truth commission

FERRETING OUT THE TRUTH
By Solita Collas-Monsod

P-Noy Aquino’s decision to establish a Truth Commission, judging from the crowd’s reaction when he broached it during his inaugural speech, struck a very responsive chord in the Filipino people. So I am willing to go along with it, particularly since former Chief Justice Hilarion Davide, Jr. is chairing it.

But a lot of issues have to be cleared up first: is this going to be a truth/fact-finding body, or will it be prosecutorial in nature as well? What “unresolved issues” are involved in this commission? Because if these include graft and corruption in the previous administration, particularly those attributed to former President Arroyo and her family, then surely there exist agencies which already (at least in principle) have the mandate to do it: the Office of the Ombudsman, the PCGG, maybe even the Department of Justice.

It must be noted that most, if not all of the Truth/Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) — or at least those I looked into, including the South African TRC which Justice Leila de Lima says we will model ours after — were set up to uncover the truth about past abuses — human rights abuses. The South African TRC was unique, because it had the power to grant amnesty (and did — to some 12% of petitioners) to perpetrators who admitted their guilt and asked for forgiveness. This, by the way, did not sit well with a lot of the victims, who wanted “justice,” i.e., that the abusers should all be punished — not just the truth. It is also noteworthy that the South African TRC not only condemned the apartheid government for its abuses, but also the African National Congress (ANC) as well, because indeed both sides were guilty.

And this evenhandedness is probably one of the reasons the African TRC is being used as a model. On the other hand, I have the feeling that a lot of Filipinos, including some of the original advocates of a Philippine TRC, are actually thinking more of Nuremberg-type trials (and other star-chamber proceedings) — and may be very disappointed at the results of a TRC, and may then take their ire out on the Aquino government. This whole thing is a double-edged sword.

One of the interesting results of my (admittedly superficial) research is that some of the TRCs were set up by the United Nations. East Timor, in 2001, and El Salvador in 1992 are examples. In the latter case, the TC was established to investigate and report on human rights abuses during their civil war (1980-1992), saying that “acts of this nature, regardless of the sector to which their perpetrators belong, must be the object of exemplary action by the law courts so that the punishment prescribed by law is meted out to those found responsible.” Sounds like what we want, right?

The UN Secretary General, appointed former Colombian President Belisario Betancur (How much more impartial can you get?) as chair, together with a Venezuelan and an American. Its report, finished after eight months of investigation was about as hardhitting as they come: 85% of all acts of violence were attributed to “state agents,” 5% to the rebel group FMLN, and the rest to the death squads. The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero was laid at the door of the death squads, and the killing of six Jesuit priests at the door of the Armed Forces. Interestingly, TC did NOT call for prosecution of incriminated perpetrators — because it saw the Salvadoran legal system as incapable of executing such prosecutions effectively! Instead, it recommended dismissal of culpable army officers and civil servants from government employment and disqualifications of other persons implicated in the wrongdoings from public office. Talk about being realistic.

But the report was rejected by the country’s civilian government and the armed forces — in any case, five days after the release of the final report (after rumored threats of a military coup), the legislature granted amnesty covering all crimes related to the civil war.

Another interesting result: in Liberia, the TRC included in its list of 50 names of people who should be barred from holding public office, elective or appointive for 30 years for being associated with former warring factions, the name of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the head of government who created the TRC in the first place. Closer to home, South Korea has its own Truth and R Sirleaf in a list of 50 names of people that should be “specifically barred from holding public offices; elected or appointed for a period of thirty (30) years” for “being associated with former warring factions.” The Liberian parliament, in August of last year, decided to have a year’s consultations with their constituents, before deciding to implement the TRC’s report or not.

