But that was then. Since early this year Estrada has been saying that he might seek in 2010 the presidency he lost to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2001, when the second People Power uprising known as EDSA 2 removed him from office. He’s refused to say if he will indeed run next year, but Estrada recently bought not only two helicopters, but also, says his friend and political ally Juan Ponce Enrile, a private jet and 20 vans. He’s preparing for the 2010 campaign, says Enrile: Estrada will run next year.

The Constitution does say that no president can seek reelection. But Estrada and his lawyers have been saying that the ban doesn’t apply to him because he didn’t serve his full term. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s ever loyal troops in the House of Representatives — the same herd that says she can run for Congress in 2010 — say, however, that he can’t, because his conviction for plunder carried with it permanent disqualification from running for any elective office. And yet the presidential order pardoning Estrada did restore his civil and political rights, which makes his case at least debatable.

Estrada made the rounds of the poor districts of the capital as well as rural communities almost immediately after his release in 2007. He’s also popped up in the aftermath of natural disasters, distributing the usual tins of sardines and instant noodles to hungry folk, and has generally made himself visible in the media.

The media have obliged because Estrada’s good for a sound byte or a laugh or two. But how seriously his threat to run is regarded may be gauged from his being invited to the ANC leadership forum at the University of the Philippines, where he regaled TV viewers and the on-site audience of mostly UP students and faculty with the usual one-liners.

When asked why he’s thinking of running, Estrada’s mantra has been “to unify the opposition”. He has said that the Arroyo coalition should be prevented from keeping power at all costs, and that, should the opposition fail to field one candidate, he would run, implying thereby that he could rally the opposition around his candidacy.

Estrada is apparently encouraged by the crowds he’s still able to draw in his sorties. The latest Social Weather Stations survey on voter preferences isn’t likely to dissuade him from thoughts of returning to Malacanang either. That survey found him fourth in voter preference in a field of nine possible presidential candidates (Manuel Villar, Noli de Castro, Francis Escudero, Estrada, Loren legarda, Manuel Roxas II, Panfilo Lacson [before he withdrew], Jejomar Binay, and Bayani Fernando).

The key word is “returning”. If Estrada does run, assuming no legal impediments to that demented possibility, it will be on the strength of the assumption that the poor he claims for his constituency will restore him to Malacanang despite his plunder conviction, his vast failures at governance during his Palace tenure, his multiple mistresses and households, and so forth and so on to infinity.

But Estrada’s gall in believing that he can run — and his possible win in 2010, all things being possible in this country of endless wonders — would also throw a bright light on his successor’s own distinct failures.

Those failures may not involve mistresses and midnight drinking sessions with shady cronies. But they’ve been even more disastrous to the country of our lost hopes. The continuing decline of the economy to arrest which exporting Philippine labor has become a lead policy; the corruption that’s metastasized throughout the entire government structure; the destruction of practically every government institution through bribery, intimidation and deceit; the pandering to foreign interests and the misuse of economic and military aid; the human rights violations and extra judicial killings; the harassment and intimidation of the press; the sheer stupidity of the statements that emanate from some of the most mindless government mouthpieces to ever rise from the cesspool of Philippine politics — all this have made the Estrada regime look good by comparison.

Of course the lesser evil argument shouldn’t be the basis for returning to power anyone who’s been there before and failed. But the electorate does it all the time. If Estrada’s dreams of recovering Malacanang can mean anything, it is to remind Filipinos how every election has meant nothing more than a change of places among the very same people who’ve been running this country into the ground for decades, in a seemingly endless rigodon that’s all form and no substance.

The rigodon, a dance from the Spanish colonial period aptly revived in Malacanang last year by Mrs. Arroyo during the Independence Day ball, and dancing which the Philippine elite likes to think endows it with nobility and class, is the apt Philippine symbol not only for the pretend changes in the Cabinet and Congress in which people are shuffled around from one post to another, but also for the same illusion of change every election offers, but never delivers on.

