Richard Gordon came in first with a vote of 139 out of 370 students who voted, followed by Gilbert Teodoro (107). Benigno Aquino III was a poor third with 48 votes, followed by Manuel Villar with 37 votes. The rest of the results may be said to have been as expected: Nicanor Perlas received 15 votes, Eddie Villanueva 5, Jamby Madrigal 3, and Joseph Estrada 1, while Vetallano (sic) Acosta and J.C. de los Reyes received 0 votes. (The College has a total student population of over a thousand, and the low turn-out may be indicative of skepticism over the process or even the actual elections themselves.)

A sympathetic reading of the results makes them less surprising than they seem at first glance. The results’ non-conformity with what the surveys say are the Filipino voters’ current preferences indicates a disconnect between the perception of the candidates by the UP students involved and that of the majority of Filipinos. It suggests that as far as some UP students are concerned, the candidates are going to have to approach them differently from the way they approach other sectors of the electorate.

I suspect, however, that the bottom line reason for the results is a sense among UP’s journalism and communication students that the choices that the majority have identified are not really choices at all, signifying skepticism over the popular view that Benigno Aquino III will bring about the reforms our society needs should be become President, or that Manuel Villar has the welfare and future of the poor at heart and will abolish poverty(!) once he’s in power as his ads promise.

The Noynoy Aquino image as reformist is tarnished by the Hacienda Luisita massacre, no matter if his supposed link to it is limited to his being part owner of the Hacienda. Even his late mother suffered from the fall-out from the Mendiola massacre, despite its being the handiwork of the police during her term as President. Among many UP students, both issues remain unresolved, thus undermining Mr. Aquino’s, and even the late Mrs. Aquino’s, reformist persona.

On the other hand, Mr. Villar still has to work on getting his protestations of innocence over the C-5 extension project across, that scandal having resisted closure, thanks to Mr. Villar’s allies in the Senate. There are also those rumors about his other failings, among them allegations of other shady deals involving his real estate empire.

UP students are nothing if not reform-minded and pro-poor, both being the bottom line preferences of UP culture. But there they were, rejecting the two candidates most identified in the popular mind with those preferential options. Obviously they were not buying either the idea that Mr. Aquino is the country’s last hope for reform, or that Mr. Villar is the poor’s salvation.

Instead of either Aquino or Villar, most of them voted for Richard Gordon, whom one can identify with reformism or being pro-poor only with a very generous stretch of the imagination. Gilbert Teodoro’s coming in second, on the other hand, seems to suggest that for all the supposed anti-administration and anti-Arroyo bias of UP students, they see something else in Teodoro other than his Arroyo connection. Of course we can throw in such other possibilities as that, as in certain other schools, Teodoro’s looks may also have something to do with his popularity among these UP students.

In any case, both choices appear to be indicative of the very difference mentioned above between the majority of voters and some UP students. I suggest that student skepticism over the Aquino-As- Reformist and Villar- As- Pro-poor theses has led them to look for other, certainly less monumental reasons for making their choice for President, and that in this instance they chose to vote for the person who seems the most fluently persuasive, in which category both Gordon and Teodoro, who’re both as slick as glass and as glib as TV talk show hosts, belong.

While one could fault the students for equating fluency with substance, their choices could be read as a protest over what is popular, as well as the irony of the presidential contest’s consisting of nine candidates among whom there’s hardly any real choice at all. If neither Aquino nor Villar are authentic choices, as their votes seem to imply, what choices are left, after all?

But a less sympathetic — and probably more accurate — reading of the results is more compelling than a charitable one. Such a less forgiving reading would suggest that the image of the UP student as activist, which has endured despite UP’s accepting the children of the wealthy and the powerful in its rolls, is no longer accurate, as many have suspected for years.

Instead the results would say that UP students — or UP mass communication students particularly, among whom are the future journalists who would be tasked with providing the public the information it needs — have no historical sense and are as ill-informed as their counterparts in other schools, where the results of mock polls have followed almost the same pattern. As one UP faculty member remarked, “the mock polls are a huge mockery of what UP stands for.”

