The real story behind the ambush of soldiers in Mulondo town in Lanao del Sur

MARAWI CITY. The ambush on August 17 was led by Mangombaya Hadji Mustapha, a.k.a. Kalamunggay, who is a notorious illegal logger with a more or less 60 to 80 armed followers.

In the1980's, Kalamunggay founded and led RIMORUNG, a group of bandits preying mostly on victims who travelled along the national road from Marawi City to Masiu, Lanao del Sur. He is wanted for involvement in several criminal cases filed in courts in Lanao del Sur, the most noted was the beheading of several tribal people from Bumbaran and Wao in Lanao del Sur, and in Talakag, Bukidnon. The cases, ranging from murder, robbery in band, arson and rape, are archived since most of the victims are afraid to pursue for fear of reprisals.

During the ambush, Kalamunggay acted it alone with his band, and was helped and aided only by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Commander Aleem Pangalian and his men after sensing the arrival of Army reinforcements.

According to an eyewitness, an hour before the ambush, Kalamunggay was seen talking with the team leader of the Civilian Volunteer Organization (CVO), Mustapha Mundir, after his cargoes of illegally cut logs loaded in several trucks were stopped in a checkpoint manned by Mundir at Bubong, Lanao del Sur, a 20-minute drive away from the ambush site.

The said witness overheard the two haggling, saying that Kalamunggay was asking Mundir to let his cargoes pass the detachment even with no legal papers allowing the transport of logs.

"Piray SOP a kayo aya,? (How much is the SOP for these logs?)," Kalamunggay asked Mundir who replied, saying its P20,000.00.

Sensing that Mundir would not changed his demand, the eyewitness saw Kalamunggay dialling his cellphones and asked, "Andakano? (Where are you?)"

A firefight ensued between the group of Mundir with his four CVO members and Kalamunggay with his 60 heavily armed followers which lasted for 15 minutes before the group of Kalamunggay retreated near Mulondo, Lanao del Sur.

By that time, a three-vehicle convoy of Philippine Army soldiers were passing along the national highway in Brgy. Ilian, Mulondo, Lanao del Sur. Unfortunately for the said convoy, they were fired upon by Kalamunggay and his band with the help of MILF fighters. "Akala kasi nila, hinahabol sila ng mga sundalo na nakasakay sa mga truck!"

The incident claimed the lives of 12 soldiers and the wounding of 11 CVOs and civilians.

But, what was unfortunate, was the seeming reluctance of the officials of the Philippine Army in Lanao del Sur led by Col. Rey Ardo, the 103rd Brigade Commander, to conduct relentless hot pursuit operations against the group of Kalamunggay who are still holed up in Brgy. Panayangan in Maguing, Lanao del Sur.

It is a sad reality that the practice of illegal logging remain unabated and worst, being done in cahoots with the Philippine Army based in Lanao del Sur.

The Reason For Our Existence

Filipino soldiers among us, the basic duty of the Filipino soldier is to defend our nation. But for whom and against whom?

Normally, this question is not being asked just like asking to members of a family this question, “ if you have to protect your family, for whom should you protect them against whom?” is not being asked. It is not being asked because the answer which is, “for the family against trespassers” is already a basic natural instinct.

Our bodies have a defense labelled as the immune system. The MedicineNet.com from its website, http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp? articlekey=3907 defines the Immune system as responsible for distinguishing us from everything foreign to us, and for protecting us against infections and foreign substances. The immune system works to seek and kill invaders.

Just like the defense at the family level and the biological level, defense system at the social level, in particular at the national level is not being given attention to as the unit it is supposed to be the beneficiary of its function is also at least functional, normally not pathological and preferably vibrant.

But when a nation as that of ours manifest painful symptoms not normal to other nations especially progressive ones like Japan, Vietnam, Israel, France or Finland, then we have to undergo examination, review our history and diagnosis. It is but proper that this is what a person experiencing pain, has to undergo—medical examination, medical history review, and diagnosis before treatment options can be decided for application.

After the 1920s, the situation in the Philippines showed that defending against who and for whom have to be reviewed.

Some of the Symptoms:

Our relatively large proportion of forest area has been decreasing at a fast rate causing flash floods and erosion of hillsides and mountainsides every year. During the last quarter of 2004, some 1500 people perished in the flashfloods and landslides in Aurora and neighboring provinces. This was caused by logging operations financed by 5 Chinese named by former DENR Secretary Alvarez. As reported in many news reports, a big proportion of those have been involved in the financing of logging are Chinese.

We have a fertile land. Our food production including rice production of which we were one of the highest in exporting to other countries has now gone down to making us one of lowest in production making us highest in importing. As reported in many reports, Chinese are mostly the ones in cartels buying farm products to farmers at a very low price and distribute them to retailers at a very high price. There is a report now that a group of Chinese are flooding the Philippine market with very low priced eggs threatening to kill the egg livelihood of the Filipinos.

Sometime in the 1950s, there have been killings of some of us Filipinos by Americans in Clark Field, Pampanga when it was still a U. S. Base. But the American military refused to hand over the killers to the Philippine courts for trial. There was an incident in which some of us Filipinos were alleged to be pilferers were shot down like dogs inside the American bases.

There was also the detention of Enrique Santa Maria, a Filipino mining operator, by the Clark Field U. S. Air Base authorities for mining in Bueno Hill, Capas, Tarlac, which was within the American reservation.

In 1964, one of us Filipinos, a boy in Clark Field was shot in the back by an American sentry. This was followed shortly by the killing of another one of us, a Filipino fisherman by American sentries at the Olongapo Naval Base in Subic, Zambales.

In 1968, another one of us Filipinos was shot to death by an American sentry in Cavite.

The following year, another trigger happy American soldier, who was off duty, went hunting with his service pistol, in broad daylight shot to death another one of us, a Filipino employee of the military base. The American soldier said he mistook that one of us Filipinos for a “wild boar.” The American military court hastily tried the offender and acquitted him. A few days later, he was reported to have left for the United States

We now have one of the highest death rates in the world of persons who were either vocal in exposing or fighting corruption in the government. This is an indication of sytematic killing of Filipinos of which, only an organization like that of the Armed Forces of the Philippines or the Philippine National Police is capable of executing. This is a symptom of systematic killing of own nationals by a defense organization of the same nationals.

In General Santos City ISM participants investigated several facilities including the local airport, the Makar Wharf, the fish port, and a new luxury hotel and concluded that they are grossly out of proportion to the actual needs of the people of the city and the region. The fact that these huge infrastructures were built recently with US funding in a region that is strategically favorable for military use raises the suspicion that they were constructed for future use by the US military.

There was a case of an american convicted of raping a Filipina. The convicted american was sprang out of Manila City Jail by Americans helped by Filipino Government Officials.

This is a pattern of foreign trespassing. All through these years, the Philippine government labelled legally as such have not only not done anything to stop these trespasses but have even collaborated with them. Instead of utilizing the national defense organization to check foreign trespassings, the Gloria Macabebe Arrobo government utilized these organization to kidnap a witness to anomalous dealings with the broadband deal of the Chinese, kill Filipinos fighting corruption in the government, manipulate election results and protect the foreign trespassers.

In developed nations, their soldiers instinctively defend their nation against foreign trespassers. We only read their histories. The Japanese generals in the 1900s threathened to remove their prime minister when he took American for his advisers. Gen de Gaulle led a resistance movement against German invasion and their puppet government led by Gen Petain in the 1940s. The Vietnamese people and their soldiers drove away the American invaders in the 1970s.

The MedicineNet.com also states that a key part of the immune system's role is to differentiate between invaders and the body's own cells– when it fails to make this distinction, a reaction against 'self' cells and molecules causes autoimmune disease.

Ours is a case of an autoimmune social disease. We have first of all to realize that defending Americans and Chinese who are our invaders, and their collaborator GMA is abnormal. It is pathologic.
The next thing to do if we still do not know what to do with this case is to review our history. Let us research our glorious moment when we became independent of Spain and produced our own government, our own defense system, constitution, a republic and a national identity. Whereas before there were the visayans, the tagalogs, the moros and many different groups of people, we became one territory and one nation when we became independent.

After that, during the 1900s, the Americans invaded our country, destroyed our defense system, killed our people and corrupted our education, communication, political and psycho-sociological sytem with an Americanized Infected Disorder Syndrome.

