Then and now September 21, 2006

Is Arroyo another Marcos?

Good question to ask today, the 34th anniversary of martial law, and the year Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo unleashed 1017 and other martial law-like edicts. My answer to it is yes and no. But lest readers take comfort in that answer, the “no” there is an even greater source of dread.

The yes is patent. Arroyo is another Marcos in many respects.

Marcos became an illegitimate ruler after September 1972, ruling without the mandate of the people. Arroyo became an illegitimate ruler after May 2004, ruling without the mandate of the people. However she twists in the wind, Arroyo will never be able to escape the ghost of the “Hello Garci” tapes. Her allies in the House of Representatives may refuse to accept that as evidence to impeach her, but the public will always find in it a reason to revile her.

Marcos wanted to rule forever, Arroyo wants to rule forever. Not quite incidentally, Marcos also tried to circumvent the ban against a third presidential term by bribing the Constitutional Convention to shift the form of government from presidential to parliamentary. His plot was foiled by an honest old man named Eduardo Quintero who exposed the bribe. His legal avenues closed to him, Marcos took the illegal route of declaring martial law.

The Cha-cha (charter change) prospers, and Arroyo can rule after 2010 by becoming prime minister. Of course, Jose de Venecia thinks he will be it, but he has always been horribly deluded. Of course, too, the transitory provisions say Arroyo can only name the prime minister and not be it, but the last elections also say Fernando Poe Jr. and not Arroyo won, and she has been it. Indeed, the whole trajectory of Arroyo’s rule suggests she does not mean to give up power ever. The scale of the killings, which opens her up at the very least to legal retribution from her victims in the form of a class suit not unlike the one the martial-law torture victims lodged (successfully) against Marcos and at the very most to physical reprisal, must suggest so.

Marcos ruled by force, Arroyo rules by force. That follows from the fact that both were/are illegitimate. The only way to maintain illegitimate rule is by force. Marcos unleashed a scale of killings unprecedented in postwar Philippine history, Arroyo has launched a scale of killings unprecedented since Marcos. The object of the killings then as now is the same: to wipe out opposition from the face of the earth. The only difference is that Arroyo does so indirectly, by sending a chilling message to critics via her death warrant on the New People’s Army.

Marcos was obsessed with power and broke all the rules to get what he wanted, Arroyo is obsessed with power and is breaking all the rules to get what she wants. Both lied through their teeth. Lying was Marcos’ favorite pastime, too. When I was writing the book on martial law, I toyed with the idea of titling it “Lying in State,” but my publishers thought it either misleading or grim. But that was what Marcos did more than anything else: he lied relentlessly about matters of state.

He even lied about the date of the proclamation of martial law. Martial law was not declared on September 21, 1972, which was a Thursday, it was declared the following day, Sept. 22, which was a Friday. Or technically, since it was declared at midnight, on September 23, Saturday. The choice of a weekend was to prevent the students from greeting it with rallies. But Marcos being superstitious (for some reason, dictators are prone to that), regarding the number 7 and its multiples as lucky for him, he officially declared the 21st as the proclamation date. Thenceforth the country celebrated every September 21 as “Thanksgiving Day,” an even more monstrous, and cruelly ironic, lie.

Two things however are different between Marcos and Arroyo, between then and now.

The first is that Marcos was elected president twice before he contemplated dictatorship, Arroyo was never elected before she contemplated dictatorship. That is no mean difference; its implications are enormous. Lest we forget (though many of us have already done so), Arroyo came to power on the wings of people power. The betrayal in her case is mind-boggling. For a beneficiary of a cause that ended dictatorship to be the very instrument that brought it back -- it is unspeakable. Indeed, for a beneficiary of people power to be the very instrument of the methodical extirpation of people power -- it is obscenity itself.