The members of the same class of betrayers, traitors, clowns and idiots alternate in office in this country courtesy of those elections, which, whether clean, dirty, honest or fraud- ridden, nevertheless end with the same dire results. Like the rigodon, Philippine elections are a spectator sport, in which what’s going on seems so elegant, so refined and so meaningful but is in truth as empty as the brain pans of certain Malacanang talking heads. Those aghast at the prospect of an Estrada return, or at his impudence, should think about whether it’s going to be any worse than what’s been going on in this country ever since it began electing the same people to the same offices over and over again.

(BusinessWorld)

Ordinary folk are supposed to make the decisions in a democracy, but they don’t always make the best ones, given the vast confusion created by contending claims in modern societies.

Hence, “It is no longer possible,” wrote Lippmann, “… to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart…We cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.”

Lippmann concluded that the “well-informed” can remedy that problem by shaping public opinion through the mass media. It’s a view that has been criticized for, among other reasons, its assumption that “the well-informed” know best what’s good for the rest of society, and are themselves not driven by ways of thinking created by their social and economic status, their experience, class and personal interests, and other factors.

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman used the phrase in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, in which the authors looked into the interests that drive the mass media, and which therefore decide what information reaches the public, what doesn’t, and in what form.

Chomsky, a linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and perhaps the most well known public intellectual in the US, has argued that far from being instruments of democratic choice, the mass media constitute the ideological apparatus through which the wealthy and the powerful preserve their rule and “keep the rabble in line”. The mass media manufacture the consent that gives societies the appearance or illusion of democratic decision- making by shaping opinions in accordance with the interests of big business and government policy.

The process is evident in the way the Western media organizations that blanket the globe with entertainment and information echo the foreign policies of the US and its Western allies — not necessarily as part of any conscious conspiracy, but consistent with a view of the world that has itself been nurtured by the mass media as the main source of information in today’s world.

Consistent with these policies is a dominant view of Iran and North Korea as the villains in an otherwise rational world order. Both countries have been “in the news” for decades. Iran because of its tumultuous recent history from the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, the establishment of an Islamic Republic in its wake, the hostage- taking by militant students of US embassy personnel and citizens in November that year, and its 1980-1982 war with Iraq. More recently, however, Iran, because of its supposed nuclear ambitions and support for the Islamist groups Hizbollah and Hamas, has been more prominently in the camera sights of the international networks and news agencies.

On the other hand, North Korea has been for decades labeled a rogue state. George W. Bush named it, together with Iraq and Iran, as part of the “Axis of Evil” — so-called because of this “axis’” alleged support for terrorism and its focus on developing nuclear weapons.

The turmoil that followed the recent presidential elections in Iran, in which the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been at issue, is the ostensible reason why it has remained in the news. North Korea’s recent nuclear tests meanwhile explain why it shares the media spotlight with Iran.

The media texts on the reporting on North Korea are the subtexts in the reporting on Iran. It is the argument that both countries have to be stopped from developing nuclear weapons because they’re irresponsible, and their leaders crazies who can’t be expected to act rationally. Reports on the turmoil in Iran thus reinforce the view of that country as unstable, even as reportage on the most recent statements of Ahmadinejad — such as, for example, those he has made during his current visit to Russia — suggest that his is an erratic leadership unworthy of control over nuclear arms.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il and the country he rules are way ahead of Iran in the current pantheon of world villains the global media have created. Kim has been painted as volatile, sick, and perhaps even mad, and his country described as “reclusive,” “secretive” and willfully “isolated”. North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons has thus been described as a “grave threat” to the world.

It is. But nuclear weapons are a grave threat to the world whoever possesses them.

Nuclear weapons as well as the missiles and air and seacraft to deliver them are in the hands of the so-called “nuclear weapons states” — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. But India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel also possess nuclear weapons, although they are not recognized as nuclear weapons states by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The assumption, however, is that the “nuclear weapons states” are “responsible,” in contrast to those others that already have them but are not recognized by the NPT, are aspiring for, or are developing such weapons — i.e., Iran and North Korea, although Pakistan too, it has been suggested by the global media, could be in that category.

