red joktober

jok as in joke.  not to make light of the threat, because it IS  a threat, allegedly from the communist left in coalition with other leftists and oppositionists right and center.  but it is funny that instead of doing something about it, nipping it in the bud, ika nga, the military brass is making them sumbong to us, the public.  and it is funny that no one seems to know anything about a wondrous coalition happening anytime soon.  unless katrina and i are so out of the loop?  if yes, that’s really hilarious, and kinda pathetic.  if no, and wala talagang any opposition-coalition cooking, then we should wonder why the military brass refuses to drop it.  we should wonder why it is in the interest of the military to put us all on red alert, so to speak.

“Ang nakikita namin (What we are seeing) is the President is being dragged to declare martial law nationwide, [and] most probably a revolutionary government,” Galvez said during a Senate hearing on the budget of the Department of National Defense.

that’s afp chief of staff carlito galvez, PMA class ’85, who leads the intense information campaign vs all opposition to and criticism of the duterte administration, including film showings and plays depicting the military as killers and torturers.  galvez has no problem facing the cameras and spinning a tale of conspiracy and chaos to come, in effect telling us to brace and prepare ourselves, something’s going down.

i remember galvez from the 1989 coup attempt, one of the young officers who was with honasan (in coalition with marcos loyalists) in staging the bloodiest attempt to topple cory aquino.  reported were ninety-nine (99) killed and 570 wounded.

Participants of the December 1989 coup later blamed perceived deficiencies in the Aquino government in areas such as graft and corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and lenient treatment of communist insurgents as the reasons for the coup. [Davide Commission Report 470]

to my mind, every one of those coup attempts in the time of cory was either enrile-RAM and/or marcos-loyalist instigated to undo the mistake enrile made in EDSA of supporting cory’s claim to the presidency instead of just grabbing the power.  wala lang sa kanila ang bloodshed, okay lang, as we saw in ’89.  galit na, pa, rin sila noon sa komunista and they hated cory for not heeding enrile’s and FVR’s advice not to release all political detainees, joma and ka dante in particular.  and they hated that there were leftists in cory’s cabinet.

it’s been almost 30 years, the amnestied galvez is now AFP chief of staff in the time of duterte.  his latest sumbong is really a lament about the image of the military.

The propaganda that there is a “looming dictatorship” under Duterte is delivered to the students through film showings and plays in the campus, he said.

“Nakikita natin na parang they are branding the government. May dramatization na ‘yung martial law nung Marcos regime, then they associated it to the current administration,” the AFP chief said.

Galvez admitted that the military committed “many abuses during the 1972 declaration of martial law,” but assured the public that the institution has “changed a lot.”

“It’s very unfair for us. ‘Yung tinatawag nating martial law ngayon, pinag-iigi namin,” he said.

“Nakita natin during the Marawi crisis, we declared martial law Mindanao-wide. Talagang ‘yung rules of engagement, ‘yung human rights talagang we are promoting it,” he said.

so, is the good general advocating censorship?  and does he really think marawi is anything to brag about?  and what exactly is general galvez warning us about here in the metro?  expect a bombing here, a bombing there, an ambush here, an ambush there, that duterte will blame on the communists, sabay impose martial law nationwide, and declare a revolutionary government thereafter a la cory?  and then, what?  annoint a successor, and then step down?  bongbong takes over, backed by a military junta?  ito ba ang pinapangarap ni galvez at ng sandatahang lakas?

it’s like galvez and his ilk are caught in a time warp, aching for the good old marcosian days when the military reigned violently supreme.  as though EDSA never happened, as though we have not seen for ourselves that soldiers can be disarmed by great numbers of unarmed people ready to die for country.

galvez et al should have taken the cue instead from FVR who considered EDSA a way of atonement for his role in martial law.  EDSA could have occasioned a reinvention of the military as a force in the service of the people and not in the service of a repressive oppressive state.

level up naman, mga sir.  hindi komunista ang matinding kaaway kundi kahirapan at korupsyon, economic and environment policies that favor the rich, foreign policies that favor foreign interests, at kung anoano pang systemic flaws begging for change.

konting nuance please, mr. general.  ano ba talaga ang agenda?  ma-so-solve ba ang inflation, high prices, falling peso?  dumadaing na ang bayan.  pahirap nang pahirap ang buhay.  we’re not in the mood for bad jokes.

tete-a-tete on EDSA

juan ponce enrile’s EDSA story has come in installments.  three (3) so far.  the first via presscons during EDSA and a lengthy interview soon after.  the second via his published memoir (2012).  and the third via that one-on-one with bongbong marcos on social media.