We could also learn something from Peru’s experience: the TRC there was chaired by Salomon Lerner, who was then the rector of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Peru (the equivalent of our UST). Its report pointed to the Shining Path as the major violator — torture, kidnapping, assassinations — with the military coming in second and the MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) third. But it also criticized the performance of the Catholic Church, specifically the Archbishop of Ayacucho, Juan Luis Cipriani, an Opus Dei. Presumably, when Lerner said that “The report we hand in contains a double outrage: that of massive murder, disappearance and torture; and that of indolence, incompetence and indifference of those who could have stopped this humanitarian catastrophe but didn’t,” he was referring, in the latter case, to people like Cipriani.

South Korea’s TRC, charged in 2005 with examining human rights violations from 1910 (by Japanese occupation forces) to the end of authoritarian regimes — including civilian massacres by US military forces — is supposed to come out with its report anytime now (it was given an annual budget of about $19million a year). That should be interesting too.

Given all these country experiences, perhaps CJ Davide and his TRC, in tackling “unresolved issues,” should focus on the media killings first. Arguably, these have given the Philippines as much of a black eye as corruption. And certainly, if the killings continue, the enthusiasm of media to blow the whistle on corrupt practices will be even more impaired.

juana change calls out edwin lacierda

via Harvey Keh

Dear Atty. Edwin,

Tumaya at nangampanya ako para kay P-Noy! Pero aaminin kong meron akong interes na gustong isulong sa pagvo-volunteer sa kanya-ang makakita ng tunay na pagbabago sa gobyernong papalit kay GMA na kinasuklaman ko ng over. ‘Di na dapat maulit!

Ngayon panalo na si P-noy at boksingan na para sa mga posisyon. Kaya nga ako tumaya para may karapatan akong magsalita at tungkuling magbantay! Kahit na anong galing at kahit gaano kakailangan ni P-Noy ang serbisyo ng mga pinakamalalapit na kaibigan, kaklase o pamilya, dapat sila na mismo ang magparaya para makapasok ang mga sariwang mukha ng pagbaBAGO! Bagong dugong may kaalaman, eksperyensya at integridad. Sa pag-ikot ko, nakasalamuha ko ang napakaraming Pilipinong marangal at handang maglingkod kaso ‘di mga makakapal ang mukhang makipagbrasuhan sa posisyon.

Sa interview sa akin ng GMA tungkol dito ay iniwasan kong magbigay ng mga pangalan. Pero nasa isip ko na nuon ang mga Abad, Montelibano, at Juico.

Imbes ay pinili kong magpangalan sa isang artikulo ni Joy Aceron sa Facebook kung saan binanggit ko ang pangalan ng mga Abad dahil sila ay derechong makakabasa ng comment ko. Hindi ako kailanman nagalit sa mga Abad! Sinabi ko doon na sana ‘di naman mga pamil­ya ang nasa gobyerno gaano pa man sila kagagaling at kakailangan. Pwede din silang tumanggi!

Nakupo! Pinutakti na ako ng pangungutya ng mga tao ni P-Noy sa Facebook sa pangunguna ni Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda. Bakit daw galit ako sa mga Abad? Gusto daw nyang marinig ang punto ko pero ang pinakamatinong maibibigay nyang comment sa akin ay naiinggit lang daw ako! Sinabi ng writer ng presidente na masahol pa daw ako sa mga trapong kinasusuklaman ko! At sabi naman ng taga new media na mahusay mag inggles na ako daw ay isang weasel. Pinagtanong ko pa ang ibig sabihin ng weasel dahil ang alam ko lang ay hayop yun! Tinatawag palang weasel ang taong tumitira ng patalikod!

Pinagtatanggol lang daw ni Lacierda ang kanyang kaibigan. Usapin ito ng mga prinsipyo para sa tunay na pagbabago! Hindi ito kampihan!

Dahil sa aking pagsasalita, nagalit ang mga tao ni P-Noy sa akin. Ito ba ang uri ng mga taong nakapaligid sa kanya? ‘Di makuha ang isyung pinag-uusapan? At nagkakampihan?

