‘Stealing’ people’s names and ‘borrowing’ their honor are despicable and disgusting - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

Old soldiers never die. In fact, they get furious and indignant when they’re misquoted. No less than a former Defense Secretary and Armed Forces Chief of Staff, retired General Ernesto Mata, contacted me to denounce a manifesto attacking the appointment of Col. Victor Corpus as chief of the Intelligence Service Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP).

"I never signed such a manifesto and knew absolutely nothing about it!" Mata asserted. "They (the protesters) used my name without my permission!" This is the first time I had heard from Mata in years, and noted he sounded hale and hearty despite his 86 years. Mata had a distinguished military career, and was AFP Chief of Staff in 1966-67, before becoming Secretary of National Defense between 1967 and 1970.

Another officer whose name was announced as an alleged "signatory" of the anti-Corpus letter which was delivered to President Arroyo last Wednesday, retired General Galileo Kintanar, also a former ISAFP head, rang me up yesterday to declare he never signed any such manifesto as quoted in all of the newspapers.

"I’ve just come back from Masbate (he’s campaigning as a party-list candidate)," Kintanar fumed, "and never even heard of such a letter until I read my name in the newspapers." In fact, General Kintanar asserted, he saw nothing wrong with the appointment of Col. Corpus, a former Army officer and Philippine Military Academy graduate (PMA ’67) and instructor who had defected in 1970 to the New People’s Army (NPA) rebel movement, but had "returned from the cold" in the 1980s. "If anything," Kintanar said, "Corpus’ intimate knowledge of the NPA would be useful to the intelligence establishment."

Kintanar, a PMA classmate of Executive Secretary (and former AFP Chief of Staff and SND) Renato de Villa, was in fact the "jailer" of Communist Party Chief Joma Sison when the latter was confined for nine years in the MSU compound in Fort Bonifacio. He was puzzled why his "name" had gotten on the list of signatories of that controversial letter.

Since I haven’t heard from the other alleged "signatories", described as former ISAFP directors (I know some of them), I can’t say whether or not they really signed their names to so-called manifesto. Let them speak up and confirm or deny their roles in this already suspicious "letter." For when two very prominent retired officers, with the rank of general and pronounced seniority, are already angrily denying they knew anything about it, President Arroyo must regard this document as flawed, if not completely spurious.

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Shame on those who have misused the names of their fellow officers and peers in the military fraternity to sow intrigue and mount a conspiracy! It is a despicable and disgusting act and brings "dishonor" to the escutcheon of the soldiers of our Republic.

Indeed, it is disheartening and disquieting that our military seems to continue to seethe with sordid infighting in which lies and defamation are the weapons of the unworthy in the roster of officers who don’t deserve, owing to their shenanigans, to wear the uniform with honor and pride.

But what did we expect? When the Navy Chief himself, Rear Admiral Guillermo Wong, had the courage to expose "conversion", and multimillion-peso procurement evils in the Marines but was punished (not the culprits) by being literally stripped of his rank and drummed out of the service, then our Armed Forces have fallen on evil days. As Commander-in-Chief, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must demonstrate the backbone and steel in her craw necessary to bring insolent and swaggering officers and any cabal of conspirators to heel.

Throw them in the brig, clap them in irons, court martial them! Sweet-talking the gripers will merely be scoffed at as a sign of weakness.

General George "Blood & Guts" Patton, Jr., who spearheaded the American thrust towards Germany (until he was busted for trying to upstage Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and beat the Soviets into Berlin), remarked: "One of the great defects of our military establishment is the giving of weak sentences for military offenses . . . In justice to other men, soldiers who go to sleep on post, who go absent for an unreasonable time during combat, who shirk battle, should be executed."

What about soldiers who lie and cheat in the pursuit of ambition?

Patton, of course, overdid it in his passion to goad his men to victory. He once slapped a G.I. whom he believed to be a "coward." Yet, it was his own personal courage, Spartan sense of discipline, and brook-no-nonsense, charge-at-the-enemy spirit that inspired the men who marched under his command. Some may not have loved him, but they fought bravely and confidently under his banner.

Now that a fighting soldier, Lt. Gen. Diomedio Villanueva, whatever his faults, has been sworn in as AFP Chief of Staff, let our military close ranks behind him and the Republic they are all pledged to serve.

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President GMA must not be too impressed with that well-staged "surrender" ceremony in Central Mindanao in which some 1,000 Moro rebels turned in about 300 weapons including grenade launchers and pledged allegiance to the Republic in Tamparan town, Lanao del Sur.