The practical implication of that is simply that if someone has the gall to do it, what can she possibly balk at? Marcos’ instincts, honed from winning a couple of presidential elections, were to try to get around the law, which he did at every turn. Arroyo’s instincts, developed from betraying the very thing that brought her to power, are to scorn the law altogether, which she does at every turn. Between the two, Arroyo is the one less likely to be deterred by rules and constraints, human or divine.

The second difference, and one thing we truly ought to be scared about, is that then the populace hated Marcos but was deterred from taking to the streets to oust him by the bayonets of martial law. Today, the populace hates Arroyo but is deterred from taking to the streets by the paralyzing effects of indifference, political fatigue, cynicism and despair -- call it what you will. Then the people overcame their fear of the bayonets and rose together in a resplendent act of heroism at Edsa. Will the people today cut through the barbed wire strung around their hearts to do the same?

Abangan ang susunod na kabanata (Wait for the next chapter).

* * *

D-Day: Today is the kickoff gig for the “Stop the Killings!” bar tour at 70s Bistro, 46 Anonas St., Quezon City. Bands playing: The Dawn, The Jerks, Sandwich, Sugarfree, Brownman Revival and Radioactive Sago. I’ll announce the rest of the schedule over the coming weeks.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=22169

Ripped September 20, 2006

I WAS fascinated by that story about the Filipinos who tried to break the Guinness record for the world’s biggest flag. In case you missed it in last Sunday’s Inquirer, the PG Tower Ministries International commissioned 10 seamstresses, two artists and 40 volunteers to make a Philippine flag that measured 200 by 100 meters and weighed 3.75 tons, and to unfurl it on a mountain in Nueva Vizcaya. It would have broken the record of the US flag which measures 77.7 meters by 153.9 meters and weighs 1,363 kg.

But the best-laid plots of mice and Filipinos oft go astray, and did in this case. The reason apparently the flag was to unfurl on a mountain in Nueva Vizcaya was that the authorities would not allow it to unfurl in UP Diliman. What reasons the authorities had for it, only they can say. Maybe they were afraid the students there might enrage Raul Gonzalez some more by running around in their birthday suits and at the end of it literally and figuratively hide behind the Philippine flag?

Alas, the mountain of Nueva Vizcaya did not cooperate. Furious winds tore up the upper part of the flag like they did the billowing sails of ships in days of yore as the flag was rolled down the mountain. In the end, as our photograph on Sunday’s front page graphically told, all the organizers had by way of souvenir was a ripped piece of giant cloth that might yet enter Guinness as the world’s classiest mess. The caption that leaped to my mind when I saw the picture was: “Tattered hopes and tattered dreams.”

I do commend the authors of this enterprise for showing initiative and ambition. Heaven knows those things are getting scarcer in this country than principles among its politicians. At least some people in this country can still dream big. Most others are just content to hop on to the nearest boat or plane, exchanging stethoscope for a nurse’s cap; whining beggars cannot be choosers.

But I was fascinated by the story because it pretty much told the story of our life. One of the organizers, Pastor Fred Merejilla, of course, interpreted it as God’s will: “That was inevitable. God wanted it to happen. It was seen all the way from heaven. If you noticed, the torn portion was shaped like a heart. God is trying to show us that He continues to love this country, and He showed this through this flag.”

My own interpretation is that if God had a hand in it, it was probably because He did not wish us to be embarrassed before the rest of the world. Or embarrassed some more, our officials already having done more than enough in that respect. If Tower Ministries had succeeded in unfurling the Philippine flag without a hitch and made it to Guinness, it would have been no small ironic commentary on our situation. We would have had the biggest flag in all the world while having the littlest loyalty to it in all the world.

Think about it: The one thing Filipinos are known for is lacking any strong ties to their country. Never mind the phenomenon of the current Diaspora, the massive exodus of Filipinos abroad looking for work or a new life -- that is merely the tip of the iceberg. The malady goes deeper. The Great Filipino Dream, I’ve always argued, is also the Great Filipino Tragedy. That dream is to live in America, and better still -- or worse still, depending on how you look at it -- get a green card. That goes for the Filipino elite as much as the Filipino poor. The reason the Filipino elite do not mind despoiling the country is that they can always emigrate to America, and often do. They own property there, their children study there. At the end of the day, or when everything turns sour in their own country, no small thanks to them, they can always live there.

