Sleeping with the enemy

By Elmer Ordonez

Affiliates of a party-list group are hard put to justify their participation in the Aquino administration holding key positions in national security, human rights, and antipoverty program and possibly other lesser posts in government. That is, if they claim to be still part of the legitimate Left.

As it stands, they have become part of the ruling elite, whose power derives from vested interests, economic oligarchies, and political dynasties. The party-list group has been absorbed in the political mainstream which is probably their goal in the first place.

If they claim to still represent a segment of the Left, what they are doing up there is in effect “sleeping with the enemy” which is close collaboration with the Left’s natural adversary. They are no longer fighting (supposedly with other party-list groups representing the marginalized) for “crumbs on the master’s table” (to quote another columnist).

What their prominent members are having at the master’s table are not “crumbs” but big stakes.

National security covers the peace talks with opposing armed groups. The government has come to initial terms with the Muslim movement. Now the next in the agenda is the resumption of negotiations with the National Democratic Front. Surely the President would be guided by what his staff, the military, and his national security adviser (who himself came in from the cold) tell him – like, is it worth negotiating with a “spent force” — which the opponents of the NDF like to think. Let them lay down their arms first, or better still surrender. This would be wishful thinking. In the meantime, arrested NDF consultants remain in prison in violation of earlier agreements forged between the NDF and the government. No wonder the negotiations do not move. Also, do not discount US influence in this matter.

Human rights is a crucial program of the government. Despite the big sign at a gate of Camp Aguinaldo along EDSA, “I am a soldier and a human rights advocate,” the salvagings, torture, and enforced disappearances continue with impunity. (The House bill on enforced disappearances is the work of legislators, particularly one whose older brother, a desaparecido, was a former student.) But what is curious about the human rights watch of the government is its failure to differentiate between state/military violations and those allegedly committed by the New People’s Army. Giving them equal weight detracts from the commission’s mandate to go after state violators. Statistics cited by human rights watch groups abroad belie the parity, And if there are indeed violations by “enemies of the state” let the NPA impose discipline and punish offenders — as they have done.

The national anti-poverty program is also strategic. The anti-poverty drive is an area where politicians try to leave an impact on the impoverished but voting masses by attending to their problems of decent housing, food, and schooling for their children. The possibilities for the party-list group to make hay in this field are many.

The ruling party has already considered the party-list group a part of its alliance, and an attractive party-list personality is one of its senatorial candidates for the 2013 election.

Is the Left participation in national elections “sleeping with the enemy”? Not at all unless the group becomes an organic part of a traditional political machine.

Well before the implementation of the party-list provision of the 1987 constitution, the dominant Left tried to test the “restoration of democracy” after EDSA.

The Partidong Bayan was founded in December 1986 and fielded candidates for senatorial and congressional seats the following year. It was foolhardy then to venture in national elections with the oligarchies and political dynasties still in control. But the PnB did not have illusions about winning a senatorial seat. Word went around that the purpose of the exercise was educational and organizational. This would enable the Partido ng Bayan to conduct in effect teach-ins on the basic problems of society, and to expand and consolidate the ranks of the Left.

Then began the harassment by the military and the political establishment of Partido ng Bayan candidates and members. Alan Jazmines, PnB secretary general, experienced several assassination attempts on his life. PnB’s chairman Jose Maria Sison (with constant threats and attempts on his life until the present) left for abroad to accept invitations for lectures. In other words the ruling class (with the intrusion of the military with putschist designs) could not abide the presence of the Left in the electoral arena. Only two PnB candidates made it to Congress. No senator.

The PnB had to disband eventually. Hence it is understandable that the dominant Left did not participate in the first party-list elections. Their leaders/members have always been aware of the hazards of being involved in people’s struggles against injustice and state abuses, or just by running for public office. Look at the affiliations of victims of human rights violations since Cory Aquino’s regime.