The media attention on Iran and North Korea (and soon, Pakistan?) thus serve to reinforce the conventional view held by the millions the global media reach daily that these countries are irresponsible rogue states whose development of nuclear weapons would make the world a dangerous place.

Make that an even more dangerous place. The nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear weapons states have the capacity to destroy the world several times over, and, given the world’s experience with the US’ Bush-Cheney regime, there’s no guarantee that madmen won’t gain the power to use them. (The Bush government and Israel were believed to have planned an attack on Iran that did not preclude the use of nuclear weapons.)

Nuclear weapons are a grave threat to the world, period. And yet the focus on the “irresponsibility” of “rogue states” detracts from the imperative to dismantle and destroy ALL nuclear weapons rather than merely restricting their possession and development to selected states — the global equivalent of the “well-informed” elite that, via the media, manufacture the consent that makes us all believe that we’re deciding on our own while decisions are actually being made for us.

(BusinessWorld)

No matter. Apparently Mrs. Arroyo thinks she can win an election – but not as president, which in 2004 she amply demonstrated she couldn’t, but as a congresswoman in the Second District of Pampanga, of which the Macapagal hometown, Lubao, is a part.

In addition to crisscrossing the globe begging for jobs and dollars instead of doing something about the economy so Filipinos won’t have to leave their families to work in places whose names they can’t even pronounce, Mrs. Arroyo also loves to travel within the country. After 2004 she went off on a number of trips to the Visayas, where she was supposed to have won the presidential elections big-time, and where she thought she would get receptions friendlier than in, say, the campus of a Manila university.

Since 2005 she’s been very selective about the places she visits in the country where she claims to have won the Presidency, mostly because she tends to be heckled and jeered and demonstrated against, and to have her effigy burned in most of it, including the Visayas.

Since February this year Mrs. Arroyo has limited most of her domestic travels — 14 out of 15 — to Pampanga, or more specifically to the second district of that province known for the Pinatubo eruption and lahar flows, and a cuisine so adrip with fat the mere sight of it has been known to cause a heart attack. Pampanga is also the home of the Macabebe tribe, from which came the most loyal foot soldiers of the Spanish and US colonial regimes. In 1901 a Macabebe traitor embraced Emilio Aguinaldo in Palanan, Isabela to signal his arrest by the US soldiers the Macabebes pretended to be holding prisoner.

There in the land of her fathers, as in countries like Spain, Mrs. Arroyo apparently feels she is loved, in contrast with the rest of the country which can’t wait to see her out of Malacanang.

But it’s not for love alone that she’s been waving at the crowds, embracing old women, and kissing babies in laharland. If the trial balloons from the Palace by the Pasig are any indication, it’s also for votes in 2010, when, she has proclaimed again and again, there will be elections despite House Resolution 1109.

A palace subaltern — acting on her orders, of course — has in fact said that she could run for Congress, citing as precedent the US experience with two former presidents who did run for Congress, and arguing that there is no legal impediment for Mrs. Arroyo’s move to Congress when she — everyone hopes — leaves Malacanang in 2010.

So much for fears of no elections — and never mind the stupid comparison with the US experience. The vehemence with which Mrs. Arroyo and company have declared that there will be elections in 2010 suggests that holding the elections next year is among the regime’s major political options.

What the regime’s not saying is that if it manages to ram charter change through via the House of ill repute, the elections could be for parliament instead of the presidency, the House and the Senate. If that’s the case Mrs. Arroyo can, and probably will, run as a member of parliament (MP) representing the second district of Pampanga — and who, knows, could end up as the prime minister of our worst nightmares in a parliament controlled by the Lakas-Kampi coalition. But if the regime fails to effect a shift to the parliamentary system before May 2010, Mrs. Arroyo can still run for Congress under the present system, although that’s not as attractive an option as the first.

