The ICCPR is part of the International Bill of Rights. Section 2 of Article XIX states that “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”

The UNHRC view that the libel law is incompatible with Section 2 of Article XIX was issued in response to a complaint by Davao broadcaster Alex Adonis who was convicted and imprisoned for libel in 2007. Adonis’ conviction was not only flawed since he was unable to defend himself (he could not attend the hearings in Davao City and lost the services of his lawyer); it was also the clearest demonstration so far of the repressive and colonial character of the libel law which has been in the Revised Penal Code since 1932, or 14 years before Philippine independence was restored in 1946.

Libel has always been problematic in the Philippine setting. The law against it has primarily been used to suppress free expression rather than to address media abuse. A libel law can be a legitimate means of redress for people the media have aggrieved, and can even encourage greater media responsibility. But the present libel law, with its antecedents in both the Spanish and US colonial periods, was primarily used to prevent criticism of both colonial regimes and to curb Filipino demands for independence.

A libel law was in place during the Spanish colonial period; it punished insults and “injuries” against persons of authority and their agents. During the American occupation, a libel law (Act No. 277) passed by the US’ Philippine Commission was used to silence the critical and nationalist press starting in 1904. The justification for Act 227’s criminalization of libel was blatantly racist. It was put in place because Filipinos, said then Governor General William Howard Taft, are “a strange people unused to the freedom of the press.”

The colonial roots of the Philippine libel law are also evident in the definition of libel in Article 353 of the RPC. That definition is virtually the same as the definition of libel in Act No. 277, which defined libel as “a malicious defamation…tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, virtue or reputation, or publish the alleged or natural defects of one who is alive, and thereby expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule.”

Article 353 defines libel as “a public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status or circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead.” Libel is also a criminal offense in both Act No. 277 and the RPC.

The landmark case during the US colonial regime was the 1908 libel suit filed by then Secretary of the Interior Dean Worcester against the nationalist, pro-independence newspaper El Renacimiento (The Rebirth) for its editorial “Aves de Rapina” (Birds of Prey).

In that editorial (written by Fidel Reyes), El Renacimiento described “the eagle” (the US) as the “most rapacious” bird of prey, and criticized certain US colonial government officials “who, besides being eagles, have the characteristics of the vulture, the owl, and the vampire.” These officials, said the newspaper, among other offenses pretended to be studying the Igorots, but in reality were looking for gold deposits in the mountains of Luzon.

Although the paper did not name him, Worcester felt alluded to and filed a libel suit which resulted in the conviction of editor Teodoro M. Kalaw and publisher Martin Ocampo for criminal libel. Kalaw and Ocampo appealed the decision before the Philippine Supreme Court and later, the US Supreme Court, but their convictions were upheld in both courts. Although pardoned by then US Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison in 1914, they had to pay the then huge amount of P60,000 in fines, which so crippled the paper it ceased publication.

With some changes, the libel laws remained in place even after 1932 when the Revised Penal Code went into effect. It has since been in the RPC despite calls for its decriminalization from journalists’, free expression, and media advocacy groups. Libel as a criminal offense mandates prison terms of from six months to six years and/or a fine of 200 to 6,000 pesos. In more recent cases, those convicted of libel have been fined more than these amounts in addition to being sentenced to prison terms. Libel’s being a criminal offense has also made it specially troubling for journalists even prior to conviction, since anyone accused of libel can be arrested, and unless able to post bail, imprisoned pending the outcome of the case.

Before Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power, the most prominent post-martial law libel case in the Philippines was the late President Corazon Aquino’s suit against the Manila newspaper Philippine Star’s Maximo Soliven and Luis Beltran — the first by any sitting President – for the latter’s statement in his column that Mrs. Aquino “hid under her bed” during the 1987 coup attempt against the Aquino administration. Soliven and Beltran were convicted, but their conviction was reversed after Beltran’s death. On his part, while still President, Joseph Estrada also threatened to sue the Manila Times for libel, but withdrew the suit when the paper apologized.

The nine-years during which Mrs. Arroyo was in power were particularly problematic, notably for the 11 libel suits her husband filed against 46 journalists starting in 2006, and for the conviction and imprisonment of Adonis in 2007.

Adonis’ offense was that he read during one of his broadcasts a tabloid account of then House Speaker Prospero Nograles’ allegedly being seen naked in a hotel where he had supposedly spent the night with a woman whose husband had materialized in the hotel in search of his wife. Nograles sued, and Adonis was convicted despite his lack of adequate legal representation and sentenced to five months’ to four years’ imprisonment. With the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) as co-signatories, after serving two years of his sentence Adonis filed through lawyer and UP law professor Harry Roque a complaint before the UNHRC alleging that Philippine libel law is incompatible with Article XIX of the ICCPR.

The UNHRC view, which was adopted by the UN during its 103rd session, compels the Philippine government, as a state party to the ICCPR, to submit a report to the UN within six months detailing what it has done in compliance with the Committee’s suggestions. It is by far the most significant development in the decades- long fight against a law whose repressive and colonial roots have no place in a country with such democratic pretensions as the Philippines. But it is also a major victory in the campaign to enhance the right to free expression and press freedom.

(BusinessWorld)

Human Rights Watch also declares that its mission is “protecting the human rights of people around the world.” It claims to “stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice. We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable. We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law. We enlist the public and the international community to support the cause of human rights for all.”

These are claims that have been challenged, for example in terms of HRW’s alleged partiality and supposedly flawed research. It has been accused of being influenced by US government policy — but also of being anti-Israel and pro-Arab. It’s also been accused of being run by leftists with an ideological agenda — under whose oversight, however, leftist governments like that of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela have come under intense criticism, and which in response have accused HRW of bias. Some governments, among them that of China, have also accused HRW of interfering in China’s internal affairs, and in one instance even ridiculed it for “wearing tinted glasses, or only squinting.”

On the other hand it has come in for praise for its impartiality — it reported abuses by the Hamas government of Gaza, for example, in the same way that it reports abuses by Israeli troops in the occupied territories of Palestine — and has been commended by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for its role in the creation of the UN Human Rights Council.

Both the criticismsas well as the praise for it are in HRW’s website (www.hrw.org), which for me at least is itself a positive statement about HRW. My only reservation is that, among those who single it out for praise is Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, whose gross intolerance for opinions contrary to his own makes his credentials as a journalist dubious at best.

In any event, the same differences in opinion about HRW are echoed in the criticism and approval of most other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in human rights monitoring and reporting. They reflect the fact that while human rights remain controversial issues for governments, they have also become central enough to their concerns for them to care about how they’re perceived by the global community.