People’s organizations associated with the Left fielding candidates outside of the party-list will not be “sleeping with the enemy.” They are simply reviving the spirit of Partido ng Bayan. The party-list group co-opted by the ruling party will have to decide what they want to be – another national political party identified with the government partaking of the largesse at Malacanang, or an independent political party with a clear ideology and platform vying with others for seats in Congress where ruling class and people’s interests contend in the passing of the laws of the land.

recto’s revenge

paano naging “intellectual property” ni ralph recto his committee report on the sin tax bill when it is something he came up with as part of his job as ways and means committee chair, and as senator, who is on the payroll of taxpayers?  property yan ng taxpayers, and the senate should be free to use it rather than waste time by starting from scratch.  in the first place he shouldn’t have resigned.  ang pikon, talo.

posted that on facebook and here’s the comment thread.

Karen Berthelsen Cardenas  hmmmm… interesting case study ito. i wouldn’t know about ‘intellectual property rights” but if the report was withdrawn then in essence it does not exist. therefore it cannot be referred to.

Stuart Santiago  hmmmmmm… “withdrawn”… tricky… i suppose this is a first. usually, kung me dissent, pinaplantsa with amendments.

Karen BC  oo nga. haven’t been following the story that closely. pero iniisip ko, kung ako gumawa ng report for a committee, and i was criticized for the report etc etc and i withdrew the report and quit the committee, i would probably say well then that report is no longer presented, is invalid, and therefore don’t use it if you felt that it was borne out of conflict of interest, it must be tainted. following the logic lang di ba?

Karen BC  kung tainted yung report, then its validity is suspect anyway, so throw it out and start again by an untainted committee

Stuart Santiago recto’s revenge

the ambush was “staged”

I said the ambush was staged, but I did not say who staged it… I never said I faked it or staged my own ambush… What do they think, that I will park my car and shoot it? 

that’s senate president juan ponce enrile in a howie severino interview two days ago.  here’s his version of the september 22, 1972 ambush according to inquirer:

… his three-vehicle convoy was driving through Wack Wack subdivision on his way home to Dasmariñas Village from Camp Aguinaldo where he had just briefed top military officers on the implementation of martial law.

“A speeding car rushed and passed the escort car where I was riding. Suddenly, it opened several bursts of gunfire toward my car and sped away. The attack was so sudden that it caught everyone by surprise. No one in the convoy was able to fire back,” Enrile said in the book.

and here’s the version of oscar lopez, patriarch of the lopez family that owns ABS-CBN Publishing Inc. that published enrile’s book.

Oscar Lopez, who lived in Wack Wack where the ambush supposedly took place, narrated his memory of that fateful night in the 2000 book, “Phoenix: The Saga of the Lopez Family.”

“After the shooting died down, I went out. I took a peek at what was happening outside my fence, and I saw this car riddled with bullets. Nobody was hurt; there was no blood. The car was empty,” Lopez said in the book.

The car was Enrile’s. At the time, Lopez did not know who owned the car, but he did know “it had been no ambush.”

“Our driver happened to be bringing our car into our driveway at around that time, so he saw the whole thing. He told me that there was this car that came by and stopped beside a Meralco post. Some people started riddling it with bullets to make it look like it was ambushed. But nobody got killed or anything like that. My driver saw this. He was describing it to me,” Lopez said.

we need to know what enrile really said.  maybe enrile remembers it correctly, he only said that the ambush was “staged,” and since media didn’t ask, staged by whom, it is now open to interpretation; had the question been asked, then enrile might have answered, by the dissidents (as it seems he is alleging, correct me if i’m wrong), and we would not be arguing about this now.

and then, again, if it had been a real ambush by the communists, and he had had a chance to say that it was staged by the communists, that would have sounded oh-so-like marcos, di ba, and it would have worked against him.  why even bring it up at such a time when he was appealing for our sympathy and support?  why would he, master of spin, even risk being likened to marcos who blamed everything on the communists?

the consensus of countless people, filipinos and foreigners, who heard that presscon is that he said, in effect, that it was faked.  and it makes sense, considering that at the time, he was out to convince us that he had turned his back on marcos, and what better way than to confirm what we had suspected all along about that ambush, and also about cheating in cagayan.  of course we lapped it all up, it was all so deliciously anti-marcos.