Which explains why the vehemence with which Mrs. Arroyo and spokespersons have declared that there will be elections is equaled only by their resounding silence over House Resolution 1109 — and their blithe indifference to the public’s resistance to charter change, and Mrs. Arroyo’s own studied snub of her falling approval ratings.

What distinguishes this regime from its predecessors is, among others, its infinite capacity for ignoring public opinion, to listen to which it has claimed would constitute pandering to what’s popular. It forgets — or has never quite understood — hat “popularity” in the sense of public approval is at the very core of democratic governance.

But what does it care, one way or another? What it knows is that money, manipulation, power and fear win elections — and that if elections were held today Mrs. Arroyo and her entire gang, no matter how unpopular and no matter how hated, would keep their seats in Malacanang and Congress.

It’s as if EDSA 1 and 2 never happened. It’s as if the Independence Day the country’s marking today, not to mention the Revolution of 1896 that made it possible, were mere figments of our collective imaginations.

The present descendants of the principalia — the progeny of the datus who collaborated with the Spaniards in the conquest of these islands, who later betrayed the Revolution and became the Americans’ lapdogs only to serve the Japanese during World War II — these traitors to national independence who’re holding forth in one of the most despised regimes in Philippine history are equally traitors to the democracy they perennially claim to be defending. It’s enough for anyone to wish for another revolution.

(BusinessWorld)

Their fears, said the United Opposition, Gabriela, Bayan, and Gloria Step Down Movement, among others, were not groundless, given the country’s experience with the government of Ferdinand Marcos, who managed to establish a dictatorship in 1972 by placing the entire country under martial law.

Civil society groups, progressive religious people, sectoral and mass organizations, lawyers, and others have issued similar warnings before. Alarm over mass apathy was and is their subtext, public apathy in these isles of fear not being without precedent.

The Marcos dictatorship was made possible by, among other factors, most Filipinos’ being in a state of denial up to the very moment when Marcos declared martial law. In the early 1970s many Filipinos, including journalists and political analysts, did not really believe a dictatorship possible, because they thought Philippine democracy to be stronger than any individual. It turned out that if the individual was president of the Philippines, and was determined, ambitious and ruthless enough, he or she could turn the seeming strength of Philippine democracy, such as it was, into the instrument of its own ruin.

Marcos thus used the Constitutional provision empowering the President of the Philippines to declare martial law – meant to protect the Philippines from invasion, insurrection and lawlessness – to dismantle what passed for democracy in the Philippines and to establish his own lawless regime.

For its elite bias and the narrowness of representation in government, Philippine democracy on the eve of martial law was flawed. But it at least protected, if only on paper much of the time, such rights as those of assembly and free expression, as well as press freedom. It also had a system of checks and balances, enshrined in the co-equal powers of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, which, however, was already under serious threat by the time Marcos was ending his second term. It also had regular elections.

In too many instances were those elections tainted with fraud, vote- buying and terrorism. Philippine elections were held up as indicators of democratic reality, but the truth was that they were more often wild orgies of unrestrained spending, cheating and violence especially at the provincial level.

Running for reelection in 1969, Marcos proved, as some of his predecessors had done before him, that the national elections were not immune to the same manipulation. But Marcos’ efforts were so much more extravagant than theirs that he made “overkill” a household term overnight.

Reelected by a landslide, and assured of a second four-year term, it turned out that Marcos had other plans than to leave office in 1973. Failing to ram through a new Constitution that would allow him to run again that year, he declared martial law a year before his term was to end.

Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s own saga and temperament invites inevitable comparisons. Like Marcos, Mrs. Arroyo ran a campaign in 2004 to which the label overkill equally applies. She cobbled together a vast alliance of various groups united by no principle except self-interest, flooded the country with billions, and made sure that her votes would not only be counted, but doubly, even triply “protected” by engaging the services of a certain COMELEC commissioner.

