion in 1977, as well as his leading the Laban (“Lakas ng Bayan”–The Nation’s Strength) campaign for seats in the rubber stamp Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly) in 1978 seem to have broadened his support further, which could explain why the Marcos regime
allowed him to leave in 1980 for medical treatment in the United States.

Once outside the country Aquino became the recognized leader of the opposition to Marcos, but realized that it was in the Philippines where his destiny awaited. He returned on Aug. 21, 1983, hoping to prevent the total military takeover he believed would be likely in the event of Marcos’ death, but was instead assassinated at the Manila, now the Ninoy Aquino, International Airport.

Aquino’s decision to return despite the risk of imprisonment or death, and his subsequent assassination, made him both martyr and hero, and sounded the death knell for the Marcos dictatorship. Although it would take three more years before the collapse of the Marcos government, his assassination in 1983 set into motion a series of events that inexorably led to the regime’s collapse, and to the restoration of the institutions of liberal democracy, in 1986. Warts and all, Aquino was an authentic Filipino hero.

In addition to his martyrdom’s being an occasion for national remembrance and celebration, Aquino’s story is also a lesson in how great events can awaken the best instincts of the unlikeliest of men and women. It suggests as well how the conventional concepts of the hero as one born heroic and untarnished by human flaw are themselves fatally flawed. To remember Aquino is thus to remember that the worst of times can result in the best of responses.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com. August 15, 2003)

Because of the ruling, one of the Quezon City special courts dealing with heinous crimes, once assigned to try the 11 cases against Lacson, can issue a warrant of arrest against him. Lacson would then be detained without bail, the crimes he is accused of being non-bailable, and if found guilty could be sentenced to death.

No matter how expertly the majority opinion (written by Justice Romeo Callejo, Jr.) justifies the decision, the Supreme Court cannot avoid accusations that it acted in furtherance of a political purpose. Senator Aquilino Pimentel may be right in saying that the closeness of the Supreme Court vote suggests that there was no pressure from Malacanang on the justices to rule against Lacson. But much of the public, and not only that part of it that supports Senator Lacson, is likely to suspect it anyway.

There are at least two reasons why. Lacson is a proclaimed candidate for the Presidency. The Supreme Court ruling will certainly affect the decision of the opposition groups on whether to field him as their official candidate, or to choose someone else. Should they proclaim him nevertheless, a trial at the height of the campaign period that unofficially began last Saturday, October 4, will almost certainly have an adverse effect on his chances in May, 2004.

It is of course possible that a volatile electorate will see him as an underdog against whom the might of the entire state has been unleashed, resulting in a voter backlash that will send him to Malacanang and oust the present occupant. It is also possible that he will be acquitted, an event that will almost guarantee his victory in May. But what is certain is that in the event of the worst-case scenario, a conviction for multiple murder, Lacson will be disqualified as a candidate and imprisoned, if not sentenced to death.

Coincidentally (some say deliberately, to make it appear that the Court was sabotaging his chances even at that time), Lacson had announced his intention to seek the Presidency last March, almost on the eve of the April 1 decision of the Supreme Court allowing the reopening of the cases. The present decision on his subsequent motion for reconsideration, on the other hand, came at the start of the political season, on the heels of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s October 4 announcement that she will run for the Presidency in 2004.

The second reason is the growing public distrust of the Supreme Court, the approval ratings of which have been steadily dropping (it was a low +16 percent in September, down from +21 percent the previous quarter). Although this can be interpreted as part of the general skepticism over government and its agencies rampant among the citizenry, it can also be due to the efforts of former President Joseph Estrada, the urban poor groups associated with him such as the People’s Movement Against Poverty, sundry opposition figures, and Senator Lacson himself to paint the Supreme Court as an institution biased in favor of the Arroyo government and of President Arroyo herself.

It’s easy to make these accusations. Seven of the Supreme Court justices are Arroyo appointees, a fact that opposition groups have repeatedly said affects their decisions. While two of these Arroyo appointees abstained and one was on leave and did not vote, which suggests that their being Arroyo appointees did not have much to do with the Lacson decision, this is a point of information much of the public is likely to miss.

Whatever be the case, the Supreme Court is in many ways a damaged institution.

Several Supreme Court justices including Chief Justice Hilario Davide have been widely depicted as political partisans, the landmark indication of it being their supposedly bending the Constitutional provisions for Presidential succession in favor of then Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in January 2001.

