Nine people are dead including the hostage- taker, eight of the dead mostly tourists from Hong Kong, which was the most grievous consequence of the colossal stupidity that apparently afflicts an institution whose demonstrated expertise is limited to torture. Incidental to this loss of lives, for which every human being must mourn, is the confirmation, in the past usually denied by government officials pretending outrage, of the near universal belief that the Philippines is a dangerous place whether for tourists, foreign investors, or, lest we forget, Filipinos themselves.

There’s an outstanding reason for it. If in some countries the police are part of the solution to lawlessness and criminal enterprise — to mayhem, murder, theft, drug- running, and most specially human rights violations — in this country they’re part of the problem, as the Rizal Park hostage- taker, an “outstanding policeman” awardee, was .

Although only the most recent example of how the police manage to “solve” crimes such as petty theft, the case of the Manila police officer caught in a cellphone video torturing a suspected thief is not an isolated one. Despite an anti-torture law, and the Philippines’ being a signatory to international covenants that protect human rights, torture is as common a police practice as having multiple wives. Other torture victims have come forward to add to the record of police lawlessness and brutality their own experience of being beaten and subjected to electric shocks and water torture, and/or their wives and children threatened with execution or worse in their presence.

As for murder, the police record in the killing of journalists alone is enough to validate former Manila police chief and now Mayor Alfredo Lim’s observation, made many years ago, that the only solution to our problems with the police is to disband the entire organization and start all over again from zero.

Incompetence kills, but is only the other side of police lawlessness. Policemen constitute the majority of the suspected killers and/or masterminds in the killing of journalists in the Philippines, which currently stands at the world record of 114 since 1986. One of the first killers of journalists to be convicted was a policeman, whom his superiors earlier hid when ordered arrested by the courts for the murder of Pagadian City broadcaster Edgar Damalerio in 2003. In the record-breaking Ampatuan-town massacre of November 23, 2009, 20 policemen are among those accused of conspiring to kill, and actually shooting, 57 men and women, including 32 journalists and media workers.

Saving lives may not be the Philippine police’s strong suit. But apparently, neither is it that of the leading broadcast networks’, whose actions last August 23 have provided the enemies of press freedom one more argument for government regulation.

It’s not as if there were no ethical protocols, developed over the last 200 years of journalism practice as well as more recent experience, to guide reportage during kidnappings, hostage- taking and the like.

In last Monday’s incident, the three leading, privately-owned broadcast networks abandoned, completely forgot, or perhaps never really knew, that the first principle in covering hostage, terrorist and conflict situations is to assume — much like the need to assume that a gun is always loaded — that the culprit has access to television and/or radio broadcasts.

These networks were reporting in painful, frantic, and in one case, panic-stricken, detail what the police planned to do and were doing, including where their snipers were positioned, etc., in addition to broadcasting live the arrest of the hostage-taker’s brother as well as interviews with his relatives and neighbors. As anyone with at least a single digit IQ knows, broadcasting the details of police operations, especially when they’re as amateurish as those of the Philippine police, provides usually media-savvy hostage-takers information that could enable them to anticipate police actions and therefore prolong the crisis. In last Monday’s incident, the live broadcast of the arrest of his brother very likely also pushed the hostage-taker to start shooting the hostages.

Avoiding live coverage including interviews, and refusing involvement in police-hostage-taker negotiations even if the police demand it, are part of the ethical and professional protocols of media coverage during hostage situations. One broadcaster’s negotiating with the hostage-taker last Monday — and his station’s airing it — was thus in the same category of mindlessness as broadcasting the details of police operations.

There are sound reasons for the prohibition against live interviews and negotiations with hostage-takers. One is that they could use the interview or the negotiations, as these are aired live, to convey messages to their accomplices. Another is the journalist’s and his organization’s loss of control over the utterances of the hostage-taker. The third is that such interviews air only the hostage-taker’s views to the exclusion of those against whom he has grievances. Finally, journalists are not trained negotiators. If policemen should not be doing journalism, neither should journalists do police work.

The death of nine people is the worst consequence of police incompetence and media insensitivity last Monday. But it also encourages the already rampant view among the country’s legislators and citizens that the media need government regulation to prevent their making bad situations worse.