Like Marcos, Mrs. Arroyo doesn’t have a democratic temperament either. It’s evident in her impatience, her total confidence in the correctness of her views and acts, her lack of transparency, and her contempt for public opinion. And as far as corruption goes, she and hers have already exceeded the wildest expectations, and only time can prevent her from surpassing the Marcos record.

This leads us to one of the reasons why she and her allies in the House of Representatives have refused to give up, despite the admission by some of their own members, that there’s hardly any time left for it – meaning amending the Constitution. The consensus is that Mrs. Arroyo wants to stay in power beyond 2010 via the replacement of the presidential system with a parliamentary one in which she could be prime minister because she doesn’t want to face the barrage of legal suits over her acts as president once she’s out of office.

Maybe. But staying on beyond 2010 wouldn’t hurt her and her family’s prospects of amassing wealth to equal that of Marcos either.

But does Mrs. Arroyo have to establish a dictatorship to stay in power beyond 2010? She doesn’t, for the simple reason that the dictatorship various groups have been warning the country about for years is, for all intents and purposes, already here, except that unlike the Marcos dictatorship, it was established without the benefit of a proclamation.

Still unlike the Marcos dictatorship, it was established without abolishing Congress, and has in fact been realized with the criminal connivance of that body, primarily the House of Representatives. As in the Marcos dictatorship, the Arroyo dictatorship has also managed to put in place a Supreme Court in which the majority will uphold its wishes, as it is likely to uphold the constitutionality of HR 1109.

But again unlike the Marcos dictatorship, the present dictatorship is in place without any official diminution of such rights as that of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. As in any dictatorship, however, what’s on paper hardly applies to reality, and the military and police, with their apparent understanding, are the primary instruments through which this dictatorship achieves its purposes, which explains why demonstrations can be violently dispersed, journalists can be prevented from doing their jobs and even murdered with impunity, and protesters and activists can be arrested without warrants, detained, tortured, murdered and made to disappear in a country that still dares call itself a democracy.

(BusinessWorld)

Locsin’s amendment to Article 354 of the Revised Penal code, which defines libel and punishes it with prison terms, would make voluntary publication of a reply from someone who believes himself aggrieved by the media — or the media offender’s retraction of any suggestion or implication of wrongdoing — a guarantee against being sued for libel.

If he’s serious about it, Locsin’s House Bill 3306 (“An Act Extinguishing All Liability for Libel Upon the Publication of a Reply or Retraction”) would add to Article 354 a paragraph declaring that “The publication in full and in the same space or time of the reply of the offended party — or the complete retraction of the offending party of the allegedly libelous remarks — shall extinguish all liability, civil or criminal, including costs arising therefrom.”

This amendment to the libel law will not decriminalize libel. But it would blunt the teeth of libel as a criminal offense, which in recent years has had an intimidating impact on the press. It was for libel that Davao broadcaster Lex Adonis was sentenced to four years in prison, out of which he served two. In several instances since Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power, other journalists have been terrorized by the possibility of being arrested, in one case right at the Malacanang beat where the journalist was assigned.

If he’s serious about it, Locsin’s amendment to the libel law — which he’s also pushing as a substitute for the right of reply bill his colleagues in Congress are raring to approve so their PR people and speechwriters can demand and get space in the newspapers and airtime over radio and television — could be a way out of the media-Congress stalemate over the right of reply bill. Instead of a right of reply, the subject of a media report or comment would have the opportunity to respond to any allegation of wrongdoing should the editor decide to give him or her the time and space in exchange for a guarantee against a libel suit.

Editors would have the same guarantee should they publish a retraction. It’s a reasonable, though temporary compromise between, on the one hand, media opposition to the right of reply bill as well as their campaign for the decriminalization of libel, and on the other, the politicians’ insistence on forcing the media to publish replies and their steadfast commitment to keeping libel as a criminal offense.

If Locsin’s serious about it.