Members of the opposition in the House of Representatives have also initiated impeachment proceedings based on this allegation, even as detained former President Joseph Estrada has repeatedly impugned the impartiality of both the Court and the entire justice system in the course of his trial on plunder charges.

These claims are themselves easily ascribed to the exigencies of politics, and even to the desperation of a former President whose conviction on plunder charges could mean a death sentence But they cannot but have some impact on whether the Supreme Court will continue to be regarded as an institution unsullied by partisan politics, or as merely one more administration instrument in furthering its political agenda.

Unfortunately for the Supreme Court majority, at least one of the justices seems convinced that the Court, because of its ruling on the Lacson cases, will be regarded as the latter, and, what’s worse, that it is compromising the Bill of Rights in the process.

While the lawyers sort out the legal complexities of the Supreme Court decision, those Filipinos already concerned over the Bill of Rights should themselves study the decision closely, and should note the warning in the dissenting opinion of one of the four justices who voted against it.

Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago warned that civil liberties would suffer as a result of the ruling, because the Supreme Court had “allowed the use of the strong arm of the law to oppressively prosecute and persecute a public officer whom the powers that be detest and whom they seek to render completely ineffective.”

In Justice Santiago’s mind, the Court decision—which emphasized that the cases against Lacson could be reopened because “the state is entitled to justice,” and that the rule that proscribed the reopening of cases after two years was approved by the Court to “enhance” not only the right of accused persons to due process but also that of the state—sets a dangerous precedent.

In effect, the Court extended the right to due process to the state. It’s an absurd formulation, the right to due process being meant to protect individuals from the arbitrary use of state power. From whom, on the other hand, does the state need protection, given its monopoly over such coercive powers as its control of the police and the military and the judicial system? By arguing that the state also has a right to due process, and what’s more, that it is also “entitled to justice,” the Court seems to have placed the rights of the state above those of Lacson’s—or of any individual’s.

Because Supreme Court decisions become precedents on which its own future decisions as well as those of lower courts can be based, “equating the awesome powers of the state with individual freedoms and formally extending the protection of the Bill of Rights to the state is not a healthy development,” said Justice Santiago.

“Bewildering” is how Santiago described the Court’s extending the protection of the Bill of Rights to the state. “This is not only an error; it is also not healthy for the development of the law of the Constitution,” said Santiago.

Santiago’s views imply that the Court ruling was politically-motivated. Of course those views could themselves be as burdened. But even if Santiago’s dissent is itself politically-motivated, that would not detract from the validity of her argument. Santiago was also saying that as a result of that bias in favor of “the powers-that-be,” the Court might have established a precedent damaging to the rights of others who could, in the future, be in the same predicament as Lacson.

Lacson’s appeal had been based on the claim that the Court’s own rule banning the re-opening of cases two years after their provisional dismissal applied to the cases against him. But the Court ruling did sound as if it had gone out of its way to use a technicality (Lacson’s not having agreed to the cases’ dismissal and to notify the victims’ heir of it) in dismissing Lacson’s appeal.

The ruling, however, goes beyond Lacson, but would apply to future cases—in which decisions adverse to individual rights could be based on the “bewildering” argument that the state has a right to the protection of due process! Theoretically, it would be possible for the courts to argue that the state’s right to due process outweighs those of the very individuals that right is meant to protect.

It would indeed be ironic if the Court, by reopening for trial cases that themselves involve the right of individuals to life and to a fair trial (the supposed members of the Kuratong Baleleng gang were allegedly killed on the orders of then National Police Chief Lacson while already in police custody), ends up affirming instead the superiority of the rights of the state over those of individuals.

Although related to, and possibly occasioned by, its determination to bring to trial someone detested (Santiago’s word) not only in Malacanang but also within Supreme Court and other elite circles, whether the Court has indeed compromised the Bill of Rights in the process is an issue more important than that of its alleged partisanship. That would make the Court not only the damaged institution its detractors says it is, but also a damaging one.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com, October 9, 2003)

These ethical and professional problems in the media, plus a host of others, are by themselves bad enough because they impede the flow of the information free men and women need to make decisions in a democratic setting. But what’s even worse is that the freedom the press claims to have recovered in 1986 is under direct and overt assault, and in a way far more damaging than being berated for “abetting rebellion” by the President of the Republic.

Since 1986, 41 journalists have been killed while on duty in the Philippines, all of them from the communities. In the first few years after the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship the killings, most of them perpetrated by local warlords and their henchmen, were dismissed as part of the hang-over of martial law, and part of the necessary pains of the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Within a few years, however, specifically by 1991, when the number of journalists killed in the Philippines had risen to nearly two dozen, it had become evident that the number of deaths was beginning to surpass those during the martial law period, prompting the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists to describe the Philippines then as the world’s most dangerous place for journalists.