The 2012 HRW report on the Philippines in its World Report 2012 is as straight forward as its past reports, and as anyone aware of the human rights situation in the Philippines would attest, fairly accurate.

Summarizing the contents of the report, a news release by the HRW Asia Division urges the government of Benigno Aquino III to “disable abusive paramilitary forces and take concrete steps to hold those responsible for killings and other rights violations to account.”

HRW echoes the view of Philippine human rights organizations that “The administration of President Benigno Aquino III has not fulfilled its promises of reform and made little progress in ending impunity for abuses by state security forces… Extrajudicial killings and torture of leftist activists, alleged communist rebels, and accused criminals continue, but the government has failed to acknowledge and address involvement in these crimes by the security forces and local officials.”

The HRW Philippine report does acknowledge such “unprecedented development(s)” in 2011 as the issuance of a warrant of arrest for retired Army general and former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo henchman Jovito Palparan and other military officers for the 2006 abduction and disappearance of University of the Philippines students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan. It also notes, however, that it was the students’ relatives and not the government that filed the complaint against Palparan and company.

While urging the Aquino government to do more to affect the arrest of Palparan and his cohorts, HRW points out that “ unlawful killings continue and the government should do more to hold those responsible to account.”

The organization says it has “documented at least seven extrajudicial killings and three enforced disappearances for which there is strong evidence of military involvement since Aquino took office in June 2010.” (These figures are lower than the dozens of EJKs and at least eight enforced disappearances since 2010 the Philippine human rights group Karapatan has documented.)

The report overall underlines not only the failure of the Aquino III administration to dismantle the paramilitary groups, but also reminds us all who have to live in these isles of fear of the reality that the military has become a practically independent power because of its role in combating so-called insurgencies, in the course of which its units commit human rights abuses that include outright murders, torture, and abductions. Some of those units also routinely occupy, despite a law that makes it illegal, school buildings, barangay halls and other public facilities during anti-insurgency operations they currently disguise as “peace and development” efforts.

While the cause of the problem is known, the Aquino administration, despite its promise to end human rights violations, has not only failed, but has actually openly refused, to dismantle the paramilitary groups that were among those responsible , for example, for the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan Massacre of 58 men and women including 32 journalists, because it regards these groups as necessary to combat the Muslim and communist-led “insurgencies”.

The inevitable result of this policy that’s no different from that of the much despised Arroyo regime’s is the reaffirmation and enhancement of warlord and military power in the communities. The dismantling of the paramilitaries and the curbing of military power would considerably reduce human rights abuses in the Philippines. But like his predecessors , who deep in their hearts believed — they knew — that preserving elite privilege and power depends on military support, gun enthusiast Aquino III won’t bite that bullet.

(BusinessWorld)

EVERY year after the end of the six- kilometer long trek that commemorates the transfer in 1787 of the Black Nazarene from the Recollect seminary in Intramuros (the old walled city ) to Quiapo Church, the country’s religious inevitably lament the “fanaticism” devotees display as the procession wends its way through Manila’s mean streets.

This year was no different — although, from the usual two million, estimates of the number of devotees who joined the 22-hour, longest-running procession ever who displayed a level of alleged fanaticism that might well be the envy and despair of other religions here and abroad, were this time between three to four million.

The parish priest of Quiapo Church was moved to describe the behavior of those millions not only as fanaticism but as an excess of it, despite fanaticism’s being, by definition, already excessive. His phrase — “excess(ive) fanaticism” — was itself redundant, like that provision in the Philippine Journalists’ Code of Ethics that warns journalists against taking “unfair advantage” of colleagues, taking advantage of anyone being by definition unfair. Other Church hierarchs found it necessary to preach that it isn’t by literally touching the statue of the Black Christ that one gets closer to God, but by living His teachings.

Certainly excessive was the trash the devotees left behind, which was enough to fill several dump trucks, and to keep street sweepers and garbage men working from Tuesday morning, January 10, till Wednesday, leading environmental advocates to lament the contradiction between the vast profession of faith — the fanaticism, if you will — evident in the frenzied participation of a tidal wave of humanity in the procession, and the civic indifference with which the Nazarene faithful responded to appeals not to litter Manila’s already foul streets and/or to pick up after themselves.

But all this actually makes sense, albeit in a disturbing way. Religions are among the means through which human beings remain hopeful despite the direst of circumstances. All religions envision a universe of order, according to the rules of which one can choose to spend eternity in the Elyssian Fields or in the Underworld of ancient Greek religion, or, in Christianity, whether to be in Paradise or Hell forever. In Christianity’s case the promise is that goodness will be rewarded and evil eventually punished, even if, in a society defined for the poor and powerless by the brutal struggle for existence, the reality may be the exact opposite.

The skeptical may argue that it may not have been devotion to the Nazarene that did either but time and coincidence, but there is solace nevertheless in the belief that God cured one’s cancer or solved one’s problems with one’s in-laws beyond the supposed miracles themselves — and that is, in the conviction that the universe is after all not indifferent to humanity’s woes, but a site of order ruled by a powerful and merciful god.

What has been described as the “fanaticism” of Filipino devotees, for which some sociologists account in terms alone of the pagan roots of folk religiosity, the adherents being mostly poor and unlettered, is not so much fanaticism as a plea for the justice and order Christianity promises. The usual displays of folk religiosity evident not only in the January Black Nazarene procession, but even more tellingly on such occasions as the voluntary crucifixion of men and women during the Lenten season, are indicators of the sense among the folk that there is no remedy in society for the ills to which the majority are subject, and that only the heavens can provide.

But few among the folk would so articulate the bases of their religious fervor. The ache and yearning for a world of law based on justice is instead focused on such specific desires as a job, education for one’s children, freedom from illness: for surcease from the sorrows that afflict Filipino lives.

The increase this year in the number of Black Nazarene devotees willing to risk not only their lives but also those of their own children is an eloquent indicator of citizen despair over the capacity of society to address and meet that yearning, and the stubborn faith that religion rather than society can provide what life in this country too often lacks. The downside to this, evident in the mass irresponsibility the tons of garbage the devotees left in the streets proclaim, is the refusal to engage reality because it has so often resisted merely human efforts at change.

The Churches are empty in the developed societies of North America and Western Europe. But they’re packed to the rafters in the Philippines, even as, in the aftermath of the demonstration of the extent of Filipino devotion to the Black Nazarene, coming soon are further demonstrations of the unplumbed depths of Filipino faith as the Feast of the Holy Child and Lent approach, and the world once more witnesses in all their terrible urgency the voluntary crucifixions for which certain provinces are noted and which have made the country the poster boy of Catholic zeal.