One congressman has already introduced a bill requiring TV and radio networks to delay broadcasts rather than air them live — which is already part of the ethical protocols in covering hostage situations. Another has suggested the government’s imposition of a news blackout during similar incidents. Such “solutions” are illusory, government regulation being the sure guarantee of media irrelevance rather than responsibility. But it’s a proposal that thanks to what happened last Monday will meet the approval of a citizenry appalled by the disgraceful performance not only of the police, but also by the outstanding irresponsibility of the leading representatives of the broadcast media.

(BusinessWorld)

The existence of these factions among others has been noted in the press community since the campaign for the May 10 elections, and most particularly when former Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay won the vice presidency over Manuel Roxas II. Neither has confirmed or denied it: Carandang, who’s now in charge of putting together Mr. Aquino’s messages, is with the group that supported Roxas, while Coloma, who now oversees the government TV station NBN 4 and the sequestered stations IBC 13 and RPN 9, is with the faction that supported Binay for the vice presidency.

Executive Order No. 4 created the bureaucracies over which Coloma and Carandang would preside. It not only renames the Office of the Press Secretary (it is now the Presidential Communications Operations Office, Coloma’s turf) but also reorganizes it.

EO No. 4 also creates a totally new office for Carandang, the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office. Besides being a mouthful of bureaucratese, the Office is tasked with research functions and the generation of Palace message content.

It may look acceptable to all. But having two Cabinet secretaries for the communication tasks Mr. Aquino and his advisers are contemplating is unprecedented. It should make for interesting sessions before the Commission on Appointments which has to approve Carandang’s and Coloma’s designations.

EO No. 4 does declare that its purpose is to assure transparency, and “appropriate” (in contrast to “full”? ) disclosure of the administration’s, specifically the Executive Branch’s, “policies, activities and achievements”.

As politically correct as the declaration in favor of transparency is — and as thoroughly as the EO seems to have thought out the bureaucratic imperatives of achieving that purpose — what’s missing from the EO is the reorientation the government information and media system has so obviously needed since the demise of the Marcos regime 24 years ago.

Marcos and his media hacks created the complex system of media and communication agencies succeeding governments have inherited and which survives to this day. This system controlled information about government. But it was also intended to undermine the capacity of the few, mostly crony-owned, private media organizations that were allowed to function, to monitor regime policies and activities.

The system was guided by the regime’s superficial interpretation of development communication, of which the idea that development requires collaboration among government, journalists and the media was the most prominent. In practice this meant government censorship over private media, monitoring and even imprisoning critical journalists, and disseminating through the Ministry of Information and the agencies it controlled solely the “good news” about, and the alleged achievements of, the regime. Although it called what it was doing “public information” what it was actually doing was public relations by developing and enhancing a positive regime image through its control over the entire media system.

Some journalists dismiss public information as no more than another name for public relations. But best practice endows public information with a function indispensable in a democracy, and in companionship with the citizen right to access government information. A public information system worthy of the name does provide what EO 4 declares to be the aim of the reorganization of the Office of the Press Secretary: it is to provide information on the policies and acts of the Executive Branch.

On the other hand, the EO’s emphasis on disseminating Presidential “achievements” could lead to the exclusion of “bad news,” from the information the system would disseminate. And yet public information should be about both the bad news about government as well as the good — or about government news and information, period.

It may be too much to expect bureaucrats committed to an administration as well as to keeping their jobs to be so neutral. Which is why one of the imperatives of an authentic public information system is to open it to diverse, rather than just to administration, views. This is unthinkable to the managers of the government information system as it has been handed down from the Marcos dictatorship to its successor governments. But opening it to diverse views by making the media under its control a forum for debate and discourse on public issues, is the only way the system can be of real service to a free citizenry which needs information as complete and as accurate as possible so it can make decisions on public matters.

That it can be done has been demonstrated in other countries. Coloma mentioned the British Broadcasting Corporation in one of his media briefings. The BBC is an example of a broadcasting organization devoted to public information, or public service information.

Coloma vowed to make the programming of the government-owned NBN-4 TV as relevant as that of the BBC, but without saying how that can be done. It certainly can’t be done by saying it alone, but by recognizing that NBN-4’s first problem is its lack of independence from every administration since Marcos, as a result of which it serves as the public relations arm of current administrations rather than providing public information. As a scan of its performance during the last election campaign will show, this has resulted in unprofessional, biased broadcasting.