Since 1986 an average of three journalists have been killed in the Philippines. This year, however, six have so far been killed, doubling the average and raising the number killed in the line of duty from 36 to 42.

The most recent death occurred only a few days ago. In the evening of September 6, unidentified motorcycle-riding men shot and killed Juan “Jun” Pala while he was walking with two companions on his way home from a friend’s house in Davao City.

The controversial Pala, host of a radio show called “Isumbong mo kay Pala (Tell Pala),” had survived two earlier assassination attempts, one last year, and the second one only last April 29. Pala was once known as the spokesman of the vigilante group Alsa Masa, but as a broadcaster has been focusing on criticizing local officials, especially Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, whom last April Pala blamed for the failed attempt on his life.

Only last month, on August 20, Rico Ramirez, a radio reporter in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, had been shot and killed by unknown assailants. His death had followed that of Noel Villarante, also a radio broadcaster and print columnist, only the day before in Santa Cruz, Laguna.

Bonifacio Gregorio of Tarlac City, Tarlac, was killed July 8 this year; Apolinario Pobeda of Lucena City, Quezon last May 17; and John Belen Villanueva Jr., of Legazpi City, Albay last April 28. All were either radio broadcasters or were in both print and radio, suggesting that it was for their radio commentaries — radio has the widest reach of all the media in the Philippines– that they had been targeted.

Ironically, the increase in the number of journalists killed this year compared to last year’s — when, in keeping with the average, three were killed in connection with their work as journalists — followed an alarm raised by several Philippine press freedom groups over the continuing assassination of journalists.

This alarm coincided with the Committee to Protect Journalists’ expression of grave concern in late 2001 over the situation in the Philippines, and was followed in January this year by the Philippines’ being listed as 86th — behind such other Southeast Asian countries as Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia — in the Press Freedom Index of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres) which rates countries according to their level of press freedom compliance.

Last year the Philippine groups — among them the Philippine Press Institute (PPI), the Kapisanan ng Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP), the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) — and several individuals formed the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists.

FFFJ initiated last January a dialogue with Interior and Local Governments Secretary Jose Lina and Philippine National Police officials to call for police action on recent as well as past killings, and specifically for the apprehension of the principal suspect in the killing of Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur’s Edgar Damalerio, also a broadcast and print journalist, who had been similarly shot to death.

Unlike in almost all of the past cases, at least two witnesses had identified one of the killers of Damalerio as a policeman in active duty. The suspect, however, managed to elude arrest early this year by disappearing from the police camp where he was supposed to be in the custody of his superiors.

The dialogue with Secretary Lina and the police resulted in a promise for the speedy investigation of the case and the apprehension of the principal suspect. The suspect, however, is still at large, and is in fact the subject of a “countdown for justice” in several newspapers, wherein his photograph is featured together with a report updated daily on the number of days he has remained at large despite a warrant of arrest issued against him.

The primary reason journalists are still murdered in the Philippines, by common agreement among international and Philippine press freedom groups, is impunity, which refers to the failure to prosecute and to punish those responsible for the murders. This is as true in the Philippines as in those other parts of the world — in Colombia, for example, where the drug problem has led to the killing of journalists on a scale similar to the Philippines — where the killing is continuing.

Not a single case of the 42 cases in the Philippines has been solved. No one has been arrested for any of those offenses except the occasional fall guy. No one has been prosecuted, and no one has been punished.

While this outstanding fact undoubtedly encourages those who want to retaliate against journalists for some reason or another, the killings are also indicative of the generally low levels of security available to everyone and not only to journalists in the Philippines specially in the countryside, where police and military officials are often in collusion with the local officials and criminal syndicates that journalists frequently target.

It is also true that, as some journalists’ groups like the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) have argued, the unsolved ambushes on, and murders of other citizens specially of activists and members of advocacy groups, the impunity with which security forces arrest and torture crime suspects and sympathizers of the Moro and communist insurgencies, have also encouraged the killers of journalists, which over the years have discovered that journalists do not have any special powers that could enable them to gain redress.