in the first installment in feb and march 1986, enrile consistently denied the RAM coup plot that marcos accused him of all through the 4 days, the one that would have installed him in the dictator’s place as head of a ruling junta.  enrile denied the coup plot because he knew that it would win him no sympathy from the public, given his architect-of-martial-law image, not to speak of marcos-crony tag.  instead the two bandidos slanted their statements to better call, vie for, the people’s attention.  there was cheating in cagayan, said enrile; they did not consider marcos a duly constituted authority any longer, said fvr.  at kiliting-kiliti naman ang mga coryista, who were already in the throes of non-violent revolution — the first day of EDSA was the 7th day of the crony boycott: banks were running, the economy was reeling.  the defection was icing on the cake, na parang hulog ng langit, wow, may armed force na si cory?!?  that he lied, and we believed him, is part of the EDSA story; if he had told the truth, that he sought to install himself in the place of marcos, coryistas would have left him to Ver’s tender mercies and ousted marcos without his help.

in the second installment 26 years later, enrile finally confessed to the failed coup plot, yes, he was all set to topple marcos, he really wanted to be president, kaya lang nabuking ni ver ang sabwatan, and fearing that orders for their arrest were out, he decided that, rather than run and hide, he and his men would hole up in aguinaldo, resist arrest, and die fighting — not that we didn’t know this already, thanks to historian alfred mccoy  and his research team whose exposey came out in 2 veritas extras in october 1986) — but then EDSA happened, umeksena at nangibabaw ang people power, and the “courageous and patriotic” rebel military was outshone, to enrile’s great chagrin.

in the third installment, enrile shares something “new”, sort of: that at the time he and the RAMboys plotted the (aborted) coup, it was to preempt “a group of generals who had also a political plan.”

ENRILE.  I’m sure your Father did not know, or your Mother, but they [the generals] had a political plan for the country.

actually it is quite likely that the father and the mother knew and were behind such plans, given facts such as this: (1) marcos started planning for the succession of imelda as early as june 1975 (the same month primitivo mijares testified in the u.s. congress on the conjugal dictatorship) when he wrote presidential decree no. 731 (never published): in case of his death or grave illness, he was to be succeeded by a commission headed by imelda [Waltzing with a Dictator 156], and (2) in august ’82, before leaving for the u.s. state visit, he had the batasan approve a law providing for a 15-member executive committee, including imelda, that would succeed him if he were to die or fall ill. [Marcos File 243]

ENRILE.  … to be truthful at that point [july 1985] we were organizing because I received an information that there was a military junta, and that I was supposed to be executed by that junta if something happens to the president.  I did not know that the president was sick at that time.

medyo hard to believe that he did not know marcos was sick.  it was kind of common knowledge even in 1983 when ninoy decided to come home, hoping to stop another military take-over, whether by imelda-ver or enrile-RAM.

E.  From my point of view, I had to do something about it at that point in our history because I was involved with the military, I was the head of the Department of Defense. I did not involve the generals of the military because they were involved, and so I had to work with young people in the military who were idealistic enough to agree to protect the interest of the country and the Filipino people without involving the people themselves. You see?

ah, yes, the young people in the military, the famous PMA’ers led by gringo honasan, I suppose?  this, from ninotchka rosca:  leftists, former political prisoners went to EDSA “only to be confronted by the faces of those who tortured them.” a heavy trip indeed.  [Endgame 144]

BONGBONG.  Why were you on the kill list of that junta?
E.  Probably because I was a hindrance to their political objective.
B.  So unbeknownst to many or most people, there was a plan for a military take over already?
E.  Correct.
B.  And the Junta was already organized?
E.  Yah.
B.  Can you tell us who the members of the Junta were?
E.  You will be surprised. The Chief of Staff, the head of the Philippine Army, the head of the Philippine Air Force, the head of the Philippine Navy, the head of the Philippine Coast Guard. Those were the members of the junta.

not surprising at all that it was afp chief of staff fabian ver’s cabal.  the head of the philippine army was josephus ramas whom ver appointed to lead the anti-EDSA ops in ’86.  the head of the philippine air force was vicente piccio whose son philip was married that saturday afternoon with ver and imelda standing as ninong and ninang.  the head of the philippine navy brillante ochoco was among the senior officers ver summoned to fort bonifacio for a tactical conference even while the enrile-ramos presscon was going on saturday evening.  can’t find anything on the head of the Philippine Coast Guard, not even a name.  twould be nice to hear from them all whether to corroborate and elaborate or to deny.  let’s hear it too from imelda.  what were ferdie’s instructions?  who else would have been asked to join that 15-member executive committee/ruling junta?