What’s needed to assure NBN-4 autonomy, to start with, is an independent source of funding similar to that of the BBC, which is primarily funded by an annual television-license fee paid by every household and organization that record and/or receive television broadcasts. Creating a similar funding source will require legislation, the details of which the legal geniuses of the Aquino government can hammer out. Once such funding is assured, the reorientation, reorganization and professionalization of NBN-4 should follow naturally, and with it, its capacity to develop and air the relevant programs Coloma mentioned. That would be an achievement Coloma and company can really crow about.

(BusinessWorld)

The Failed States Index of a US-based organization called the Fund for Peace was suddenly on many people’s lips as well as in some columns and blogs. The Index is an annual monitor of some 178 countries, which it ranks according to how high the threat of state failure is: red for “alert,” meaning the states in the category have already failed; orange for “warning,” meaning the states so labeled display some of the indicators of state failure and could fail unless it takes appropriate steps; pale orange for states under “moderate” threat of failure; and green for states that are “sustainable.”

The Philippines is listed in the “warning” category, together with 91 other countries which include Laos and Rwanda, Indonesia, Cambodia and Costa Rica. China, where one would think the state is firmly in control, is listed in the same category, as is Malaysia. The United States is listed in the “moderate” category, together with most of the countries of Europe, as well as Asian states like South Korea and Singapore.

But the Index lists states according to the degree of their actual or impending failure, or their sustainability. The Philippines was 54th in 2009 in the overall listing — up from 59th in 2008, which brought it closer to the first 39 countries, led by Somalia, listed as failed states. It was 15th in the warning category, which for 2009 was headed by Syria, which was in 40th place over all.

The states are classified on the basis of such social indicators as mounting demographic pressures; massive movement of refugees or internally displaced persons which create complex humanitarian emergencies; and legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance or group paranoia resulting in chronic and sustained human flight.

The economic indicators are limited to “uneven economic development along group lines” and “sharp and/or severe economic decline”. The political indicators are more numerous: criminalization or delegitimization of the state; progressive deterioration of public services; suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation of human rights; the security apparatus’ operating as a ‘state within a state;’ the rise of factionalized elites’ and intervention of other states or external political actors.

It’s obvious why the Ampatuan Town Massacre, during which 57 people including 32 journalists and media workers were killed, and which was allegedly perpetrated by some 100 members of the Ampatuan private army, should have provoked observations that the Philippines is a failing state or has already failed.

The existence of private — or more appropriately, privatized, since they spring from the paramilitary formations organized, trained and funded by the Philippine military — the existence of privatized armed groups in the Philippines is a leading indicator of lawlessness, chaos and state weakness.

The Philippine government’s loss of control over these groups, has also strengthened independent military power in the Philippine countryside, which helps explain why the Arroyo government, which was supposed to have command over the military, still had to woo even the most brazen violators of human rights among the officer corps, whose support it needed to stay in power.

The allegiance of some of the armed clans all over the country, estimated to be over a hundred, it managed to hold by, among other means, entering into political alliances with them at the local level, where the same clans lord it over the citizenry as independent powers.

It’s not supposed to happen, but it does, primarily because the political elite that emerged out of the US colonial period, and which has ruled the country since, recognizes no interest except its own. The extra judicial killings the madmen of the Arroyo regime thought could stop exposure of and protests against official wrongdoing was for example in no other service except that of greed. But the killings were made to appear necessary to stop an armed social movement that in the first place would not have flourished had the Philippines been a better place. It could also be argued that by attacking the citizenry, which was the exact opposite of its constitutional mandate, the Arroyo watch was criminalizing the state.

A number of the indicators the Failed States Index has identified do apply to the Philippines. These indicators include unrestrained population growth, thanks to, among others, institutions such as the Catholic Church, which look at contraception as murder, but not the death of babies and children from disease and starvation.

However, as accurately as the failed states concept may describe countries like the Philippines, the United States monitors states for signs of failure in behalf of its war on terrorism. Failed and failing states are the fertile breeding grounds for armed groups such as the Taliban and the Abu Sayyaf, most of which end up threatening US economic and strategic interests, thus the monitor.

And yet the failing states concept could serve the interests of the populations of the countries in the watchlist, through the failed state indicators’ serving as a warning that social, economic and political reform, even revolution, is imperative if a country’s march to the precipice is to be averted. Filipinos need not buy into the idea that they must arrest their country’s impending demise to keep it safe for US interests. Rather should their awareness of their country’s condition drive them to address the vast problems that confront them, through collective action as well as, in the present instance, keeping up the pressure for change on the new government.