The killing of journalists in the Philippines is not only a serious matter that requires the attention of journalists and their organizations. It is also a symptom of a deeper problem of governance rooted in the failure of the justice system, starting with the police and security forces, to truly protect — and on the contrary even to attack — the very citizens whose rights and lives it is supposed to defend. Even more fundamentally do the killings put in serious question Philippine claims to democracy, because they target a fundamental right, the right to a free press, without which no society and no government can claim to be democratic.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com, September 10, 2003)

One of those guards just happened to fall asleep at the time the trio were making their way out of their cells and the complex; another had gone out to buy something at the exact same time—all in the wee hours of dawn last July 15.

Listen to Sydney, Australia’s Morning Herald:

“The mocking ease with which a convicted Jemaah Islamiyah bomb maker escaped from a Manila jail on Monday highlights the formidable challenge iof confronting terrorist threats beyond Australia’s borders,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

“This was no daring escape,” it continued. “In Catholic- majority Philippines, it is not radical Islam but personal profit that has most probably been behind the escape.

“If so it is a reminder that as long as the security forces and the bureaucracy of the Philippines and other nations in the region remain vulnerable to corruption, no amount of aid for specialist police training can guarantee (the success of) the anti-terrorist effort.

“The nature of terrorism is such that weak, corrupt and inefficient governments are easily exploited, affording terrorist groups freedom of movement and access to training grounds, weapons and false documentation.”

In short: the so-called “escape” was no escape at all, but a conspiracy between Fathur et.al. and his police guards, who most probably accepted money in exchange for looking the other way. What’s more, the “escape” should be no surprise considering the weakness and corruption of the Philippine bureaucracy, the police included.

On the other hand, the Australian described the “escape” as “a deadly farce” which had “set the fight against terrorism back years.” It also demonstrated, said the newspaper, how easy it is for terrorists to prosper in the Philippines, and how ineffective the Philippine government has been in stopping the corruption for which the Philippine government is noted in the region.

Although these newspapers are only two among the thousands in Australia, they do reflect the dominant thinking in Australia as well as other developed countries—whether Japan, the United States or anywhere else—that like other Third World governments, the Philippine government is inefficient, weak, and ridden with corruption.

That conclusion is inevitable. Although perception of Philippine corruption is an article of popular wisdom in developed countries, it has been repeatedly validated by the observations of businessmen, diplomats and survey organizations, who have uniformly listed the Philippines among the most corrupt countries in Asia.

By implication, that finding suggests that the Philippines government is also among the most inefficient in the region, official corruption being the leading factor in the kind of deliberate incompetence that allows even high risk prisoners like al-Ghouzi to escape—or for that matter, that permits the construction of roads that lead to nowhere, and of captured illegal drugs’ ending up in the streets.

Certainly official government policy is to keep people like al-Ghouzi in jail, just as it is official policy to develop the country’s infrastructure and to combat the drug menace.

The Arroyo government has not only repeatedly announced its commitment to anti-terrorism. It has also committed the country to unconditional support for the United States’ own war on the international terrorist networks to the extent of supporting the latter’s unjust war on Iraq; and welcomed Australian aid in the Philippines’ own supposed effort to combat home-grown terrorists as well as those of the international variety who have taken refuge here. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was in fact welcoming Australian Prime Minister John Howard on the day Al-Ghouzi et.al. walked out of Crame, and was promised A$5 million in aid in support of the anti-terrorist campaign.

The development of Philippine roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure is on the other hand a continuing policy of all Philippine governments, as is the campaign against illegal drugs. The Arroyo government has made the latter a major plank of its current policy thrusts, launching only a few weeks ago a supposedly tough campaign meant to halt the alarming growth in drug addiction in the country because of the impunity with which drug rings have been operating in Philippine territory.

These policies not withstanding, newly-constructed roads still disappear with the first rains of the wet season, bridges still collapse, or are not built at all despite millions allocated for them, and the anti-drug campaign appears headed for the vast graveyard of government failures.

The “escape” of Al-Ghouzi suggests the same fate for the anti-terrorism policy. The “escape” shares with the Abu Sayyaf’s success in breaking out of Lamitan in 2002 the same possibility: that collusion between security forces and the groups and individuals they’re supposed to be fighting, and not the terrorists themselves, is what makes the campaign against terrorism problematic.

Corruption is the one single factor that unites most government failures, and corruption that’s at the core of the weak state. The weakness of the Philippine state is in fact based on its inability to enforce its policies through its own institutions, agencies and officials, and only peripherally on its inability to enforce its will among the governed.