This in a very brief review, is the underlying cause of our sickness today, including thatof the painful situation in Mindanao.

Filipino Soldiers among us, for whom are we defending against whom?

(Posted by Josemiguel at the Sundalo Forum)

The reformed military with genuine revolutionary program is the only hope.

Father Reuters says “Let's not just abandon the Philippines ” because since 40-years ago our nation has been heading “towards an irreversible path of economic decline and moral decadence.” He says further, “We have tried people power twice; in both cases, it fell short. Maybe it's time to try prayer power.”

We tried though prayers a lot esp. in EDSA I that led the evil forces of Marcos dictatorship not to defy with viciousness and ruthlessness, the 300 strong military rebels backed by the critical mass of people. But prayer power seemed not enough.

The military was too fast to hand over to Cory and GMA political forces the reins of the govt. They failed to educate them and get their real commitment to sacrifice and if need be, die for our country and people, not only done by the soldiers being abused and corrupted by them.

They were the same old dogs with different collars only, afflicted with the decades old culture of corruption. When the military revolutionaries realized such grave error in our nation’s history, they did pockets of rebellion against Cory and GMA but didn’t know the evil forces of corruption grew much bigger than their pangs. They learned the techniques of suppressing people power – the choke point strategy of the RAM then was met also with the same approach pouring loyalist forces to strategic choke points to counter the people’s movements to the seat of power. People power has become a PUFF, no longer an effective means.

The political forces entrenched more themselves bribing and corrupting the military whose leaderships couldn’t just reject. They were easily brained washed that according to the Constitution, political authority is supreme over the military and must be protected and safeguarded at all times, no matter what the prevailing corrupt practices they used in getting and keeping themselves into power. They are in effect illegitimate in the throne of power that the military keeps on putting them entrenched on the pedestal. This runs counter to the very essence of the Constitution.

Yes, prayers could be. This had always been resorted to by the people, esp. the poor ones. But nothing significant changed the tide of the sad history of the nation. Prayer power fell short??? The political leaders and their corrupt values being exorcised by prayers??? No way will they ever reform!!!

For the military revolutionaries and the well meaning leaders in the noble profession of arms, prayers or no prayers, this has been their much much long wish for our great mass of people: the entire AFP be unified so they have the solid will to free the people from the decades old of vicious, ruthless, corrupt political bondage. They learned so much about the lessons of our nation’s political history at the national and local level: sa kaparangan, kabundukan, kanayunan, lungsod man o hindi – pare-parehong mga ganid ang mga nasa poder pampulitika. Kasama na rito ang mga sumusuporta sa NPA at Muslim extortionist-terrorists, ninanakaw nila ang kaban ng bayan para mabihisan sila (like uniforms being tailored even by military tailors outside camps) at maarmasan sila.

So, the reformed military with genuine revolutionary program is the only hope. Mao did it as he knew political power emanates from the barrel of the gun.

TITO'66

We have lost our constitutional options

The Philippine system of elections, as has been widely acknowledged, is a flawed process that produces only dishonest government leaders. Since the time it was first implemented it has shown no acceptable measure of honesty and fairness.

Like a bad tree planted on our grounds it has continually borne bad fruits that have poisoned our society, our culture and all the other facets of our life as a nation.

Our election process is flawed not only in the sense that the counting of votes is easy to manipulate. Our present system essentially requires every candidate to spend an unreasonably huge amount of money for his campaign. A presidential candidate, for example, necessarily has to set up a huge campaign network that requires enormous amount of money to run effectively. So does every senator, congressman and governor.

First in the mind of every newly elected politician is how he shall recover his election expenses. After he has recovered his investments through illicit and immoral use of his newly acquired power, he then works to similarly generate funds for the next election. By this time, he would have lost all his scruples. Once he has saved enough to ensure his re-election, stealing would have become a habit. He then goes on to endlessly acquire more and more, to continuously satisfy a luxurious lifestyle.

Since almost all of our political leaders go through this route of political spending, cheating and stealing, we continuously suffer from corrupt leadership. After all, what can we expect of a nation led mostly by thieves and cheats?

As most of our politicians are irreversibly corrupt they are rich only in rhetoric and promises but utterly poor in delivery. From being number one in Southeast Asia in economic performance the Philippines under their leadership is now at the bottom of the list. At over 50% poverty rate, we have the highest percentage of families living in destitution. Furthermore, over 17% of our people continually go hungry as they often miss a meal or two in some days for lack of money. With not much to show where our borrowed money have gone, our total debt has now reached an amount we can never hope to pay unless our leaders mend their corrupt ways. The nation's annual amortization for this debt is now computed at over 90% of our country's gross revenue.

Surely, if we allow our present political leaders to continue with their merry but corrupt ways they will bring us to the gutter. That is if we are not yet there.

Actually, we have not only failed in economic performance but we have also done extremely badly in practically all other aspects of governance. We have performed terribly in the field of education and sports, with Pacquiao as our only saving grace. Peace and order has not been improving. Worst, there is no longer a government institution we can trust. Even the Judiciary, including the Supreme Court, for good reasons, is now widely perceived to have been corrupted by power and money.

Clearly, our present system has miserably failed our people. Our nation does not lack competent and honest men but because we have a corrupt election system, we find it impossible to elect even a few honest men.

We need to bring into our government leadership untainted breed of individuals but we can do it only if we change the manner we choose our leaders. Our present crop of politicians, however, who thrive only in a flawed electoral system where guns, goons and gold determine victory, will not allow meaningful change.

We need a window of opportunity where we can institute meaningful and lasting reforms without the intervention of the enemies of change.

We know such an opportunity can never exist within the bounds of the present Constitution as the mechanism by which it can be obtained are in the hands of the same corrupt political leaders from whose abuse and manipulation we wish to be freed.

It is, therefore, only through a direct exercise of our sovereign right as a people by instituting an interim government that we can break the chain that tie us to a flawed and destructive political system. Such a democratic initiative is legitimate and it is our only remaining road to freedom. As the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 when it decided on the legitimacy of the Cory government, "it is an inherent right of the people to cast out their rulers, change their policy or effect radical reforms in their system of government or institution by force or a general uprising when the legal and constitutional methods of making change have proved inadequate or are so obstructed as to be available."

To do nothing about our country's continuing journey to destruction is treason.
Col. Guillermo Cunanan, PMA '66
Malaya

Why most soldiers have lost the will to fight

The slow and painful death of Marine Cpl. Angelo Abeto in the battlefield in Basilan, as recounted by GMA 7 reporter Jiggy Manicad, is an eye-opener.

It gives the public a first-hand view of why the military is losing the war against enemies of the state: The foot soldier’s welfare is the least of the government’s concern.

Soldiers, as well as policemen in far-flung areas, have lost their will to fight because of low morale. Low morale is caused by the perception that they are being fed to the dogs by corrupt government officials.

Abeto would have lived if he had been immediately evacuated by helicopter from the battlefield, which he cried for as he lay wounded.

“Ang sakit ng ulo ko! Hindi ako makahinga! (I have a terrible headache! I can’t breathe!) Medevac! Medevac!” Manicad recounted Abeto as shouting.

“Medevac” is the military acronym for medical evacuation or transportation by either ambulance or helicopter from the battlefield.

A military helicopter came all right for Abeto, but it was too late. He died on the way to the hospital.

There are many Abetos in Mindanao and other places where soldiers and policemen are fighting the New People’s Army and Moro guerrillas.

That’s why soldiers and policemen don’t fight as they used to many years ago, because the government does not attend to their medical needs when they’re wounded.

Wounded soldiers, who are lucky enough to be brought to the V. Luna Medical Center in Manila, run out of luck at the hospital.

At V. Luna, soldier-patients are told to buy their own medicines as the hospital pharmacy doesn’t have enough stock. They are told they will be reimbursed later.

To a typical soldier who lives a hand-to-mouth existence, buying his own medicine is like telling a waitress to dip into her pocket to give the customer his change as the restaurant cashier doesn’t have the cash yet.

* * *
When my father was in the military service in the late 1940s up to his retirement in 1970, soldiers fought hard in the battlefield because they were given the best possible medical attention at the various military station hospitals and, in severe cases, at the Camp Crame hospital and V. Luna.

Also during the time of my old man, soldiers’ families were given the best possible care by military doctors assigned in every camp.