Kami sa Pinoy Power ang humingingmakipag-usap sa kanila kung saan si Lacierda ay tahasang tumanggi! ‘Di na daw kailangang makipag-kape! Ganun? Kasi volunteer lang ako? Kasi sila naman ang nasa pwesto? Kasi takot siyang humarap dahil nagkamali sya sa banat nya sa akin ng patalikod? Dahil ‘di sya dapat bumitaw ng ganung mapagparatang na salita dahil spokesperson sya ni P-Noy? Walang b____? Gusto kong malaman!

Sa proclamation nag-abot ang aming mga tingin. Inabot ko ang aking kamay sa kanya at sabi ko, “Edwin magkape tayo.” Pautal syang umoo sa akin.

Tagapagsalita ka ng pangulo ng Pilipinas. Ako nagpaparating ng sentimyento ng taumbayan. Bakit ka galit sa akin?

Ganunpaman, ang anumang gusot ay dapat na napag-uusapan. Kaya ko yun Edwin. Dapat kaya mo rin! Kaya mo ba? Usap tayo!

Para sa bayan at mamamayan,

Mae Paner aka Juana Change

dinky soliman, NGOs, peace bonds

Peace Bond ghost to haunt Soliman
by Alvin Capino

When returning Social Welfare and Development Secretary Dinky Soliman goes through the wringer at the Commission on Appointments, we can expect her to be asked interesting questions not only about her record during her first stint in the department during the Arroyo Administration but on the controversial Peace Bond.

President-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III should be interested too in Soliman’s explanation on the Peace Bond since it his cash-strapped administration which would now have the burden of finding the funds to pay the whopping P35 billion of maturing obligations for the P10 billion bonds issued in 2001.

So why should Soliman be asked to explain her role in the issuance of the controversial Peace Bond?

The Peace Bond, according to reports, was a fund raising scheme for non-governmental organizations cooked up by the NGO of NGOs, i.e. Code-NGO (Caucus of Development of NGO networks). Soliman and her husband lawyer Hector Soliman, as well as another member of the Arroyo Cabinet who is now returning as a key official of the Aquino administration, Ging Deles, are prime movers of this group.

Of course mention should also be made of Marissa Camacho-Reyes, sister of then Finance Secretary Lito Camacho, and Danny Songco as the principalsof the influential Code-NGO.

Just to highlight the influence of Code-NGO at that time, just a month after the issuance of the controversial Peace Bonds in October 2001, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was the guest in the Code-NGO 3rd National Congress held at the UP Diliman where Mrs. Arroyo acknowledged the key role of Soliman, Deles and Songco in EDSA 2 and in her administration.

It was a very profitable scheme for Code-NGO. As the pre-designated conduit for the sale of the Peace Bonds, the secondary market Code-NGO earned a windfall of P1.48 billion in profits.

Remember this was in 2001. P1.48 billion then is even bigger than P1.48 billion now if you factor in inflation.

So what happened to the P1.48 billion windfall of Code-NGO? What Code-NGO did was to retain 10 percent for its endowment fund. The remaining 90 percent or P1.318 billion was transferred to the newly created Peace Equity Access for Community Empowerment Foundation (PEF).

In the Senate hearings conducted at the height of the controversy in 2001, Senator John Osmeña questioned the transfer of funds from Code-NGO to PEF. Osmeña observed then that the people behind PEF included Soliman and her husband.

Perhaps the members of the Commission on Appointments should ask Soliman ifshe was or is in any way involved with the Peace Foundation because in fairness to her and to her husband, their names do not appear in the list of members of the Board of Trustee of the Foundation.

Some people might ask: what’s wrong with civil society and non-government organization profiting from a government bond offering like the Peace Bond?

We remember an insightful and incisive article of Angela Stuart-Santiago on this issue which appeared in the defunct Today newspaper in May 18, 2002 title “Code-NGO, Fake NGO”.

Stuart-Santiago observed that availing of government funding as what Code-NGO did results in a “conflicted situation” where the NGO is placed in a position of “condoning government’s unsustainable development strategies” and “worse, it would mean changing from a purely non-government to a government organization (GO) or, at best, NGO ng GO, or NGONGO, how freaky.”