The second is a consequence of the first. In Lamitan, for example, the escape of the Abu Sayyaf, whose neutralization has been a state policy for at least two years, was made possible not because that group was in any way superior in arms, tactics or intelligence to the Armed Forces, but because of the corruption of the very institution and men charged with the task of implementing that policy.

The same is equally true in the implementation of the state policy of infrastructure development. Critical to the country’s progress, the roads, bridges, airports that would transport farmers’ produce to market, bring tourists into the country and link its various communities together are either not being built despite the millions allocated for them, or else are built haphazardly because of the cost of corruption, which in the Department of Public Works and Highways is conservatively estimated at 30 percent of each project.

Essentially the same problem is evident in the anti-drug campaign, which has been hobbled by corruption among police and military elements. Corruption in the form of bribery as well as direct police and military involvement in the drug trade has led to the Philippines’ conversion into, for the international drug rings, a reliable transshipment point as well as a growth zone for their illicit product.

What these suggests is the urgent need to reform the bureaucracy including the police and the military beyond falsely claiming that “the strong Republic” has been achieved.

A misnomer to begin with, that phrase has served no purpose except to conceal from public understanding the most critical failure of governance in the Philippines: that of its own instrumentalities’ willingness to subvert the very policies they’re supposed to implement—and even the very Constitution they have sworn to uphold.

No Philippine government, and that includes this one, has ever tried to seriously address that most basic of all problems. It’s not just the Camp Crame guards who’ve been asleep during their watch.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com, July 17, 2003)

By near unanimous global consent in 1997, this permanent tribunal’s establishment was long overdue. Its creation was the result of the search for a means to address crimes against humanity that goes back nearly a hundred years to the early 20th century—a century of unprecedented human sufferings brought about by two devastating world wars.

The Preamble of the Rome Statute creating the ICC indeed points out that “millions of children, women and men have been victims of unimaginable atrocities” in the 20th century. “Such grave crimes,” it continues, “threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world.”

The most serious crimes “of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished… their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures as the international level and by enhancing international cooperation.”

The Preamble also affirms UN principles, among them “that all States shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State…”

While it will punish offenders, the intent of the ICC is to help minimize crimes committed against civilian populations in times of war—a purpose all men and women of goodwill would presumably welcome. Given the possibility that the 21st century may be another century of war because of the United States drive for world conquest, the ICC is thus of special relevance to the prevention of crimes against humanity.

But since 2002 the United States has waged a tough campaign against ratification of the Rome Statute that established the Court. The US campaign has included diplomatic pressure (“muscle diplomacy”), and the threat of withdrawing from, or not providing military aid to, those countries that ratify the Statute and that do not enter into a bilateral agreement exempting US troops from ICC prosecution.

A US law passed in 2002, called the American Service Members Protection Act, in fact provides that countries without a bilateral agreement exempting US troops from ICC prosecution will not get military aid. US policy also prohibits military aid to any country that ratifies the Statute.

Under US pressure, 48 countries, of which 18 had originally signed the Rome Statute in 1997, have so far signed bilateral agreements with the United States, in effect helping the US undermine the capability of the ICC to prosecute individuals, acting in behalf of states, who are accused of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

Of these 48 countries, the Philippines was the 34th to sign a bilateral agreement with the US. Seven more countries have since done so, among them the Philippines’ Asean neighbors Thailand and Cambodia.

The possibility that these states will not ratify the Rome Statute is high. While the Philippine Senate, for example, has expressed readiness to ratify it, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has not submitted the Statute for ratification. It is unlikely that she will, just as it is unlikely that the other heads of the states that have signed bilateral agreements with the US will submit the Statute to their own treaty-making bodies for ratification. The reason: pledges of US military aid.

The Statute was initially signed in 1997 by 120 countries, but was opposed by seven, with 21 abstaining. Among the countries that refused to sign the Statute, China, Israel and the United States chose to openly state their reasons for their opposition.

Primarily the US claimed that its soldiers abroad could be brought before the Court on politically-motivated charges—a possibility to which soldiers from every country serving abroad would be vulnerable, but which the integrity of the ICC judges and the elaborate safeguards in place could very likely prevent.

The US did eventually sign the Statute. But this was during the Clinton administration. Citing the same reasons advanced by the Clinton administration in 1998, the Bush administration withdrew the US signature in May 2002.

It doesn’t take an over-active imagination to surmise that given the Bush administration’s drive for total US world dominance through the use of force, what it doesn’t want is for its soldiers and officials to be brought before the ICC for crimes under its jurisdiction.