**********

…and ignorance

IN a letter to Business World last January 10 (“Who will watch the watchdog?”), Lito Zulueta of the University of Santo Tomas noted “striking resemblances” (sic) between the January 2 CMFR statement (“Specious and disingenuous”) and my January 6 Vantage Point column (“Rule makers and rule breakers”), and insinuates intellectual theft, presumably from CMFR, on my part.

Mr. Zulueta was as usual speaking in ignorance, if not malice as well. As CMFR deputy director and editor of its media monitoring publication PJR Reports, involvements I have many times disclosed, I wrote the January 2 CMFR statement for uploading in the CMFR website, and subsequently developed it for this newspaper into a column. Unless I can be accused of stealing from myself, Mr. Zulueta’s attempt to divert attention from his egregious ethical lapses by alleging “intellectual theft” can only be described as pathetic.

Mr. Zulueta makes up the ethical rules of journalism as he goes along . He claims, for example, that journalists should disclose their associations only to gatekeepers and not to the public, to whom anyone with a molecule of knowledge of journalism ethics knows they should be even more responsible. He also speculates rather than proves. The suggestion that it was in furtherance of propaganda for the University of the Philippines that I wrote the column in question — in his feeble attempt to turn an ethics issue into a competition between UP and UST that can happen only in the dreams of juveniles in a state of arrested development — is as absurd as the implication that I stole from myself after 45 years of service to the University of the Philippines where plagiarism is an offense even more unforgiveable than stupidity.

My links to UP as a professor of journalism and former dean of the UP College of Mass Communication are well-known, as Mr. Zulueta himself noted, which would make my reiteration of those connections unnecessary unless they’re compellingly relevant. They are irrelevant to the present case, but whenever they were pertinent — for example when I criticized UP, for, among other offenses, raising tuition fees, or failing to curb fraternity violence — I have disclosed them as well as my connections with CMFR in behalf of the ethical imperatives of transparency and full disclosure.

I have never done public relations work for any institution. I have often been critical of UP despite my long association with it, and I direct those interested in establishing the truth of this claim to my website and to CMFR’s (www.cmfr-phil.org).

(BusinessWorld)

Minority Congressman and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ally Edcel Lagman is leading the chorus of Corona advocates in declaring that a crisis is upon us as a result of the supposed haste, describing the signing within a few hours by 188 congressmen of the impeachment articles as the result of “the mother of all blackmails (sic)” because, he said, his colleagues signed on pain of Malacanang’s withholding their 2012 Priority Development Assistance Fund, otherwise known as the pork barrel.

Maybe, maybe not. But Lagman should know whereof he speaks, anyway, his patron Mrs. Arroyo having used Palace control over pork barrel allocations to good effect during her nine-year rule, when she prevented any impeachment complaint against her from prospering in the House, and generally got her way in that body through precisely the same threat.

If Lagman seems to have forgotten that, it’s probably due more to selective perception rather than the ravages of age and conscience on his memory. Like Alzheimer’s disease, there’s a lot of that — selective perception — going around lately among the country’s legions of lawyers, including Corona and his spokesperson Midas Marquez.

In any event, the claim that anything involving a legal issue was or is being done in haste almost automatically leads to a lot of tongue-clucking among those lawyers who think postponements, deferments, and suspensions of proceedings to be the core essentials of the exquisitely misnamed justice system, despite that dictum about justice delayed being justice denied to which they piously pay lip-service whenever it suits them. (Manila’s judges called a court holiday and cancelled all hearings last Wednesday. There was no visible effect on the progress of the already delayed cases languishing in their courts.)

Delays, delays and more delays, for example, have characterized the Ampatuan Massacre trial, thanks to the unlimited capacity to file motion after motion and petition after petition of both the defense and the prosecution.

The petitions for bail of the accused in the Ampatuan Massacre could take years to resolve, the process moving so glacially a new ice age could be upon us and everyone could be dead by the time the cases against them are actually heard, let alone resolved. Only with slight exaggeration did lawyer Harry Roque declare that the way it’s going, the case against the Ampatuans for the November 23, 2009 massacre that took place in their Maguindanao turf can take 50,000 years to conclude.

Thanks meanwhile to the House allies and “men for others” schoolmates of that brilliant legal scholar Mariano del Castillo, the progress of an impeachment complaint filed against him a year ago for plagiarizing parts of a decision he wrote denying a petition for redress by Filipino women forced into sex slavery during World War II has lagged far, far behind that of the complaint against Corona, and is even likely to be dropped altogether because, says a House spokesperson, it can’t handle two impeachment cases at once.

That of course is justice, Philippine style, thanks to a judicial system in which expertise in the technical complexities of the law and the ability to lie through one’s teeth is the most common strategy in winning cases. Every Filipino also knows that the country’s unspeakable jails are full of poor people who’re not necessarily guilty of whatever offenses they’ve been accused of, but who’ve been rotting there for years either because they can’t afford a lawyer — or else do have one who has succeeded in delaying the resolution of their cases through the various, perfectly legal means at his or her disposal.

Among those means of delaying and denying people justice is the TRO, or Temporary Restraining Order, which lately has been used to stop practically anything, from preventing people accused of masterminding the murder of a journalist (e.g., the killing of Tacurong City’s Marlene Esperat) from being arrested, to stopping the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority’s anti-smoking campaign, or getting former Presidents out of government watch lists.

The justifiable fear that a TRO could be issued by some court or the other to delay the process compelled the House leadership to get the complaint against Corona signed immediately. But if it’s the supposed haste with which the complaint was signed that has led some lawyers to climb up the high horses from where they’ve been whinnying about observing in Corona’s case the due process that’s routinely denied millions of Filipinos, for Corona and company, including the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, it’s Supreme Court independence and the system of checks and balances that are in peril.

But what Court independence are these worthies talking about, if only a Chief Justice rather than the entire Court is being impeached — and if it’s a Chief Justice widely perceived to have been the client and beneficiary of a former President against whom a number of cases are likely to be filed that could almost certainly end up for final resolution in the Court over which he presides?

Is Supreme Court independence indeed in danger, or is that just another lawyer lie, its independence having been already compromised when Corona was appointed by Mrs. Arroyo despite widespread public misgivings?

When Joseph Estrada was impeached in 2001, did that put the executive department at the mercy of Congress? Or did that, though only too briefly, create an opportunity to renew the Presidency?