At that time, soldiers dreaded retirement as they and their dependents would be losing free medical treatment and hospitalization. They retired after serving 30 or more years.

Now, soldiers are retiring en masse when they reach 20 years of service.

By Ramon Tulfo, On Target, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 08/14/2008

TV reporter witnesses 4-hour dying of a Marine

What this TV reporter witnessed on Monday in Tipo-Tipo, Basilan, echoes yet again the tragedy of soldiers dying in the battlefield because of the limitations of the Armed Forces itself.

It also showed that the issue, one of a number raised five years ago by renegade junior military officers in the Oakwood mutiny, remains a problem and is far from resolution.

By his account Tuesday to the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net), GMA 7 reporter Jiggy Manicad traveled with his crew to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) for a “simple coverage” of the first ever automated elections in Philippine history.

But the news team found itself trapped in heavy fighting between government troops and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels, and Manicad found himself witnessing the agony of the severely wounded Marine Cpl. Angelo Abeto, begging for a “medivac” as he lay bleeding for four long hours.

No Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopter arrived to evacuate Abeto and three other wounded Marines and a militiaman, Manicad said.

It was a Sikorsky helicopter from the US military, which has troops in Zamboanga City, that picked up the wounded men in the afternoon.

Bled to death

“We learned that on the way to Zamboanga, Corporal Abeto died,” Manicad said on the phone from Lamitan, Basilan.

The way he saw it, the Marine, who was hit by shrapnel from mortar fire, had bled to death.

“His whole body was already pale when I saw him lying on the gurney at the Marines camp. He kept on shouting, ‘Ang sakit na ng ulo ko! Hindi ako makahinga! (I have such a headache! I can’t breathe!) Medivac! Medivac!’” Manicad recounted.

Four of Abeto’s fellow soldiers stayed by his side, rallying him to hang on and fight for his life.

Manicad said he had heard a number of Marines complain that military choppers were immediately available when generals needed them but that it was often a futile wait for wounded soldiers.

On the phone, however, Marine Lt. Gen. Nelson Allaga, chief of the AFP Western Mindanao Command, denied that Abeto had died from loss of blood and that the PAF had not sent choppers to Tipo-Tipo.

“[Abeto] did not die because of loss of blood. He was hit in the head and back. He was seriously wounded,” Allaga told the Inquirer. Quoting military doctors, he said Abeto would not have survived his injuries.

Allaga also said PAF choppers had arrived earlier in Tipo-Tipo than the US chopper.

Daylong firefight

Abeto was part of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 10 that engaged some 300 MILF rebels in a daylong firefight to drive away the latter, who were purportedly planning to take over the town of Tipo-Tipo in protest of the ARMM elections.

According to Manicad’s account, he and his team started their election coverage on Monday at around 6:30 a.m.

They were to document the collection and transport of ballot boxes from the municipal hall to the schools for the elections. But they were diverted when told that Cabangalan Bridge in Tipo-Tipo had been blown up by armed men believed to be MILF guerrillas.

After wrapping up a report on the bridge, Manicad, along with cameraman Gregg Gonzales, assistant cameraman Jonathan Palisoc, and driver Ding Lagoyo, returned to the municipal hall.

Manicad and his crew

At around 8:45 a.m., they were informed that some 300 MILF fighters were already at the bridge.

The Marines and the police began to prepare for a fight, and the teachers and residents of Tipo-Tipo started to flee to the nearby town of Unkaya Pukan some 30 minutes away by foot.

From a distance

Manicad continued his account thus:

At the onset of the firefight, the news team took cover in the Tipo-Tipo municipal hall but subsequently rushed to Unkaya Pukan, where even Mayor Joel Maturan had armed himself in case the fighting spilled over to his town.

Manicad and his crew covered the fighting from a safe distance.

Still, they saw some 300 MILF rebels led by four commanders spread on the other side of the highway that separated the government troops from the guerrillas who were in fatigue uniforms.

To Manicad, it appeared that the Marines were severely undermanned in the first hours of the fighting. He learned that most of the troops had been deployed for election duties in the other ARMM provinces.

“There were reinforcements, but they came really late in the day—almost at the time of clearing operations,” said Manicad, 33, who has covered the military and defense beat.

‘A lot of snipers’

The fighting lasted for 10 hours, Manicad said.

He said the Marines had mortars, M-16 rifles and .50 cal. sniper rifles, and the MILF, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and “a lot of snipers.”

“They were strong,” he said of the MILF.

Manicad said he believed that the rebels had a well-planned effort to take over Tipo-Tipo on Monday.

He said cell sites had been destroyed a day earlier, and all roads leading to other towns had been turned into ambush sites by the rebels, practically isolating Tipo-Tipo.

Reprise of kidnapping

Late Monday night, text messages that Manicad and his team could not be reached by GMA 7 headquarters in Manila made the rounds.

The team had not been able to file a report from Tipo-Tipo, raising fears of a reprise of the kidnapping of an ABS-CBN news team in Sulu two months ago.

Isolated

Manicad said he had exhausted all means to contact GMA 7 headquarters but that Tipo-Tipo had effectively been isolated.

He and his team were able to leave Tipo-Tipo early Tuesday morning, and reached Lamitan at around 8:30 a.m.

After phoning his bosses to inform them that he and his crew were safe, Manicad immediately went to work to tell Corporal Abeto’s story.

Nikko Dizon, Philippine DailyInquirer

Surrender and betrayal

Just so it’s in context: Mrs. Arroyo’s deal for "peace" in Southern Mindanao is analogous to the Americans giving the descendants of Geronimo and his Apaches exclusive ownership of Arizona and New Mexico and the descendants of Sitting Bull and his Sioux exclusive ownership of Montana and parts of Wyoming and Dakota. Everyone should thus congratulate the MILF rebels for a great victory over the Philippine government and its armed forces.The deal is nothing less than a surrender.

While no one will dispute the great need to finally bring peace to conflict-troubled areas in Mindanao, the soldiers who’ve fought and bled and died there because they were told that this served the interest of their government surely have a right — or their families do — to now feel betrayed. After all, they sacrificed much — as much as the MILF fighters did — but they are not to be rewarded with the kind of settlement for which the word generous would be an understatement. The Filipino people, who are only now learning about what was to be given away in their names because Mrs. Arroyo and her panel of negotiators tried to seal this agreement behind their backs, also have a right to feel betrayed.

Presidential spokesmen and other apologists for the deal are being disingenuous when they call the agreement a mere "discussion document" and quibble that it will still require enabling laws, plebiscites, and an amendment of the Constitution before it can be called an agreement. They ask us to believe that recognizing the MILF as the sole representatives of a separatist group and treating them as equals in "a piece of paper" signed in a foreign country by authorized representatives of the Philippine government (including its secretary of foreign affairs) and witnessed by representatives of other foreign governments (including superpower mediator America) has no effect on the MILF’s standing in the international community and on our own actions regarding their separatist movement. They should try telling that to the marines in Mindanao.

Reading the wordy document, one cannot shake the feeling that the MILF leadership drafted it exactly the way they wanted — they even managed to delete all mention of our Constitution or of a National Government — and the Philippine panel just meekly agreed to it. That, of course, is a tribute to the MILF negotiators and their foreign supporters. Mrs. Arroyo and her panel should, however, consider this a sad reflection on their own negotiating abilities, assuming of course that their goal was actually the national welfare and not just their own personal interests or the interests of some foreign power.

Consider just a few of the things the Philippine negotiators agreed to. For one thing, the panel agreed to define the "Bangsamoro" people as "those who are natives or original inhabitants of Mindanao and its adjacent islands including Palawan and the Sulu archipelago at the time of conquest or colonization of its descendants" and agreed that "ownership of the [Bangsamoro] homeland is vested exclusively in them by virtue of their prior rights of occupation that had inhered in them as sizable bodies of people, delimited by their ancestors since time immemorial, and being the first politically organized dominant occupants." Note that if it is the Spanish conquest referred to, the definition excludes all those who moved to Mindanao only after 1565. Note also that the so-defined Bangsamoro people own what is designated as their homeland "exclusively," with no apparent qualifications for who might own particular areas now.