The Rome Statute identifies a number of crimes for which responsible US civilian and military officials as well as common soldiers could be brought before the ICC. By invading Iraq the United States is also in violation of the fundamental UN and ICC principle banning the use of force and the threat of force against independent states. While offenses committed before the ICC ratification may not be brought before it, US troops now in Iraq, or those deployed in other countries, could in the future commit crimes that would fall under ICC jurisdiction.

Under Article 5, Part 2 of the Statute, four crimes are identified as within the Court’s jurisdiction: The crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.

Each crime is defined in detail in Articles 6,7 and 8.

“Crimes against humanity” are thus defined in terms of specific acts, among them the use of torture, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, and persecution for reason of race, culture, religion, gender, political belief, or ethnic origin. Such crimes also include “enforced disappearances,” defined as “the arrest, detention, or abduction of persons by… a State or political organization, followed by refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom, or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time.”

“War crimes” are defined as consisting of, among other acts, “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population… or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities” as well as “intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects… which are not military objectives.”

War crimes also include “attacking or bombarding by whatever means towns villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives.” It is also a war crime, according to the Rome Statute, to use “weapons, projectiles and methods of warfare which… cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate… ”

Obviously the United states is preempting the possibility that its troops, as the US embarks on an adventurist course of invasion, conquest, and regime change in furtherance of the New American Empire, may be brought before the ICC.

In that sense the Bush administration regards a fully functioning ICC sanctioned by the international community as a hindrance to its agenda of “full spectrum dominance” on land, air, sea and space. The ICC could put the acts of its soldiery—which in Iraq have included attacks on unarmed civilians and the bombardment of undefended towns and villages—under scrutiny.

Worse, these and other similar acts could be condemned as war crimes, shattering the US myth that it is engaged in the liberation of oppressed peoples. By signing a bilateral agreement with the US, the Philippines is on the other hand assisting the US drive to undermine international support for a tribunal meant to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com, July 2, 2003)

In early February, or four months ago, and only two months after she had announced her non-candidacy, for example, she suddenly took bag and baggage for Kuwait supposedly to reassure Overseas Filipino Workers there of their safety should the US attack Iraq–but right at the point when the final version of the Absentee Voting Bill was about to pass Congress.

In that context that trip could only have looked like an attempt to ingratiate herself with the OFW millions whose votes, if delivered and counted, could henceforth decide the outcome of any elections.

The consistency of her support for US war policy was equally suspect. The same Mrs. Arroyo who in 2002 welcomed US soldiers into the Philippines despite a possible violation of the Constitutional ban on foreign troops, early this year committed the Philippines to the so-called Coalition of the Willing, despite the possibility that a war in Iraq could spread throughout the Middle East and put in harm’s way the very same OFWs for whose welfare Mrs. Arroyo had taken the greatest pains to demonstrate concern.

In support of the US drive for war, last February she also chided the UN and urged it to use force against Saddam Hussein despite the demonstrated effectiveness of UN arms inspections. Her government followed that commitment to the use of force in Iraq by expelling an Iraqi diplomat for his alleged links to the Abu Sayyaf, in what looked like an attempt to validate US claims of links between Al Qaida and the Iraqi government.

Also in February, the Philippine military launched its now infamous Pikit offensive, which created tens of thousands of refugees, escalated the shooting war in Mindanao between the Armed Forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and made the peace talks more problematic than it has ever been in years.

While Mrs. Arroyo did attempt at one point to rein in Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, she almost immediately after gave the military carte blanche in continuing with the offensive, justifying it variously as defensive, and, on the eve of her departure for her May state visit to the United States, as a campaign to seek out the terrorists “embedded” in MILF ranks. Mrs. Arroyo indeed timed an order for a new offensive against the MILF with her departure for the US, as if to further convince her US patrons of her toughness against terrorism.

The offensive in Mindanao as well as the US visit were popular among the majority of Filipinos, according to the surveys, and Mrs. Arroyo seems to have been driven by that sense in adopting a get-tough policy with the MILF together with an unconditionally supportive one when it came to the United States.

Her frequent demonstrations of total support for the US also bore fruit not only in terms of US President George W. Bush’s declaring the Philippines a non-NATO ally, and his pledge of US military and economic aid, but also in the lavishness of her reception at the US capital. Mrs. Arroyo thus returned triumphant from her US visit–which for a non-candidate was distinguished by the political windfall of US support.

