Hazing is “the persecution or torture (of) somebody in a subordinate position.” It has become part of the initiation rites that have taken deep roots in the practice of Philippine fraternities and other organizations. New members or recruits are initiated by forcing them to do embarrassing, humiliating or dangerous acts, or subjecting them to physical abuse, of which the most common form is paddling. Salilig was reportedly paddled 70 times.

Hazing is both a consequence and a symptom of the culture of violence in these murderous isles. Like extrajudicial killings,  hazing deaths not only devastate entire families. They also feed the blood lust for even more violence, and deny Philippine society the contributions to its betterment that the victims could have provided had they survived. 

There is hazing as well in a number of other organizations, but  its practice in fraternities is what has  been most widely reported.  The Philippine versions of Greek letter societies are akin to those of the United States, in the universities and colleges of which fraternities (men-only organizations) and sororities (societies that accept only women) are recognized, except in those institutions where they are banned. Hazing deaths have also been reported in the US.

Fraternities were imported to the Philippines in the post-US colonial period. Their local founders and leaders adapted quickly to the realities of a hierarchical society in which economic, political and social rank matter most. They survive to this day on the assumption that belonging to them puts a member at least a rung above those not similarly “distinguished.”

Membership in such societies is in fact premised on, and made attractive by, their doors’ supposedly being open only to a selected few. Exclusivity is the presumed advantage of fraternity or sorority membership.

Some Greek letter organizations, particularly honor societies, go even further. They recruit only students with exceptional academic performance, while others recruit those recognized for their leadership, athletic achievement, or popularity. One not only belongs; one also belongs in an organization with an exclusive membership. Being in a fraternity, whether under- or above-ground, puts the student in the company of the school elite.

But it is when the student graduates that membership in a Greek letter society becomes truly meaningful. It opens doors not only to better jobs, but also to greater opportunities for advancement in feudal Philippines, where who one knows is a qualification superior to one’s knowledge and skills. Because of fraternity ties, a new graduate can overnight find himself in a job he would otherwise have had to work years for, and be first in line for advancement besides, thanks to his “brods.”

The majority of fraternities enforce their claims to exclusivity through harsh initiation rites, on the presumption that the organization’s being open only to those applicants who can survive verbal, physical and even mental abuse endows it with some sort of distinction. As odd as it may seem, social psychologists have found that it is this fraternity practice that by adding endurance and physical prowess to their personas most attracts even the most accomplished students.

Some Congressmen propose a total ban on fraternities whenever a particularly vicious instance of hazing makes the headlines. A ban is likely to be introduced this year because of the lethal consequence of the practice on Salilig and other applicant-members. But as at least one senator has pointed out, banning fraternities altogether would be unconstitutional, a fact about which its proponents seem oddly unaware.

In addition to abridging the right of every citizen to join any organization of his or her choice, singling out one type of organization for prohibition would also be discriminatory. What is even worse is that such a ban could set a precedent that would justify banning other organizations, and undermine the right to join an organization of one’s choice. A ban on fraternities could also include penalties for violations of its provisions by themselves, which could also make such a law a bill of attainder, or a law that punishes without trial.

Schools can of course ban fraternities and the like. That prerogative is theirs to exercise should they wish to. But as the entire country is currently witnessing, a school ban does not guarantee that fraternities won’t be organized in secret or will disappear. On the contrary. A ban endows them, it seems, with the romance and intrigue that add to the attractions of the forbidden.

Neither has the 2018 Anti-Hazing Act (RA 11053), despite its harsh provisions, stopped violent initiations. The ban on fraternities in Adamson University didn’t stop the Tau Gamma Phi Fraternity to which Salilig was applying for membership from establishing an underground chapter in that school, and could arguably have made membership in what amounts to a secret society glamorous and exciting. Meanwhile, the Anti-Hazing Act has forced fraternities to move their hazing rites outside the schools and into private homes and other places beyond the reach of school authorities.