If he’s serious about it, his amendment could gain acceptance among his colleagues in Congress because they would still have the option to sue for libel and to send journalists to prison should there be no apology and no publication of their reply to whatever has been published or aired about them.

On the other hand, his amendment would remove from the discussion over the right of reply the bottom line basis for media rejection of it: the compulsion to publish any reply from anyone who either sincerely thinks he’s been abused by the media, or who maliciously wants only the space and airtime for free, self-serving publicity.

One hopes that Locsin is serious about it. The caveat is necessary because Locsin’s press statement on the subject (“No Multiple Personality Disorder: Chance to Reply and Right to Retract Bill”) treats press freedom as almost as big a joke as the House of Representatives.

Locsin doesn’t want journalists to take either press freedom or themselves seriously. He says “any journalist who takes himself too seriously is not a serious journalist but is probably an academic or a media watchdog.” I say that any alleged lawmaker who thinks an issue over which hundreds of journalists are concerned is something to laugh at is probably a congressman who doesn’t give a hoot about press freedom’s worth in a society ruled by the worst political class in Asia.

Locsin in fact makes serious fun of press freedom by repeating the usual cliché so often heard in congressional circles, Malacanang, the sacred precincts of the Philippine National Police, the dark heart of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the rank premises of the National Press Club — that press freedom “is not a sacred right”. Which it probably isn’t in other places like the United States, but which it should be in these isles of fear, secrecy and absurdity, primarily because the people who rule the country of our agony regard neither law nor common decency with any respect, let alone sanctity.

I must confess that just like the members of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, after decades of witnessing the idiocies of and listening to the idiots in this country who call themselves its leaders, I too have lost my sense of humor.

I’ve lost my sense of humor over the wiretapping charge against Probe Productions’ Cheche Lazaro. I can’t laugh over the threat to the life of New York Times Philippine correspondent Carlos Conde, whose name is in the AFP’s order of battle in Davao. I don’t think shooting at journalists from a motorcycle qualifies as comedy. And I don’t see anything funny either in the campaign by the politicians to ram a right of reply bill down the throats of the media organizations whether great or small, and whether Lopez- or NGO- owned.

That must be because, again like the members of the NUJP, I’m not a serious journalist. I am in fact not only an academic, but also part of a media watchdog group. Talk about taking one’s self too seriously!

(BusinessWorld)

In a reprise of the teacup storm over a column by a Hongkong hack who said the Philippines was “a nation of servants,” some Filipinos are beside themselves over Alec Baldwin’s tongue-in-cheek threat to import a Filipina mail order bride who can bear his children. Baldwin made the remark while a guest in TV’s The Late Show with David Letterman.

The remark was actually made in self-deprecation, and over his age, 51, which in Hollywood would qualify as advanced. Baldwin said he was so desperate to have children he was thinking of “getting a Filipina mail order bride, or a Russian…”

But most Filipinos, and certainly none of the politicians, caught the irony—or even the reference to Russians, who incidentally don’t seem to be overly concerned. Several senators of the Republic demanded an apology (Zubiri), excoriated Baldwin for his “insensitivity,” (Legarda), demanded that he be declared persona non grata (Revilla), and claimed that “Filipinas are not for sale” (Legarda).

US actor Alec Baldwin is with the cast of the TV comedy “30 Rock,” in which the phenomenal Tina Fey rather than Baldwin’s the real star. He’s a political liberal who supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, and one of whose less unmemorable movie roles was to play the lawyer who managed to get the racist killer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers convicted 30 years after Evers was killed.

While one can argue that most Caucasians are racists at heart, there’s no evidence that Baldwin belongs in that humungous category of man(un)kind. But his remark does demonstrate how widespread in Western popular culture are less than edifying perceptions of Filipinos and the Philippines.

We saw that in one episode of the TV series Desperate Housewives, where a doctor’s having graduated from a Philippine medical school was disparaged. But we’ve also seen it in the word “Filipina’s” being synonymous to domestic help in many European countries, as in “Once I have enough money, I’ll get me a Filipina.”