That visit now appears to have been a turning point in deciding whether Mrs. Arroyo will run in 2004 despite what she said last December. Its impact on her approval ratings is likely to be positive in a country where pro-Americanism is part and parcel of the political culture. It is thus no coincidence that the enthusiasm among her partisans in Malacanang and Congress in pushing for an Arroyo candidacy in 2004 reached fever pitch immediately after her US visit.

The result has been her almost certain candidacy in 2004. The year 2003 had begun with none of the “groundswell” that her supporters now say justifies her candidacy. There was none of the endorsements she has received from US President George W. Bush, as well as, allegedly, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Muhamad Mahathir, and none–this also from her partisans–of the improvement in her approval ratings in the public opinion surveys.

She now has all that in her pocket–plus a political landscape equally favorable, among them the disunity within the opposition, and the threat of a split within the administration coalition. Mrs. Arroyo thus has every reason to “change her mind.”

That very possibility has been assailed as well as defended, although it could be argued that it might not be a case of her changing her mind, but of proceeding to the next phase of a crafty strategy meant to silence critics, buy enough time to boost her approval ratings, and then run anyway.

Whether she would be indeed changing her mind, or merely proceeding as planned, Mrs. Arroyo’s detractors say nevertheless that she would be violating her word of honor if she runs in 2004–as if words of honor have ever mattered in Philippine politics, in the practice of which more pledges than the stars in the sky–pledges based on honor, country, God and motherhood–have been violated since the Commonwealth period.

Mrs. Arroyo could indeed “change her mind”. She would have every right to do so. Perhaps it would be just as well that she did.

The outcome of an Arroyo candidacy in 2004 would be the survey to end all surveys on the Arroyo administration’s performance since it came to power in 2001. It would finally lay to rest the question of whether on balance it has been, as its partisans claim, a real alternative to the mismanagement and corruption of the Estrada years, or whether it has brought the country to far greater ruin than Joseph Estrada and his cohorts would have ever been capable of.

It would be a test, finally, of whether what matters to this country’s electorate is not food on the table, its safety at home and in the streets, and a predictable future, but total commitment to the interests of a foreign power, and to the use of force as an instrument of policy not only in Mindanao but in other areas of conflict.

The results could be as expected and not pretty. Mrs. Arroyo could yet win in 2004. In such an event the country would have clear evidence not only how easily an uninformed electorate can be manipulated into approving even those policies contrary to its interests; it would also once more demonstrate the persistence and triumph of traditional politics.

Lest we forget, it was that very politics Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo vowed to eradicate when she took power in January 2001–and the very same politics she then proceeded to champion with fierce devotion.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com)

But from the minute Malacañang announced Arroyo’s visit, many observant Filipinos had suggested that it was something she and her government needed. Mrs. Arroyo’s low approval ratings, the galloping poverty that she had pledged to diminish during her watch, the country’s peace and order problems, and the general sense of decay and drift that afflict much of the population could be helped only by a dramatic media event. The visit fit the bill perfectly.

Any public relations practitioner knows that to deflect attention from issues that create negative public perceptions, but about which one is either unwilling or unable to do anything, a client needs to focus in his or her strengths. Mrs. Arroyo’s main strength has so far been her capacity to pander to popular biases, particularly to the pro-Americanism rampant among a citizenry among whom a majority would live in the United States if given the choice, and to that same citizenry’s anti-Muslim sentiments.

An indication of the importance Mrs. Arroyo attached to her visit was her order on the eve of her departure for the United States for the military to attack the terrorists supposedly “embedded” in the MILF. The order was calculated not only to win brownie points at home among the majority Christian population eager to see the armed Muslim groups destroyed, but also to ensure that Bush’s enthusiasm would glow sufficiently for its expression to be reported back to the Philippines via the impressed and impressionable media people with the Arroyo entourage.

Mrs. Arroyo or her P.R. handlers knew that the enthusiasm with which she would be greeted, and the warmth as well as promises of aid and other rewards Bush would demonstrate, would please the vastly pro-American Philippine public, perhaps enough for it to forget her failings in governance.

What has so far happened has exceeded her best hopes. Bush has not only promised military and economic aid (provided, however, that U.S. processes—i.e., U.S. congressional review and approval—are satisfied); he also pulled out all the stops to make sure that the U.S. media gave the visit the kind of coverage they reserve for the heads of state of major powers. The Philippine media have noted it as well, and have expectedly issued the expected reports gushing over the quality of the china, the food and the entertainment to which Mrs. Arroyo and company were treated during the other night’s White House state dinner to convince those back home that the Philippines still has an important place in the hearts of U.S. presidents.