But there’s a caveat to all this: neither reading has been validated by science, and either can very well be invalidated by, say a focus group discussion. Everyone is therefore free to interpret these results pending their validation or otherwise through the usual, accepted means that social science research sanctions. The country is also only in the third week of the campaign and there are still nine weeks to go, in the course of which these students as well as much of the electorate are still likely to change their minds, who knows?

(BusinessWorld)

If the attitude of the latter suits Marcos fine, the amnesia of the former is equally agreeable to some of the principal actors and beneficiaries of EDSA. They’ve been saying for years that People Power — the means through which the government of Ferdinand Marcos fell in 1986 in EDSA 1, and which in 2001 forced Joseph Estrada out of Malacanang in EDSA 2 — is better left to future generations to remember and appreciate.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, for example, proclaimed this year that People Power has been “divisive” and politicized — i.e., it has become a constant threat to sitting governments, particularly hers. Since demands for her resignation escalated in 2005, Mrs. Arroyo has downplayed EDSAs 1 and 2 in her government’s scheme of things, marking both anniversaries as an afterthought and as something to get over with, like Monday’s flag-raising ceremony.

Fidel V. Ramos, who as chief of the defunct Philippine Constabulary in 1986 withdrew his support for Ferdinand Marcos when he moved to arrest him for involvement in an alleged coup, has disparaged People Power for the image of political instability its exercise presents to the world and foreign investors.

As for Juan Ponce Enrile, who was implicated in the coup plot being hatched by the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) in 1986 and was forced to seek the people’s protection together with Ramos, he’s long written off EDSA 1 as an anomaly because it led to Corazon Aquino’s, rather than to his, assuming the Presidency.

Enrile also credits the military for the overthrow of Marcos in 1986, and for Estrada’s abandoning Malacanang in 2001– in the belief that what matters most is who has the guns rather than the numbers that democratic theory says should prevail in political disputes.

The bottom line for these three worthies is that, having benefitted from People Power, no one else should, henceforth — a view that’s both self-serving as well as based on fears that what put them in power can remove them (or could have), and that People Power can go ”too far” if encouraged.

One can appreciate their apprehension. Suppose People Power actually put someone in power other than a member of the handful of families that have been in power in this country since 1946? What if People Power actually changed something?

Filipinos aren’t as enthusiastic or even as interested in People Power as many think they should be precisely because it didn’t change much, whatever it changed is constantly under challenge, and it didn’t go far enough.

It’s customary to say today that what EDSA 1 was about was to remove Marcos. But the more perceptive knew even then that it wasn’t Marcos who was really the country’s problem. As putrid as his dictatorship and his clutch of military and civilian goons were, they were only a symptom of the centuries-old malaise of Philippine society. The dictatorship may have been a particularly brutal one as symptoms went, but symptom it was nevertheless — of, among others, a political system built on patronage, fraud, deceit and violence which allowed only the moneyed and unscrupulous access to power, while denying it to the majority. Martial law and the Marcos dictatorship merely stripped away the populist mask of a system that claimed to be democratic but wasn’t.

Martial law was, among others, nevertheless a reaction to majority demands for social and economic change as well as a voice in governance — demands to make democracy a reality. When martial law was declared, the streets, factories and fields of the country were echoing with cries for land reform, a living wage, and industrialization. Implicit in those demands was the call for the democratization of power necessary for the realization of the social revolution that for centuries had eluded the legions of the poor.

When the Marcos regime was overthrown, it was inevitable that the many sectors that had resisted the dictatorship would see it as the prelude to that revolution — to the dismantling of the land tenancy system, to authentic industrialization, and to the widest possible participation in decision-making by the voiceless and disempowered.

It wasn’t to be. The anti-Marcos wing of the elite that had control of People Power — the likes of Ramos and Enrile, for example, and Corazon Aquino herself — could not have countenanced such changes as giving up their lands and sharing power with the people from whom they claimed to derive their authority. Land reform has yet to be realized as a consequence. The rest of Asia may be industrializing; the Philippines isn’t. And money, violence and fraud continue to rule Philippine elections, thus assuring the election of the husbands and wives, the sons and the daughters, etc., from the same families and dynasties that have monopolized political power in this country since 1946.