It seems self-serving when individuals who are members of fraternities (such as Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, who, like his father the late former senator Edgardo J. Angara, is an alumnus member of the University of the Philippines’ Sigma Rho fraternity) oppose the banning of fraternities. But they may have a point. Perhaps Greek letter societies are better recognized so they can be monitored, and their activities, such as initiation rites, controlled by the school involved.

Hazing has led to neophyte injuries and deaths in the country’s schools from 1954 to the present. Some have been reported in Manila-based universities as well as in the Visayas and Mindanao. University of the Philippines (UP) fraternities have also been implicated in some hazing deaths. Hundreds have been killed in many such incidents and in various institutions including the police and military academies over the last seven decades.

But despite the many injuries and deaths, fraternities and similar organizations have no shortage of applicants. It is not just because they meet the need to belong inherent in every human being. They are also among the more reliable means through which the ambitious student establishes the contacts that are so crucial to future advancement in the professions, business and government in this country.

Many dismiss membership in Greek letter societies as the refuge of the immature. But the lure of it is actually based on aspirants’ understanding of how Philippine society works. Only when feudal Philippines changes can the fraternities change and the violence that many of them  inflict be a thing of the past.

But if only to demonstrate that the impunity murderers, thieves, torturers and plunderers enjoy in this country doesn’t apply to them, those responsible for the hazing death of John Matthew Salilig and who have presumably injured others as well should get the long prison terms they deserve. The Anti-Hazing Law must also be amended and its flaws corrected. One can only hope that both could help reduce the numbers of those victimized by the culture of violence and impunity that so distressingly afflicts the whole of Philippine society.

(BusinessWorld)

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It may not be another instance of State terrorism against a critic of government. But together with harassments, “red-tagging” and other attacks, some abductions have involved political and social activists and their families as victims. These are still occurring despite the promise of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. during his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July that he would protect human rights. He made the same pledge in his September speech at the 77th United Nations General Assembly. 

The media reported at least eight instances of harassments, threats and human rights violations during the first two months of 2023. What makes them  alarming is that some of the victims seem to have been targeted because of the involvement of  their kin in those groups  the previous regime had  labeled “red” and “terrorist.” 

As reported by some media organizations,  those instances included the following:

Playwright and political activist Bonifacio Ilagan, who is also the lead convenor of the non-government organization Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law  (CARMMA),  received a death threat on his cell phone on the second day of the new year. 

The  caller claimed to be  the “commander” of a police or military team that was only waiting for the approval of his superiors to kill Ilagan. The caller, said Ilagan, told him that his  and similar State groups can easily kill “communists” with impunity.   

Six days later, on January 8, in an apparent case of harassment, while visiting her father, the daughter of  a political prisoner  was strip-searched and frisked in full view of  jail guards in violation of their own guidelines for such searches.

Two labor rights advocates were abducted at Cebu City’s Pier 6 on January 10. Forced into a car parked  at the docking area, they were released later. Both victims said  their abductors, who had introduced themselves as police officers, subjected them to days of psychological torture.

An activist and eight others including a community journalist were formally charged with rebellion before  Branch 2 of  the Cordillera Regional Trial Court. A staff member of a Cordillera indigenous peoples (IP) network, one was arrested on January 30. She is the mother of the labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno’s international officer who was also arrested last year on the same charges.

Before the month ended, on  January 29, a former National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultant was arrested  with his wife and a female companion. He was one of the peace consultants released in 2016 to participate in the  peace talks between the Duterte regime and the NDFP.

On January 30, the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) named a medical doctor a terrorist in its Resolution No. 35. A community activist  who helped set up health centers  in Mindanao, she was arrested February last year on alleged and patently absurd kidnapping and illegal detention charges.

A  humanitarian mission of the human rights group Karapatan was  threatened and harassed by military elements in the Bondoc Peninsula of Quezon Province on February 1. The human rights group was  assisting families in retrieving the bodies of alleged New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas who were killed in a supposed  encounter with government troops. 

