Impending bloodbath December 5, 2006
IT’S Time magazine’s turn to express alarm over the killings. Or at least Andrew Marshall, a journalist based in Bangkok, its Nov. 27 issue essay writer, does.
Marshall begins by talking about his own experience. He personally knows people in the south who have been killed or are expecting to be killed. Ruby Sison, an activist friend of his, has it on good authority a contract has been made on her life. Her crime is continuing to keep the murders of journalists George and Maricel Vigo in the news. The Vigos were gunned down in broad daylight by men in motorcycles while on their way home to their five children. Thankfully, says Marshall, as he wrote his piece, Sison was still alive.
Well, if something should happen to her, it should damn this government to hell. For the threat to her life to be known to the world but death, like taxes, coming to her inevitably anyway -- that should say everything there is to say about the depths to which this country has plunged.
Marshall goes on:
“But the slaughter of reporters, leftists, lawyers, labor leaders, priests, students and human-rights workers in the Philippines continues with a fury that recalls the darkest days of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship… In August, in response to international concern, Arroyo set up the six-member Melo Commission to probe the killings. Some bereaved families doubt its independence and have refused to testify. This distrust is symptomatic of a profound loss of faith in Arroyo herself. She is an unpopular president, plagued by corruption scandals and slammed for her failure to improve living standards. Arroyo has condemned the killings, but she will not implicate the military -- even as it implicates itself. Col. Eduardo del Rosario, head of a military antiterrorist unit called Task Force Davao, admitted to Time earlier this year that ‘individual commanders’ might be responsible for the killings.”
In fact, it’s not just that that Arroyo is an unpopular president, plagued by corruption scandals. It is that she is an illegitimate president plagued by the “Hello Garci” tape. That is the wellspring of the killings. The only way a usurper can rule is by force, the only way a usurper can stop dissent is by stopping life. Remove Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and you stop the killings. The infernal equation is simple, the divine resolve is not.
Indeed, that is the very bad news amid the good news. The fulminations are coming from outside, not from inside. The international community has risen to condemn the killings, the local one has not. Over the past few months, we’ve seen, or heard, variously: The citizens of the European countries that Arroyo visited hound her with protests over the killings; the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce warn her that large-scale investments and wholesale murder do not mix; and now this from Time. Within this country, nothing. Or next to nothing. You do hear sporadic vituperations, notably from the kin of the dead, but that is all. It’s as if we don’t give a damn anymore and we’ve factored in wanton murder into our lot in life. And hope to extricate ourselves from everything by hopping on the next boat or plane, saying, “Bahala na kayo sa buhay 'nyo, such as you still have a life, or are alive, I’m gone.”
Hell, Willie Revillame found it so much easier to raise money for his legal defense against a wife who has accused him of abuse than we did to try to stop the killings with a musical outcry.
The silence carries a heavy price. Quite apart from the obvious one of more journalists and political activists being killed in future, there is the possibility of the killings spilling over into the elections next year. That was pointed out to me by my friend Dan de Padua, who’s in charge of the television station ABC5’s News and Public Affairs. It’s true. The only thing that can really stop killings of this scale is public outrage, and that not being there, what’s to prevent mayhem in the next elections from becoming mind-boggling?
As I write this, I’ve just seen our item (Nov. 30, p. 9) about the gunsmiths of Davao flourishing with candidates patronizing their wares in anticipation of next year’s elections. While this is a usual occurrence before elections, the prospect of "paltik" [homemade guns] spreading all over this country over the next few months faster than fake ballots has become far more sanguine (literally). The people who are directly in the line of fire here (again literally) are the party-list candidates. If ABC5’s documentary last Sept. 21 on Jovito Palparan’s doings is anything to go by, soldiers are being taught to see no distinction between Bayan Muna and other parties -- indeed to see all of them as the Enemy.
Quite apart from that, the other people who are likely to be in the line of fire here are the opposition candidates. Next year’s elections have all the makings of the 1971 elections and/or the recent US senatorial elections: The administration is headed for a debacle or epic proportions. It’s an election that is likely to have only one issue, who is Arroyo, in the same way that the 1971 elections had only one issue, who was Marcos, and in the same way that the recent US elections had only one issue, who was George W. Bush. The last two elections resulted in a massacre of administration candidates. Not so this May if the administration candidates, national and/or local, can massacre their rivals first -- completely non-figuratively. I said in previous columns that the opposition bets, to a man or woman, are likely to be proclaimed winners in next year’s elections, provided the votes are counted right. I have to qualify that with something more elemental: The opposition bets are likely to be proclaimed winners in next year’s elections, provided they are still alive.