Additionally, the panel agreed to acknowledge "any unjust dispossession" or "marginalization" of the Bangsamoros’ "territorial and proprietary rights (and) customary land tenures" and make restitution. This could be taken to mean that land that had been appropriated by Spanish and American colonial authorities or land that had been awarded to homesteaders and settlers for farming or land on which structures like roads and dams and buildings had already been constructed must now be given back. Moreover, "whenever restoration is no longer possible, the GRP [Philippine government] shall take effective measures of adequate reparation collectively beneficial to the Bangsamoro people." That would mean that the Bangsamoro people will have to be paid, presumably by the rest of us.

Then, the panel agreed that "the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) shall have jurisdiction over the management, conservation, development, protection, utilization and disposition of all natural resources, living and non-living, within its internal waters extending fifteen (15) kilometers from the coastline of the BJE area. (and that) the territorial of the BJE shall stretch beyond the BJE internal waters up to the Republic of the Philippines (RP) baselines." This is significant because the panel agreed that "all potential sources of energy, petroleum in situ, hydrocarbon, natural gas and other minerals, including deposits or fields found in territorial waters, shall be shared between the Central Government and the BJE in favor of the latter through production sharing agreement or economic cooperative agreement." And this sharing? "All royalties, bonuses, taxes, charges, custom duties or imposts on natural resources and mineral resources shall be shared by the Parties on a percentage ratio of 75% / 25% in favor of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity." Wow.

Now who heads the BJE? Well, it can only be whoever is designated by the MILF signatories of the agreement. The agreement itself gives implicit recognition to the MILF leader as the representative of the entire Bangsamoro people. Note that it is not the MNLF leader. Nor the ARMM governor. Nor the governor of any province. Nor anyone else.

With respect to the nature of the relationship between the BJE and the Philippine government, the panel agreed that this "shall be associative characterized by shared authority and responsibility." That’s deliberately vague, but the word "associative" implies a relationship between equals. Other parts of the text shed some light on the intentions: "the BJE shall be empowered to build, develop and maintain its own institutions, inclusive of civil service, electoral, financial and banking, education, legislation, legal, economic, and police and internal security force, judicial system and correctional institutions. (and) is free to enter into economic cooperation and trade relations with foreign countries. (and) open Bangsamoro trade missions in foreign countries." Furthermore, the Philippine government is required to "take necessary steps to ensure the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity’s participation in international meetings and events, e.g. ASEAN meetings and other specialized agencies of the United Nations."

What is one to make of such munificent provisions other than that the Philippine government has agreed to surrender part of its territory and allow the establishment of an independent state by the MILF?

There really seems to be no way of interpreting the proposed agreement except as a deal intended solely to benefit the MILF and its foreign sponsors and Mrs. Arroyo and her factotums personally. What the MILF and its backers get from the deal is abundantly clear. The question before us is, what does Mrs. Arroyo get from this that is so important to her that she is willing to betray her soldiers and the Filipino people for it? Let’s guess.

Rene B. Azurin, Strategic Perspective, Business World

Sellout to MILF, or a setup for Charter change?

That the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity will have powers inconsistent with the Philippine Constitution—that much is obvious. Indeed, that is why it can be put into place only when it is approved by the people in a plebiscite.

The next issue is whether our negotiators can agree to submit such proposals to a plebiscite. In effect, they are merely proposing Charter change, which is allowed by the Constitution. To the extent that they promised to do so in an agreement, at worst they were giving conditional consent, subject to ratification by their principals.

The real problem then is whether we are simply being maneuvered into revising the Constitution, where the purported object is to engage our Muslim brethren but the hidden agenda is to enable Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to remain in office beyond 2010. Thus seen, the proposed agreement is the cleverest maneuver. Charter change, despite several fits and starts, couldn’t get off the ground and was finally junked by the Supreme Court. Now suddenly it enlists the cause of Muslim self-determination in Mindanao and—voila!—the lost cause gains new adherents and builds fresh momentum.

The incompatibilities with the Constitution are legion. One, the 1987 Constitution uses the term “autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao” while the pact uses the term “Bangsamoro Juridical Entity” covering a much larger area. The term is at best amorphous, at worst evasive.

“Juridical Entity” is the most generic lawyer-talk for any legal body vested with rights and powers, of which the most pedestrian example is the corporation. Avoiding the term “autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao” is understandable. One, that name is already being used (that’s what the ARMM stands for) and it will only confuse people. Two, to say, for instance, “Expanded ARMM” might only exacerbate political passions on either of the battlefields. And three, given that the MILF is a rebel group, understandably they would steer clear of any implicit submission to the Constitution of the enemy.

What I wonder about is: Sure, let’s use another name, but why the bland neutral sounding “Juridical Entity”? The reason, I venture, is that any other term is too loaded for either side. “Bangsamoro State”? As if we couldn’t even be more hysterical than we are right now, as in “Arroyo became president to preside over the dismemberment of the Republic.” “Bangsamoro Region”? Well, maybe it’s the MILF’s turn to be outraged, as in “My uncle fought in a war, and all he got for me was this T-shirt!”

Two, the agreement, to its credit, uses the concept of “ancestral domain” to characterize the Bangsamoro people’s right to their territory and its resources. Ancestral domain is a claim reserved for what international law calls “indigenous peoples” (or IPs) and what our Constitution calls “indigenous cultural communities.” The very first lines of the agreement say that the Bangsamoro people includes “all Moros and all indigenous peoples of Mindanao.” For sure, there are genuine IPs in Mindanao, and they are certainly entitled to their ancestral domains, but Muslim Filipinos might be difficult to call as IPs, unless we classify Islam as an indigenous religion. My guess is that this is the most acceptable and least provocative of concepts. The alternatives lie on either extreme: on one hand, the “Bangsamoro peoples’ right to self-determination” (incendiary language for Manila) and, on the other, the Article 27 nondiscrimination rights of “ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities” (too mild for the MILF, understandably, given several centuries’ history of exclusion and dispossession).

Third, the agreement, again rather creatively, extends ancestral domain claims to maritime zones, and adopts the language of the Law of the Sea. At this point, we sail into stormy waters. Control over internal waters (like lakes and rivers) and the territorial sea (in international law, a band of sea within 12 nautical miles around the coastline) is vested in sovereigns, and our Juridical Entity is starting to appear like a state!

Finally, the Constitution lists only nine items that may be devolved to the autonomous region, and says that any powers not delegated are deemed retained by the national government. Among those reserved powers are foreign relations and finance. Contrast that to the powers of the Juridical Entity: “to enter into any economic cooperation and trade relations with foreign countries”; “open trade missions in foreign countries”; the right to “participat[e] in [Philippine official missions and delegations] in international meetings …, e.g. ASEAN meetings and … the United Nations”; and develop its own “financial and banking” institutions.

I agree with lawyer and peace activist Soliman Santos, who published his master’s thesis in Melbourne, “The Moro Islamic Challenge: Constitutional Rethinking,” that constitutional reform is a legitimate enterprise, especially when warring groups talk peace. “To seek constitutional change (e.g., a shift to federalism) has not been usually treated as unconstitutional, except it seems when it has to do with the Moro question.”

But equally legitimate are our concerns about the bona fides of both sides to the agreement. The pact includes profit-sharing arrangements on the expected windfall from natural resource exploitation. Anybody who knows the record of both Malacañang and of the ARMM in the able and honest disposition of the public wealth should be frightened. The pact requires constitutional change (deliberately, I venture) and we are rightly uneasy that the genuine and historic grievances of Muslim Filipinos are being used for the cheap workaday politics of greed and ambition.

Raul Pangalangan, Passion for Reason, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Doing a Nero

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may be acquiring a reputation for being the Nero of the Philippines. Nero, as every high school student knows, was the Roman emperor who is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. (Historical note: In 67-68 AD, while Nero was visiting Greece, trouble broke out throughout the Roman Empire, partly because of his extravagance, partly because of his unacceptable behaviour and partly because of his mismanagement of the empire.)

Ms Arroyo went gallivanting with a large entourage on a working visit to the United States even while Typhoon 'Frank' was battering a large section of the Visayas, killing 557 people, displacing 4 million and destroying P13.5 billion worth of public works, crops and private property. The typhoon also sank the Sulpicio Lines’ MV Princess of the Stars, killing more than 800 passengers and crew.

She said then that she could not cancel the US visit as to do so would embarrass the country. But was it not more embarrassing to see the leader of the country enjoying herself abroad while hundreds of her countrymen were dying and hundreds of thousands were suffering from the devastating effects of the strong typhoon?