Looking at the Peace Bonds, Stuart-Santiago observed: “Certainly it was a remarkably creative capitalist coup, the way Marissa Camacho et al, using their connections, managed to exploit the government treasury and the banking system to make more than a billion out of thin air for poverty alleviation. But there is nothing heroic or evolutionary about it because it changes nothing in the long term. Bottom line is, it is just another two-handed scheme of the rich – helping the poor and, at the same time, shafting them by helping get the government even more deeply into debt that eventually the poor will be made to pay.”

She said the rich in the country as well as the Church is mired in a situation and she quoted the late environmentalist and NGO pioneer Maximo “Junie” Kalaw who founded Haribon Foundation and Green-Forum Philippines who talked of “the internal contradiction of donating to the poor with one hand and contributing to their poverty with the other.”

Indeed now that sh*t will hit the fan next year when the government pays P35 billion for the P10 billion Peace Bond, we can only imagine where the government will get the money and what projects would have to be shelved to pay for this huge obligation.

Perhaps it is timely for the Senate or the House of Representatives to take another look at the Peace Bond issue.

Seeing all the people behind the Peace Bond back in the saddle again, so to speak, in the Aquino administration makes us apprehensive. They might try a Peace Bond part 2 in order to pay for the maturing P35 billion for Peace Bond part 1.

rizal redux

a decade or so ago, when all i had read were renato constantino’s and teodoro agoncillo’s versions of revolutionary philippine history i actually believed that andres bonifacio, not jose rizal, deserved to be national hero; that rizal didn’t even approve of that glorious revolution that bonifacio led; that he was against all violence, and would have preferred to continue fighting for reforms and representation in mother spain, which fit in exactly with the benevolent-assimilation drama of the new colonizers, no wonder the americans chose to build him up as national hero/role model rather than the radical bonifacio.

and then i got into floro quibuyen’s A Nation Aborted, an alternative reading of rizal’s words and deeds, correspondence with family and friends, as well as testimonies and diaries of people who knew him personally, and wow what an eye opener.

Rizal certainly never precluded the use of force, if it became necessary, as his 19 June 1887 letter to Blumentritt reveals:

I can assure you that I have no desire to take part in conspiracies which seem to me premature and risky in the extreme. But if the government drives us to it, that is to say, when there remains to us no other hope than to seek out ruin in war, when the Filipinos shall prefer to die rather than to endure their miseries any longer, then I too shall advocate violent means. [page 18]

i see now that rizal was the mind and spirit behind the revolution that bonifacio organized and led on the ground as supremo.

The leading light <…> was Rizal, whose initiative in building a “historic bloc” against the colonial regime through his founding of the Liga Filipina, forged an “educative alliance” between the ilustrados and the masses. Though the Liga Filipina lasted barely a week, it provided the model, as well as the springboard, for Bonifacio’s revolutionary party, the Katipunan. [305]

so why did he not lead or take part in the revolution himself? why did he submit to arrest? what was he thinking?

What was Rizal’s vision? In his letter to Marcelo H. del Pilar Rizal had declared explicitly that “our sacred mission” is “the formation of the Filipino nation.” And so he had called on his fellow expatriates to come home “to fight for the nation, the Philippines.”

The great puzzle for us postcolonial Filipinos is that when the moment of truth came in 1896, rather than leading the revolution, Rizal allowed himself to be arrested and, while awaiting his inevitable death sentence, condemned the revolution.

This seeming contradiction has bedeviled nationalist historians like Agoncillo and Constantino. Agoncillo regarded Rizal as a “revolutionary reformist” or a “reformist revolutionary,” which only adds to the confusion. Constantino was more unforgiving, and therefore more mistaken, in dec;aring that Rizal’s real agenda was the hispanization of the indio and the assimilation of the Philippines to Spain.