A revolution EDSA 1 wasn’t, but a restoration — of the same land-based and comprador elite the country’s colonizers had used to rule the country in colonial times, which itself had ruled in its own behalf since alleged independence, and of the same power brokers in Church and State. It also saw to it that the same social and economic system that limits opportunities and dooms millions to the ever harsher consequences — hunger, disease, misery and early deaths — of increasing poverty was intact when the dust had settled.

People Power a failure? Not from the standpoint of the Ramoses and Enriles. But certainly from that of the Filipino people themselves, who gave their names and even lives to it, and received little in return.

(BusinessWorld)

The provision involved is Section 6.6: “Any mass media columnist, commentator, announcer, reporter, on air correspondent or personality who is a candidate for any elective public office or is a campaign volunteer for or employed or retained in any capacity by any candidate or political party shall be deemed resigned, if so required by [his or her] employer, or shall take a leave of absence from his/her work as such during the campaign period.”

It seems clear enough at first glance — but only at first glance. The provision won’t get a prize for clarity, being vague enough to allow for at least two opposing interpretations. The first is that a media practitioner whether in print or broadcast would be “deemed resigned” ONLY IF required to resign by his or her employer. The second is that, EVEN WITHOUT being required by his or her employer, he or she must take a leave of absence from his media organization.

In addition, there’s the Comelec’s confusion, not necessarily proceeding from the wording of Section 6.6, over what “mass media columnist, commentator, announcer, reporter on air correspondent or personality” means. Although that part seems clear enough because it’s specific, and doesn’t mention actors, the Comelec law department through Commissioner Ferdinand Rafanan used the more generic “celebrities” to refer to those who either have to resign or go on leave once they run for office or endorse a candidate.

Naturally Rafanan, and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) which brought it up in the first place, ended up including actors such as Dolphy, Lorna Tolentino, Eddie Garcia, etc., etc., among the “celebrities” covered by the provision who therefore had to give up whatever film gigs they’ve lined up during the campaign period.

The actors’ protests as well as those of their advocates were loud enough for the Comelec en banc to announce that Rafanan’s views were his own and was not yet official Comelec policy. Finally it announced early this week that “there is no requirement from Comelec for a particular media practitioner to resign or to take a leave. The discretion is left to the network or person involved.”

Fine. Except that certain “media practitioners” including actors do have TV programs they can use to further the candidacies of their endorsees or their own. There are also the cases of the “columnist(s), commentator(s), announcer(s), reporter(s), or on air correspondent(s)” who’re either running for office or who’re paid or volunteer campaigners for this or that candidate.

These individuals, whether volunteers or paid campaigners, do have the means to advance their or their endorsee’s candidacy through their newspaper columns and/or TV and radio programs. Some columnists and commentators who’re neither volunteers nor paid staff are also sufficiently biased in favor of this or that candidate to use their space or airtime in his or her behalf — and I mean practically at every opportunity

They do have the same right to free expression as other citizens. But they have a power ordinary citizens don’t have, and that’s the power to influence others and to shape opinion that’s inherent in media practice, through which they can reach, depending upon the medium as well as its circulation or ratings, thousands if not millions of voters.

Except in a handful of cases, there’s no discernible movement among those media practitioners — in print, broadcast and/or the Internet — to either stop themselves from commenting on the virtues of their candidates and the vices of their opponents, or to at least go on leave for the duration of the campaign. These are the ethical choices available, rather than continuing with one’s column or program for the duration of the campaign, pretending to be “objective” while being committed to a candidate or candidates.

It’s neither brain surgery nor rocket science. Assuming enough respect on their part for their day jobs, those who’re actually in the payroll of certain candidates have to either go on leave or resign, as do those who’re serving as volunteers in this or that politician’s campaign.

But so do those who have this early and even earlier expressed their preferences, and who continue to use their programs or columns to sing the praises of their chosen candidate and to put down his or her rivals. The public is perfectly entitled to reading those columns or listening to those programs that are honestly trying to look at the merits of the candidates. It doesn’t deserve the manipulation that occurs when media practitioners already committed to this or that candidate pretend to be “objective.” It may not be a matter of law. But it’s certainly a matter of ethics.