And doesn’t the operation of the system of checks and balances require a co-equal branch to check what it believes to be the excesses of another branch, through, among other means, impeachment? Practically everyone prates about the system and pays homage to it in every other speech, interpreting it to mean that each branch is immune from the scrutiny of the other, rather than the exact opposite: that while independent, each branch — the executive, the legislature and the judiciary — has not only the right, but also the duty, to keep each other honest.

But of course that won’t do — not in a country dominated by people who use the law to keep things the way they are, who cite it to prevent even the most minute change including the actual observance of the law from taking place, and who will use whatever means — whether “fair or foul,” to quote Corona to himself — to prove white black, subservience to the narrowest interests independence, inertia change, plagiarism original thought, words reality, lawlessness order, and lies truth.

(BusinessWorld)

Senator Arroyo made his “creeping martial law” statement last November, echoing Negros Occidental Congressman Ignacio “Iggy Pidal” Arroyo’s claim, made at about the same time, that the administration’s stopping his sister-in-law from leaving the country supposedly for medical treatment abroad was worse than what was happening during the martial law period (officially from 1972 to 1981, although Ferdinand Marcos retained dictatorial powers until his overthrow in 1986).

This week the former human rights lawyer found an opportunity to expand on his thesis by referring to Justice Secretary Leila De Lima’s argument before the Supreme Court last Monday that the government had to prevent Mrs. Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo from leaving the country so it can prosecute her for allegedly sabotaging the elections of 2007.

“Secretary De Lima mentioned the conflict between individual rights versus the right of the state to survive. That was the same issue during the 14 years of martial law when the right of the state to survive was considered superior to individual rights. That’s why police powers were always invoked during that time,” said Arroyo. In so many words, Arroyo was saying that if the Aquino administration is curtailing the rights of one individual in behalf of the rights of the State, it could raise the same argument in other cases, thus endangering everyone else’s rights.

On one point at least was Senator Arroyo right. The Marcos regime did argue that the State had to defend itself to justify the violation of individual rights. But so did the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime –except that it didn’t say so in so many words; it simply acted on that presumption. What’s worse was that the Arroyo regime was actually undermining the State by, among other self-serving initiatives, committing electoral fraud, orchestrating the most egregious violations of human rights since the martial law period, and subverting Philippine sovereignty through its shameless efforts to curry favor with the US government.

If there was ever any regime that because of its corruption and putrid human rights record was worse than the martial law regime, it was that of Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo’s sister-in-law. And if there has ever been a regime since 1986 in which the martial law virus had so infected Malacanang and the police and military on which it depended most for survival and dominance murder had become a leading State industry, it was Mrs. Arroyo’s.

The irony is that the regime was undermining the State almost from day one, when the murder of human rights workers, political activists, Church people, journalists and even local officials began to escalate, culminating in 2009 with the massacre of 58 men and women on November 23 in the turf of one of Mrs. Arroyo’s most favored warlords. By that time over a thousand men and women had been murdered, hundreds more had been abducted and tortured by State security forces, and the Philippines had become the poster child of impunity.

The murders, abductions and torture that were so much a feature of the regime were not only in violation of Philippine and international law. As attacks on citizens they were also attacks on the State itself, the citizenry being its most vital component.
Mrs. Arroyo’s alleged sabotage of Philippine elections was equally subversive of the State, and qualified her, rather than the party-list, student and journalist groups as well as civil society organizations that were in her police and military’s list of “enemies of the State,” as an even more dangerous threat. Elections are after all a key element in State pretensions to democracy. By undermining their credibility, the Arroyo clique made citizen cynicism over the validity of election outcomes inevitable, and therefore undermined one of the few means through which citizens could delegate their sovereign powers to officials of their choice.

As if the assault on the Constitution and whatever remained of democracy the regime was systematically carrying out were not enough, by politicizing them the Arroyo regime also damaged such other State institutions as the Commission on Elections, the Civil Service, the Legislature, and the Supreme Court. In her drive to keep US support for her dubious presidency, Mrs. Arroyo also gave the Bush administration a blank check in terms of supporting whatever initiatives it would take — whether it was bullying the weak, intimidation, outright invasion, a war on civilians, or assassinations — in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Under Arroyo rule the State was devouring itself.

Among the consequences of the nine-year Arroyo regime is a State so weakened by its own supposed protectors the country has been reduced to chaos. Simple justice has become a prime commodity in a judicial system riddled with corruption. The legislature, in which four Arroyos and an Imelda Marcos are in cocky residence, has been reduced to a debating club among dynasts who talk only to each other. The police establishment has made torture the standard means of “solving” cases, whether simple theft to murder.

In addition to its mastery of torture and murder, the corruption-ridden military has become the private army of its generals and their patrons in politics and business. Thieves, murderers, and plunderers populate the bureaucracy. And foreign relations have been reduced to no more than a patron-client arrangement in which the country does the bidding of whoever can best threaten, cajole or buy it.

While all these had happened before, never have all of them happened all at once, and on the same scale as during the Arroyo regime. That truth makes Secretary De Lima’s argument compelling: the protection of the State has never been more urgent than in the aftermath of the Arroyo regime, primarily because of what that regime has inflicted on the country of our sorrows. Crucial to that protection is the imperative to hold Mrs. Arroyo and her accomplices to account, the alternative being even worse lawlessness and chaos, and total State failure. Though unable to articulate it, the Aquino administration knows in its bones that to preserve itself and the entire political class of which Mrs. Arroyo and company were a particularly negative example, it must take the necessary steps to halt the already advanced process of State decay and failure.

During the martial law period the Marcos regime was absolutely wrong in putting the rights of the State above those of ordinary citizens. The only offense of the men and women it murdered, imprisoned and tortured was to demand delivery of the promises of the Philippine Revolution: the making of an independent State, the achievement of social justice, the equitable distribution of wealth. Mrs. Arroyo and company were not engaged in the same socially-redeeming pursuits, but in totally anti-social, self-serving, personal, familial, class, and ultimately anti-State ends. The pity of it is not that Ignacio Arroyo can’t distinguish between what Marcos and his sister-in-law did and what the Aquino government is attempting, but that Joker Arroyo can no longer tell the difference.

(BusinessWorld)

The label’s both cliché as well as meant to distinguish him from such of the country’s heroes as Rizal the Ilustrado, and rural-gentry landowner Emilio Aguinaldo, whose own stature as hero has been diminished by his role in Bonifacio’s execution.