The  drivers of the mission vehicles were interrogated and all the names of their passengers  taken. Two vehicles were also impounded for alleged violations of Land Transportation Office (LTO) regulations. At the LTO Office later,  an LTO  official and a police officer demanded that the drivers admit that they and their passengers are members of the NPA.           

Five days later, on February 6,  a University of the Philippines (UP) professor  was arrested inside her home in UP Diliman for her alleged failure to remit Social Security System (SSS) contributions for her former domestic help. The professor said  she was not aware of any case against her.  

Her arrest was in violation of the UP-Department of National Defense (DND) agreement which prohibits the military  from entering the campus without  coordinating with UP authorities. The likely reason for her arrest is her supposedly being among those militants the government has labeled  “red.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) had earlier compared the human rights situation during the Duterte regime with that  in Marcos, Jr.’s. HRW Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said that “the reality is nothing has changed… only a change in tone and a greater effort in public relations.”  

HRW noted the instances of “red-tagging” last year during the first months of the Marcos administration. It also recalled that in September, the former spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) even  threatened in a social media post a Manila Regional Trial Court judge for dismissing the government petition to declare as terrorists the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NPA. 

But apart from “red-tagging,” and attacks against freedom of expression, other human rights violations have continued under the Marcos administration — among them the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of dissenters. and the  “drug war” killings that have been monitored by, among other groups, the UP Third World Studies Center (TWSC).

Given these circumstances, how then account for the EU parliamentarians’ description of the Philippine human rights situation as “improved”? The answer can only be because the situation during the six years of the  Duterte regime was so bad in comparison to the seven months of the Marcos II administration, the present can only seem better.   

The extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during the present regime (according to the TWSC, 35 so far this year), for example, when compared with the number of EJKs during the Duterte era, which the Philippine National Police ((PNP) says numbered “only” 6,252, pale in comparison with that figure — and even more so when  compared to the 27,000 to 30,000 individuals human rights groups say were actually killed during the Duterte “war on drugs.” And, although the harassment, “red-tagging” and killing of government critics, human rights defenders and activists are continuing, the numbers are, so far, similarly lower than those during the Duterte regime’s.

Also still to be established is whether the Marcos regime is replicating such Duterte era atrocities as its encouraging the police to kill suspected drug pushers and addicts by offering them financial rewards, which  made the “war on drugs,” according to Amnesty International (AI), a “deliberate and systematic” war  against the poor, the deaths of whose  breadwinners have driven the widowed and orphaned even deeper into  penury. 

As noted by the global coalition InvestigatePH, “the State forces that perpetrate violence are (also) obstructing investigations.” In its second report, the coalition pointed out that the tactics the Duterte regime had been using in its “drug war” were also being used, by 2021, to target human rights defenders and government  critics.

As favorably as the current regime’s human rights record may seem compared to that of its predecessor’s, everyone should keep in mind that it is still only in its seventh month. That means it could yet equal, if not  surpass,  the Duterte record in the  five years and five months left of its six-year term.

(BusinessWorld)

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Only platitudes and motherhood statements emanated from Malacanang Palace during those occasions. It was as if the former President and his  minions feared that saying something meaningful could enlighten the mass of the citizenry enough for them to harbor such ideas as that they are the true sovereigns of this country and that government officials serve only at their pleasure. That, after all, is the central lesson of EDSA 1986 — and neither the Duterte regime nor its predecessors were comfortable with it.

The Marcos Jr. administration is even less likely to note, least of all celebrate, its 37th anniversary this year, since that February 22-25 civilian-military uprising overthrew the Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.  dictatorship and forced him and his family into exile in Hawaii, USA.

Consigning it  into  the limbo of forgetfulness has never been as likely of success than today — but not just because another Marcos is once again in the country’s highest post. It is also because EDSA 1986 has become, particularly for those Filipinos who trust and approve of him most, just another  incident in history whose meaning eludes them.