Seeing to it that the Ampatuan Massacre is resolved, meaning with the perpetrators and masterminds successfully tried and punished, would be a good start at restoring the capacity of the justice system to provide the reason (justice) for its existence, and at dismantling the “states within the state” that warlord rule has established all over the country. A result otherwise would confirm fears that the country’s descent to chaos is irreversible.

(BusinessWorld)

In Chile, South Africa, Argentina, Peru and El Salvador, the mission of the truth commissions was to determine the extent, causes and cases of state-sponsored crimes committed against the citizenry so that they may never again be repeated. They were also meant to identify and recommend prosecution of the guilty, and compensation for the victims and survivors, or their kin.

The need for a truth commission was evident in all the above countries. In Chile, only through a truth commission could the extent of the crimes of the Augusto Pinochet military regime — which was replaced in a 1990 election 17 years after seizing power in a 1973 coup d’etat against the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende — be established.

The Pinochet regime was aided by University of Chicago economists in drafting its economic policies. Corruption among the US-backed Chilean military once these policies were in place was rampant. But the 1990 truth commission focused on the human rights violations the regime committed in behalf of the local elite and US multinational interests, among them the arbitrary arrests and detentions, the summary executions, enforced disappearances, abductions, torture and assassinations that targeted leftwing and church activists, trade union and student leaders, artists and journalists, and members of opposition groups.

Of particular concern were the disappeared, or desaparecidos — those abducted by the military, and about whose fate their kin needed to be certain. Once what happened to the victims of repression was established, they themselves or their surviving kin filed charges against those responsible. A number of military officers were prosecuted and imprisoned for their roles in the repression. Until he died, Pinochet himself was hounded by criminal charges filed in Chile and other countries.

The prosecution of those responsible for some of the worst, most systematic and most extensive violations of human rights in recent memory was necessary not only for the sake of justice, but also to provide some assurance, through collective remembrance, that the same crimes will never happen again.

In the Philippines, the need for a truth commission occurred after the overthrow of the Marcos regime in 1986. But the need for one today, in the aftermath of the Arroyo regime, is as evident, on the same urgent grounds as in post-EDSA 1986.

At the end of the Marcos regime, a truth commission could have performed exactly the same role as the truth commissions of Chile, Peru, South Africa, El Salvador and Argentina: that of once and for all establishing — and disseminating among Filipinos so they will remember — that the acts the past regime had committed in the name of democracy and order were indeed crimes for which those responsible had to be prosecuted, and how and why they occurred, so that the country could put that period behind it in the certainty that it will not happen again.

The alternative was for the country to remain divided on what happened during the dictatorship; confusion on who were responsible for it; uncertainty as to what happened to those the military abducted; and worst of all, to risk its repetition. That is exactly what has happened since. The uninformed maintain that it was a period of peace, stability and relative prosperity. The torturers and killers of that era are unpunished. The fate of scores of the disappeared has not been established. And the country remains in peril of dictatorships.

Part of the reason why what happened during the martial law period is still debated even today is because the late President Corazon Aquino did not create a truth commission to establish the truth about that dark chapter of history. Instead she created a poor copy of one, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), with a limited mandate and limited powers.

The PCGG mandate of looking into cases of ill gotten wealth and corruption during the Marcos regime was similar to that of the “truth commission” Benigno Aquino III created last week, apparently on the twin assumptions that corruption was the most outstanding offense of the Arroyo regime, and that corruption is a stand-alone offense against the nation.

And yet, equally evident, together with the many corruption scandals the Arroyo regime generated, were the human rights violations that could be laid at its door. These violations — the disappearances, assassinations, torture, massacres, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, among others — were part of the regime’s counter-insurgency strategy. But they were at the same time the instrument of regime determination to prevent exposure of its misdeeds and to silence criticism of the corruption that has metastasized throughout government. At the same time that they were, and still are, part of a brutal anti-insurgency policy, the extrajudicial killings and other crimes against political activists, progressive church people and local officials, lawyers, labor, student and farmers’ leaders, and even journalists also had the effect of terrorizing regime critics.