In the United States, “Filipino” as a synonym for gardener, janitor, driver, apple picker or some other menial goes back to Empire Days (have those days really gone?), when, after all, many Filipinos did go into those occupations.

There’s a Nelson Algren short story, written in the 1940s, in which the term is used precisely in that sense, and another (“The Man With the Golden Arm,” if memory serves) in which a knife –probably a “balisong,” or fan knife — is described as a “Filipino gut-ripper”.

Another story, this time by William Saroyan, “Our Little Brown Brothers the Filipinos,” while actually rooting for the underdog, would very likely be interpreted as insulting by critics who don’t know any better, because it contains such observations as that “Filipinos don’t grow to be that big” in reference to the protagonist of the story, a six-foot-tall Filipino wrestler.

Should we care? We wouldn’t if such references and remarks aren’t touching the raw nerves of truth. Popular wisdom can be cruel, but it’s usually based on at least a quantum of evidence.

If there’s a perception that the Philippines is among the world’s major suppliers of mail order brides, it’s because, despite Republic Act 6955, or the Anti- Mail Order Bride Law of 1990 (Yes, Virginia, there is such a Philippine law), Filipinas do continue to leave for the US, Japan, and various countries of Europe precisely as mail order (or Internet) brides.

If there’s a perception that most Filipinas are domestics, it’s because thousands of them including those with college degrees leave the country of our sorrows daily so they can mop floors and do the laundry in North America as well as in Singapore, the Middle East, Japan, Taiwan and Australia.

And if there’s a perception that Filipinas are for sale, and cheaply at that, it’s because thousands of them do grab at the chance to live in the United States or some other country with better plumbing and garbage collection even if they have to exchange their virtue for it.

Which brings us to the case of “Vanessa,” whose rape by a US Marine who’s in the country courtesy of the Visiting Forces Agreement is the second to have been revealed among the abuses that agreement has once again made possible. The Women’s group Gabriela is urging “Vanessa” (not her real name) to file a complaint against her rapist, despite the country’s recent experience with the case of Suzette Nicolas.

Nicolas was the “Nicole” who, after three years of insisting that US Marine Corporal Daniel Smith raped her, withdrew that claim last March, as a result of which she’s now living in the US with $2000 from Smith. And, of yes, Smith’s earlier conviction was also reversed by the Court of Appeals.

The three women justices of the Court of Appeals reversed Smith’s rape conviction by the Makati Regional Trial Court, declaring, among other pearls of wisdom, that the supposed rape was actually “a romantic episode.” Apparently these justices don’t go out much, having sex in a moving van with one man while three others cheer him on not being any normal human being’s idea of romance.

But these are abnormal times, and I’m afraid that if Gabriela gets its wish and “Vanessa” does sue, there’s no telling what can happen next once the idea of living in the Promised Land (in these post-Biblical times, the US) is dangled before her.

I’m not saying that “Vanessa” is going to fold as Nicolas did. Only that it’s best to be careful what you wish for. Sorry, Loren, some Filipinas — make that many Filipinas — are for sale in the fire sale that the Philippines, thanks to its poverty and desperation, has become.

(BusinessWorld)

On May 10, a day after the 2009 report was made public, Prospero Nograles dismissed a call from some party list members of Congress to expel retired general Jovito Palparan from the House of Representatives, and urged them to instead look into the extra- judicial killings (EJK) in Davao.

As one reporter put it, Nograles was saying that the party list groups were “barking up the wrong tree,” by which he meant they should “redirect their energies” from Palparan to Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who’s been widely accused of at least ignoring the killing of petty and suspected criminals including street children in that city.

Even as Nograles’ statements was making the front pages, Raul Gonzalez was telling reporters that “we”—meaning the Arroyo government– should “just ignore” the report.