Their overwhelming satisfaction with Marcos Jr. that a recent survey by Social Weather Stations  (SWS) found defies understanding. Exactly why someone in history qualifies as a hero is something they haven’t bothered to find out either. They think of Jose Rizal as no more than a playboy who had a girl in every port, or of Gregorio Del Pilar as just another misguided  anti-American. As for EDSA 1986, they think it an incident that ended the “Golden Age” that “the best president the Philippines has ever had” made possible.

But what  makes celebrating EDSA 1986 less than attractive even for the better informed is that, while  often described  as a “revolution,” it was hardly that. It did not dismantle or even truly reform the feudal system. The land tenancy anomaly in fact survived it and even emerged stronger than ever. Inviting foreign investments into the country is still the main development strategy of the successors of Marcos, Sr. as it has been since 1946; and industrialization has never been seriously contemplated as economic policy.  

That “revolution” was no social upheaval either. It did not end the vast inequality, the social injustice, and the poverty that still afflict millions of Filipinos. And the most that it did politically was to replace one wing of the ruling elite with another. It did not replace the dynasties that have monopolized political power in this country for decades, and in fact eventually allowed the representatives of their most backward, bureaucrat-capitalist faction to eventually regain and keep power indefinitely.

But EDSA 1986 was nevertheless a historic moment, though brief, of mass empowerment. After decades of tolerating corrupt and incompetent misgovernment from 1946 onwards, some two million Filipinos braved the guns, the tanks, the helicopter gunships and the mercenary soldiery of the dictatorship. They had had enough of the arbitrary arrests, the torture, the enforced disappearances and the extrajudicial killings of the regime, and knew that it was time to end the kleptocracy that had brought only dishonor to their country and suffering to its people. It was  revolutionary in that sense — and it is for that reason that, while they have never found the words to  say it, the ruling dynasts and power elite fear it. 

But Duterte is  not alone in wanting it and its lessons away, and neither is his successor. Their predecessors were equally focused on getting the people to forget it — and for entirely the same  reasons. He was one of the leading figures of EDSA 1986, but the late former President Fidel Ramos repeatedly muted its significance and warned against its repetition supposedly because the political instability it would generate would discourage foreign investments. Joseph Estrada’s removal from office via EDSA II understandably made him, his family and his allies leery of anything similar, while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo allegedly contemplated declaring martial law out of fear that an EDSA III could depose her.  

He was accused of fomenting a military putsch during the presidency of the late Corazon  Aquino. Former Senator — and now Legal Counsel of the son of the President he helped depose — Juan Ponce Enrile quite logically encouraged the Filipino people to remember EDSA I  differently instead of  discouraging its celebration.  Like Ramos, he was one of the 1986 event’s leading figures, and apparently believed that something similar could propel him to power. Rather than admit that what overthrew Marcos, St. in 1986 was the people’s direct action, he declared at some point when he was eying the Presidency that it was the military that had done the deed. 

That claim denies the crucial role of the millions of civilians who massed at EDSA from February 22 to 25. Elements of the military were indeed involved in the uprising, but without the support of a sizable segment of the Filipino people, those rebel units would have been crushed by the superior numbers and firepower of Marcos’ military loyalists.  It was unarmed civilians — nuns and priests, students, professionals and other middle-class folk — who faced Marcos’ tanks and  prevented Ramos’, Enrile’s and their military cohorts’ annihilation in 1986. 

But it could not  have happened without  the decade-long efforts of Church people, journalists, writers, teachers, students, artists,  and many other sectors to provide the citizenry, from day one of martial rule,  the information  denied them by the regime-controlled press that finally led even entire families to mass at EDSA from February 22 to 25. The dictatorship would have  prevailed without them — and the same dedication to good government of  almost the same sectors assured the ouster of Joseph Estrada via EDSA II in the year 2000.