It’s for the power inherent in their programs or columns that media practitioners have either been hired or otherwise encouraged to support a particular candidate. They would be just like everyone else if they quit the media or go on leave. But that’s exactly the point. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, unless you’re the kind of practitioner whose cavalier interpretation of ethical practice is slowly but surely ruining the Philippine media — and contributing to the debasement of Philippine politics.

(BusinessWorld)

As in the case of the Presidency, the House of Representatives and even the Supreme Court, Senate prestige and credibility has been on the decline since 1990. From the 1950s to the declaration of martial law in 1972 among the most respected entities of government, the Senate when revived after 1986 enjoyed only a brief period of public esteem, among other reasons because of the election to that body of incompetents and clowns who slept their way through its sessions, but at least one of whom managed to be President.

The Senate has since been in free fall, and its recent woes, the echoes of which will resonate during the campaign period, are prime indicators. One of its members has in effect rejected legitimate demands for accountability before his peers and the nation. Another, while denying it, has become an international fugitive.

Both blame politics for their predicament. Senator Manuel Villar saw a conspiracy among his fellow senators, several of whom are also running for President, to damage his own candidacy. On the other hand, Senator Panfilo Lacson claims he’s being linked to the Dacer-Corbito murder case in retaliation for his exposure of the scandals that have haunted Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s nine-year rule.

It’s tempting to dismiss both claims as a convenient means of evading responsibility and preventing the exposure of what could be their respective failings. But neither Lacson’s nor Villar’s argument is entirely without basis.

The Philippine government through the department of justice has acted with unwonted speed in issuing a warrant of arrest for Lacson and in alerting the law enforcement agencies of other countries, through the Interpol, of his allegedly fugitive status. This compares unfavorably with government inaction in the case of Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano of “Hello Garci” infamy, whose arrest was ordered by the House of Representatives in 2005 in the wake of the 2004 election scandal. Garcillano managed not only to leave the country; the NBI also claimed to be clueless as to his whereabouts throughout, and he returned to the country with the apparent assurance that he would not be arrested.

On the other hand, three of Senator Villar’s fellow senators — Benigno Aquino III, Richard Gordon, and Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal — are running for President. Senator Jose Pimentel “Jinggoy” Estrada’s father Joseph (“Erap”) is also a candidate for the very same post he was ousted from in 2001, while the Liberal Party’s Manuel Roxas II is the vice- presidential running mate of Aquino.

The current Senate President, Juan Ponce Enrile, supposedly an Arroyo administration ally, is supporting Joseph Estrada’s candidacy and is himself running for reelection in Estrada’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino. All three candidates for President as well as Enrile, Estrada and Roxas are in the majority of 11 who signed the Committee of the Whole report that finds Villar guilty of benefiting from the C-5 road project.

Meanwhile, the so-called minority that claims that Villar’s getting a raw deal are, almost to a man and woman, united by support for his candidacy, among them the brother and sister team of Allan Peter and Pia Cayetano. Former Villar critic Aquilino Pimentel is another ardent Villar partisan whose daughter Gwendolyn is in the Villar Senate slate together with reelectionists Miriam Defensor Santiago and Ramon Revilla Jr. Revilla’s been his usual silent self, but Santiago has been a spirited defender of Villar, while pretending to be sick of politics, refusing to be interpellated after delivering a privilege speech, and walking out of the Senate session hall.

To ascribe what was happening to politics is to reduce its worth to its meanest: to a contest of interests no larger than personal ones and, as has often been said of Philippine political parties and politicians, without any basis in ideology or conviction. But that was exactly what was happening, and that is exactly how the Philippine political class, in word as well as deed, has defined politics for this country.

If the minority position was so obviously driven by party and individual interests, so was that of the majority. Despite Madrigal’s progressive claims — she has more than once recalled that Pedro Abad Santos, founder of the Socialist Party, was the brother of her grandfather Jose — she was profuse in her praise for Marcos era Defense Minister and martial law administrator Enrile during the Senate sessions that tried to take up the Villar C-5 issue.