“We cannot keep on stopping every time a dog barks. What we should do is just do our best to perform our tasks that are assigned to us within the limits of our authority and power,” said Gonzalez.

The Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions visited the Philippines at the invitation of the Philippine government in 2007 to look into the killing of political activists, journalists, and suspected criminals.

During that visit Alston met with senior officials of the Arroyo regime including high- ranking police and military officials, members of Congress, the Melo Commission, the Philippine National Police’s Task Force Usig, the Chief Justice and other members of the judiciary, and representatives of civil society as well as of the MILF and MNLF, among others.

In a February 7, 2007 press conference he called before he left the country, Alston specifically mentioned meeting Rodrigo Duterte, whose watch as mayor of Davao City has been distinguished not only by the low crime rate in that city, but also by the number of EJKs allegedly perpetrated by the so-called Davao Death Squad.

Alston made several observations and recommendations, among them the need for Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to—

1. instill in the military a sense of the seriousness of the allegations that it is responsible for most of the killings of political activists (Alston alleged that the AFP was “in a state of denial.”);

2. restore the systems of military and police accountability to civilian authority that have been eroded during her watch;

3. strengthen the witness protection program;

4. make it clear that there is political space for legal leftist groups in place of the implication that their members deserve elimination; and

5. re-evaluate the counter-insurgency policy that has resulted in the assassination of many political activists from legal groups.

Since then Alston has been one of the Arroyo regime’s pet hates. Gonzalez at one point referred to Alston—a distinguished professor of international law—as “nothing more than a muchacho,” or houseboy, even as his boss, Mrs. Arroyo, was making all sorts of noises to convince the international community that the killing of political activists was not national policy. Gonzalez’ comparing Alston to a barking dog was thus no surprise, given the Gonzalez propensity for insulting regime critics that has so endeared him to sound-byte seeking reporters. (For example, last March Gonzalez told the New York- based Committee to Protect Journalists to “jump in the lake.”)

Nograles’ reaction was on the other hand understandable, Duterte being his long-time and continuing rival in the politics of Davao City. But he also has a point. As non-political as they may be, the Davao EJKs have steadily increased in number since 1998. The 2009 Alston report notes that the killings have worsened rather than abated since his 2007 visit, with one victim being killed almost every day, from 116 in 2007 to 269 in 2008.

The Davao killings have to be addressed, among other reasons because they can spread to other cities. Alston has recommended that Duterte give up his supervisory powers over the local police and the abolition of the “watch list” of petty criminals that barangay officials are required to submit to the police. (Duterte has agreed to give up supervision over the police, but the watch list has not been abolished.)

But if Nograles has a point as far as the Davao EJKs are concerned, he hasn’t as far as his implication is concerned that addressing the killing of political activists is misplaced. The killing of political activists has never stopped– despite Alston’s 2007 report, despite the alarm expressed by Amnesty International, the Asian Human Rights Council, and even by the US State Department (all of which agreed that responsibility for EJKs and the killing of journalists could be laid mostly at the door of the Philippine military and police).

The killings did abate after 2007, after Mrs. Arroyo declared it a policy to stop EJKs. But this year 16 EJKs have occurred, the most heinous being the March abduction, torture and killing of Davao school teacher Rebelyn Pitao, whose only offense was that of being the daughter of a New People’s Army commander.

Meanwhile, if past events are any guide—the number of EJKs jumped in 2007, an election year when activists associated with left- wing party list groups were particularly targeted—2010 could witness more politically- driven EJKs.

As urgent as the Davao killings and the killing of journalists may be, the killing of political activists is equally crucial in that they have to stop as an indication, as the 2007 Alston Report said, that there’s space in Philippine politics for the political pluralism that gives democracy its substance. Ignoring these killings—and worse, the Alston reports—will guarantee not only their continuing, but also the steady erosion of what remains of Philippine democracy.

The barking of vigilant dogs—whether up a tree or at the gate—does serve a purpose, even if other dogs merely whine for bones.

(BusinessWorld)