The eyes of any Filipino with the stars and stripes in his or her unreformed brain are likely to water at the thought that his or her president is considered important enough for such treatment—described as “royal” by one overenthusiastic Filipino reporter. It is after all the lot of every colonial to long for the approval of those he secretly believes are his betters, and most Filipinos are no exception, and are in fact the exemplars in their eagerness to be told they’re acceptable in the best circles of the metropolitan power.

The Arroyo visit is thus likely to have a most favorable impact on the next Social Weather Stations or Pulse Asia survey on her approval rating.

Filipinos may have to queue for water, barricade themselves behind closed doors for fear of thieves and murderers, or even beg in the streets for their next meal, but a warm welcome for their president beats piped-in water and a minimum wage job any day. So huge is the public relations dividend this visit is likely to reap for Mrs. Arroyo that she could conceivably think it enough for her to be elected in 2004—and to announce any day now that she’s changing her mind, she’s running for president after all.

But if Gloria Macapagal needed this trip for domestic reasons, George W. Bush needed it as well, and for almost the same reason. Unlike Mrs. Arroyo, who has announced that she’s not running in 2004 but is likely to be persuaded to go back on her promise, Bush is definitely running in the same year.

Like Mrs. Arroyo, with whom he shares several things in common, Bush’s special Achilles’ heel is domestic affairs, particularly the economy, which in the short span of two years he has brought to ruin. Bush has widespread and record approval as a “wartime” president, a myth fostered by the war on terror and the attack on Iraq, but basement level ratings as far as his handling of the U.S. economy is concerned.

As Bill Clinton said on the eve of his campaign for a second term in 1996, “it’s the economy, stupid”—meaning it’s how the U.S. electorate perceives the economy is being run that wins elections. Unfortunately for Bush the perception is not likely to favor his reelection in 2004.

Industrial production in the U.S. was down half a percent last March, the second straight month that the output of U.S. factories had fallen, and the worst decline in three months. Consumer confidence also dropped to the lowest it has ever been in the last ten years, while nearly half a million more U.S. workers—in addition to the two million who have already lost their jobs since Bush took over—were laid off in March and April.

The U.S. budget deficit, which Bush’s voodoo economic policies created from the trillion dollar surplus of the Clinton years, is expected to rise from $304 billion to $307 billion by next year, even as that figure could increase to over $400 billion should the U.S. shoulder the entire cost of the reconstruction of Iraq.

Following the same P.R. principle of emphasizing his strengths on the global front in the hope that it will deflect attention from his weaknesses at home, George W. Bush and his handlers saw the visit of the President of the Philippines, whose importance he boosted by declaring the country a major non-NATO U.S. ally, as potentially significant to his reelection.

The Arroyo visit and the corresponding media coverage it encouraged must be seen in the context of the U.S. electorate’s support for the war on terrorism and the attack on Iraq. Mrs. Arroyo’s presence and her statements supportive of both suggest that Bush is winning, or is about to win, other victories in that war, specifically in its “second front” the Philippines, where the depredations of the Abu Sayyaf and its supposed though unproven links to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islami’ya have convinced many Americans they have a security interest. More than anything else, however, it also suggests that far from being isolated from the international community, the U.S. under Bush’s guidance is on the contrary winning allies all over the world, even if they powers as middling as Eritrea and the Philippines.

Bush’s military strategists are of course also thinking of Indonesia, the one place in Asia where the U.S. believes Islamic militants are “embedded” among the world’s largest Muslim population. With its Christian majority, its vastly pro-American population, and a government apparently willing to do anything for the United States including violate its own Constitution, the Philippines is the logical staging ground for any U.S. force deployment in Southeast Asia including Indonesia.

That consideration explains the continuing emphasis in Bush and company’s official statements on “joint exercises” by U.S. troops with Philippine soldiers, which incidentally will assure U.S. forces a continuing presence in the Philippines under the terms of the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement, in effect providing the U.S. under another name the very same military bases the Philippine Constitution prohibits.

Bush’s motives are clear, or should be clear to anyone aware of U.S. strategic interests as well as Bush’s own need for reelection. What’s not clear are Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s motives. Right now those motives seem to consist of nothing more far-sighted than getting a few aging helicopters and spare parts from the U.S., but also quite probably, winning in 2004. Base as these motives may be, they are important enough for any Filipino politician to have unconditionally committed the Philippines to U.S. interests as Arroyo has.

(abs-cbnNEWS.com, May 22, 2003)