Would a flag worthy of Guinness have made up for a people’s lack of loyalty to that flag? I don’t know. Maybe the symbol itself might help to spark the dying embers. The last time I saw an outpouring of nationalist sentiment and the flag being flaunted by Filipinos was during the 100th anniversary of Philippine Independence on June 12, 1998. But that was achingly short-lived, a sudden burst of pride that swiftly passed on to passivity, not unlike the fireworks that blazed forth that night and died after an hour or so.

More than likely, an oversized flag against a backdrop of undersized patriotic passions would have highlighted the one fundamental failing, or foible, of Filipinos, which is that we prefer porma (form) to practice, token to substance, ritual to life. We flagellate ourselves on Good Friday and feel free to rape and murder the rest of the year. We hear Mass and receive Holy Communion and feel free to lie, cheat and steal in public office. We go through the motions of holding elections and feel free to not count the votes.

It is not without irony itself that the Tower Ministries thought to undertake this project. If I recall my Bible, the folk of Babel once undertook to build a tower that would reach up to the skies. Heaven struck them down for their presumption, causing them to speak in many languages and thus unable to communicate with each other. I don’t know that the sin of the makers of this flag is pride, or indeed that there is any sin here at all. And in any case God struck this country down long before the flag was made, causing us to speak in many languages and thus unable to communicate with one another.

Who knows? Maybe God who has been known to move in mysterious ways just wanted to tell us in the language of metaphor: “Look, people, you’ve ripped your flag.”

* * *

Still reminding: The “Stop the Killings!” bar tour kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, Sept. 21, at 70s Bistro, 46 Anonas St., Quezon City. Bands playing: The Dawn, The Jerks, Sandwich, Sugarfree, Brownman Revival and Radioactive Sago.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=21948

Refutations September 19, 2006

I WROTE about it last month -- the case of Teresita Barque Hernandez vs Severino Manotok. The case seemed fairly straightforward. Hernandez had long owned a 34-hectare land in Quezon City beside Ayala Heights, bequeathed to her by her father Homer Barque. Her claim to it was challenged by Manotok, who lost the challenge.

First, the Land Registration Authority ruled that the land indeed belonged to Hernandez. The Court of Appeals agreed with its decision. The Supreme Court upheld it. For good reason: Hernandez’s papers were ironclad, Manotok’s was shot full of holes.

But all that seemed well would not turn out well. Unable to reconcile himself with justice, retired Justice Florentino P. Feliciano wrote Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and asked that the case be reopened with all the justices, and not just a division, sitting in judgment. The letter violated all the rules of ethics and fair play, quite apart from all the laws of God and man in this country. Supreme Court rules state clearly that a plea of this sort may be entered only before, and not after, a division of the Supreme Court has made its ruling. After the division has ruled, nothing more can be done about it. Its judgment is final and executory.

Is this a case where new evidence has been found that could possibly save the life of a man about to be hanged, which behooves rousing up St. Peter to demand the gates of heaven itself be opened? Not at all. This is not a case involving life and death, this is a case involving property. This is not a case involving new evidence, this is a case involving an old and discredited one. This is not a case that may be opened, this is a case that is more shut than the metal doors of a safe in a Swiss bank.

Why did Feliciano, a former justice who has reached an age when people think of leaving their own heirs an example to follow, do something as breathtaking as this? Ask him. I did say at the end of that column that if his plea prospered, I can only advise readers to take to the hills or abroad since they are more likely to find justice there than here.

Well, Feliciano’s plea has prospered.

Last Aug. 30, Hernandez’s lawyers received a letter from the clerk of court of the Supreme Court saying the Court had resolved en banc on Aug. 22 to reset the case for oral argument on Oct. 3 at the Supreme Court Building. Hernandez’s lawyers were being summoned for it.

