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Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales criticized the “excessive devotion” of millions of Filipino Catholics to the Black Nazarene. Living lives of simplicity and selflessness, said the Cardinal, would constitute real devotion, rather than the mad rush to get on or near the carriage bearing the statue of the dark Christ so one can kiss the image or wipe it with a handkerchief. Two people died and some 400 were injured in this year’s celebration of the Black Christ’s transfer from the old city of Intramuros to the Quiapo Church nearly 300 years ago.

The Cardinal’s advice to live simply couldn’t have been addressed to a less likely crowd. We can safely assume that only a very, very few, or even none, of the estimated two million devotees that braved the heat and crush of the five kilometer procession from Manila’s Luneta Park to Quiapo Church owned several mansions or fleets of cars, regularly went on vacations in the US to visit Disneyland, or feasted on $20,000 dinners at Le Cirque and Bobby Van’s Steak House.

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It may have an ample supply of people with single-digit IQs and pronunciation problems. But the Arroyo regime has a genius for using Filipino misfortunes to its advantage.

When the Maguindanao massacre of 57 people including at least 30 journalists and media workers outraged the country and the world, then spokesperson Lorelei Fajardo admitted, and what’s more reaffirmed, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s continuing friendship with the suspected masterminds. But the less imprudent voices from Malacanang made it appear that Mrs. Arroyo had absolutely nothing to do with the Ampatuans. The ruling coalition’s expulsion of clan members did remind everyone that the Ampatuans were her political allies and had immeasurably helped deliver the presidency to Mrs. Arroyo in 2004 as well as 12 Team Unity candidates to the Senate in 2007.

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Gary Olivar, oddly enough while defending his boss’ non-attendance at the joint session of Congress last week that was supposed to review Presidential Proclamation 1959, let slip last Thursday (December 10) what he really thought about the declaration of martial law in Maguindanao.

One of the few Arroyo officials with at least half a brain, Olivar was explaining to the media why Mrs. Gloria Macapagal chose to attend to her other appointments last Wednesday (December 9) rather than show herself in Congress. Olivar harrumphed that neither the representatives of the people nor the senators of the supposedly strong but in reality limp Republic have any right to tell Her Majesty what she may or may not do.

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At least one member of the Ampatuan clan seems to have recently discovered how important the media can be when the shoe’s on the other foot, and you’re being oppressed rather than doing the oppressing. Outraged over the supposed use of excessive force when Army troops stormed the hospital room of Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., an Ampatuan relative called ABS-CBN to complain about it.

The media had been barred by the military from covering the Army’s decision to finally arrest Ampatuan, three days after he checked himself into the hospital, in a ruse that should by now be familiar to most Filipinos. To escape the discomforts of a Philippine jail, every politician or similar creature of influence who has troubles with the law nearly always pretends to be sick so he can be placed in what’s known in this sorry country as “hospital arrest”. Claudio Teehankee Jr. did it so he wouldn’t have to spent a minute in Jejomar Binay’s Makati City jail while on trial for murder. Convicted but pardoned rapist Romeo Jalosjos also did it before he found heaven in the comforts of, and in his own hamburger stand in, the National Penitentiary.

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The central paradox of failing and failed states is their capacity to inflict the gravest harm on their perceived enemies, their own people, and on humanity at large, while being weak when it comes to protecting the innocent or observing their own laws. Such states may be paper tigers, but they do have claws and teeth.

Philippines is not yet exhibit A in the gallery of failed and failing states. In the contest for that distinction are such African countries as Rwanda, Somalia, the Sudan, the Republic of the Congo. In Asia, among the candidates, but still far behind these sub-Saharan states, are Burma and Sri Lanka.

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The unparalleled act of barbarism that was the massacre of November 23 has been described as “politically motivated,” but that phrase imbues its purpose with a meaning it does not have and does not deserve. No price can ever be enough for a single human life, but here is a case in which at least 47 people have been killed, apparently in furtherance of nothing more than the intention of petty tyrants to remain in power and pelf in one of the country’s poorest provinces.

The abduction and murder of some 47 people, more than half of them journalists and media technicians, and many of them women, in Maguindanao is a new low even for Mindanao as well as the Philippines. It speaks volumes not only about the rot in a political system that tolerates brutes and murderers’ occupying public office so long as they can deliver the votes, and no matter if they maintain private armies made up of creatures more animal than human. It also provides the civilized world a sense of the levels of barbarism in these parts, for a precedent to which one has to look long and hard in the history of the planet.

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It’s practically an article of faith among the Muslim separatist groups: the Muslims in the Philippines are not part of the Christian majority, are not even Filipinos, and have their own culture, beliefs, traditions and history. It’s true enough — except in one outstanding respect: with most Filipino Christians, the separatists (the word is used advisedly) share fealty to the idea that the problems of this land can be solved only with US intervention.

That’s the subtext of one of the recent issuances from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Secretariat as well as of the recent history of MILF-US engagement. In a statement issued a day after the visit to the Philippines of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretariat Chair Muhammad Ameen bragged that in response to a letter the MILF had written to US President Barack Obama, the MILF’s chief negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, had met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel last November 6 in Makati City. Marciel, said Ameen, handed to Iqbal Obama’s reply to the MILF letter.

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