B.  How were they going to take over the reins of power?
E.  According to the information I received, if your Father died, they were not supposed to announce it at all.  They will keep it away from the knowledge of the public.  They will invite all the members of the cabinet in the name of your Father for a cabinet meeting.  And once we are in the Palace we will be quarantined, but in my case I will have to be executed.
B.  This is something that, again I don’t think… Maybe this is the first time that this information has seen the light of day.
E.  Well.
B.  So the uprising of what became EDSA was not a break with my Father, it was an opposition to this Junta.
E.  Correct.

hmm.  in the time of EDSA, maysakit si marcos pero alive and kicking pa, so to speak.  lumalabas pa sa TV, in-control pa rin daw, palaban pa rin.  ibig sabihin, imelda’s junta of generals was not yet operative, a non-entity to the end.

to my mind, enrile’s uprising that “became EDSA” was both a break with marcos whom he wanted to replace AND an attempt to preempt cory or, at the very least, to negotiate an end to the boycott (kahit hindi naman daw siya crony, wala siyang lll-gotten wealth, say niya sa memoir).  and to a certain extent he was successful.  he managed to get on the good side of cory, thanks to the people, and he helped freak the marcoses out of the palace, and that was the end of the boycott, mission accomplished.

B.  EDSA … this popular uprising has become already a part of the political narrative or the political methods of unseating a government or bringing a government down. In your view is that a good development? Should it be part of the narrative?  Should we choose our leaders this way?

E.  We cannot avoid prevent people from marching in the streets to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances, that’s constitutional.  But in the case of the first EDSA, the question is, why EDSA?  Who decided that the event must be in EDSA? Cory did not decide that, none of the Liberal Party people decided that. They were all gone, they were In Cebu. … It was there because we went to Camp Aguinaldo and that is where the confrontation took place.

this is enrile still laying a claim on EDSA.  the way he sees it, kung hindi sila nag-defect, walang EDSA.  totoo naman, to some extent.  kung hindi sila nag-defect, nag-people power pa rin tiyak, hindi nga lang sa EDSA, so we’d be calling it something else.

on that 7th day of the boycott, cory was in cebu rallying the people to join her civil disobedience campaign and adding to the list of crony products and services to boycott.  next stop davao.  the clamor for marcos’s resignation would have spread nationwide by the 10th day, and marcos’s inauguration would have brought out the people marching to mendiola, most likely, if not into the palace mismo, there to face tanks and the Marines as bravely, to stop the oathtaking.

if anything, the military defectors owed their lives and status, post-EDSA, to the people who not only saved their lives but also prevailed upon cory to avail of their armed services.

B.  Tito, All this time since 1986 I have been wanting to ask you a question and I have never found the opportunity to do it, and I think this is a good time.  After all that happened in EDSA, after all this uprising etc. … bakit hindi kayo ang nag-Presidente? You knew the characters that were involved and you were much more qualified than any of them.

E.  You know, your Dad was giving me the government in the morning of Tuesday February 25.

B.  I remember, Tito, I was there when he made the phone call to you.

E.  Corrrect.  He was asking me to ask Cory to postpone her oathtaking.  I told him I will try.

uy.  bago yang “I told him I will try.”  in earlier accounts it was more like, it’s too late, ang say niya kay marcos.  day 4 na iyon noong tawagan siya ni makoy; papunta na siya sa inagurasyon ni cory sa club filipino.

E.  You know, Bongbong, I did not intend to take over power, in the first place.  But while I was inside Camp Aguinaldo, and Camp Crame, I was thinking about what will happen.  I said if the military will take over, I will involve the country into a possible civil war.  Because the election was just finished. There was a big block of votes that voted for Cory, there was a big block of votes that voted for your Father, and I was not exposed to the electoral process at that point. I’m sure that if I did, if the military took over and I assumed power, I will have enemies inside my military organization also, then I will… There is a possibility that the two forces that fought in that election will combine. … And then you have the bulk of the military at that point who did not know where to where they will situate themselves. All of that I thought about it.

that is enrile being noble-kuno about giving way to cory to avoid bloodshed.  in fact, he had no choice, the people gave him no choice.  he didn’t even get a chance – there was simply no opening – to offer himself to the coryistas as the one better equipped to replace marcos.   and if he had dared, cory’s people would have withdrawn their support, i think, and watched him and ver wipe each other out.