But working-class indeed was Bonifacio, one of six children born to parents who died when he was 14, forcing him to leave school, and, as generations of school children have been told, to fashion and vend walking canes and paper fans to put food on the table for himself and his siblings. In his later teens he became a clerk and sales agent despite his limited education, although it’s as warehouseman (bodeguero) Filipinos know him best via high school history class. It was while a bodeguero that Bonifacio founded the Katipunan after the arrest of Jose Rizal, finally convinced, perhaps, that Spain would never grant the reforms he and his fellow members in the reformist group La Liga Filipina wanted.

No sophisticate like Rizal, who was educated in the country’s then best schools and in Europe, Bonifacio was self-taught and a voracious though eclectic reader, favoring novels like Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew, and Rizal’s Noli and Fili. He did seem to have also read about the French Revolution, and read too the law books of law student and fellow Katipunero Emilio Jacinto, plus a volume on the lives of the presidents of the United States.

From his interest in the lives of US presidents among others, the late National Artist Nick Joaquin drew the conclusion that Bonifacio, having risen from his early poverty to Supremo of the Katipunan, could have entertained thoughts of rising from command of a clandestine group to the presidency of the entire country.

The Bulacan doctor Pio Valenzuela said almost the same thing during his questioning by the Spanish authorities for his involvement in the Katipunan. He claimed that Bonifacio often said that a blacksmith became president of the French Republic, perhaps implying that he too could rise to the same heights. Though he might have been in Spanish hands and under duress at the time, Valenzuela did not have to say, but did, that “There happened to him (Bonifacio) what had happened to Don Quixote — his head was turned and he was always dreaming of the presidency and speaking of the French Revolution.”

Valenzuela’s observation fits Nick Joaquin’s thesis (in A Question of Heroes) that it was pride and a sense of entitlement that drove Bonifacio to accept the Magdiwang invitation for him to mediate in the conflict between the Magdiwang and Magdalo factions in Cavite, where he tried to assert his authority as founder of the Katipunan.

Bonifacio founded the Katipunan in the awareness that only revolution would free the country, but he wasn’t as equal to the tasks of waging it as Emilio Aguinaldo and his generals were.

Perenially defeated in the battles he fought in Manila and its surrounding communities, Bonifacio and the Katipuneros of Manila had to go into hiding while the Cavite Katipunan was winning one battle after another and eventually gained control of the entire province. For that province he, his wife and his brothers left the Balara hills in December, 1896, in an attempt, so Nick Joaquin tells us, to take over the leadership of the Cavite forces of the Revolution, which, in contrast to its rout in Manila, was succeeding in that province.

But while not of gentry birth, and certainly no royal as Sophocles’ Oedipus or Shakespeare’s Hamlet were, Andres Bonifacio was nevertheless the leader of men all heroes are, having founded the Katipunan in 1892 during a clandestine meeting in a house in what’s now Claro M. Recto Avenue in Manila, the city of his birth, which today claims him as its hero — and leading it, had managed to attract thousands, including the middle-class and gentry militants of Cavite.

As Katipunan founder and Supremo, Bonifacio could not but have assumed that his authority and leadership would not only be acknowledged, but certified too by Aguinaldo and company by electing him President of the Republic they were contemplating. But he had won no territory from the Spaniards, a fact thrown into his face when he insisted on being thus recognized and while “acting like a King” among the Cavite gentry, thus aggravating the factionalism between Magdiwang and Magdalo and between Cavite and Manila rather than soothing either.

Despite the books he had read, Bonifacio did not seem to have learned much by way of a practical understanding of politics. Instead of unity as was his theme in Manila, his policy once he was in Cavite was, as Nick Joaquin put it, “ever to divide, divide, divide.” Out of fear that, with the Spanish forces knocking at Cavite’s gates, Bonifacio’s attempts to found his own army would endanger the Revolution, Aguinaldo had him arrested, tried and executed.

And yet, said Nick Joaquin, rather than meet a sad end in Maragondon, Cavite, Bonifacio could have been, were he more astute and more forceful, the leader of the Revolution in Cavite too as he was in Manila, and even first President of the Republic, although that belongs in the realm of historical speculation, among the “what ifs” that bedevil both historian and activist.

But even if we assume that Bonifacio’s trial and subsequent execution was driven by his attempting to capture leadership of what had become, the Revolution, rather than the other way around as favored by the late historian Renato Constantino (that Aguinaldo and company executed Bonifacio to seize the leadership of the Revolution from the proletariat), was he nevertheless an authentic hero, burdened though he would then be by hubris, the sin of pride for which fatal flaw all tragic heroes fall, in his case from Supremo to a corpse in an unmarked grave?

Indeed he was, if we define heroism as more than bravery and virtue, but also as ownership of a vision and the courage to fight for it despite the greatest odds, even if that vision should include imaginings of one’s own exalted place in the new society rising from the ruins of the old. Heroism has everything to do with being frailly human; humanity after all is what makes heroes.

Flawed as he might have been, Bonifacio was born when that portion of humanity today known as Filipinos had no real option other than independence and revolution. That he had neither the intellectual sophistication of Rizal nor the political and military skills of an Aguinaldo or Luna was of no moment, and neither was the pride that went before his fall. For he did begin it all, the Revolution, in that house in Azcarraga now appropriately named Claro M. Recto, and in behalf of something far greater than himself.

(BusinessWorld

And yet that was what Severino was doing. While demanding “objectivity” on the part of Tucay, Severino was being so “objective” he was haranguing the latter in favor of his own views — and over his own network, which also described Tucay as the student editor who disrupted (nanggulo) the GMA7 event. Was the media spectacle GMA7 and Severino put in place in behalf of Clinton indicative of what his generation has learned about journalism?

Is their idea of “objective” journalism to stage and script what could have been an opportunity to enlighten the Philippine public on the issues of Philippine-US relations by planting in the audience actors, comedians and actresses whom they had charged with asking asinine questions so as to shield Clinton from being asked the hard questions journalists not only can ask, but should be asking?

Among those questions is what Clinton meant when she said she was visiting Asia and the Philippines in behalf of peace. Is it in behalf of peace that the US is using the Spratlys issue to justify its establishing military bases in Australia, and in the Philippines through the VFA, in the process provoking, and fomenting conflict with, capitalist China? And what of the Aquino regime, whose paranoia over China and the Spratlys has led it to assume the same role as its predecessors as a US tool in, as Barack Obama arrogantly put it, “shaping the future of the region”? How long will it allow, or has it already agreed to extending, the ten-year presence of US troops in Mindanao?

