Honesty, lies and Sara Duterte

this was first published in march 2019 @inquirerdotnet, when the mayor was campaigning for her senatorial bets. now that she seems to be on the verge of running for president sa 2022, time to double up. the marcoses are not nag-iisa.

RACHEL A.G. REYES

We are not naïve, stupid or gullible. We know and even accept that in politics and in public life, white lies, untruths, evasions, dissimulation, feigning, pretense and bullshit are at times necessary, even required for political wheeling and dealing.

At the same time, truth and honesty are universally valued and cherished in social and private lives. We categorically believe that lying is wrong. Lies rebound on the liar, and we know how a single lie can wreck lives and destroy reputations. Plato was unequivocal. He said lies were evil and poisoned the soul of the person who uttered them. The French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne concurred. “In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice,” he said. “We have no tie upon one another, other than the reliability of our word.”

We can be similarly uncompromising. We demand truthfulness and honesty from our elected public servants and from our colleagues and friends. We teach our children to be truthful and honest and regard as treacherous the lover, husband or wife who is found to be untruthful and dishonest.

That said, I have been trying to fathom Sara Duterte’s thinking. The President’s daughter has recently been saying a lot about lying and honesty. But given the nature of politicking in this country, the talk has spiraled out of the realms of reason.

Sara’s thinking

As far as one can gather, her argument can be unpacked as follows: (a) all politicians lie, everybody lies; (b) honesty should not be an electoral issue; (c) there is no legal requirement for senatorial contenders to be honest, truthful and of good moral character. Neither are academic qualifications necessary. Philippine citizenship and being able to read and write would suffice.

One could take the view that championing lying, as Sara does, is hard-as-nails pragmatism. Lies can decrease conflict, promote harmony, forge compromise. In this way, one is able to justify lies, accept the utility and necessity of telling lies, if the outcome is beneficial—if more good than harm can come from falsehood. The unbounded pessimist Friedrich Nietzsche went further. He said: “That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.”

Yet, society cannot possibly function if, as Sara contends, we accept that everybody lies all the time. Society, writes the British philosopher Anthony Grayling, operates on probity and integrity. “For the ordinary transactions of daily life, we have to believe that most people are telling the truth most of the time.”

But public office is a public trust

Those who penned the Philippine Constitution would agree. Section 27, Article II is explicit: “The State shall maintain honesty and integrity in the public service and take positive and effective measures against graft and corruption.”

Moreover, Section 1 of Article XI states: “Public office is a public trust. Public officers and employees must at all times be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives.”

I can’t see how these passages can be read as anything but a stern rebuke of Sara’s legal justification for lying and dishonesty in public life.

Sara is mayor of Davao City and running for reelection. She has been doing no campaigning of her own. This seems to be because she is very busy being the campaign manager and spokesperson for senatorial candidates running under her regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago. Clearly, she is confident of winning the Davao mayoralty without too much effort on her part.

She’s loud and she swaggers

Loud and swaggering, Sara has enormous presence. She is not a senatorial contender but acts like one. Those who think that she has her eye firmly on the presidency and aims to succeed her father are probably right. Which is precisely the reason why we should listen to her carefully. She is amassing power before our very eyes.

Sara advocates lying and dishonesty as acceptable for those in public life. Why should this be so troubling? Because, as Grayling writes: “To tell a lie you have to know the truth but deliberately intend to communicate its very opposite to your audience. You thus commit a double crime: of knowing but concealing truth, a precious possession; and of purposefully leading others away from it.”

Would Sara apply this standard on her children? Would she allow her husband to deceive her with lies and dishonesty?

Rachel A.G. Reyes (rachelagreyes@gmail.com) is a historian of Southeast Asia and writes commentary pieces on science, gender and politics.