Mr. Aquino can do worse than to widen the mandate of the truth commission to include an inquiry into the extent of the human rights violations committed during the Arroyo regime as an instrument in its effort to conceal corruption; whether they were indeed state policy; the fate of the abducted and disappeared; and who were responsible. The truth commission could thus live up to its name, rather than being limited to duplicating the functions of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice, and open to complaints as to its legality.

The country missed an opportunity to understand what happened during the martial law period. It shouldn’t miss the opportunity to understand what happened during a regime that’s been justly compared to Marcos’ own.

(BusinessWorld)

HIS REVELATIONS about the gargantuan bonuses MWSS executives had been getting despite a water crisis he refuses to call a crisis may have shocked those Filipinos whom tales of government corruption and profligacy have not desensitized.

The information that the Arroyo government had been importing tons and tons of rice way above what’s needed, in the process further depleting the public treasury, may have even awed a public grown cynical over the conduct of its officials.

But puzzling instead was Benigno Aquino III’s expression of hope that the media would monitor their own ranks, and that the press would give life to the basic journalistic principle of explaining vital issues and to be fair and truthful so as to raise the level of public discourse.

Mr. Aquino made the reference to the media (he meant the press) in a portion of his 3,768-word State of the Nation Address last Monday that declared these to be times of sacrifice (“panahon ng sakripisyo”), and that the necessary companion of citizen rights and liberty is his or her duty to each other and the country (“Kaakibat ng ating mga karapatan at kalayaan ay ang tungkulin natin sa kapwa at sa bayan”).

Some media organizations linked his statements about the media to extrajudicial killings, but Mr. Aquino mentioned the killing of political activists several paragraphs earlier (and, it must be noted, committed his government to solving only those six that had occurred since he assumed the Presidency last July 1).

By urging them to discharge their basic responsibility of being fair and truthful (or accurate) so as to raise the level of public discourse, was he also implying that they have been otherwise — i.e., biased and inaccurate? Was he then admonishing the media, and in the process unknowingly validating the claim that journalists and media practitioners are to blame for their being killed?

He also seemed to be saying that the media had NOT been monitoring their ranks. He did not say why the media had to do so. But we can surmise that it’s in furtherance of discharging their basic (or fundamental) responsibility of truth-telling.

Mr. Aquino — and his media advisers — are mistaken in these assumptions. The media, particularly the press (meaning the social institution charged with providing information and analysis through print, broadcasting and online), have been monitoring their own ranks since 1946, or after the restoration of Philippine independence, although press and media advocacy awareness of that need became more pronounced in the aftermath of the martial law period.

The media’s monitoring of their own ranks has had two meanings: the first has to do with keeping watch over ethical and professional lapses (which include lack of fairness, inaccuracy, and the corruption that makes fair and accurate reporting problematic). This watch has included providing training in ethics and standards to fill the gaps in practitioner education.

The second has been focused on media safety and defense, in response to the attacks on, and the killing of journalists and media workers that began to increase in number in 1986, and soared to unprecedented levels starting 2001, when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power.

Mr. Aquino’s media advisers don’t have to look far, should they want a list of the journalist and media advocacy groups that have been monitoring their own ranks to enhance the press capacity to do its mandated tasks.

Among these groups are the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (an affiliate of the International Federation of Journalists), the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, the Philippine Press Institute, the Kapisanan ng Brodkaster sa Pilipinas, and the Center for Community Journalism and Development.

There is also a coalition, the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists that has been at the forefront of prosecuting the killers of journalists through private prosecutors, and aiding the survivors of slain journalists.

These groups maintain links with, and some are members of, such international press freedom watch groups as the Southeast Asian Press Alliance based in Thailand; the Canada-based International Free Expression Exchange; the UK-based Article XIX; the Committee to Protect Journalists based in New York; the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres, etc.

In case Mr. Aquino’s media experts don’t know it, the latter groups have been focused on the Philippines as a global site in the killing of journalists, and as, uniquely among supposedly democratic countries that are not (officially) at war, the one country in the world where despite constitutional protection, press freedom has been under siege for decades.

The Philippine groups’ programs have had for central purpose the defense of press freedom as a necessary component of democratic governance, and in furtherance of raising the level of public discourse to which Mr. Aquino’s speech seemed to assume the Philippine press has not been contributing.