But is there a contradiction in Rizal? Our problem is that we tend to view the nation in Enlightenment terms, the liberal concept of the nation-state. The nation-state is founded on the principle of sovereignty and is constituted by a people, a state, and a geographic territory. In a so-called democratic nation-state, the theory is that sovereignty resides in the people and the state is to exercise power — in making and enforcing laws as well as waging wars against other sovereign nations-states — in behalf of the sovereign people it supposedly represents.

Yet, Rizal’s vision went beyond the liberalism of the Enlightenment, his was a post-Enlightenment vision which at the same time drew on the earlier pre-Enlightenment ethics of Catholicism. Rizal’s concept of the nation, particularly as inscribed in the Noli-Fili, both predates and transcends the liberal concept of the nation-state. Rizal’s perspective is antistatist, counterposing the nation against the state, in terms of an ethics that transcend the imperatives of the state.

For Rizal, the seizure of state power — the quintessential revolutionary goal from the American and French revolutions to the national liberation movements of the twentieth century — cannot be the solution, for the simple reason that the state itself is the problem. Rizal did not welcome the revolution when it came. But he did not condemn his people for embracing it [Emphasis mine].  In his farewell to his people, he linked his martyrdom with their revolutionary struggle:

En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio
Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar
El sitio nada importa, cipres, laurel o lirio,
Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,
Lo mismo es si lo piden la Patria y el hogar.

Bonifacio understood well Rizal’s sentiments when he enlarged the stanza into two in his Tagalog translation:

Sa pakikidigma at pamimiyapis
ang alay ng iba’y ang buhay na kipkip
walang agam-agam, maluwag sa dibdib
matamis sa puso at di ikahapis [emphasis Quibuyen’s].

Saan man mautas ay di kailangan
cipres o laurel, lirio ma’y putungan
pakikipaghamok at ang bibitayan
yaon ay gaon [gayon] din kung hiling ng Bayan.

Rizal’s concept of the nation resonated deeply with the Pasyon tradition and thus struck a chord in the popular imagination. It resonates as well with the very contemporary notion of civil society. [4-6]

and why did he not escape from dapitan, when he could have, easily?

What he tried successfuly to prove, by his refusal to escape, was a moral imperative that the Filipinos must have the courage to do what was good for the community even in the face of colonial domination. If his example could be universalized, that is, if every community in the Philippines followed the Dapitan example, in which the ilustrados and the masses worked together for the well-being of the community, a national trend towards social transformation would have ensued. If the Calamba example could inspire every community to resist injustice anywhere, it would be easier to perpetuate injustice anywhere, it would be easier to promote the public welfare. If more and more Calambas and Dapitans could sprout all over the archipelago, a massive movement for social transformation could emerge. This could bring about the reform of civil society on a national scale. In such a situation Spain would have no choice but grant the demands of the people. But if, given such a social momentum, Spain refuses to budge, the people would be better prepared to rise up in arms. With a united people and a strengthened civil society, a revolution would have a better chance of fulfilling its dreams. [312-313]

and a united people who had just won the revolution vs spain would have had a better chance of seriously spurning america.

The road to Redemption is never easy, and many sacrifices have to be made. Over the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, Rizal and his family, Bonifacio and Jacinto, Mabini, Evangelista, Malvar, and Sakay, and thousands of nameless others, offered their best years, their youth and their talents, if not their lives, to pave the way for an envisioned national Redemption — a robust and democratic civil society. Looking at the sorry mess in which the Philippines finds itself today, one wonders if all that sacrifice has meant anything at all. But if Jose Rizal were confronted with this question, he would surely have replied that a good man or woman has no choice but to do what is right. [313]

A NATION ABORTED
Rizal, American Hegemony, and Philippine Nationalism
Floro C. Quibuyen
Ateneo de Manila University Press 1999

not surprisingly leftists who swear by constantino are offended.  here’s roland simbulan’s scathing review:  Rizal as Religion, haha.   quibuyen’s reply:  Constantino as Dogma, hehe.