 

The Unbelievable Irwin Ver (updated)

Being reposted on Facebook is Esquire magazine’s 2017 essay “Strange Bedfellows: A Martial Law Love Story” by Aurora N. Almendral. It’s about the romance of the author’s mom, Gemma Nemenzo (sister of Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, high-ranking communist in the ’60s and ’70s) and former colonel Irwin Ver (son of Marcos’s AFP chief of staff Gen. Fabian Ver in the time of martial law).

No offense meant to Gemma, whom I met in 1983, Sesame days  (she was the media liaison of the Philippine Sesame Street Project), but Irwin Ver’s pronouncements about Ninoy Aquino and the dictator Ferdinand Marcos are nakaka-offend, being clearly of a piece with Bongbong Marcos’s flippant dismissal of anything negative about his father. In effect, Irwin and Bongbong paint their fathers innocent of any crimes and unjustly ousted by the people.

ON NINOY’S KILLING 1983 | “No, I don’t think he was involved”

Irwin’s story is that, like his father the general, he was at home when Ninoy was shot.

He was watching TV when his father barged into his quarters dressed in pambahay, to tell him something had happened at the airport.

“If he knew that something like that would happen,” Irwin said, to me, to my mother, to my mother’s friends and family, to everyone who has asked him, “he would have been in uniform. He would have been at his office, monitoring the situation. But he was as shocked as the rest of us. No, I don’t think he was involved.”

But But But. According to the Agrava Fact-Finding Board, at around 1:30 PM, AVSECOM commander Gen. Luther Custodio  “reported the incident [read assassination] by telephone to General Fabian Ver who was at the time in his office at Malacañang Park.”

There is no doubt that Gen. Ver was monitoring the situation. Two days previously, August 19, his order to Custodio was to “return Aquino to his point of origin on board the same aircraft he took in coming in.” He must have realized after that there was no way China Air Lines could simply immediately turn around and fly Ninoy back to Taipei. Early on the morning of August 21, he revised his instructions, ordered Custodio to: “Arrest Aquino and turn him over to the Military Security Command in Fort Bonifacio.”

That the general was nakapambahay lang, as Irwin claims, means nothing. It was a Sunday, after all, and his office was right next to his home in Malacañang Park (correct me if i’m wrong). How he was dressed, or not, has no bearing on whether or not he was monitoring the situation. Unless it was deliberate, if true, to give the impression, in case the shit hit the fan, that he was off-duty and completely uninformed and uninvolved and innocent, or something silly like that.

In November 1984 the Agrava Board’s Majority Report (that so displeased the dictator) unequivocally named Fabian Ver (and 25 others) indictable for the “military conspiracy in the premeditated killing” of Ninoy Aquino.

ON MARCOS IN THE TIME OF EDSA 1985 | “He did not want to kill his own people”

Irwin’s kuwento is that he was at the Palace sometime after Marcos’s high-noon oath-taking.

The same day, Colonel Irwin Ver, head of the presidential guard, favored son of General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s most loyal aide and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, was at Malacañang Palace. Irwin saluted Marcos, who was still dressed in the barong he wore for the cameras. Despite the oath-taking performance, Marcos seemed to have already accepted defeat. Irwin had not. Our position is still defensible, Irwin reported, ready to fight off an attack from the rebels. “No,” Marcos said. He did not want to kill his own people. Irwin recalled seeing the sadness in Marcos’s eyes, and for a moment he feared that he himself might cry.

Drama queens. Question is, what were they so sad about?  Were they sad about not killing their own people? Or were they sad because their officers were defying orders to kill the people.

Surely Irwin Ver remembers the very eventful morning of February 24, Day 3 of the four-day EDSA uprising. By then, Enrile and RAM had left Camp Aguinaldo and joined Ramos in Camp Crame.

Early that morning, according to Alfred McCoy [Veritas Special Edition, Oct 1986], Fabian Ver gave the signal for an all-out attack on Camp Crame by riot police using tear gas, Marine artillery, helicopter gunships, and low level jet bombers.

Riot police teargassed the human barricades in Libis / Santolan and cleared the way so that two battalions of Marines led by Col. Braulio Balbas were able to enter Camp Aguinaldo, from there to take positions within sight of Camp Crame.