As odd, or perhaps even stranger, was Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s being in the same faction as Enrile, whom his mother Cory fired as defense secretary when she was President for his alleged involvement in the various coup attempts that nearly removed her from power, and, in at least one instance, threatened her own life.

The result of all this is a credibility problem not only on the part of the individuals and factions in the Senate, but more crucially on the part of the institution itself, which after all is indivisible from those who comprise it.

And yet to save themselves from condemnation as traditional and unprincipled politicians, and the institution’s being perceived as no more than a vehicle for personal ambitions, the members of the majority bloc — they were after all in the majority — could very well have set aside for another time the Committee of the Whole’s report given the volatile political context in which a web of partisan interests prevented rational debate. As it turned out, virtually the same result was achieved through the minority boycott of the voting on the Report, with the added consequence of pending and urgent bills’ not being passed.

That the statesman’s option did not seem to have occurred to the senators of the Republic speaks volumes about the mindset of politicians used to advancing the narrowest of self-interests and who have never acted out of bed-rock conviction or principle. If Philippine political and governance institutions are damaged goods, it’s because their stewards have been especially proficient in undermining them.

(BusinessWorld)

Trafficking in children is among the most odious forms of human trafficking — the practice of luring, forcing, misleading or removing through various means men, women and children from their homes and communities to other parts of a country, or across international borders. It is illegal in most countries including the Philippines, where, however, human trafficking nevertheless flourishes.

Most Filipinos are familiar with the cases of women lured from their villages to the cities on the promise of high paying jobs only to end up in prostitution or involuntary servitude. But men and women can also end up in other countries, where they are forced to labor at low wages or even none while paying off debts supposedly incurred by those facilitating their travel abroad while their passports are held by their employers. In this form the practice is a type of debt peonage, and comes close to slavery.

The sale of babies and children for adoption or other purposes, whether within national boundaries or across them, is a form of trafficking. As January was ending, the Haitian police arrested on suspicion of child trafficking ten men and women with US passports who were about to cross the Haiti-Dominican Republic border in a bus with 33 children.

Claiming to be from an Idaho, US-based Baptist group called New Life Children’s Refuge, the Americans claimed that in attempting to spirit out of Haiti (they had no documentation at all) the children whose ages ranged from two months to twelve years, they were being moved by the highest altruistic aims, which they vaguely described as “rescuing” Haitian children.

An Agence France-Presse report says that the group website is soliciting donations to bring 100 Haitian children to safety in the Dominican Republic and for volunteers to take care of the children. The website declares its purpose to be to “rescue Haitian orphans abandoned on the streets, makeshift hospitals, or from collapsed orphanages,” and says that it has leased a 45-room hotel in the Dominican town of Cabarete as a temporary shelter for the children.

It turned out, however, that 22 of the 33 children were not orphans, but had been allowed to go with the group by their parents, which raises the possibility that the parents were paid off or otherwise provided some kind of compensation. The group’s use of the Dominican Republic as a trans-shipment point also raises suspicions as to its intentions, given the vagueness of its stated purpose. Although many assume that they’re rescuing the children from devastated Haiti for adoption in the United States, in none of the group members’ statements was that ever specified.

It may very well be that the Americans are no more than the do-gooder, know-nothings — people ignorant of the implications of their actions on others as well as of other cultures — who infest the religious scene in the US. But it is also possible that they’re part of a syndicate exploiting the agony of Haiti and the often naïve openness of far too many of their countrymen to the idea of doing a good deed by paying for the privilege of adopting children from an impoverished country so they can assure them better futures in “the best country in the world.”

The arrest of the group nevertheless came in the wake of warnings by UNICEF that separation from their families as well as the hopelessness among the poorest Haitian families have made children extremely vulnerable to trafficking. UNICEF frowns on the idea of international adoptions in general, and on the separation of children from their parents, which in many impoverished countries of the world occurs with parental consent in exchange for payment. Recall how, in the Philippines, some parents have been known to allow pedophiles to exploit their children in exchange for appliances and a few dollars.