As contrary to the facts as Enrile’s re-invention of EDSA I  may be, it seems that Duterte shared his view, although not necessarily because of his say-so, and without publicly admitting it. The same assumption of military primacy as Enrile’s was evident in his  courtship of the officer corps — his packing his government with retired generals, and his putting the interests and welfare of the soldiery above those of everyone else’s in terms of perks and salaries. Rather than the people shielding him from the military, it seemed that  Duterte  anticipated the possibility that the military might have had to shield him from the people. 

His successor does not seem to share those fears, perhaps because it was his father who, after all, transformed the military from the fist of civilian authority into a power broker whose support has become vital to every post-martial law regime. As for another People Power uprising, that, too, seems  unlikely despite the inflation, the hunger and the rank injustice that afflict millions of Filipinos.   

Mr. Marcos, Jr. and his family are now in the same position as that of their late patriarch during his reign as President — that of being protected by the self-serving loyalty of the military — but  with a further advantage. Added to that is the cluelessness and apathy of the heirs of a generation that brought down a seemingly invincible tyranny to which government was but a banquet for it to feast on. It is this latter fact that makes it so much the worse for the long-delayed and so problematic democratization of  Philippine society and governance.

(BusinessWorld)

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Its role in the making of a democratic, humane and just society does not usually figure in their calculations, and neither does its being equally crucial to each individual’s development and productivity as a citizen and as a human being. But there is also the widespread and quite disturbing view that education has its limits — that one can be “too learned” and therefore deserving of the dismissive “masyadong marunong” epithet, which is usually reserved for the critical and questioning, such as, say, student activists.

However, whatever their views on education may be and whatever their class differences, most Filipinos, if not all, do their utmost to start their children young. The wealthy and even some middle-class families enroll them in the most expensive and presumably best schools. Their poorer counterparts put them in public schools, which in the more remote areas of the country can mean the children’s walking for kilometers in sun and rain, sometimes across rivers, hilly terrain, and along mountain trails.

They all know that education begins with such fundamentals as reading and writing, and adding, dividing and multiplying sums. But already in crisis for decades — haunted by shortfalls in classrooms and teachers as well as books and equipment — the basic education system of the Philippines fell even further behind that of other countries during the two-year-long pandemic lockdown.

Learners, parents, and teachers struggled with a host of problems in the 2021 “new normal” Department of Education (DepEd) policy of limited face-to-face classes in November that year. Schools re-opened in 2022, but the system continued to lag behind that of most countries for a number of reasons, one of them the Duterte policy of keeping schools closed until a vaccine became available.

In the first year of the lockdown, the basic education system (K-12) failed to develop effective programs for remote learning, mixed, or blended teaching. Because of the economic downturn, more than 25 percent of pre-school to high school students also failed to enroll, and nearly 2,000 public and private schools were forced to close.

The Economic Policy Institute identified in September 2020 as a “critical opportunity gap” in online learning the uneven access to computers and the Internet. That “digital divide” affected not only learners but also their parents and teachers who had problems in adjusting to the different teaching methods the pandemic had forced on teachers. It also further marginalized students with special needs.

But the ills of the educational system are even more disturbing than those caused by government ineptitude during the pandemic. The World Bank (WB) July 2021 assessment of the state of the country’s education mentioned a host of problems that have been plaguing the educational system even before COVID-19. It found that more than 80 percent of Filipino students could not meet minimum levels of proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics even before the pandemic lockdown.

The most that then Education Secretary Leonor Briones could do in 2021 was to demand an apology from the WB for not alerting DepEd on the release of the study: she did not dispute its findings. The Duterte administration itself showed little to no interest in education. While DepEd continued to receive the biggest share of the national budget, its allocations were still insufficient in addressing such problems as the classroom and teacher shortages.

The same administration pointedly raised police and military salaries while ignoring the long-standing need for similar increases in teacher wages. It instead militarized the bureaucracy while increasing its own 2022 confidential, intelligence and contingency funds.