E.  By the way Monday night I called for Jimmy Ongpin to come to Camp Crame and I said, with this event that is happening now, will be a protracted event, let us organize a provisional government to handle the running of our revolutionary government. I proposed five cabinet positions.  Defense, Finance, Local Govt, Justice and Foreign Affairs.  Sa inyo yung apat kako na posisyon, sa amin yung Defense. Because I wanted to balance their political forces against the military forces.  Alam mo ang ginawa nila, that night?  That is where I started to suspect them.  They filled all the positions in the Cabinet, they organized their own Cabinet.

B.  But you had an agreement previous to that.

E.  Yah, I had an agreement with Jimmy Ongpin. Eh kako hindi pala totoo na tao itong kausap ko.

this is enrile most unclear.  what kind of revolutionary government was he thinking of?  on day 2 he is said to have proposed to doy laurel a military-civilian junta that would include cory and doy and other civilians.  cory, of course, would not hear of it.  a junta arrangement was always more military than civilian.  why should cory allow herself to be sidelined when she had won the votes of 10 million pinoys, and enrile had not.

B.  It’s always been a mystery to me, because you were positioned perfectly to take over the reins of power and we were all a little surprised, watching this again from far away, and we were saying for sure I’m sure si Minister Enrile…

E.  I was afraid not for myself but for the country, that it will cause a bloodbath.

B.  I think you were similar in thinking to my Father because one of the reasons, and I asked him this directly: Why were you so hesitant to use force in 1986? Nung talagang papasukin na yung palasyo, binobomba na tayo, binabaril na tayo, ganon, marami naman kaming tropa, we were very well prepared, because as I said we received the information about imminent attack to on the Palace one week before you and General Ramos went to Crame and made your stand in Crame, so we had the chance to prepare.  So we were wondering why did we not fight back with force.  And he said, that would have been the beginning of a civil war.  Which I think is exactly the way you saw it.

E.  … GOD was with us because that event turned out to be bloodless because your father restrained himself.

no no no.  EDSA turned out to be bloodless not because marcos restrained himself but because certain officers defied, refused to follow, orders that would have harmed innocent civilians.  read untrue story, unsung heroes, of EDSA.

towards the end, enrile alleges that history was “totally distorted to favor one group.”  i submit that that’s exactly what enrile and bongbong are doing, totally distorting history to favor the memory of marcos.  i look forward to bongbong’s next, hopefully a tete-a-tete with imelda herself.  that would be one for the books.

enrile’s endgame

in my last blog i opined, in a spirit of reconciliation, that martial law was not all bad, and EDSA was not all good.  let me qualify that.  martial law was not all bad but it was mostly bad.  EDSA was not all good but it was mostly good.

i came out of the enrile-bongbong tete-a-tete feeling a little dirty, complicit, because i stayed to listen kahit obvious naman that it was more of the same spin, painting marcos a super know-all president and cory a wicked know-nothing witch.  i had been hoping against hope that the old man, for the sake of nation, would level up the discourse a little, get beyond insisting that everyone had a wonderful time noong martial law and finally admit that many gross mistakes were made on every front that continue to fester and rankle the body politic.

alas, the old man continues to disappoint (as does the silent FVR).  read randy david‘s An interview in quest of an audience.

It …  comes as no surprise that he would willingly lend himself to a project to rehabilitate Marcos in the public memory. Perhaps he thought he owed the Marcos family something for contributing to their downfall. Without sounding as though he regretted his participation at Edsa, it was obvious he was trying to patch up his relations with the family by praising the regime of which, after all, he had been very much a part. With the passage of more than four decades, many of his contemporaries who might convincingly contradict his recollection of events have passed on.

… This particular interview, videotaped and posted on social media to coincide with the 46th anniversary of the imposition of martial law, is barefaced propaganda aimed at “millennials,” who, having been born long after the actual events, are presumed to accept without question so-called eyewitness accounts of historical events. As a teacher, I would not take it seriously.  Still, propaganda like this, formatted as public affairs material, offers important lessons on what to avoid in the teaching of history.