It was a classic in brevity. It was also a classic in perfidy. One can only imagine the shock of Hernandez’s lawyers when they received the summons. It was so -- unthinkable. As Jose Flaminiano would write later on in reply to the summons, several things are monumentally wrong with it:

First, the Court cites no reason why it effectively reopened a case that was beyond reopening. Well, how can it? It is not hard to imagine the kind of bind it was in. If it mentioned that the reason for reopening the case was Feliciano’s letter, it stood to be suspected of supreme pakikisama (accommodation), or worse of giving in to supreme temptation. If it did not and left the reason unspecified, it stood to be pilloried for supreme folly. Clearly, it thought supreme folly was much the lesser evil. Such has life gotten in these parts the one institution tasked with showing supreme wisdom has fallen to this pass.

Second, the “respondents were neither notified nor afforded the opportunity to be heard” before the Court passed its resolution. The Court itself says that “notice and hearing constitute the essential elements of due process and neither of these elements can be eliminated without running afoul of the constitutional guarantee.” The speed and surreptitiousness with which the Court sprung the dead back to life does not just run afoul of the Constitution, it runs afoul of the Ten Commandments. No, it runs afoul of the very separation between Life and Death.

Third, and most important, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the (commonsensical) proposition that a person who has won a case with that Court as final arbiter, whether as a division or as an entirety, has won “a vested property right protected by the due process clause of the Constitution.” The inviolability of that is etched in tablet in the Court’s own rules. Appendix E says variously: “A decision or resolution of a Division of the Court…is a decision or resolution of the Supreme Court.” “The Court en banc is not an Appellate Court to which decisions or resolutions of a Division may be appealed.” “A resolution of the Division denying a party’s motion for referral to the Court en banc of any Division case shall be final and not appealable to the court en banc.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to go against these rules is unprecedented, mind-boggling and totally iniquitous. No one provides a better -- no, an ultimate, absolute and irrefutable -- refutation of it than a former justice of the Supreme Court who once said very wisely, without the usual thicket of legalese:

“All litigations must at last come to an end, however unjust the result of error must appear. Otherwise litigation would become even more intolerable than the wrong and injustice it is designed to correct. Considering the litigiousness of our people and the volume of litigation being processed in our judicial system, the importance of that public policy can never be overstressed.”

Who said that?

Why, it was one (ex-)Justice Florentino P. Feliciano.

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Reminder: The “Stop the Killings!” bar tour kicks off on Thursday, Sept. 21 at ’70s Bistro, 46 Anonas St., Quezon City. Bands playing: The Dawn, The Jerks, Sandwich, Sugarfree, Brownman Revival and Radioactive Sago.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=21758

Stop the killings! September 18, 2006

I SAID LAST WEEK THAT DOING UNTO JOVITO Palparan as he does to Bayan Muna, which is to send him to the next life, as the NPA threatened a couple of weeks ago, won’t make things better, it will make things worse. It won’t lessen the body count, it will jack it up.

At the very least, it will only give Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) her own 9/11, or the platform she needs to stand tall, which she very badly needs in more ways than one today. Particularly after the battering she got over the killings everywhere she went in her recent sortie abroad. At the very most, you can’t kill a bad idea with another bad idea. The only way to kill a bad idea is with a good idea. The only way to stop the killings is not to kill as well. It is to bring back an appreciation for the preciousness of life. The only way to rein in the dogs of war is to summon them back with the pipes of peace.

In this country, I do mean pipes in quite a literal sense. We Filipinos may have gotten deaf to many things, but we have not gotten deaf to songs. We Filipinos may have gotten deaf to the din of politics but we have not gotten deaf to the cacophony of music. That is so especially for the youth who find in songs the best way to express themselves and communicate to others.