Like its predecessors, is the Obama administration projecting US power all over the planet in furtherance of its economic interests, this time by putting Asia in its gunsights? As it winds down its Iraq presence, is the US looking around for another war to revive an economy built on war, destruction and mass misery in other lands? And have these anything to do with the US elections next year, given the US Republican Party’s demand that the US pressure China into changing its economic policies so US multinationals can “compete with” — read “rule over” — that country?

The answers to these questions are significant to the region’s and this country’s future, and to the Philippines’ development and the “democracy” that has mutated in it. That they were not asked made what GMA7 staged a puppet show. Tucay had every right and responsibility not only to express himself, but also to demand some sanity in an alleged press forum. But Tucay was being too charitable: a press forum that event wasn’t, and Severino had no business demanding, during a non-journalistic event, compliance with the ethics and professional standards of journalism of a student journalist who knew better than to behave like a fawning colonial.

But it wasn’t the first time the Philippine media have been obsequious to visiting US officials, and certainly not the first time they treated Clinton like a governor-general around whom, lest they offend Memsahib, everyone had to tiptoe.

During Clinton’s 2009 Manila visit, GMA7 rival ABS- CBN put together a special called “Hillary Clinton: the Manila Forum.” It was a forum only in the minds of its organizers. It was a circus of sycophancy in which the usual talking heads disguised as journalists displayed their “objectivity” by claiming, among other servile remarks, that unlike in Manila, where there were anti-VFA protests, in Mindanao the people were grateful for the presence of US troops, whom they allegedly credit with protecting them from kidnapping and terrorism.

The same “journalists” also spent the hour gushing over Clinton — and yes, asking practically the same kind of questions actresses were asking Clinton in the GMA7 media event, such as, “If you had a crush other than Bill (Clinton), who would it be?”

Either someone somewhere had decided that journalists should put a hold on doing their jobs in behalf of the US Overlord, or our so-called journalists can’t tell the difference between public relations and the pillar of democracy, independence and change real journalism should be.

The fact remains that US-Philippine relations have been problematic from the very start, when Dewey betrayed Aguinaldo at the turn of the 20th century, and US forces proceeded to kill civilian and combatant alike so as to destroy the forces of revolution and independence. After 1946, when the US “granted” the country the independence it had already won in 1899, those relations remained so close the Philippines could hardly breathe, defined as they were by iniquitous economic and military agreements, the latter consisting of, among others, a lease on air, naval and R and R (rest and recreation) bases all over the archipelago.

The renewal of the bases agreement the Senate rejected in 1991 by a narrow vote of 12-11. That should have ended US military presence in this country. After all, the 1987 Constitution declares that “After the expiration in 1991 of the agreement between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America concerning Military Bases, foreign military bases, troops or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate and, when the Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose, and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting State.”

But in 1999 the Senate ratified the VFA as a treaty. Its legality has been questioned because it is not “recognized as a treaty by the other contracting State (the US).” But the main argument against it is that it allows US forces to remain in the Philippines on what has become a permanent basis, since they have been in Mindanao for a decade and could also spread like dengue to other parts of the country, restoring and even widening their pre-1991 presence, and once again making a mockery of Philippine sovereignty.

The issues the VFA has raised are by themselves important. But of equal significance is the Aquino administration’s willingness to be the US Trojan Horse in the latter’s strategy of containing rather than engaging China by enlarging its military presence in Asia, including the Philippines, to the present government of which it has promised further military aid supposedly to help it pursue its claim to the Spratlys. The US and the Philippines are militarizing the Spratlys issue, even as the US, a non-party to the dispute, muscles its way into the region with the help of Australia, another non-Asian power eager to be the US imperial overlord in Asia.

The responsibility of the press in this context should be clear enough. It is to ask the hard questions. It isn’t to ask stupid ones and divert attention from the issues — and least of all is it to pay simpering homage to any visiting US official whose purposes are far far less benevolent than some “journalists” imagine.

(BusinessWorld)

Among the questions these groups and some communication academics asked then, and have since been asking, is whether the Massacre has imposed on the media such supposedly additional responsibilities as providing more information than the daily news agenda makes available, and analysis and interpretation beyond the usual front-page, op-ed and evening news menu of politics and scandal.

The Massacre has since become an international symbol of the perils journalists face in failing and failed states (international media watch and press freedom groups have declared November 23, 2011 the International Day to End Impunity). It was not only election-related. It was also the worst attack in Philippine history on the press as a necessary institution of democracy.

To any practitioner with some experience, the suggestion that the news media should pay less attention to trivia and scandal is a fundamental principle. But it does seem novel in the context of what has since been common practice in the Philippine press. To some journalists immersed in the daily grind and such other burdens as corruption and plain incompetence, the duty to provide the public information on matters that concern it, and the analysis and interpretation that can enhance citizen capacity to make the informed decisions free men and women must make in a democracy, are either irrelevant to reporting the latest rumor on which actor is sleeping with whom, or even totally unknown.

What the press is basically being told is for it do a better job of both reporting as well as explaining those events, issues and developments most relevant to the lives of that segment of humanity known as Filipinos. Journalism after all shares with literature, the sciences and religion the fundamental need for human beings to understand the world so they may change it. But it can’t do that job, and can instead compound ignorance and harm individuals and even society as a whole if the information and analysis it provides are inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or bought and paid for by interests opposed to those of the public’s.

If the Ampatuan Massacre achieved anything, it was to remind journalists — or those who could still be reminded — of the need to keep in mind and observe the ethical and professional standards of media practice many had either never known or had forgotten.

Among those standards is that of truth-telling, which in practice demands accuracy in both factual and contextual terms. This has always been a fundamental press responsibility that has become even more relevant in the aftermath of the Massacre. Not only is the reporting of the details of that event and subsequent developments — for example in the trial of the accused perpetrators — a press responsibility, journalists also have to look into and explain its context so the public may better understand it and the crisis the killing of journalists in the Philippines has created for press freedom.

Of that duty some journalists seemed aware two years ago. A week or so after November 23, 2009, several media advocacy and journalists’ groups as well as the representatives of some newspapers and networks pledged never to relent in the pursuit of justice for the victims, and to do whatever needs to be done towards achieving that end by, among other means, keeping the story of the Massacre and events subsequent to it in the news.

Despite that pledge, there has been a perceptible slowing down in the commitment to keep the issue in the public eye 24 months since then. Evidently, the conventional news value of focusing on the the new has tended to exclude from the news and analysis agenda the continuing story of the trial of the accused perpetrators and the wealth of issues arising from the Massacre .

And yet, should not the events immediately following the Massacre have provoked the press into looking into the state of the country and its institutions beyond the mere reporting of events? Despite the Massacre, that does seem too much to ask of a press focused on beauty pageants, boxing matches and the sordid details of fratricide. In 2003 it needed a spike in the killings for the national press to even report that these killings had been happening in the community press since 1986.

