Pimentel worried over civil liberties

Calling the government’s total war on terrorists and criminals "dangerous," opposition Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said yesterday President Arroyo’s excessive emphasis on national security doctrine may lead to a curtailment of civil and political liberties.

Pimentel said Mrs. Arroyo’s statements declaring the use of draconian measures to combat terrorism and criminality are reminiscent of the 1970s when many dictators in Latin America resorted to national security doctrine to prop up strong-arm rule in their countries.

The President said Monday in her second State of the Nation Address (SONA) that she aimed to establish a "strong Republic" through the destruction of all forms of terrorism and criminality. She warned criminals and terrorists that they would be dealt with as national security threats who will face the full force of the law.

Mrs. Arroyo urged Congress to immediately pass into law an anti-terrorism bill which she said will "strengthen our legal armory in this war" and "plug the loopholes by which crimes spread and democracy is undermined under the protection of laws."

Pimentel, a former street parliamentarian before becoming senator, said the setting up of a "strong Republic" is a noble cause but noted that this is an "objectionable proposition" if it will mean trampling on civil and political liberties.

The President appeared to have joined the US-led international coalition against terrorism without realizing its implications, he added.

Noting that Mrs. Arroyo’s SONA sounded "militaristic," Pimentel said she should have instead used terms such as "law and order" that stress the primacy of the law and due process in the quest for social order.

"The nuances of meanings should clearly be impressed in our minds," Pimentel told a forum sponsored by the Office of the University of the Philippines President, Third World Studies Center, Center for Leadership, Citizenship and Democracy, and the Action for Economic Reforms.

He said he was disappointed that Mrs. Arroyo did not mention in her SONA any action plan to alleviate problems in Mindanao.

Prof. Miriam Ferrer, director of the Third World Studies Center, said Mrs. Arroyo’s war rhetoric was not original but a copy of US President George W. Bush’s statements following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Ferrer said that even ousted President Joseph Estrada resorted to similar rhetoric when he ordered an all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Meanwhile, Sen. Teresa Aquino- Oreta said yesterday Mrs. Arroyo performed poorly in the administration’s social agenda for the people, especially in meeting her first SONA pledges on increased low-cost housing, cheaper food and medicine for the poor and the anti-graft campaign.

In a statement, Oreta said Mrs. Arroyo’s claim that she had surpassed her first SONA target of building 150,000 housing units for the urban poor was "rather deceiving" because the figure included 50,000 housing units built under the Mt. Pinatubo Resettlement Project.

She said it was an "illusory" and "empty boast" for the administration to say that the cost of food and medicine has gone down because the deployment of rolling stores was done under the then Estrada administration and the Department of Trade and Industry has blamed "greedy" drug companies for the failure of the government’s parallel drug-import program.

On poverty, Oreta said families of daily-wage earners "continue to struggle to make both ends meet as indicated by government statistics showing that the average daily poverty threshold is now pegged at P228 or higher than the minimum wage average of P209."

Oreta said the presidential statement on a successful drive against corruption "rings hollow" following recent complaints by local and foreign investors on the worsening corruption in the country.

Oreta said a recent Philippine Labor Force survey revealed that 4.87 million Filipinos were jobless as of April, compared with 3.29 million in July last year. She said these figures mean that ranks of the unemployed had swelled by another by 1.58 million during the period July 2001-July 2002.