so now he’s saying he said nothing of the kind.  it was a true ambush.  which means what, we all misheard him in feb 22, 1972 1986 and it’s taken him this long to straighten us out?

how about, let’s hear those radio veritas tapes of that presscon.  i’ve tried “Listen to History: The Veritas/Radyo Bandido Broadcasts – February 22-25, 1986.” Interaksyon Online. February 2012 but i can’t find the ambush quote in the replays that are putol-putol.  maybe i just missed it.  how about uploading the 7 pm presscon in one go?  are there competent transcripts of the proceedings?

but the real question is, why is enrile suddenly so keen now, after 26 long years, to make the point that it was a real ambush.  is he playing with us?  are lawyers betting, he’s so galing, he can convince the people that it was for real, even if he has said it was fake?  siguro naman hindi, but that would be wild.

the only other explanation that occurs to me is that it could be in defense of marcos.  perhaps he thinks  it would make marcos smell less foul if we deleted from our memory banks the fake ambush; after all, marcos did not need such a pretext to declare martial law that night?

we believed him then, but he’s saying we heard wrong then.  so why should we believe him now, we may be hearing him wrong yet again.  once burned, twice shy.

bangsamoro con chacha

it does seem like the anticipated bangsamoro deal with the MILF would have the same problematic provisions as the arroyo admin’s MOA-AD that was struck down by the supreme court back in 2008.

the only significant difference is that the mo-ad was presented as a finished product — requiring only a constitutional amendment to allow a kind of federalist substate and then congress saying yes to the whole deal — samantalang this bangsamoro framework is presented as a work in progress — nothing’s final, but here are the points that the government panel and the MILF panel have come to agree on — and from now on govt is engaging the public, esp the concerned mindanaoans, in a process of transition toward the desired bangsamoro substate-sort-of, how nice.  except that, apart for some tweaking here and there, the roadmap is clearly headed in the same direction as the failed moa-ad.

senator miriam has warned us, it would take two constitutional amendments to legalize the abolition of ARMM and the founding of bangsamoro, and i believe her more than i believe dean leonen who is saying that it would not need charter change, but who himself, In one of the early presscons, brought up the possibility of “people’s initiative” (RA 6735) as a way of amending the charter.  surely he knows that the people’s initiative, enshrined in the 1987 constitution, still lacks implementing rules and regulations.  but who knows, they might be sneaking that in right now while they distract us with cyberlibel atbp.?

there is no doubt that the charter change dance is in progress.  last tuesday, just two days after president aquino’s sunday announcement of a peace accord achieved, malou tiquia attended an afternoon forum on federalism in the house of representatives and tweeted about it.  i jumped in upon the mention of pimentel and abueva,  both ardent federalists.

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
On deck at HOR is Forum on Citizen’s Participation on Consti Reform. forum covers federalism. M one of reactors. #Federalism

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
Bangsamoro, Bangsabicol, Bangsavisaya, BangsaIlocos…n the forum starts on federalism…

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
Nene Pimentel presented a complete n very comprehensive plan on federalism. Pepe Abueva on deck.

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
“What is good for Moro ppl is good for all ppl”- Dr. Jose Abueva

angela ‏@stuartsantiago
@maltiq parang we’ve heard that all before. sana someone presents too the negative side.

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
@stuartsantiago which is?

angela‏@stuartsantiago
@maltiq ay, mahabang usapin, let me find links from last time’s debates

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
@stuartsantiago ur own views? What do u fear frm federalism

angela ‏@stuartsantiago
@maltiq not going to change status quo. the powerful ones now will still be the powerful ones in a federal system.

angela ‏@stuartsantiago
@maltiq and the costs of setting up federal govt for every region will be huge. and okay for rich regions with money. what abt poor regions

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
@stuartsantiago that can be dealt with by revising present regional set up where rich n poor can form one fed state

angela ‏@stuartsantiago
@maltiq sounds good on paper, but when did rich ever really share equitably with poor

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
@stuartsantiago valid point!

