Category: military

pia hontiveros vs. admiral angue

caught strictly politics last night and was amazed at pia hontiveros’ total lack of objectivity re rear admiral feliciano angue’s complaints.   a lot of whining daw, signifying nothing?   hmm.   her husband is in the military, ‘no?   methinks she protests too much.   angue reminds me of senator trillanes back when he was griping about corruption in the military and the grievance committee wouldn’t act on his complaints.   reminds me too of fvr when he finally broke away from the marcos government on grounds that promotions in ver’s afp were not based on merit but palakasan.   where there’s smoke there’s fire?   senator now congressman once afp chief rodolfo biazon seems to think so.

the plot thickens

a conspiracy theory has it that ces drilon unwittingly walked into a trap sprung to give the armed forces reasonto start another all-out-war in mindanao, win pogi points with gma who in turn wins pogi points with george w. bush, and, incidentally, discredit mayor alvarez isnaji who’s running for governor in the armm elections.

it would explain why the situation was resolved so quickly, without serious harm to ces and co. but i have a hard time wrapping my mind around such a theory mainly because it would have hinged on ces or some bigfish like her being dumb enough to make kagat the bait of an exclusive interview with a surrendering abu sayyaf. it would also mean that the orenas needn’t have come up with ransom money, as ces and co. would could have been released anyway in time for gma’s trip to mindanao. unless of course the idea was to harass ces’ kapamilya, abs-cbn, into coughing up the millions, pero the kapamilya balked, strictly adhering daw to the no-ransom policy, so that ces’ true pamilya had to raise the first five million. unless of course abs-cbn is the source of the two duffle bags of money that pnp chief razon knew nothing about daw?

and then again maybe abs-cbn was part of the conspiracy? this would explain whythe police, and maria ressa, stopped ces from answering questions at her first presscon in zamboanga, questions that were only for razon to answer daw?

will we ever know what really happened? will anc ever tell us what it knows? will we ever believe anc again?

oh, and dan mariano of manila times has one last question : who’s footing the bill for that ten-day suspense serial that had us all glued to radio and tv for the latest news?

Thousands of police and soldiers were mobilized for operations to secure the news team’s freedom. Manila-based officials broke off their regular schedules and flew to the far South to coordinate the operations. The government was not about to let itself be seen as complacent-even if the victims belong to a media organization hostile to the administration.

The massive movement of security personnel and equipment was done at great cost to the state. Who will foot the bill?

In countries with efficient rescue services, the parties that call for help are often required to pay for the cost of emergency response. This is one aspect of the 911 shows on television that is rarely mentioned. However, the logic is unassailable.

The upkeep for emergency response units comes from public funds, which in turn are sourced from taxpayers’ money. The cost of deploying those units should therefore be borne by those who directly benefit from them-unless, of course, they are indigent. However, a network like ABS-CBN can hardly be described as needy.

indeed. tinataga tayo ng lopezes sa koryente, karma-karma lang kung sila naman ngayon ang tagain for the operations that resulted in the release of their star correspondent. they can always make bawi by making a documentary that will tell all, and i mean ALL, in the spirit of the public’s right to know, na mantra ni maria ressa once upon a time not too long ago.

the edsa tradition

a friend texted after reading my blog on the trillanes trip: “OMG the blogger wants blood!?! how demanding!”

not at all. i was just trying to point out (maybe i failed) that trillanes was doomed yet again unless he was on non-violent mode and willing to die for his beliefs a la ninoy-cory-butz, seeing as the arroyo police was on shock-awe-and-destroy mode a la marcos-ver.

let’s not forget that what was remarkable, and what deserves re-creating, about edsa one was not so much the military rebellion as it was the non-violent action of the people, stopping tanks with their warm bodies and ardent prayers, which “disarmed” so to speak, and rendered non-violent too, the marcos military.

cardinal sin “forgot” this noong edsa dos. and juan ponce enrile, miriam defensor santiago, and tito sotto “forgot” this noong edsa tres. this is why when historian rey ileto asked me, soon after edsa dos and tres, what differences i saw between “the original EDSA and its pale reflections,” i could only agree. pale reflections, indeed. poor imitations, in fact.

the edsa tradition would have been better re-lived by edsa dos if cardinal sin had not stopped the youth from moving the action to mendiola. noong edsa uno, day 3 pa lang, unarmed militant groups were already gathering in mendiola; coryistas marched in from edsa the next day. the mission: to scare marcos, make him think violent mobs were at the gates, on the verge of breaking in. in fact, non-violent pa rin ang strategy. some stones and bottles were thrown at the marines guardingthe palace gates and barricades but not to hit or hurt, only to provoke the soldiers to shoot their guns in the air and thus freak out the marcoses.