Mr. Aquino was wrong on both counts about the media. His SONA was also remiss in its failure to recognize the imperative, together with that of investigating corruption, of his planned Truth Commission’s looking into how the previous government created a climate that encouraged the killing of journalists through an anti-press offensive that included the threats and harassments it unleashed during the state of emergency in 2006, its dragging its feet in the search for, and the investigation and prosecution of the killers of journalists, and its practice of naming journalists’ groups enemies of the state and including community journalists in the military’s Orders of Battle.

Mr. William Esposo of the Philippine Star denies that he was ever a public relations practitioner, which this column assumed last week.

(BusinessWorld)

Opinions often lead to action, and are the bases on which citizens support, suggest changes to or reject policies, question government decisions, object to proposed legislation, and make their views known on matters of public relevance. Ideally, this is a constant, ongoing process wherever and whenever a free press exists and is able to monitor governments. But it is during elections when the power inherent in the news media role of providing information and interpretation is most evident.

In acknowledgment of the media’s critical role in shaping voters’ opinions, and influencing who they will vote for, the parties and personalities in contention for national posts last May waged the 2010 campaign primarily in the media. A review of media performance suggests that overall, the major media organizations did not fail to provide either information or interpretation during the 2010 exercise. In print, the columnists helped readers wend their way through the tangled and often bewildering claims and counter-claims of the camps of the candidates for the Presidency and other posts, and in most cases managed to get at the truth behind those claims.

However, some of the columnists were part of the campaign machineries of this or that candidate. Their readers are either still clueless about it, or have come to know of it only in the aftermath of the elections — and when some were appointed to government positions and their roles publicly acknowledged by a grateful Benigno Aquino III.

Like everyone else, columnists have the right, and are expected, to express their views on matters of public interest. Who they think the voters should vote for, and why, are certainly among the questions columnists are expected to answer during election campaign periods.

But there is a difference between following events and commenting on them on the basis of their perception of what the country needs — what its problems are, and which candidates and parties have the platforms and policy planks that can best address them — from being committed to supporting that party and/or candidate, whether as a volunteer or as a paid member of the campaign staff.

The support that columnists — or any other journalist so committed — who continue to write during campaign periods end up providing is the use of their columns to influence public opinion in favor of their preferred candidate or party. They would not be of much use otherwise. Every columnist on the planet knows what their true value to a political campaign is. It helps explain why so few of those who have volunteered for, or are paid by, their favored candidate, are able to take the ethical path of at least taking a leave of absence for the duration of a campaign.

The conflict of interest inherent in some columnists’ being part of a candidate’s campaign or being committed to his or her candidacy even before or during the early stages of the campaign that began last February is disturbing enough. That they continued to write their columns without the public’s being forewarned that they were already committed to this or that candidate is equally worrisome.

No columnist who had been so involved has so far expressed any regret over these lapses. They seem unaware that they had breached the ethical divide that protects readers from the biases of partisan columnists and which separates public relations from journalism. That most if not all of those so involved were not trained as journalists helps explain their cluelessness. But that they had come from such other disciplines as economics, literature, business– and yes, public relations — does not excuse their respective publications from a charge of ignoring what should have been obvious to their editors.

And yet the decision of a major broadsheet — the Philippine Daily Inquirer — to let one of its columnists go suggests that its editors at least sensed that an ethical line had been breached. This is not to single out the Inquirer — other papers including this one included partisans for Aquino III and other candidates among its columnists. But the sheer number of its partisan columnists, the consistency of their focus on furthering the candidacy of the Liberal Party’s Benigno Aquino III , and its recent dismissal of one of its columnists for partisanship does raise a number of questions about the role of columnists in elections.

The paper justified the firing of one of its long-time columnists by accusing her of partisanship — apparently for Arroyo administration candidate for President Gilberto Teodoro and against Aquino III — during the campaign period.

But at least two other Inquirer columnists did seem as partisan as the paper claims the axed columnist was. And while it could be said of her that her ties with the past administration constituted a conflict of interest with that of the public, so did the ties of those columnists to the Aquino III campaign.

Some of the latter are likely to be in the communications group the Aquino III administration is organizing. One other columnist who was similarly committed while he continued to write his column in another newspaper has since assumed a post at the National Food Administration. The sister of another public relations practitioner disguised as a columnist of still another newspaper has been conducting media relations seminars for Cabinet secretaries.