Meanwhile, Sikorsky gunships were ordered to fly to Camp Crame and bomb two helicopters parked there to prevent Enrile and Ramos from escaping by air. Instead Col. Antonio Sotelo led the 15th Strike Wing’s seven gunships bristling with rockets and cannon to Camp Crame and defected wholesale.

CAMP AGUINALDO ► Looking down from the high ground of Aguinaldo’s golf course, Balbas had awesome firepower “boresighted” on the rebel headquarters only 200 meters away: 3 howitzers, 28 mortars, 6 rocket launchers, 6 machine guns, and 1000 rifles. [McCoy]

CAMP AGUINALDO, 9:00 AM ► General Josephus Ramas gave Balbas and his Marines the “kill order.” With his artillery ready to fire at pointblank range, Balbas lied to Ramas. “We are still positioning the cannons and we are looking for maps.” Ramas: “The President is on the other line waiting for compliance!” [McCoy]

CAMP AGUINALDO, 9:20 AM ► Ramas again barked the command through the radio: “Colonel, fire your howitzers now!” Balbas replied, “Sir, I am still positioning the cannons.” [Cecilio T. Arillo. Breakaway. 1986. page 77]

At some point Balbas radioed Tadiar, made certain that the order had been cleared with / by  Marcos. But even so, the Marines could see that even Camp Crame’s grounds were teeming with people.  Balbas just could not order his men to fire. “We will be hurting a lot of civilians,” he said to Tadiar.

Just about then, over at the Palace, a Sikorsky gunship sent by rebel chief Fidel Ramos to rattle not harm the Marcoses, fired six rockets on the Palace grounds. Damage was negligible but the Marcoses and the generals freaked out.

CAMP AGUINALDO ► Balbas got a “frantic call” from Col. Irwin Ver, Commander of the Palace Guard, ordering a “full attack” on the rebels. Lying boldly, Ver said the Palace was hit and they suffered 10 casualties. [McCoy]

Yes, Irwin Ver himself, who would have us believe that Marcos did not have the heart to kill his own people.

That Malacanang presscon where Marcos tells Ver that his order was NOT to attack Crame? That was pure palabas. As in moro-moro. Dramarama sa umaga. The dictator saying one thing and doing the opposite. Messing up the narrative, as always.

ON FABIAN VER & MARTIAL LAW | “It felt like a war situation”

As a son, Irwin is loyal to his father’s memory and defends his reputation. … He knows there were many regrettable abuses of power at the lower levels of government, but insists that Marcos never ordered foot soldiers to commit arrests, torture, and disappearances. “It felt like a war situation, a combat situation. We were both on the offensive and the defensive. It is not uncommon that would happen,” said Irwin, “that some soldiers would act on their own.”

True. Marcos had nothing to do with foot soldiers, but he had everything to do with the generals who lorded it over the police and military forces, the Rolex 12—topped by Ver, Enrile, and Danding–in particular, who implemented his orders and  benefitted greatly (got rich) in / over the 14 years of martial law.

General Ver became the fall guy for the Marcoses. He went into hiding and spent his life on the run, using fake passports and assumed identities, in part because he could not afford defense lawyers for the cases the American and Philippine governments were mounting against him. He died without seeing his family again.

… In the accounting of misdeeds after the fall of Marcos, General Ver was associated with the corruption that came with unfettered power—and his sons have inherited an on-going case for plunder.

Irwin would have us believe that his Dad didn’t share any secrets with the family. Like, who was the mastermind of the Ninoy murder?

Irwin believes his father did find out, but he took the knowledge to his grave. “It’s better you don’t know,” General Ver told him, “You’re still in your military career.”

And yet Irwin Ver has stories that make me wonder. Take this one about Marcos and Ninoy in Inquirer‘s “Marcos: ‘My best successor is Ninoy'” by Fe Zamora back in August 2008:

On at least four occasions before May 8, 1980, Marcos sent his most trusted officer, AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian C. Ver, to deliver a note to Aquino at his detention cell in Fort Bonifacio. On the last two visits, Ver asked his son, Col. Irwin Ver, commander of the Presidential Guards, to join him.