The impact could have been different, however, if an interview like this were to be conducted by a panel of respectable historians and journalists, and the principal subjects were individuals who had been detained and tortured or stripped of their properties by the regime but never allowed their sordid experience to cloud their view of events.  I’m not saying that their accounts would be entirely free of bias. But a good impartial interviewer would have had greater success in teasing out the truth from personal narratives.

it was therefore a joy running into pop historian lourd de veyra‘s sept 20 special on my facebook feed.  watch and listen and share Martial Law Myths Busted | History, exactly the kind of martial law info and assessment that i was wishing for from historians of the academe.  de veyra should do a series, let’s hear what the economists and political and social scientists, the lawyers and the military, the artists, the communists, have to say.  let’s not ask the trapos, of course.

EPISODE 2 of the tete a tete, like episode 1, was obviously edited down — time constraints? or did the old man tend to wander and say things inconsistent with, or unsupportive of, the official story?  whatever, the EDSA episode is worth transcribing.  it’s the first time ever that bongbong has said anything about the four days.  the first time, too, (correct me if i’m wrong) that enrile has spoken up and rubber-stamped the claim that marcos did not give orders to shoot.  sabay show ng TV footage of marcos forbidding ver from attacking crame.

it would be great if de veyra could focus on that question in a special episode for EDSA 2019.  as far as i can tell from my own research for the EDSA books, marcos issued 3 kill-orders, as in, never mind kung madamay ang civilians — feb 23 tanks were ordered to ram through the crowd in ortigas (tadiar refused), feb 24 air force strike-wing gunships were ordered to bomb crame (sotelo defected instead); a few hours later marines positioned in aguinaldo were ordered to bomb crame with howitzers and other hardware (balbas managed not to, his family was among the people in EDSA) — this last around the time that  marcos was on tv telling ver not to attack.

my theory is, marcos was just being his wily old self, making the best of a bad situation by pretending to be the good guy to ver’s bad cop, hoping to fool washington dc and the vatican, if not the filipino people, a little while longer.

and then, again, is it possible that the orders did not issue from marcos himself?  then who issued them?  ver?  imelda?  bongbong?  all of the above?

time to get the story straight.  #HindiPaTaposAngLaban

whiffs of fiction, “public history” 2018

kakaiba ang timpla ng pro-marcos discourse, mas maanghang, mas palaban, mas mayabang.  para kaya maipaabot sa, and impress upon the, supremes where (they think) public sentiments lie, in aid of bongbong winning his PET case and taking over as veep?  next stop, the presidency?

sa social media, kaabang-abang ang tete-a-tete nina juan ponce enrile at ferdinand “bongbong” marcos.  on sept 20 tungkol sa martial law, on sept 22 tungkol sa EDSA.

i expect that the exercise is meant to glorify martial law and to villify EDSA.  it would be nice though if the two could be a little more candid and and even-handed. just as we, who are all set to scream revisionism!!! need to get a better handle on martial law and EDSA.  martial law was not all bad just as EDSA was not all good.

a question i hope is addressed in da tete-a-tete:  so, anong nangyari?  bakit pabagsak na ang ekonomiya by 1982, even before ninoy’s assassination?

sabihin pa natin, for the sake of argument, that marcos did all the right things re infrastructure (except for a lemon or two) and he was able to electrify almost half the archipelago (not all of it, not even close) and he got uncle sam to pay rent for the US bases (kahit binarat tayo nang katakut-takot) atbp, not to speak of how culture and the arts kinda blossomed because of (and despite) imelda:  bakit hindi na-sustain ang “progress”?  bakit biglang ayaw nang magpautang ng mga bangko?  bakit di tayo nakabayad ng mga utang?  bakit ba talaga hindi naging isang singapore ang pinas?

it would be great to hear nationalists in the academe — the historians, the political scientists, the economists — having tv tete-a-tetes with the populace and sharing their findings on questions like these.  we need answers based on facts, figures, records, documents.  so we all — the elected and the electorate alike — can learn the lessons we need to learn, so we can correct our mistakes, so we can move forward.

the last thing we need is a conference of historians perorating on a notion of “public history” (now ongoing 20-22 sept) that i fear would legitimize, validate fictional (partisan, and/or “creative”) accounts of historical events, among other historical and cultural horrors.

bakit wala silang criteria of any kind?  ano ito, let’s just be glad that we’re talking history, even if reeking of fiction and propaganda?  i would sit in judgment: is the opinion sound and balanced?  is it based on facts?  the slightest whiff of fiction should be red-flagged and merit automatic rejection from the annals of public history.

it’s not as if our historians have nothing else to do.  every september and february we hear it repeated that marcos did not give shoot orders that would have harmed civilians in EDSA.  credible eyewitness and first-person accounts say he did.  so who’s revising history?  our historians, academic or “public”, should be weighing in.  otherwise, anong silbi nila?