International adoptions are not permitted in many countries, and in any case are controversial, despite the much publicized adoption by US actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of mostly Asian and African children. Although there is widespread approval of it in the United States, where the assumption is that such adopted children are being assured a better future, there the assumption is that not only is the adoptive culture superior, the home culture is inferior and deserves to lose its children. However, adopted children from other cultures in the US often end up as alienated from the cultural mainstream as children born into that supposedly multi-racial but nevertheless extremely racist society.

Human trafficking including trafficking in children, in which many critics include international adoptions, is among the many consequences of an unjust world order in which the elite in a handful of countries control most of the world’s resources, while the rest of the planet’s population has little or nothing. The grinding poverty and the immense disparities in development, wealth and opportunities the world order perpetuates force the poorest of the earth, including parents, to trade in their own children. But a vital part of the problem as well is that both the affluent as well as the criminal in the wealthy countries are only too willing to engage in the trade, whether in the illusion that they’re doing the children a favor, or for gain. Either way profit, whether emotional or material, is made from the misery that rules a planet of great injustice and great poverty.

(BusinessWorld)

It hasn’t exactly been clear what US interests in Haiti are, apart from the political one of keeping everyone in the US backyard in line. Of course it’s been for Freedom and Democracy primarily — which is probably why the US supported the French when the latter tried to regain Haiti in the middle of the 19th century from its former slaves; for Freedom and Democracy that the US supported the brutal regimes of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his successor-son Jean Claude (“Baby Doc”) from 1957 to 1987; for the same Freedom and Democracy that the US has sent in troops, the last time in 2004 so they could help oust the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the presidency of Haiti and install their preferred tyrant.

At the request of President Rene Preval — whose coalition of former military men and members of the Haitian mulatto (mixed blood) elite led the “reform movement” that abducted Aristide and exiled him to the Dominican Republic — US troops are back in Haiti, and control the airport as well as the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake.

Like most other natural calamities — for example, floods, storms and typhoons — nothing can stop an earthquake. But the devastating loss of life and the destruction the January 12 earthquake unleashed on tortured Haiti was not by nature’s hand alone. Haiti’s status as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and the incredible incompetence and corruption of the Haitian ruling elite, also had a lot to do with it. Neither can the US escape responsibility, its nearly two centuries of intervention having kept that country in desperate poverty under the rule of a succession of thieves, murderers and scoundrels such as the Duvaliers.

Life expectancy in Haiti is at 51 years the lowest in the Americas and lower than in many other countries in Asia — the result of the pathetic incomes, unemployment, lack of sanitary facilities and access to clean water among the majority that for hundreds of years has been driven by the vast inequality in wealth a succession of colonial and post colonial regimes has managed to preserve.

The numbers tell the story. Seventy percent of Haitians are unemployed. Eighty percent live below the poverty line. Only half the population can read and write. Average Haitian income is 66 US cents a day. Seventy percent of the population has no access to sanitary facilities; 46 percent has no access to clean water. One percent of the population owns 50 percent of the country’s wealth. Some of the most unspeakable slums in the world are in Port- au-Prince.

Over this cauldron of misery and despair presides a government that Transparency International has ranked as among the 13 most corrupt in the world, and the most corrupt in the Western hemisphere. Neither this government nor its predecessors has even bothered to enact building codes, in a country that’s regularly visited not only by earthquakes, but also by cyclones and floods. Millions live in makeshift housing which were among the first to crumble during the earthquake, while most of the concrete buildings of Port-au-Prince, some notably without the steel reinforcements that could have kept them intact, collapsed almost simultaneously.

The public health care system, deficient even in normal times, was overwhelmed by the sheer number of the injured and dying. No authority was visible to supervise the rescue and relief work needed in the aftermath — not only because the Haitian government had neither the personnel nor the resources to do so, but also because it had never prepared for a contingency that had been long predicted could happen. With the UN peacekeeping forces in disarray, the same government’s police forces could not keep order as hungry mobs roamed the streets to loot the ruins of homes, shops and supermarkets and to prey upon the survivors.

As an inept and corrupt government wrings its hands over the immense number of casualties and begs the world for aid, and the “international community” (read: mostly the United States) assumes practically all the responsibilities over relief operations, expect a de facto restoration of foreign rule in Haiti. For all its cost in lives, the Haiti earthquake provides an opportunity for the US to keep its troops — now numbering some 20,000 — in the country and to augment their number as they segue from rescue and relief operations to security operations.