There is the devil to pay for the silence.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=36368
Marshall begins by talking about his own experience. He personally knows people in the south who have been killed or are expecting to be killed. Ruby Sison, an activist friend of his, has it on good authority a contract has been made on her life. Her crime is continuing to keep the murders of journalists George and Maricel Vigo in the news. The Vigos were gunned down in broad daylight by men in motorcycles while on their way home to their five children. Thankfully, says Marshall, as he wrote his piece, Sison was still alive.
Well, if something should happen to her, it should damn this government to hell. For the threat to her life to be known to the world but death, like taxes, coming to her inevitably anyway -- that should say everything there is to say about the depths to which this country has plunged.
Marshall goes on:
“But the slaughter of reporters, leftists, lawyers, labor leaders, priests, students and human-rights workers in the Philippines continues with a fury that recalls the darkest days of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship… In August, in response to international concern, Arroyo set up the six-member Melo Commission to probe the killings. Some bereaved families doubt its independence and have refused to testify. This distrust is symptomatic of a profound loss of faith in Arroyo herself. She is an unpopular president, plagued by corruption scandals and slammed for her failure to improve living standards. Arroyo has condemned the killings, but she will not implicate the military -- even as it implicates itself. Col. Eduardo del Rosario, head of a military antiterrorist unit called Task Force Davao, admitted to Time earlier this year that ‘individual commanders’ might be responsible for the killings.”
In fact, it’s not just that that Arroyo is an unpopular president, plagued by corruption scandals. It is that she is an illegitimate president plagued by the “Hello Garci” tape. That is the wellspring of the killings. The only way a usurper can rule is by force, the only way a usurper can stop dissent is by stopping life. Remove Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and you stop the killings. The infernal equation is simple, the divine resolve is not.
Indeed, that is the very bad news amid the good news. The fulminations are coming from outside, not from inside. The international community has risen to condemn the killings, the local one has not. Over the past few months, we’ve seen, or heard, variously: The citizens of the European countries that Arroyo visited hound her with protests over the killings; the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce warn her that large-scale investments and wholesale murder do not mix; and now this from Time. Within this country, nothing. Or next to nothing. You do hear sporadic vituperations, notably from the kin of the dead, but that is all. It’s as if we don’t give a damn anymore and we’ve factored in wanton murder into our lot in life. And hope to extricate ourselves from everything by hopping on the next boat or plane, saying, “Bahala na kayo sa buhay 'nyo, such as you still have a life, or are alive, I’m gone.”
Hell, Willie Revillame found it so much easier to raise money for his legal defense against a wife who has accused him of abuse than we did to try to stop the killings with a musical outcry.
The silence carries a heavy price. Quite apart from the obvious one of more journalists and political activists being killed in future, there is the possibility of the killings spilling over into the elections next year. That was pointed out to me by my friend Dan de Padua, who’s in charge of the television station ABC5’s News and Public Affairs. It’s true. The only thing that can really stop killings of this scale is public outrage, and that not being there, what’s to prevent mayhem in the next elections from becoming mind-boggling?
As I write this, I’ve just seen our item (Nov. 30, p. 9) about the gunsmiths of Davao flourishing with candidates patronizing their wares in anticipation of next year’s elections. While this is a usual occurrence before elections, the prospect of "paltik" [homemade guns] spreading all over this country over the next few months faster than fake ballots has become far more sanguine (literally). The people who are directly in the line of fire here (again literally) are the party-list candidates. If ABC5’s documentary last Sept. 21 on Jovito Palparan’s doings is anything to go by, soldiers are being taught to see no distinction between Bayan Muna and other parties -- indeed to see all of them as the Enemy.
Quite apart from that, the other people who are likely to be in the line of fire here are the opposition candidates. Next year’s elections have all the makings of the 1971 elections and/or the recent US senatorial elections: The administration is headed for a debacle or epic proportions. It’s an election that is likely to have only one issue, who is Arroyo, in the same way that the 1971 elections had only one issue, who was Marcos, and in the same way that the recent US elections had only one issue, who was George W. Bush. The last two elections resulted in a massacre of administration candidates. Not so this May if the administration candidates, national and/or local, can massacre their rivals first -- completely non-figuratively. I said in previous columns that the opposition bets, to a man or woman, are likely to be proclaimed winners in next year’s elections, provided the votes are counted right. I have to qualify that with something more elemental: The opposition bets are likely to be proclaimed winners in next year’s elections, provided they are still alive.
There is the devil to pay for the silence.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=36368
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