Last week, a big part of Mindanao was threatening to erupt in flames over the very questionable memorandum of agreement on the creation of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity negotiated by the Arroyo administration, and yet Ms Arroyo did not stay at home and instead left for the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Let’s grant that she wanted to be one of the 80 heads of state at the Olympics opening, but she could have returned immediately after the opening ceremonies to attend to the serious situation in Mindanao. Instead she stayed for three more days, to attend a luncheon given by China’s President Hu Jintao, to meet with some of the other heads of state and to stand as witness at the signing of a $150-million private deal between a Chinese firm and two Filipino corporations headed by her former chief of staff, Michael Defensor. What was so urgent about these things that she had to stay in China instead of hurrying back home to try to prevent a conflagration threatening to engulf a great part of Mindanao?

On a personal level, she also did a Nero when she left the bedside of her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo, while he was recovering from a life-threatening surgery, to be in China just to witness the signing of the $329-million national broadband network deal with ZTE Corp. Right after the signing, the copies of the agreement were reported missing. It was only after the Senate began looking into the questionable transaction that a 'reconstituted' copy of the agreement surfaced. Later developments tended to show that the deal was tainted with graft, and Ms Arroyo had no choice but to abort it.

Ms Arroyo is the most widely travelled president the country has ever had, having been, at last count, to 20 countries. On her trips abroad she would often bring members of her family and scores of congressmen and local government officials whom she wanted to reward for their loyalty. In the process, she spent millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

In the last two years of her term, she has to moderate her wanderlust. Government funds are needed for important programmes and services, and there are many urgent matters that have to be attended to by a President in Malacañang.

Ms Arroyo cannot be a Nero most of the time, fiddling or attending to less important matters while the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. The threatened conflict in Mindanao can result either in the dismemberment of the country or in a bigger, more deadly and more devastating conflict than the war in the 1970s and 1980s when tens of thousands of soldiers, Moro rebels and civilians died and hundreds of thousands of others were displaced or left homeless.

Ms Arroyo, after watching 'the greatest show on Earth' that was the opening of the Olympic Games, after having fun hobnobbing with other heads of state in Beijing, and after solicitously standing as witness and hovering close by like a mother hen to her favourite courtier at the signing of a private agreement, can now attend to more serious matters.

First, she has to tell the nation the whole truth about the so-called Bangsamoro Juridical Entity. Second, she has to assure the nation in clear, unequivocal terms that she will not resort to any subterfuge, including the setting up of the BJE, to prolong her stay in Malacañang beyond 2010. She can stop fiddling around, stay put in Manila, and be honest with the nation for once.

Editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang)

The handwriting on the wall

And so it came to pass that King Belshazzar of Babylon gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles. In the midst of Belshazzar’s revelry with his nobles, wives and concubines, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the wall: mene, mene, tekel, parsin. Terror filled the heart of the king and all those in the palace.

All the king’s wise men could not read the handwriting on the wall. Finally, the prophet Daniel was summoned. He told the king the meaning of the words. Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Parsin(or Peres): Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

Today, July 28, the President will address a gathering of her nobles and satraps. She will deliver the annual SONA or State of the Nation Address. Whatever she says, however she says it, cannot erase the handwriting on the wall which is there for all to see.

There is more than one Daniel denouncing and exposing the perfidy of the present administration. As early as July 18, Social Watch Philippines started its series of statements and briefings on the national budget, the state of the economy and its impact on the social sectors.

This week, more Daniels spoke out—academics, think tanks and progressive organizations, particularly the youth. Last Friday, former cabinet members from four administrations (FSGO) issued a powerful statement which was prophetic as well as poetic. It highlighted the seven curses which the present administration had inflicted on our hapless country: the food crisis, worsening poverty, deteriorating basic social services, corruption, wanton abuse of presidential power and illegitimacy.

Today, Social Watch Philippines convenor of the Alternative Budget Initiative composed of 48 civil society organizations is presenting its position regarding the handwriting on the wall and the state of the nation:

Mene, Mene: Your days are numbered

The latest that this administration can last is up to 2010. There are speculations about constitutional change, either to extend the term of the president or change to a parliamentary system. The public strongly rejects this move. Efforts to generate support for constitutional change at this time have been roundly rebuffed. The people refuse to give the smallest opportunity for the president or her anointed successors to stay one minute longer.

End of days is coming!

Tekel: Tinimbang ka ngunit kulang

For seven years Social Watch Philippines has weighed the accomplishments of this administration in social development, particularly the Millennium Development Goals and found them grossly wanting. Mention has consistently been made of poverty, inequity, increasing hunger, deterioration in education, stubbornly high levels of infant and maternal mortality, low levels of health, environmental degradation, and global problems related to trade and debt.

Inadequate financing

Lack of adequate financing partly explains the appalling failure in social development. Dr. Rosario Manasan of the Philippine Institute of Development Studies calculated that for four MDG goals alone Ph94.9 billion in additional resources will be needed this year. The actual additions to the 2008 budget are nowhere near this amount.

For 2009, Manasan has calculated that additional resources of Ph100.4 billion should be added to the national budget for education, health, water and sanitation, and poverty reduction. Again, this amount is not likely to be generated, considering escalating deficit levels.

Slowdown in the economy

Most of the counter SONA assessments focused attention on social development impacts. Social Watch Philippines has already issued extensive papers on non-attainment of MDG goals.This is partly explained by the slowing down of the economy.

Official data on the growth of the economy indicate a clear downward trend in the gross domestic product. In 2007, the president called for a special conference crowing about a 7% GDP growth for the first quarter. During the first quarter of 2008, this has gone down to 5.2%.

The growth of agriculture, fishery and forestry has gone down from 4% growth in the first quarter of 2007 to 3% growth, also in the first quarter. Even worse, the industry sector has gone down from a hefty 6.6% growth during the first quarter of 2007 to 3.9% in 2008. A breakdown of the industry sector shows numbers which are not for the faint hearted: manufacturing went down from 4.1% during the first quarter of 2007 to 2.3% in 2008. But wait! Construction went down from 21.7% to-- que horror—4.5% from the first quarters of 2007 to 2008!

Global crisis no excuse

The usual excuse is that the crisis is global. How come Vietnam has 7.4% growth rate, Malaysia 7.1%, Indonesia 6.3%, Thailand 6.0 % and the Philippines a meek, embarrassing 5.2%? The crucial factor is governance.

What employment?

Last week, the government paid for a full two-page ad and issued a series of press releases on its so-called accomplishments. A claim was made that 9 million jobs were created from 2001-2008. These extravagant claims are totally erased by the fact that unemployment now stands at 8% and underemployment at double digit levels. Even as so-called millions of jobs were created for street cleaners, canal diggers, flower trimmers and the like, millions of jobs were also lost in manufacturing and construction. This resulted in a net loss of 168,000 jobs since April last year.

Governance

The present administration has been measured and found most wanting in the area of governance. No less than the World Bank has pronounced this government as the most corrupt in East Asia.

Parsin: Reform is blowing in the wind

The people refuse to listen to the SONA and its claims. Change and reform are on the way. They already know the truth and it will set them free.

Postscript

Whatever happened to Belshazzar? He was thrown into the dustbin of history. Darius took over the kingdom of Babylon.

Leonor Magtolis Briones, The Business of Government, ABS-CBN News Online

A Stolen, Not a Strong, Republic

On Monday, July 28, 2008, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will make her 8^th State of the Nation Address. The abundance of the number eight may make the occasion lucky for her. We gather today to consider if it marks a lucky day for the rest of the Filipino people.

The President will once again enter Congress with members of both Houses assembled, wade through crowds of costumed officials lined up with hands extended in welcome. She will take the podium and proceed to deliver her State of the Nation Address to cheers inside the hall and boos in the streets outside.

Diminished and trivialized as this political rite has become under GMA, we, former senior government officials, nonetheless persevere to take this occasion seriously. The State of the Nation Address or SONA is an important “ritual of the state” symbolizing the coming together of the nation as one family to hear its head, or Pangulo, speak on how stands our common collective enterprise. It is a unique opportunity each time for the whole nation to take a look at itself, assess its state of well-being and lay out a program of action for strategic priorities to be pursued.

Only the President of the Republic as head of state has the responsibility to address Congress on the state of the nation. This mandate grants our country’s leader the privilege of charting our actions toward our collective future but also demands an accounting of results from actions promised in the past.