It was in recognition of this that on March 16, a group of us, with little help from our friends, put up a concert at the Sunken Garden in UP called “Never Again: The Concert for Freedom.” GMA had just unleashed the dogs of dictatorship then with 1017, and we resolved to fight it with the rage of rhythm, the battering ram of chattering riffs. I personally was astonished by the enthusiasm with which it was greeted. The contributions poured in abundantly and, more importantly, the bands poured in spontaneously. There is a wellspring of anger at the stifling of freedom and there is an even bigger wellspring of goodwill for the sounds that break silence.

The signs of dictatorship have not disappeared, they have taken the more vicious form of wanton killings. Until the last couple of weeks, when GMA met with the revulsion of the civilized world, those killings were taking place at the rate of one a day—a dark parody of curbing population growth.

I still think music is the best way to fight it. With a little help from our friends, that’s what we are doing all over again. This time though, it won’t be a single concert, it will be a bar tour, entitled (with our every desire to stress its urgency) “Stop the Killings!” Every week, three bands or more will play in a bar in Metro Manila. They will either do covers or original compositions of antiwar, anti-violence and pro-peace songs. The songs need not be “political” in the narrow “protest” sense of the word. Songs like Gary Granada’s “Banko,” which proposes accommodation (easy enough to share a bench, why fight over it) and Tracy Chapman’s “Behind the Wall” or Suzanne Vega’s “Luka,” which talk of domestic violence, should as much be part of it as the Jerks’ “Rage” and Bob Dylan’s “God on Our Side,” which are more forthright excoriations of war and exploitation.

The bar tour kicks off on Sept. 21 for reasons that should be fairly obvious. Sept. 21 is the date Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law 34 years ago this Thursday, which became marked by the torture and slaughter of Filipinos, many of them barely past the flush of youth. Venue is 70s Bistro, 46 Anonas St., Quezon City, 8 p.m. The bands that will play there are (in order of playing time): The Dawn, The Jerks, Sandwich, Sugarfree, Brownman Revival, Radioactive Sago.

The next playing date is the first week of October, and every week after that. The bar tour goes on for as long as the killings go on. But our first leg ends on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day. If things work out, and with the help of the human rights groups, we’ll hold a concert on that date.

So far the bands/singers that have offered to lend their magnificent services to the cause are: The Dawn, The Jerks, Radioactive Sago, Sandwich, Sugarfree, Brownman Revival, Gary Granada, Bayang Barrios, Cynthia Alexander, Chikoy Pura, Noel Cabangon, Susan Fernandez, Bagong Dugo, Gougou, Paramita, Spy, Giniling Festival, Session Road, Imago, Mojofly, Lyn Sherman, Color It Red, Paolo Santos, Pido, Parokya ni Edgar, Kamikaze. The music bars include: 70s Bistro, Conspiracy Garden Café, My Brother’s Mustache, News Desk, Sa Guijo, Unplugged, Capone’s, Pier 1 Mall of Asia, Handle Bar, Mayric’s.

I’ll announce the schedules and the additional bands/singers/bars in weeks to come.

The idea is to spread a culture of peace that is the antithesis of today’s culture of war. As I keep saying, worse than the killings themselves is the ease or blitheness with which GMA and Palparan have been able to justify them—and the indifference or silence with which the public has greeted them. That is the bigger cause for alarm. If we don’t watch out, we will lose our freedom completely, along with our lives, by sheer default. If we have to rebuild the antiwar culture that arose during the Vietnam War ages ago, then let’s do it. If we have to raise the V sign again with our fingers to signify peace, then let’s do it. That is the only real assurance the killings will stop. That is the only lasting assurance the “never again” will truly never happen again.

The culture of peace that we want to build here, of course, is not the one that has to do with burying our heads in the sand, or in the smoke rings of self-induced oblivion. The culture of peace we want to build here is the one that has to do with justice. Justice and peace: Those are not two concepts. Those are two sides of the same coin.

Let life flower, let song soar. Stop the killings!

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=21534