If there is anything that demands a comprehensive, “whole-of -nation” approach to its problems, it is education. What is needed is to identify the priority issues in it that demand solutions, and to craft the relevant policies. But no sense of urgency drove the past regime to address the perennial problems of the educational system. Neither was it even remotely interested in looking into how other countries remedied or mitigated the negative impact of the pandemic on their own educational systems.

The crisis in education demands urgent solutions. But Briones’ successor at DepEd has so far done little to address the above issues. Vice-President Sara Duterte’s Basic Education Report (BER) showcased her supposed commitment to solving the problems of the system which she had earlier crowed she could solve within six years.

During a public forum in which she presented the BER last January, VP-cum-DepEd Secretary Duterte described herself as “a mother of four learners” who is at the same time responsible for 28 million others, making her “interest in the future of Philippine education…very personal.” She admitted that Filipino students are not “academically proficient.” But her BER, though long in rhetoric, was far short in the specifics of how exactly she would address it.

She provided information that has long been conventional knowledge, such as the shortage in classrooms and resources, which she described as the “most pressing issue” in education; the low literacy and numeracy levels of learners that the 2018 report of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found; the cluttered… K-12 program’s failure to assure the employability of graduates; and the lack of training and support systems for teachers.

She did mention plans to address these problems, such as revising the K-12 curriculum and providing more training programs for teachers and school administrators. Duterte’s statements on these deficiencies were welcomed by education experts, but her report neither presented data nor described what steps DepEd would take to solve the many other problems she admitted have hounded the educational system for decades.

Among them, certainly, is the need to address the salary and staffing problems that have long been a factor in the dismal state of Philippine education. But she did not mention anything about raising teachers’ salaries or increasing the number of the guidance counselors and teaching assistants that are needed to reduce the burdens on teachers.

Neither did her report reveal the progress of DepEd’s K-12 review, in which, incidentally, the involvement of such stakeholders as teachers’ and parents’ groups has been minimal, if at all. There is as well the need to assure language proficiency as a fundamental requirement for better learning, to achieve which a number of strategies are available. But the Duterte BER had nothing to say about it. Improving teacher training should similarly be in the agenda. It should ideally consist of improving access to research facilities, books and competent instructors at the formal schooling stage, and providing continuing teacher education after. But the Duterte BER provided little detail about it.

Unless the real problems of Philippine basic education are addressed with real solutions, it will continue to be the less than reliable foundation for the making of the employable citizens millions of parents hope their children will be. Least of all will it be the sound basis for their contributing to the development of the society of progress, peace, justice, humaneness and freedom that has long eluded these troubled isles.

First published in BusinessWorld. Photo from Mayor Vico Sotto’s Twitter account.

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But the next coup that should worry pro-democracy Filipinos will not be in this country — at least not yet. Some commentators are saying it is already happening — and in a most unlikely place: in the United States of America, which over the past 76 years  has engineered “regime change” and instigated  coups of its own against a number of governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

None of the foreign groups the US despises so much but a home-grown one is the source of the threat. No longer the same party of which Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery in 1865, was a leading member, the Republican Party (GOP — shorthand for Grand Old Party) of former President Donald Trump, said Washington Post columnist George Will, is “an insurgency,” and a “neo-fascist” organization, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Emeritus Professor Noam Chomsky. It is in the middle of a campaign to seize total power by 2024, when Trump is likely to run for a second term.

Social critic Chomsky has described the campaign Trump and his allies are orchestrating as “a soft coup” intent on a Trump victory in 2024 regardless of whether he gets the necessary number of votes or not. The conspirators are concentrating on winning this year’s November 8 midterm elections for Congresspersons  and governors who would then appoint  state officials who can be relied on to disenfranchise likely anti-Trump voters and manipulate the numbers so Trump can again be President. 

They are making sure that their candidates in November do not only believe that the 2020 elections Trump lost to Joseph  Biden were fraudulent, but  are also diehard Trumpists. Trump endorsed for the GOP primary elections which decide who will be its candidates in the midterm elections only those party members who fit that category, while fulminating against the few Republicans who have dared challenge his claim that he won the 2020 Presidential elections.