Even as Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is poised to make her 8^th SONA, she still has to be held accountable for results from her seven years in power thus far.

Seven Years

In our people’s history, periods of productive seven years marked the birth of our country as a free nation. Seven years of publishing La Solidaridad laid the intellectual foundations for imagining a sovereign Filipino nation.

Jose Rizal, after writing and publishing Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, returned to the Philippines, where, within seven years, he was executed at Bagumbayan and thereby triggered the Philippine revolution.

Thereafter, within another dramatic seven-year period, Christian Filipinos revolted against Spain, the Spanish-American war was fought, the Philippine-American war raged and Muslim Filipinos fought the American occupation of their land. These four wars over a seven-year period defined the country that we are today.

Our founding fathers have shown that so much can be achieved in seven years. What has the GMA administration achieved in seven years?

Being former senior government officials, with our respective experience at different departments and agencies of government, we examined the record of this administration from 2001 to 2007. We reviewed the President’s stated intentions declared at seven past State of the Nation Addresses on a wide range of matters from managing the economy to fighting corruption to ensuring food security, among others. But our nation’s true state cannot be found in studying the speeches of the President. We must discern it from the evidence around us about the state of development of our dearly beloved nation. We examined the evidence from 7 years of her administration.

We hereby report our conclusions to the nation.

Review of Performance

The Philippine Constitution, ratified in 1987 after our people’s victory over the Marcos dictatorship, seeks a society with “a more equitable distribution of opportunities, income, and wealth; a sustained increase in the amount of goods and services produced by the Nation for the benefit of the people; and expanding productivity as key to raising the quality of life for all, especially the under-privileged”. This would be achieved by the State promoting “industrialization and full employment based on a sound agricultural development and agrarian reform”.

The past seven years of this administration have seen repeated, persistent and gross violations of this Constitutional mandate. The willful and systematic violation has harmed the Filipino nation, and we have identified at least seven curses that harmed us in the past, harm us today and will continue to harm us in the future. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has used the powers of the presidency so irresponsibly and selfishly that her administration has either inflicted, or worsened, or did nothing about, these 7 curses that gravely enfeeble our nation.

We warn our people that in her address to the nation next Monday, the President will blame global causes for higher food and fuel prices and cite how she is spending our money supposedly to alleviate the hardships of a suffering people. We will review the curses that define our shared suffering as a nation these past seven years. We ask the thoughtful citizen to evaluate the Administration’s plans for our country’s future in the light of this past record.

Here are seven curses that seven years of GMA has wrought upon our nation.

Agriculture

The first is the curse of a country unable to feed its own people, due to gross neglect of agriculture and rural development.

Since the start of the GMA administration seven years ago, 12 million more Filipinos were added to our already teeming numbers. Millions more are on their way. Yet our vital capacity to feed these more mouths has been left grossly neglected.

In her very first SONA in 2001, she made rice self-sufficiency a priority and even held office at the Department of Agriculture in order to make sure her programs were implemented. She repeated the promise of food on every table in her 2003 SONA. Yet in every year throughout her administration thus far, the country was importing increasing quantities of rice every year that this year the Philippines achieved an odd milestone in rice self-sufficiency: our becoming the world’s largest rice importer.

Each year our government declares its commitment to implement the Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Act. Yet in the past 7 years, the Department of Agriculture never got the P17 billion in incremental funds mandated under the law. Reported amounts released were repeatedly puffed up and window dressed to include costs of projects unrelated to agriculture and activities already undertaken. Safety nets promised farmers when tariff protection of agricultural products was lessened were not provided.

Instead of extending adequate funding, the President let loose in the Department of Agriculture people who waste and steal whatever limited funding there was; people like Joc-Joc Bolante who, as agriculture undersecretary, was accused of masterminding the diversion of P728 million in fertilizer funds to “ghost” foundations and urban congressional districts, thereby denying farmers the benefit of this vital farm input.

Our agricultural trade deficit, that was already just short of a billion dollars in 2000 ($967 million in 2000) balooned to more than one and a half billion dollars in 2006 ($1,535 million in 2006). Each year we needed to create 1 million new jobs in agriculture and fisheries, but we were able to realize these additional 1 million new jobs in seven years. In 2006, less than 2% of total direct foreign investments went to agriculture and in 2007 only 6% of all outstanding loans financed agricultural projects.

The high food prices pushing more people into hunger and poverty are a direct result of our government’s neglect of agriculture. This is a fundamental failure because so many of our poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture, because anemic agricultural production leaves urban Filipino consumers at the mercy of volatile world markets, and because weak agricultural output constrains the overall competitiveness of the rest of the economy.

Poverty

The second is the curse of worsening poverty and increasing disparity between rich and poor, due to economic mismanagement that ignores the needs of the many to serve the interests of the few.

We acknowledge that many external factors, beyond the reach of government, influence our economy. When global food and fuel prices were low and stable, when the economies of our trading partners were humming along, and when international credit markets were fine, this administration claimed credit for whatever was going right. Now that inflation and interest are rising, this government blames higher food and fuel prices on world markets for our current economic woes. One cannot claim credit for what goes right while avoiding blame when the same things go wrong.

Government policies often affect the economy, when they do, after a lag period. Some policies taken by previous administrations could help or hinder current economic performance. The crucial task of government policies is to build the foundations of sustained economic growth by harnessing our people’s own desire to meet their own needs and achieve their highest aspirations through the good or bad times brought about by changing global economic conditions.

And here we must point out that our present economy was already yielding increased joblessness and widening poverty even before the current worsening of global economic conditions which, we fear, will yield even more job losses and greater hardship in the near future. Despite last year’s much ballyhooed record GDP growth rate, this year we have 2.9 million workers who are unemployed and another 7 million workers who are looking for more work to supplement their incomes.

Some new jobs created in 2007 were good jobs such as in call centers and their support services and real estate activities, and in teaching. But many more new jobs were in sari-sari stores, bagsakan, namamasukan, katulong, labandera, househelp, trisikad, padyak-cycle, colorum and FX transport. Apart from unemployment and under-employment, the quality of available jobs in our economy has significantly deteriorated. The loss of jobs is further abetted by rising incidence and volume of smuggling possible only by those with political connections to the administration.

A major side-effect of the serious failure in job creation, which should be a major policy concern of all government policy, is that poverty incidence increased to 26.9% in 2006 (from 24.4% in 2004). This comprises 4.6 million poor families or 27.6 million poor individuals.

The severe constraints that extreme poverty imposes on many more millions of Filipino families are triggering a process that could transmit poverty into the next generation and become self-perpetuating. Women from the poorest quintile are having an average of 6 children over their reproductive life compared to women from the richest quintile who have only 2 children. Children from poorest families are 25 times more likely to die than children from the richest families.

The tragedy of extremely poor families does not end with bearing more children than they can support, more of whom will die in infancy or childhood. It continues on to their surviving children’s reduced access to schooling and education. School attendance levels in elementary have been falling: from 90.3% three school years ago; to 87.1% two school years ago; to 83.2% last school year (2006-2007). These percentages mean more than 2 million children aged six to 11 years old who do not attend elementary schools. Drop-out and repetition rates have increased by 30%.

Public education’s ability to rescue poor families from the poverty trap has suffered due to severe under-spending by government. While enrollment grows at 2.5% each year, the education budget grows at only 2% in real terms. While the Estrada administration with its more constrained budget spent P5,830 per student from 1998 to 2001 (in 2000 peso terms), the Arroyo administration with its supposedly stronger fiscal condition spent only an average of P5,304 per student from 2001 to 2006. The Philippines remains one of the lowest spenders on education in Southeast Asia. Today, the Philippines, which was a leader in our region in the nineties in education-for-all indicators, has fallen in ranking below such countries as Indonesia, Mongolia and Vietnam.

Public Spending

The worsening of education indicators is just one among many other symptoms of the third curse, which is, the curse of deteriorating basic social services essential to the survival and welfare of the people, due to callous disregard of the public good. Public money is spent on the wrong things, not enough on the right things, and all with little results, thereby wasting a precious and scarce resource for national development.