Ver told his son they were to bring a letter to the detained senator. The younger Ver expressed surprise; he thought all along that Marcos and Aquino hated each other’s guts. Ver explained that Marcos actually admired Aquino, that Marcos even saw him as “brilliant enough to be president someday.”

Selective sharing? Propaganda? Anything to help along the story that Marcos could not have ordered Ninoy killed because he admired Ninoy, Ninoy was his friend? Anything to help Bongbong get elected in 2022? Anything to bring back the happy days when the Marcoses reigned supreme and the Vers, too, in their own fashion?

I wonder how the Nemenzos really feel about that. #NeverAgain #NeverForget

*

Sources

“Strange Bedfellows: A Martial Law Love Story” by Aurora N. Almendral. Esquire Magazine. Sept 22 2017. https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/notes-and-essays/strange-bedfellows-a-martial-law-love-story-a1999-20170922-lfrm3

Reports of the Fact-Finding Board on the Assassination of Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Mr. & Ms. Publishing Co. 1984. pp 205, 40.

Veritas Special Edition. “Coup!” by Alfred McCoy, Marian Wilkinson, Gwen Robinson. Oct 1986. http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/day3.php

Chronology of a Revolution 1986. Vol. 1 of DUET FOR EDSA. Published by Eggie Apostol (1996). Edited by Lorna Kalaw-Tirol.  http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/

 

Bongbong Marcos should apologize for his father

ANTONIO CONTRERAS

INDEED, children should not inherit their parents’ sins. But in reality, we do. In a culture where debt of gratitude is inherited, even debts, whether financial or moral, are bequeathed by deceased parents to their offspring. We cannot take pride in the accomplishments of our parents, without balancing it with a sense of remorse, and the duty to ask forgiveness from those they may have offended.

I once argued against the act of asking for forgiveness for our parents’ actions, simply because I was a firm believer of a kind of ethics where you can only be held liable or responsible for the things that you had control over, or that in which you had an active participation. But upon much deeper reflection, I soon realized that this is a very Western construct, where responsibility and rights are very much defined within an individualistic ethos.

This is not what happens in our communitarian culture where family honor is considered to be a well-revered institution, that in some cultural groups, clan wars erupt to defend it. Thus, preserving honor is not a mere individual construct, and becomes a family duty.

It is in this context that former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. should apologize for the sins of his father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

At the outset, it must be emphasized that the Marcos family has always been pleading for a fair and objective treatment. They appeal to our sense of balance as we pass judgment on the complex period which Marcos Sr. had presided over, including the dark years of martial law. In fact, it is precisely because of such fairness and objectivity that Bongbong Marcos should not gloss over such complexity, by denying that everything was bright and sunny.

I lived through that period, and while I know that there were benefits that came out, there were also black memories that darkened the period of his father’s rule. To be objective is to take stock of both the positive and the negative. Bongbong Marcos cannot remind us of the good things that his father did without recognizing the bad things that happened during his term in office. After all, Marcos Sr. was not perfect as he was human, and he had his flaws. He was also not in total control of the actions of his people, but as president he bore the responsibility of being in command.

I know of people who disappeared in the dark of night, brothers in the student organization I joined. I have been told stories of torture. Indeed, these are people who may have rebelled against the state and joined the communist insurgency that threatened to make the Philippines into one of the Asian dominoes that faced the risk of falling, as the communist ideology was wreaking havoc and bringing death and destruction as it engaged in its expansionist project.

Nevertheless, there are rules of war which state parties are duty bound to uphold. While I do not expect rebels to uphold the law, what distinguished the state agents from them is the commitment to act within the boundaries of civilized combat, that inhuman punishments are prohibited, and that rights even of people who committed crimes against the government should be respected and protected. Thus, when state agents commit these atrocities, government leaders are duty bound to apologize and take responsibility.