but during edsa dos, cardinal sin was so afraid that violence would break out, remembering only the violent entry into and looting of the palace. in fact all that violence happened only after the choppers had lifted off with the marcoses and the marines had withdrawn. and had ramos and gringo/the new armed forces bothered to send troops to the palace along with the people (it’s not as if they didn’t know marcos was leaving), the transition would have been completely orderly.

and so, had the edsa dos crowd been allowed to march to mendiola a la edsa uno, with the mission in mind of peacefully, through sheer numbers, pressuring erap into signing an unequivocal letter of resignation drafted by the people, then that particular issue would truly be closed. instead, erap freaked out only enough to leave the seat of the presidency, but not to resign the office.

as for edsa tres. imagine if the edsa tres “mob” had been better informed by their leaders about edsa 1986, in particular how the non-violent strategy worked to neutralize the armed forces and freak the marcoses out. imagine if the masses who marched to mendiola marched peacefully instead and surrounded malacanang in a giant sit-in, filling the streets, stopping traffic, with priests saying mass and nuns leading the praying of the rosary24/7… the armed forces would have been helpless, gloria would have had to negotiate, the erap question could have been more quickly and more clearly resolved.

our problem is, we’re fixated on a rebel military as the key to mobilizing people power. our problem is, we don’t see, or we forget, that by the time enrile and ramos defected in february ’86, people power was already mobilized, it was already day 7 of cory’s civil disobedience campaign, coryistas were on non-violent revolutionary mode, the boycott of Marcos-crony businesses was peaking, and the economy was reeling from bank runs and capital flight. there was no doubt by then that cory’s strategy, to compel the business community to force marcos to step down, was succeeding. in fact it was succeeding so well, the military reformists just had to get into the act, and that’s when people power was diverted to edsa.

in other words, change is not up to the military, change is up to us. cory showed us the way, if we would only see.

the trillanes trip, the media mess

early on in the trillanes-lim stand-off at the manila pen, when i saw on anc how the pnp-swat forces were quickly surrounding the hotel, i knew for sure that trillanes and lim didn’t have a chance. there was no way people would come to show their support and shield them from bullets a la edsa one, simply because naunahan na sila ng pulis. it only worked for enrile and ramos in ’86 because marcos and ver refused to take the threat seriously that first night, thinking that the defectors could be talked out of it. if they had sicced the military on camp aguinaldo right after that saturday night presscon, when there were no real crowds yet to speak of, then there would have been no edsa one to speak of either (and no edsa dos and tres) because the rebels, who didn’t have the numbers, would have been wiped out.

as for the people, i have no doubt (even if the media do, forever asking why few people came to support trillanes et al, wittingly or unwittingly lending credence to government propaganda that people are bored and done with extraconstitutional edsa-like actions) that, given time and adequate information, trillanes et al would have been able to muster enough support from some of the 11 million who voted for him in the may 2007 elections.

information is critical. in ’86 the critical mass of people didn’t start marching out to edsa upon hearing of the enrile-ramos defection. first they sat down and listened closely to the replays of the presscon on radio, made sure that enrile really said that cory was cheated of some 300,000 or so votes in cagayan and that they were prepared to support cory if that was the will of the people. then they listened to justice cecilia munoz palma on radio veritas declaring support for the rebels; then they listened to butz aquino calling for people to march to edsa, promising non-violent action a la cory’s civil disobedience campaign; then to cardinal sin telling them it was all right to support the rebels, they are our friends, they have no food. then they sat through marcos’s televised midnight presscons, when he accused the duo of plotting a coup with military reformists to topple him and replace him with a junta. and then the people slept on it. the next day, first thing sunday morning, they marched to edsa, hopeful of winning for cory the support of the rebel military.

but as in the oakwood caper in 2003, trillanes neither had the time nor the inclination to be transparent/informative, expecting people to take him on his word (and maybe face value). sorry, no dice. if there’s anything that thinking people have learned from edsa one and two, it is that we can’t trust in motherhood statements that can always, eventually, inevitably, be bent this way and that to preserve the status quo.

trillanes and his ilk simply have to get more creative. as creative as the arroyos and the generals were in building an impeachment case against erap in 2000. the impeachment strategy no longer works, as we all know, but neither does, and never has, the fivestar hotel strategy.

and so, watching that scene at the pen over late lunch, i was thinking that the only way trillanes and lim and the magdalo could come out of it winners was if they were prepared this time to fight to the death. they should have shooed away the media people who were only there for a scoop (such as ces drilon? pinky webb?) and allowed only people who were prepared to die with them (like bibeth orteza, maybe dodong nemenzo, teofisto guingona?). only their deaths at the hands of gma’s loyalists could have truly rocked the boat, raised a stink, challenged the status quo, upset gma’s applecart, and shown her up for the pseudo-democratic tyrant that she really is.

when ninoy came home in ’83, prepared for the worst, he was moved by, and armed only with, ghandi’s wisdom: that

“…of all the responses of God and man to oppression, nothing is more effective than the sacrifice of the innocent.”