Our current fiscal state was improved, not by solid revenue effort, but by deep cuts in social and economic spending. Our national government revenues as a percentage of GDP remain among the lowest among the major economies of Asia since 2001. Our government’s allocation of resources for development expenditures has been the lowest in the region. Our continuing tight fiscal situation constricts the available resources for infrastructure development and educational modernization, the two most important investments we must make as a nation.

The Filipino workers, farmers, professionals, businessmen and consumers are financing the government from their blood, sweat and tears. Every centavo and peso the government collects and spends comes from someone’s productive effort. Every legislator’s salary and allowance, every government executive’s budget, and every contract or agreement with government is paid for by the economic output of the Filipino nation. Yet the allocation, management and use of public funds are marked by such greed and disregard of the public good that can only be condemned as scandalous.

Consider the behavior of this government in the face of the latest typhoon that lashed the Visayas last month.

While homes, farms and businesses in our country were taking precautions given storm warnings, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, her husband and sons together with a specially selected delegation were packing their gowns and suits for what is always a great treat: visiting friends and relations in the USA.

While they were hosting cocktails for the candidacy of Senator Santiago to join the International Court of Justice, Senator Santiago’s kasimanwa were suffering strong winds, heavy rain, flooding and the fear of dying in the elements.

While GMA was enjoying the 50 minute meeting with President Bush that included laughing at a cultural stereotype joke about Filipinos being cooks and maids, sirens were sounding in Iloilo warning that rising flood waters are no joke.

While the President’s staff were chasing Democratic Party Presidential candidate Barack Obama all over the US for a precious meeting, which eventually resulted in a brief telephone call, victims in Iloilo, Capiz and Aklan were chasing after rice, food and water in many damaged towns and barangays short of supplies for their essential needs.

While many Ilonggo families were staying on their roofs shivering in the cold and gray daylight and subsisting on whatever food some neighbor or friend could share, our government officials were occupying 30 rooms at Willard Hotel in Washington DC at between $300 to $5,000 a night and having dinners at $400 –$500 per plate.

And as the hungry, dirty and wet homeowners of farms and subdivisions all over Panay island confronted their devastated neighborhoods caked in mud and strewn with debris, many of our highest officials from Congress and the Cabinet were rushing to ringside seats at the Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas, with the certainty of hitting the shows, gaming tables and slot machines.

The image of Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned has an echo for us Filipinos today. It is the image of our officials’ downing toasts to the leadership of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in New York, Washington and Las Vegas while Filipinos were gasping for air and drowning in the Visayas, a region which up to this time had always been a loyal believer in this government.

It grieves us greatly to remember that authoritarian leaders like Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Russian President Vladimir Putin each cut short their respective state visits abroad and returned when their countries were hit by calamities. Yet our President did not see it fit to do the same thing for her people that the Pakistani and Russian presidents did for theirs.

Our back of the envelope calculation is that this Philippine delegation visit to the USA while the Visayas was being visited by calamity cost at least P300 million. In contrast, how much did our government spend on relief for typhoon victims? While our national treasury was being freely bled by the costs of this particular junket, including the costs of mounting early morning video-conferences to show how high technology can faintly substitute for real sympathy, what stringent restrictions attended every release of every sack of rice and every bag of relief goods provided to our suffering people?

Around 8 million people were affected by disasters each year from 2004-2006. Only half of these affected people received any assistance from government and private sector. Of those who were assisted, presumably among the poorest victims of disasters, the value of the assistance did not even approach 1% of the low average incomes of these poor households during normal times.

And while we are examining the government’s behavior in the last typhoon, which featured a terrible man-made sea disaster within a larger calamity, let us pause and consider how well the Department of Transportation and Communications under this administration performed. The DOTC was previously occupied with touting the merits of the cancelled NBN-ZTE project, which would have cost $329 million. Yet we now find out that the same DOTC has been neglecting the implementation of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System that was started in 1997 and has, in fact, been contracted and delivered but never implemented.

Why does the DOTC persist in pursuing the scandal-ridden NBN-ZTE project while it desists from completing an approved, contracted and implemented project that could make travel on Philippines seas safer? Maybe the answer lies in the far greater opportunities for corruption in starting new projects versus the much lesser opportunity for bribes in putting on stream a completed project.

Corruption

Thus the fourth is the curse of a national government gripped by a metastatic cancer of corruption.

The World Bank reports that in 2007 our country is the most corrupt among 10 of East Asia’s leading economies, even worse than Indonesia, and we are among the most corrupt one fourth of 212 countries in the world. Transparency International in 2005 ranked us among the countries with “severe corruption”, ranking 117^th most corrupt among 159 countries. Another World Bank study in 2006 showed a worsening of our control of corruption from an already weak 50% in 1998 to an even weaker 37% in 2005. A global competitiveness survey in 2006 ranked us 60^th worst among 61 countries in terms of bribery and corruption.

Corruption has become pervasive, persistent, and prolific. And the President, instead of fighting it, has become its prime practitioner and protector. She corrupted the already weak electoral process. She corrupted the already diminished civil service. She corrupted the already politicized public investment and fiscal programs. By committing crimes without punishment, abusing power without restraint, and violating rules with impunity yet suffering no adverse consequence, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has turned our most valued principle of “public office is a public trust” into a perversion: “public office is a key to whatever you can get away with”.

Our system of checks and balance is being torn apart. And a culture of impunity has taken root and grows by the day. Like a crocodile biting its tail, bad government chases after corruption, which drives even worse government grasping after more corruption.

A corrupt president leading a corrupt system of governance to the nation’s perdition spawns many grave consequences in its wake:

There are the enormous financial costs of corruption that increase public spending without corresponding increases in public benefits and make the burden on every Filipino born and yet to be born much harder to bear for being so much heavier and so infuriatingly unjust.

There is the treason of selling off sovereignty to those willing to condone corruption from foreign powers, to large companies, to well-connected persons, to private interests. This involves the systematic sacrifice of national interest for personal gain, the effect of which directly worsens the situation of the poor and marginalized, and further limits the possibilities of a better future for everyone.

There is deepening damage from long-standing crises, unattended by a government whose attention is on committing corruption, fending off exposure of corruption committed, and buying or scaring off those fighting any corruption exposed. Meanwhile the nation’s state deteriorates: Crises in health and nutrition, education, food, water, energy, environment, deepening and widening poverty, urban chaos, rural development, rule of law crisis, human rights, Mindanao.

There is the perpetuation of the cycle of corruption spawning bad government demanding more corruption. Destruction of constitutional bodies. Eroding the independence of the Supreme Court. Turning local governments into puppets. Buying off the military and police hierarchy. Militarizing the bureaucracy. Cultivating a Malacanang wing of the Church. Usurping the House of Representatives.

A very large share of these truly enormous burdens from dysfunctional governance is added to the already heavy burden on the poorer half of the Filipino nation, making their suffering much harsher, their poverty much harder to overcome and even impeding their own efforts to survive and prosper.

Appointments

This corruption is fed by and feeds from the fifth curse, which is the curse of wanton abuse of presidential prerogatives.

We have cited the case of Joc-Joc Bolante who represented the worst of the President’s appointees from 2001 up to the 2004 elections. The President used her prerogative to appoint senior executives of government to put in place someone willing to cut corners to help her secure election in 2004. After she appeared to have obtained a legitimate mandate from the 2004 elections, many more good and capable people joined her government to serve our people.

After the “Hello, Garci” scandal broke in 2005, however, and through the many scandals since then, many good and capable people left the government for various reasons. The balance of power within the GMA administration between its dark and bright sides tipped radically in favor of the dark side. A new type of presidential appointee along the Joc-Joc Bolante brand dominates. The appointments of others already rejected by the electorate in 2007 will further darken the complexion of her Cabinet. You can name your own favorite presidential appointee belonging to the following categories:

a. They have no pretense of serving the nation, just the President. Whatever credentials they might posses to qualify them for the jobs they occupy are secondary to the only real requirement: blind loyalty to the President.

b. They are former politicians who eat scandals for breakfast and have acquired callousness to controversy.

c. They are bureaucrats who see this administration as an opportunity for one more feeding at the public trough before retirement and obscurity.

d. All of the above.

A special place is reserved among the Joc-Joc brand of GMA appointees for Secretary Romulo Neri, former NEDA Secretary, former CHED Chairman, now SSS Administrator and head of the Social Welfare cluster of the Cabinet. After exposing the attempted bribery surrounding the NBN-ZTE deal, he became one of the keepers of evil secrets, protected by the talisman of “executive privilege” as long as he remains in a Cabinet position.