One of the most prominent of the latter is Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, the daughter of Richard Cheney, who was US Vice President from 2001 to 2009. A conservative like her father, Cheney has a voting record in the House of Representatives of supporting Trump, but was among the ten Republicans who voted with the Democrats to impeach him a few days before the end of his term in January 2021 for “inciting an insurrection” to prevent the official declaration of Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States. She is also the Vice Chair of the bipartisan January 6th House Committee investigating the violent attempt on that date to keep Trump in power.

Her refusal to support Trump’s claims that he won a second term in 2020 and her constant warning to the US public of the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his fact-resistant, neo-fascist and white supremacist supporters cost her her seat in Congress. She is still the lone Wyoming Representative, but only until the end of the year, because she lost the GOP primary elections last week to a supporter of Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 elections.

In testimony to the continuing hold of Trump on the GOP, most of those he supported won or are likely to win the party’s primaries. They will face Democratic Party candidates in the midterm elections, which are likely to result in the GOP’s regaining control of Congress, or at least the House of Representatives. Trump’s base among non-college graduate white workers is still intact, while Biden’s approval rating is at an abysmally low 41 percent. A GOP win this November would help Trump recapture the White House in 2024.

The January 6th 2021 attack by an armed mob of Trump supporters on the US Congress, in which the lives of its members and that of Vice President Mike Pence were imperiled, and some police officers killed and injured, was encouraged by Trump.

It was a coup attempt that tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, say analysts, and if it had succeeded would have undermined the rule of law and the US Constitution. Some observers have gone even farther: they look at that incident as an attack on US democracy, which they say is “hanging by a thread” because of Trump and company’s continuing efforts to return to power at whatever cost.

Trump is facing a veritable legion of legal problems ranging from allegations of tax fraud to unlawfully keeping in his Florida home classified documents vital to US national security. But those cases are likely to take some time to resolve, and could very well be dismissed should he succeed through fair means or foul in getting a second term, because the President is immune from suits arising from the performance of their official duties. Hence Trump’s focus on laying the groundwork now to assure his victory in 2024.

Whatever happens in the US will eventually have an impact on much of the world including the Philippines. But whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans who are in power does not make much of a difference in US foreign policy. That policy is primarily focused on preventing the rise of any other power that could challenge its global hegemony, part of which demands that countries such as the Philippines remain in its sphere of influence.

Despite the Democrats’ supposedly more enlightened perspectives, in furtherance of US strategic interests another Congressional delegation visited Taiwan only 17 days after the visit there of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both contradict the “One China” principle enshrined in the 1972 Zhou Enlai/ Richard Nixon Shanghai Communique. Contrary to the supposed centrality of human rights in his foreign policy, Biden himself visited Saudi Arabia a month ago despite the apparent involvement of some of its highest officials in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

But as starkly demonstrative of the arrogance of power as those acts are, so can it be claimed that the seizure of power by a blatantly authoritarian, anti-immigrant, and racist regime could lead to, say, even harsher restrictions on immigration to the US as well as the further encouragement of hate crimes against people of color.

An even more aggressive US policy that could lead to a devastating war with China over the Taiwan question and/or the West Philippine Sea issue is also possible under such a regime. So is diminished support for global initiatives to address climate change — Trump and his minions think global warming is a hoax — as well as even less attention to the human rights record of authoritarian regimes while increasing military aid for them as long as they support the US against its Russian and Chinese rivals.

Like any coup in the less developed countries of the Third World, a coup in the US, even a “soft” one, would also be solely focused on advancing and defending the interests of its instigators and of the wing of the power elite it installs in power. The rest of the world would hardly matter.

But what is happening in the domestic politics of the United States has been largely unremarked in these isles and elsewhere. The next two years may prove that parochial indifference problematic,  even catastrophic,  for the Philippines and for much of the globe.

First published in BusinessWorld. Photo from the Voice of America.

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