As for looking into their causes, foreign media and press freedom watch groups were far ahead of what’s usually referred to as “the mainstream” Philippine press in the attempt to explain why, in a country supposedly at peace, and where press freedom is explicitly protected by the Constitution, the killing of journalists had assumed near epidemic proportions. By June 2003 the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists’ Lin Neumann had already written an in-depth report on the May killing of Edgardo Demalerio in Pagadian City.

The November 23 mass murders was a crime waiting to happen, given the fact that the factors that have made the killings possible have remained in place, among them the weaknesses of the justice system and warlord rule in over a hundred places in the Philippines. In one day the massacre bloated the number of journalists killed for their work from three in 2009 to at least 34, and added so many more to the 124 already killed in the Philippines since 1986.

But what is worse is that unless the killers are called to account, the Massacre will encourage more killings by demonstrating that no one or almost no one who kills need fear retribution. Only by arresting, bringing the perpetrators to court, and credibly concluding the trial can prevent the November 23 killings from turning into one more incident to inspire the killers — of journalists, political activists, human rights workers, local officials, priests, students, lawyers and judges — who roam this country with impunity to keep on killing.

This imperative compels the news media not only to closely monitor the ongoing trial of the accused in the Massacre to keep the public aware not only of the developments in that process, and to remind it not only of what happened on November 23, 2009. They must also provide the citizenry an understanding of its significance not only to the practice of journalism, but also to Philippine society as a whole.

This requires a pro-active commitment to the examination and reporting of the human condition in this time and place beyond the focus on celebrities and other trivia and the mere reaction to events typical of Philippine news media. The responsibilities of the news media are as they have always been: to fulfill the fundamental duty not only to explain the world, but to explain it towards changing it. The Ampatuan Massacre was a reminder of that purpose and among the news media’s most important subjects then, two years ago, as well as now and in the coming years of the trial.

Based on a lecture at a November 16 University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication forum. Comments and other columns: www.luisteodoro.com. Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter.

(BusinessWorld)

De Lima acknowledged that the decision was political, but based as well on legal considerations and an evaluation of Mrs. Arroyo’s medical condition: “It may be political. One thing’s for sure, it’s more than medical or legal. It may be a combination of all, but what’s important is that it will serve the ends of justice.”

Similarly political and driven by “a combination of all” were the government decisions on the cases of a former Philippine president and an opposition senator allowed to travel abroad for medical purposes. During the martial law period, the late Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was allowed to leave the country for medical treatment that was available in the Philippines, while deposed President Joseph Estrada was allowed to have knee-replacement surgery in Hongkong in 2004 while his trial for plunder was ongoing, even if the operation could have been done in a Philippine hospital by Filipino doctors.

In both cases the primary reason was political. In Aquino’s, it was the Marcos regime’s perception that it could better deal with Aquino abroad rather than in the Philippines, where he was likely to remain a rallying point for the opposition. In Estrada’s, it was the Arroyo regime’s hope that it could appease and even win over Estrada forces through a calculated display of compassion.

The exact opposite of the Aquino Jr. and Estrada decisions, the de Lima ruling indicates the Aquino III administration’s apparent willingness to brave the political fallout from the opposition and the usual chorus of sentimentalists to whom even rape and mass murder deserve forgetting.

But as de Lima implied, the country’s need for closure is itself a political and legal necessity. The country has to address and credibly conclude allegations of corruption and election fraud during the watch of Mrs. Arroyo, against whom three plunder and two election sabotage suits have been filed. Without closure, these accusations will remain in the murky company of those events and issues that until now are unexplained and unresolved, from which no lessons can be learned to help move the country forward.

If proven, the corruption of which Arroyo and company are accused could help prevent similar occurrences. If the accusations are proven false, the process can strengthen the argument for full public awareness of government policies and transactions in furtherance of the development of the informed public authentic democracies need.

The second point is particularly crucial. The citizenry needs information not only to enable it to monitor government transactions and to compel official accountability, but also to arm it with the capacity to distinguish gossip from fact and falsehood from truth, and to shield it from the manipulation of political and other interests.

The Aquino III administration has so far balked at the passage of a Freedom of Information law. It needs to understand that as an instrument of transparency, access to government information cuts both ways. Access to information can help citizens combat dishonesty and inefficiency in governance. But it can also protect honest officials from mischievous, whimsical, or simply false accusations of wrongdoing. The Arroyo regime is a prime example. Its non-transparency did not prevent, and in fact made inevitable, the proliferation of those tales of corruption and other wrong-doing that haunted it for nine years.

Mrs. Arroyo has been accused of a number of offenses, but the Aquino III administration has solely focused on allegations of corruption and election fraud. While that focus, if the process is to proceed credibly, could finally put to rest the truth or falsehood of the alleged offenses — and is in that sense needed, given widespread perceptions of corruption during the Arroyo regime — it is hardly enough to achieve the closure the country needs on the Arroyo years.

There are widespread and credible accusations of human rights violations during the Arroyo regime that have so far been addressed only by non-governmental organizations. Because those accusations are even more serious than corruption and electoral fraud, the Aquino administration could do the country a lasting service if it were to devote as much attention to them as it is devoting to corruption during that period.

Mr. Aquino III did refer to the need to put an end to impunity when he created the short-lived Truth Commission in 2010. But that Commission was supposed to investigate corruption during the Arroyo regime, and was not meant to look into the more pressing need to address — and, assuming a credible process, put closure to — the multiple accusations of human rights violations that were part of the Arroyo regime’s counter-insurgency policy. Neither does there seem to be any indication now that the Aquino III administration will address those accusations, most likely out of fear of military displeasure.

And yet, if the accusations are accurate, the number and brutality of the human rights violations during the Arroyo regime would put it in the same company as the Marcos dictatorship, and in some respects put it ahead of Marcos’ vile record.

The violations, say human rights watch groups, occurred almost from day one of Mrs. Arroyo’s assuming the Presidency. Over a thousand activists, priests, farmers, human rights workers, judges, even local officials have been extra- judicially killed while thousands more have been abducted, tortured, and forcibly disappeared since 2001. The worst attack on journalists in Philippine history — the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan Massacre — also occurred during the Arroyo regime.

Despite protests from such local and international human rights groups as the country’s largest human rights formation, Karapatan, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations Human Rights Council, Mrs. Arroyo never condemned the human rights violations that characterized her watch.