There have been allegations of corruption, and the amassing of hidden wealth. I have always depended on the courts to adjudicate and determine the veracity of such allegations, and it is a given fact that sans the partisan agenda of those who hounded the Marcos family, independent courts both here and abroad have made judicial determination of the veracity of some of those claims.

If only for these, then it is in order for Bongbong to act honorably by recognizing that there were instances where laws of reasonable engagement against dissidents were violated and that there were instances where the courts established that indeed there were economic crimes committed. There is a preponderance of things that warrant, at the very least, a display of sincere remorse and contrition.

But instead, Bongbong has doubled down by refusing to apologize. He boldly declared that he is thankful that he is a Marcos, even congratulating himself for choosing his parents very well. Of course, no one is telling him not to be thankful for having been born into a very privileged family. And while he actually didn’t choose his parents, he can actually choose how to honor them.

As children, we do not control the actions of our parents. And while we owe so much to them, there are many parts of their lives that we are not familiar with or that were probably hidden from us. We are not privy to all the lies they told, every transgression they made, and every sin they committed. There is nothing dishonorable if we apologize for these. And it becomes a duty when we somewhat knew, and we tolerated it, and worse, we benefited from it.

For me, that is the biggest honor a son can perform on behalf of an imperfectly human parent — to bear the burden of an apology which the parents were denied of asking when they were still alive.

There is one other compelling reason why Bongbong should sincerely apologize. He is a presidential candidate offering himself to the people. If we believe surveys, scientific and otherwise, he has a chance of being the next president of the Republic. He has a solid base of support. He has nothing to lose if he apologizes. He may not convince many of those who have an intense dislike for him and his family, but he may just create more space to unify this toxically divided country by changing his narrative and redeem it in the eyes of those who are still open to changing their minds.

 

Why are oil prices rising, and what we can we do about it?

Overpriced gasoline and diesel, for instance, gave oil firms an estimated P38.47 billion (US$757.13 million) in additional income, of which P4.62 billion ($90.93 million) went to the government as value-added tax (VAT).

By ARNOLD PADILLA
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Since the start of the year, local pump prices have increased significantly. The government, as always, explains this as the operation of global market forces. Remember that the government deregulated the oil industry, and the country imports almost all its petroleum needs. As such, local price adjustments merely reflect the movement of international oil prices and fluctuations in the peso-dollar exchange rates. At least, that is what government and the oil firms want us to believe.

P4-5 overpricing at the pump this year

But this explanation is not as straightforward as it appears to be. Pump price adjustments do not reflect global price movements. As of the first week of October, the price of gasoline in the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) has gone up by about P11.49 ($0.23) per liter. Meanwhile, the pump price of gasoline as of Oct. 5 has jumped by P16.55 $(0.33) per liter – P5.06 ($0.10) higher than MOPS. The same thing is true with diesel. MOPS diesel increased by around ?10.86 per liter while the pump price of diesel surged by P15.00 ($0.30)– a difference of P4.14 ($0.087) per liter.

MOPS is the benchmark that the country uses for local petroleum products, according to the Department of Energy (DOE). It is “the daily average of all trading transactions of diesel and gasoline as assessed and summarized by Standard and Poor’s Platts, a Singapore-based market wire service.”

The difference between the adjustments in MOPS and actual price changes at the pump is a form of overpricing that has thrived under the Oil Deregulation Law. This 25-year-old law allows oil companies to implement automatic price adjustments based on global price movements.

By implementing higher price hikes or lower rollbacks than international price adjustments, oil firms and the government can collect billions of pesos in extra profits and taxes. Overpriced gasoline and diesel, for instance, gave them an estimated P38.47 billion (US$757.13 million) in additional income, of which P4.62 billion ($90.93 million) went to the government as value-added tax (VAT). This exploitation of the consumers by the oil companies and government becomes even more reprehensible amid the pandemic that has massively wiped away jobs and incomes.

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