The US commander has said that US troops will stay in Haiti only for three to six months, but that’s not etched in brass. Although it’s done it before, running Haiti a la Iraq and Afghanistan may not be the US preference at this point: after all, the country remains in the hands of its reliable allies in the Haitian elite. But the earthquake has exposed the incredible inability of that elite to provide even the rudiments of the services any halfway decent government should be able to manage. The resulting political instability could resurrect the demand for authentic change that’s been echoing in Haiti for centuries, and that’s not something the US wants. That’s why it sent in the troops almost as soon as the first aftershocks were being felt in Port-au-Prince. And that’s why those troops are likely to stay.

(BusinessWorld)

The hopes were understandable. The US economy was in shambles, with jobs lost, manufacturing plants shut and many facing uncertain futures. Worse of all, as Obama noted in his inaugural speech, while the economic and social indicators of the crisis were evident — “ Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet,” “less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.”

Obama pledged to address the crisis swiftly and decisively, and outlined the program of economic recovery that he said he proposed to put in place.

“The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”

Apparently not in his first year, however. Since Obama pledged bold and swift action a year ago, the most visible attempts to address the economic crisis have been the immense financial bailout of the US banks and car companies, a policy many Americans saw as rewarding with taxpayer money the already rich who were in the first place responsible for the crisis.

On the other hand, such other issues as climate change have been slowly addressed, and health care reform watered down. In addition the Obama administration has also extended such Bush administration policies like the US Patriot Act, while refusing to take the leadership in gay marriage and abortion issues.

Administration spokesmen have responded to expressions of impatience among the grassroots movements that supported Obama’s candidacy with condescension and petulance, arguing that “governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult,” and that they would have to wait, a year being too short a time to show results.

That was not the case for Ronald Reagan, however, who, practically upon his inauguration in 1981, aggressively pushed his conservative agenda of less taxes and more defense spending within his first year. Within one year the “Reagan Revolution” had taken deep policy roots in the US government. And yet Reagan did not have the kind of electorate and Congressional support Obama had in January 2009.

Obama also promised to pull US troops out of Iraq, but has several times changed the timetable for it. He has not shut down the US prisons in Guantanamo, even as he has escalated the US war in Afghanistan, as well as the use of armed though unmanned drones in killing alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders and militants in Pakistan.

The drone attacks in Pakistan have angered Pakistanis, because they have killed civilians and in several cases missed their intended targets. The Pakistani government is hard pressed to explain why its citizens in supposedly Taliban areas have to live in fear and why it allows the US to continue with the attacks despite Pakistan’s being a sovereign country.

The attacks, having already increased in number in 2009 (45, from 27 in 2008) have further increased since December 30, 2009, apparently in retaliation for the suicide bombing that killed seven CIA operatives in a US base in Pakistan on that date. The death toll last year was 700. No independent source has verified if these were all Al Qaeda or Taliban militants.

Although the drone attacks are the only visible US initiatives against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, they have raised the human rights issues that during the 2008 campaign Obama had pledge to respect.

The United Nations’ Philip Alston has called on the United States to reveal who was being targeted in the attacks and to provide a list of casualties. The United States, said Alston, had an obligation to do so under international law. In Afghanistan, Alston pointed out, there are investigations into allegations of civilian casualties and guidelines on when bombs could be dropped; there are no such safeguards in Pakistan, officially a non-combat zone.

“The whole (US drone) program (in Pakistan) is so secretive that we have very little information to evaluate whether the United States is honoring its obligations under the Geneva Convention,” Alston said. The Convention allows only the targeting of combatants and demands avoiding civilian casualties in addition to respect for other rules of war. “When we were dealing with isolated cases I raised it with the United States. Now that (the US) is systematically using drones, it is becoming increasingly important to get clarification.”

One late night US comic said Barack Obama isn’t a do nothing President. At least in foreign affairs he’s implementing the aggressive policy — of his 2008 rival for the US Presidency, John McCain.

(BusinessWorld)