angela ‏@stuartsantiago
@maltiq Federalism: Issues, Risks and Disadvantages

Malou Tiquia ‏@maltiq
@stuartsantiago thanks! Will raise agam agam

if that’s happening in the house of reps, can the senate be far behind?  what was that wednesday dinner hosted by the president and attended by all but 3 senators really all about kaya.  so it wasn’t about an enrile ouster, obviously, or he wouldn’t have been invited, too.  still it’s hard to believe senator drilon when he says it was just a thank you dinner for their votes to oust corona all of 4 months ago.  we weren’t born yesterday.

senator enrile of course is already a part of the dance, stepping up to contradict senator miriam (who else would dare?) re constitutional amendments.  charter change won’t be needed, he says, while evincing great interest in this experiment in parliamentary govt.

this should remind us that not too long ago, post-corona, pre-brady, pre-memoir, when he was smelling so good and wise, enrile and speaker belmonte joined forces and tried to convince the president about amending the constitution and making national defense a higher priority than education and — the ruling elite’s holy grail – setting the economy free from protectionist provisions.

it’s too bad that the bangsamoro dream keeps getting hijacked to serve the chacha dream of the powers-that-be.  the bangsamoro people deserve autonomy, but only as much autonomy as every other local government unit deserves and isn’t getting either in luzon, the visayas, and other parts of mindanao.  poverty, along with landlessness and joblessness,  is a nationwide affliction, and it is the fault not of the moros and other rural and urban poor who make up, what, maybe 70 %, maybe 80? of the population, rather it is the fault of imperial manila, of a central government that is loathe to share its considerable powers and resources with local governments, despite the Local Government Code of 1991 that mandates decentralization, devolution, and autonomy, complete with implementing rules and regulations.

ARMM is a failure not simply because muslim leaders are corrupt and crooked (hindi lang naman sila), but because aside from “having negligible powers, it was also hostage to the power-brokers in Malacanang.”

Since it was created, the ARMM has been led by local politicians who had been “anointed” by whoever sits in the presidential palace. The first regional governor was the local stalwart of Pres. Aquino’s Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP). The second one was a Maranaw protégé of Pres. Fidel V. Ramos. During the third ARMM elections, the FPA with the MNLF has just been signed. MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari was persuaded by Pres. Ramos to run for ARMM governor. Misuari ran virtually unopposed in the 1998 ARMM elections. By that time, a new president had replaced Ramos – Joseph Estrada. Estrada’s term was cut short by another “People Power” mass action at EDSA in 2001 because of a popular perception of his alleged plunder and other crimes against the Filipino nation. The Vice President then, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took oath as the new president. Like her predecessors, Arroyo lost no time in directing who will become the new ARMM governor. Along with her power-brokers, she made possible the (in)famous break-up of the MNLF Central Committee, easing out Misuari as its chairman. A so-called “Council of 15” was organized, with Dr. Parouk Hussin as its leader. Eventually, Malacanang also anointed Hussin to be the new ARMM governor. In last year’s elections, a new face in regional politics surfaced as the winner in the contest for the ARMM governor’s post – Gov. Datu Zaldy “Puti” Ampatuan. Despite the declaration of the ARMM as a “free zone” in terms of the most likely to be elected regional governor, there are persistent views that the new ARMM governor is also Malacanang’s bet – he is the son of Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan, widely known as Pres. GMA’s favorite local political ally. http://iag.org.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=43&Itemid=44

would it be any different for a bangsamoro substate-sort-of?  there is no reason to believe so.  nothing has changed.  let us see this bangsamoro framework for what it is: just another attempt to justify, make it all right for congress to shift to constituent-assembly mode for the sake of the muslims kuno, and while they’re at it, have a go at the economic provisions, and who knows what else.

after what we’ve learned from the cybercime case about how laws are made, how objectionable amendments can be sneaked in, and how some, if not most, senators and reps can themselves be clueless as to what’s really going on, and after how we’ve seen them sit on, literally, the RH and FOI bills, never mind the interests of the majority, t’s obvious that it would be a big mistake to go on trusting our lawmakers to look out for our interests.  what they look out for, administration after administration, congress after congress, are the interests of the few, the ruling elite, of which they are a fundamental part.

NO to chacha.   call me paranoid.