It is worse enough that the abuse of presidential prerogatives in the administration of government hobble the effectiveness and responsiveness of GMA’s administration. Unfortunately, it also damages future administrations by destroying the norms, standards and practices essential for a stable and well-functioning professional bureaucracy.

Nearly 60% of the 4,000 positions from directors to undersecretaries belonging to the career executive service are occupied by GMA appointees who do not possess eligibility in the career executive service. She has appointed more than 80 assistant secretaries and under-secretaries whose positions are not even provided by law.

She has usurped the power of government Boards, Councils and Commissions to appoint their officials by abusing the courtesy previously extended to the president using so-called “desire letters” which essentially intimidate these collective bodies to elect her chosen ones. She has even directly violated the law by such maneuvers as placing a quasi-judicial body like the National Telecommunications Commission under the control and supervision of the DOTC Secretary.

Her latest machination is the vesting of Cabinet rank on such positions as SSS Administrator, which is a position in a government corporation, and TESDA Director, which is position in an attached agency of DOLE. These actions destroy institutional arrangements established by decades of practice essential to clear and simple lines of administration in the bureaucracy. The results are predictable: confusion, demoralization, and more opportunities for corruption.

Politics

Many of these curses are linked to the sixth curse, which is the curse of an illegitimate president.

In her SONAs of 2001, 2002 and 2003, she promised clean computerized elections.

And in the 2004 SONA, just after the presidential elections, to an audience that probably included then Comelec Commissioner Garcillano, then Comelec Chairman Abalos, and maybe, still Comelec employee Lintang Bedol, she said with a straight face: “Thanks to many of you, I emerged from the last election with more votes than any previous president.”

In her 2006 SONA, she once again promised automated elections. And after the 2007 senatorial elections, she delivered another SONA before a Congress that included Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, whose election is still being disputed as tainted with dagdag-bawas. To this day, she has not taken any sure step to clean computerized elections after seven years of promises. Her recent appointments of new Comelec commissioners of unknown reputations still do not offer any comfort about our future elections.

In her 2002 SONA, she declared: “I will lead our country towards a strong republic.” She defined “a strong republic” as a government making policies independent from such class and sectoral interests, as for example, Lucio Tan, Ricky Razon and others. It is also a government with strong institutions, like an Ombudsman that is not headed by a classmate of her husband. It is government with a strong bureaucracy where appointees are chosen free from political consideration and strictly on their merit, not the likes of Mark Lapid at Philippine Tourism Authority or Tito Sotto at Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promised us a strong Republic we have realized that she is running a stolen Republic. Thus far, we have seen her trying only to keep what she had stolen.

Many people note that the President works so hard, rising early and sleeping late, hardly resting, following punishing schedules day in and day out, traveling the length and breadth of the land. She goes to every nook and cranny of our archipelago pushing her 5 super regions, her BEAT THE ODDS priorities. Her appointees and political allies are mystified why she continues to have such low ratings, why people say they are dissatisfied with her performance.

In the 5 super regions she unveiled at her 2006 SONA, and amplified with scores of projects costing P1.7 trillion pesos during the 2007 SONA, more than half of people are dissatisfied with her performance, 62% in Mindanao, 56% in the Visayas, 63% in Metro-Manila and 60% in rest of Luzon.

Yes, the President works very hard. But who is she really working for? It is not for us and our future; it is for her and her future. She is like the over-dedicated accountant who is never absent, who always works overtime, who never allows anybody else to do her job, because she is hiding her stealing of the company’s funds. Or the Customs collector who works so hard he returns to his post directly from the hospital even with an IV line still attached to his arm because he wants to keep the bribes coming.

We are witnessing the unfolding consequences of illegitimate politics, which uses incumbent position to secure continuation at whatever cost to country and its institutions. Even as we condemn and resist every unfair and unjust act we encounter, we must work first against the politics of despair, alienation and cynicism, which this administration has spawned and continues to foster.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the head of our government is the worst threat to the state of our nation. The person pretending to tell us about the dire state of our nation next Monday is the very same person who has done the most to destroy the very foundations of our nation, sell its future to its exploiters and abusers, and consign the poor and middle class to deeper poverty and worse despair.

Nation

Finally, we come to the seventh curse which combines the malignant effects of the first six curses. This is the curse of a nation robbed of its dignity, unity and future.

Under this administration, our country has acquired a global reputation for pervasive corruption which can only hurt and humiliate us. Under this administration, our country has been investigated by international bodies as a violator of human rights for extra-judicial killings and assassinations of political activists and journalists. Under this administration, our national patrimony from mineral resources to possible oil deposits has been put on sale to foreign interests like so much ukay-ukay. The loss of our country’s good international standing and credibility has been a sad victim of GMA’s bad governance. We will suffer from these losses as a people for a long time, just as we suffered from the ridicule and humiliation as the country of Imelda’s shoes.

The President talks and acts as if the thousands of Filipinos who leave for work abroad and the millions of our countrymen already working abroad are an achievement of her administration. Overseas employment is more often an act of desperation and only incidentally an act of heroism. Leaving one’s home, family and community to seek jobs in strange, difficult and dangerous places is rarely a decision of visionary enterprise on the part of our overseas Filipinos. Much more often it represents a repudiation of what GMA has wrought on this land and a rejection for the limited choices her policies created.

It is true that continued growth in the amounts of remittances from overseas Filipinos has benefited many families as well as the whole economy. Poor families with an overseas worker have a 70% chance to getting out of poverty. The foreign exchange flows have financed consumption, growth in retail and wholesale trade and real estate.

But economists Felipe Medalla, Raul Fabella and Emmanuel de Dios have written recently about looking beyond the remittances-driven economy. The currency appreciation due to remittances has a cost to our economy. It has eroded the competitiveness of manufacturing and all tradeables for both export and import-competing sectors, causing investment and output in these sectors to weaken. Investment has declined from 24% of GDP in 2000 to less than 18% in 2006. Even the families of overseas workers themselves suffer from the consequences of the currency appreciation. They have lost the equivalent of P188 billion in purchasing power since 2004.

The worst unintended side effect of remittances has been to allow the government to abdicate on doing many difficult and urgent tasks. For example, public investment has perversely become less necessary since the production sector makes less demands on infrastructure. Yet, we must recognize that a remittances-driven economy is limited and self-undermining because remittances cannot be expected to remain high and grow at an increasing rate. We must, therefore, use whatever breathing space remittances provide to accelerate investment spending on infrastructure and education as the common facilities for remittance-dependent and other sectors of our economy.

Reclaiming Democracy

Will we get a government able to lead us through our problems and sensible enough to build on our strengths? Only when it is a government we can trust.

The Jesuit historian Fr. Horacio de la Costa provides us with some guidance:

The survival of democratic government in our country depends on whether or not the people have confidence in the ability of democratic government to reform itself. And they will have this confidence only if they actually see government making a serious effort to reform itself. They will lose confidence, they will lose hope, not only in their government but in themselves if our ship of state continues to be, in the words of T.S.Eliot, “a drifting boat with a slow leakage”. We must stop the leakage; put an end to drift; find a direction, and steer.

We will persevere in working with our political institutions as our instruments for reform and justice, not parties to anomalies and scandals. We will continue to build a government that mobilizes the nation to greater achievements and not a mere machinery for delivering patronage to favored supporters. We will keep looking for a presidency that fights the enemies of social justice and is a reliable platform for serving those who have less in life that they may have more in law; not this one temporarily in Malacanang fighting only its critics and serving only self, family, relations and cronies.

The Philippines, even under this administration, continues to have the strengths of a democracy: informed citizenry; free media; a robust civil society; communities of decent and civic-minded people; allies of good governance all over the world and throughout our country. We will build institutions that stand solidly for the nation’s interests and resistant to the corrupt and crooked.

We can re-imagine the nation as something far better and more capable than the one that the President will paint in her SONA this Monday. We can find deep and enduring ties and connections with millions of other fellow Filipinos and sympathetic foreign friends around our re-imagined vision of our nation. And we can devote our lives, careers and resources to the effort to ultimately realize this re-imagined vision of our nation. This is how the Filipino people will prevail over this current patch of bad governance.

This administration may have stolen the Republic, but it will not rob us of our hopes.

Former Senior Government Officials (FSGO)