In these circumstances, how far the columnists’ anticipation of these rewards influenced their writing is a fair question — which is why, as universally counseled by every journalists’ code of ethics, journalists must avoid even the suspicion of conflicts of interest. In the present instance the conflict was not merely suspected, but was real enough. The consequence is the erosion of public confidence in a free press, and the journalists’ own loss of professional credibility.

(BusinessWorld)

Contrary to the common perception that only the wealthy and powerful literally get away with murder, it also happens even to the poorest folk. If the wealthy and well-connected can evade punishment by hiring crafty lawyers, and bribing policemen, prosecutors and judges, those who are otherwise, if they’re lucky enough, can escape the law by simply disappearing in the vast countryside that surrounds the cities, or in the anonymous warrens and labyrinthine slums the poorest call home. Police inefficiency and reluctance to hunt down killers, if the victims are “not important” and won’t be missed except by their closest kin, does the rest.

But what makes the killing of political activists different from common murders is that it has been, for a very long time, part of the government’s anti-insurgency policy, which makes no distinction between the armed combatants of the New People’s Army, and the members of legal organizations with aims similar to those of the Communist Party of the Philippines which commands the NPA.

The policy has resulted in the killing of over a thousand men and women from various sectors: students and teachers, farmers and workers, progressive local officials and leaders of non-governmental organizations, priests and pastors, lawyers and judges. The policy has not only cost the country the lives of citizens that in other societies would be cherished for the consistency and courage of their convictions. It has also further enshrined the culture of impunity that fuels the violence and lawlessness rampant throughout Philippine society.

It was only a matter of time before the policy was equally applied to journalists by its evil architects and the mindless brutes that implement it. While the killing of journalists has primarily been due to the weaknesses of the justice system — among them police inefficiency and collusion with the killers, the shortage in, and indifference of local prosecutors — it had not been government orchestrated.

But in the latter years of the Arroyo government, starting with the police/military labeling of some journalists’ groups (the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and the College Editors Guild of the Philippines) as “enemies of the state” together with a long list of legal organizations whose leaders and members were already being regularly assassinated. This was followed by the inclusion of critical local journalists in the dreaded military orders of battle, which identify those who can be legitimately targeted for elimination. The Arroyo regime ended in the nick of time: there was every indication that like the assassination of political activists, the killing of journalists was about to be state policy.

Many assume that all these have passed with the coming to power of a new administration, which among other initiatives has emphasized that not only are state-sponsored extrajudicial killings NOT among its policies, it also expects the military to respect human rights and international law in the course of its anti-insurgency campaign.

As things are turning out, however, the exit of the Arroyo clique has not stopped the attacks on, and the killing of journalists and political activists. One free lance journalist was killed in the first week of the Aquino III government, and a second, who survived, was ambushed only this week. But three political activists, one a member of Bayan Muna, another a member of a farmers’ group and a third a teacher who was a member of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, were killed within a week.

Justice Secretary Leila De Lima may have a point in suspecting that the killings are being committed by military partisans of the previous regime to embarrass the Aquino III government. Among the consequences of the state policy of encouraging EJKs, which among others included promoting and publicly applauding the work of some of the most egregious human rights violators in its brutal history, is the strengthening of the military as a power unto itself, independent and contemptuous of, though paying lip service to, civilian authority.

This monster was not the creation of the Arroyo regime alone. The emergence of the military as a decisive factor in Philippine politics, policy-making, and governance was inevitable during the martial law period. The governments that followed that of Marcos either did not have the capacity to curb military power, had no desire to do so, or were not even familiar with it.

The Arroyo regime, however, made the military a co-conspirator in its efforts to remain in power, rewarded retired officers with appointments in lucrative government positions more than Fidel Ramos ever did, and encouraged the human rights violations to which it has been accustomed since Marcos. But it had a cost. Among the Arroyo regime’s most putrid legacies is the further weakening of the central government’s capacity to control the military, especially at the local level.

This makes it likely that the same insane policies of extrajudicial killings of the Arroyo regime are still in place within the military, given its primary article of faith: the use of any means including the most heinous to put an end to any social movement that threatens its own as well as its patrons’ interests. The culture of impunity is firmly rooted in that evil tradition, as it has been further strengthened by the failure of a succession of governments to root it out, and, in the case of the Arroyo regime, to even nurture it.

(BusinessWorld)