Instead, in 2006 she singled out for praise and promoted Army general Jovito Palparan, who is accused of some of the most brutal and most despicable crimes against humanity and civilization ever committed in the Philippines or elsewhere. The basis for those crimes, which the general coyly admitted could have occurred because the soldiers under his command were “inspired” to commit them, was the barbaric assumption that not only were members of legal organizations fair game like guerillas and other combatants, but that combatants and non-combatants alike could also be abducted, tortured and summarily executed.

The accusations are not only serious, but even more credible than the corruption and fraud Arroyo and company are accused of, for the number of witnesses and organizations that attest to their truth. They merit a pro-active government effort to look into the Arroyo regime’s human rights record so that the victims and their families, and all Filipinos, can draw the relevant lessons from that dark period to make sure that it will never happen again. For that eminently human goal, the Aquino administration should have courage enough to risk the political consequences, and worse — unless to expect that kind of commitment of it is to expect too much.

(BusinessWorld)

That’s standard technique among some advertising practitioners when they’re pushing a cheap product, whether it’s a skin-whitening cream or a snake-oil cure for cancer. But it’s especially useful in promoting the Philippines as a tourist destination.

To attract more tourists to these parts, the government has to gloss over, or even totally deny, the existence of such nightmares as the maddening traffic in the streets of the country’s major cities, its less than well-maintained historical sites, its dishonest taxi drivers, the sky-high crime rate, and, of course, the so-called Mindanao problem, which includes but is not limited to kidnap-for-ransom gangs, armed secessionist movements, and the private armies and warlord rule threatening to put the country in the same company of failed states as Somalia and Haiti.

The Mindanao problem has been in the national limelight lately, and could torpedo Jimenez’ grand plans. But Jimenez is in no danger of being axed — it’s not his fault the product he has to sell is so shoddy — and has even emerged as a government savior of some kind by his making good use of his background in the aftermath of the October 18 firefight in Al-Barka town, Basilan. In that incident, 19 Special Forces soldiers were killed by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerillas in an encounter that, for some reason, much of the Philippine media insists on calling a massacre.

As usual at a loss as to what the government response could be, Mr. Aquino III’s other Cabinet secretaries were rescued by Jimenez from a propaganda and media catastrophe they fear even more than a hostage-taking. He coined the phrase “all out justice” as an alternative to the call of the warmongers in government and the media for “all-out war” and to prevent perceptions that the government was doing nothing and would continue to do nothing to retaliate.

Another term for retaliation is vengeance, which is what people like Senator Francis Escudero and deposed President Joseph Estrada immediately demanded — and which the print and broadcast media echoed, apparently with even less thought than Estrada had put into it.

Thanks to Jimenez, Mr. Aquino managed, in his post-October 18 “all-out justice” statement, to seem to reject that call without any loss to his macho image. In the same breath, however, he ordered an offensive against the killers of the 19 Special Forces troopers. His military officials and spokespersons earlier identified the “killers” and the “enemy” as “renegade” MILF fighters, but have since claimed, despite MILF admission of responsibility, that they were actually members of the Abu Sayyaf group, and jihadists affiliated with Jemah Islamiyah.

The military then bombed a barangay or two, and launched ground offensives in and around Al-Barka, displacing thousands of residents and killing a number of people whom it said, depending on who was saying what to whom, and on what occasion, were either (1) renegade MILF fighters wanted for various crimes on whom the police had to serve arrest warrants; (2) members of the Abu Sayyaf; or (3) Jemah Islamiyah jihadists.

What the government is doing is pandering to the anti-Muslim sentiments and Christian majority chauvinism that are driving the demands for vengeance, an end to peace negotiations, and the annihilation of the MILF. The “all out justice” ploy also glosses over the fact that the 19 soldiers (1) were killed in a firefight that apparently occurred because of military incursion into an area the ceasefire agreement between the MILF and the Philippine government had designated as a neutral zone, which means that they were casualties of war and not massacre victims; and (2) were thrown into a potential conflict area without adequate preparation and even the most basic orientation, which makes their commanders primarily accountable.

At least two senior officers have indeed been relieved by the Armed Forces (AFP) command precisely for these lethal lapses, in what should be, even to the swivel-chair urban warriors with single -digit IQs who’re thirsting for Muslim blood, an obvious admission that it was the AFP that basically caused the problem.

But to save face, the AFP is making it seem it’s part of the solution. The bombings and ground assaults in Basilan therefore continued even during the November 1 holidays. The attacks displaced thousands of residents in the affected areas in a repeat of the total war offensives Estrada ordered in 2000 and which were launched in 2003 during the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime. In 2003 thousands had to flee to evacuation centers where at least two children died, as the AFP pounded Cotabato’s Pikit town with artillery supposedly while in pursuit of Abu Sayyaf and Pentagon Gang bandits.

The only difference between the current campaign and the 2000 and 2003 offensives is the clever name it’s been given. Estrada, Arroyo and their generals at least called their offensives what they were. Aquino and his bright boys have had to fig-leaf what’s essentially the same thing with a phrase straight out of an advertising manual to peddle a product it can’t sell if it were correctly labeled. For its part, the military pretends it’s pursuing the Abu Sayyaf and other groups while actually itching to “punish” the MILF and its mass base in the communities.

What’s going on isn’t all-out justice, but all-out war and all-out deception. It’s deception for Aquino and company to use the word “justice” to mask an all-out offensive, and devious for the AFP to deny it’s after the MILF while it attacks MILF camps and bombs Muslim communities. And it’s not justice but its exact opposite to punish non-combatants for the military’s own incompetence and in furtherance of the same anti-Muslim, anti-peace bias that over the decades created the deeply- rooted, multi-faceted “Bangsa Moro problem” (the MILF’s own term for it).

Anti-Muslim bias drove the government policy of resettlement and Christian evangelization that has marginalized Muslims in Mindanao and led to legitimate demands for autonomy. But it is military and bureaucratic antagonism to a peace settlement, and their preference for the so-called military solution, that has kept the war going for decades.

Those puzzling over the contradiction between what the government and its military are doing and what they’re saying should stop wondering. No Philippine government has ever found it necessary to suit its words to its actions, and the Aquino government is no exception. Mr. Aquino and his government are no more committed to “all -out justice” in Mindanao than his predecessors were. They would otherwise not have had to fabricate that sly phrase to deceive and confuse the unwary. They would have immediately halted the military offensives in that troubled island, and launched an independent inquiry into who violated the terms of the ceasefire, instead of pretending to be for peace and justice while raining bombs on combatants and non-combatants alike.

(BusinessWorld)