The Chief Executive, of course, was pleased at the photo opportunity by which she was pictured as bringing "peace" to Mindanao. Don’t be deceived, Madam President. Muslim insurgent "surrender" ceremonies are frequently zarzuelas in which, after fulsomely being rewarded, the rebel chieftains and their cadres quietly slip back into the forests and hills to resume their banditry. The firearms "collected" are often returned or resold – and the violence resumes. We’ve seen such ceremonies before, long before the famous surrender of the kris of Kamlon, and, always, the Bangsa Moro movement and the Islamic "independence" insurrection flared up anew in full fury.

There will be no peace in Mindanao if the GMA administration persists in following a policy of appeasement. La Gloria has been hoodwinked by the peaceniks who surround her into fondly believing that waving the olive branch will do the trick. The terrified Christians, as usual, will bear the brunt of her government’s mistakes, as they did when ex-President Ramos and his holey-moleys forged what turned out to be a false and shortlived "peace treaty." Keep an eye on the Mindanao vote this coming May 14. Then, President GMA will feel the true pulse of the people there.

Look at the fighting which has just flared up in Macedonia where the Macedonian army has been bombarding Tetovo, alarmed at the incursions of heavily-armed "ethnic Albanian" infiltrators from Kosovo. These attacking Muslim insurgents (against a Muslim-led but ethnically-integrated Macedonian government, mind you) belong to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whom the American and European forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) saved the other year from the depredations of the Christian Serb forces. Did the NATO expulsion of the Serbs, which included bombing and missile-targetting of Yugoslavia’s cities and towns, reducing Belgrade almost to rubble, bring "peace" to Kosovo and the Balkans? On the contrary, the Islamic rebels are now the ones catching the NATO peacekeeping troops in the cross-fire. They’re in the process of ambushing and burning out the few remaining Kosovar Christians (who are ethnic Serbs) and defying NATO as well. They want an "ethnic Albanian", Muslim "Kosovo" state, and to even annex peaceful Macedonia. Yesterday’s victims of "massacre" are now the ones conducting the massacres.

There is, indeed, no movement more aggressive and unforgiving than Islamic fundamentalism. Just next door into our south, Indonesia appears to be breaking apart. Rebellion has broken out anew in oil-rich Aceh, where the US Exxon-Mobil oil and gas fields are located. Supporters and opponents of Indonesia’s beleaguered head of state, President Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), are fighting in the streets of Jakarta. Indigenous Dayaks are assaulting and killing Madurese settlers (even second-generation migrants) in Kalimantan (Borneo), and the military and police are, in retaliation, shooting them down.

A meltdown in Indonesia will flood Mindanao with refugees, most of them Muslim, thus upsetting the "mix" in our southernmost provinces. Other evacuees will be Christians from the Moluccas where armed Islamic fanatics have been trading blows with the Christians.

If the disorder continues, don’t expect Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri to "succeed" the reeling, almost-blind Gus Dur. My bet is that the armed forces, the Angkatan Bersendjata Republik Indonesia (ABRI), which has been spoiling to resume "power", will seize on the opportunity to take over the government anew.

This is a time for our Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police to go on "alert" and not be squabbling and divided.

Finally, there is the specter of Chinese intrusion. The other day, ten Chinese fishing trawlers were boarded by our Philippine Navy while "poaching" off Scarborough Shoal in our territorial waters, their catch confiscated, and then the vessels chased away. Imagine that: Just off Zambales in Luzon! You can imagine that the incursions will become increasingly more frequent down in the disputed Spratlys.

Ours is an area in ferment. We can’t afford to remain a weak and defenseless "sardine", swimming blissfully among the sharks.

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The Indians, who have been building up one of the biggest navys in the nearby ocean, are squirming in the throes of an arms procurement scandal of far-reaching proportions.

India’s Defense Minister, George Fernandes, although he was not personally involved in the scandal, felt it necessary to resign. The largest opposition party, Congress I, led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of the assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, has been calling on the BNJ government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to resign. The Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, while reeling from the shocking revelations which have eclipsed the old Bofors arms deal scam, stolidly refuses to budge.

The controversy erupted when journalists, posing as "arms merchants", secretly filmed embarrassing videotapes of ranking BJP officials accepting bribes. The president of the BNJ, Bangaru Laxman, resigned last week after an Internet media company, Tehelka.com, showed videotapes taken by hidden cameras of Laxman accepting handfuls of rupees, some 100,000, approximately worth $2,175. The videos further exposed a number of party and defense ministry officials, and military men, talking about or actually accepting bribes to grease a fake arms transaction.

I don’t know where this heated controversy will end, but opposition legislators are calling the prime minister himself "a thief" and denouncing those portrayed in the tapes. The initial casualties have been Army Maj. Gen. P.S.K. Choudhury and four defense officials caught on videotape taking money from the journalists who pretended to be arms-manufacturers.

I wonder whom we would "catch" over here, if hidden cameras were also to be planted in strategic locations. Already, one prominent American military conglomerate is in town "pushing" for deals with the new administration. Remember, some US big shots bragged about one of them in Paris (as revealed months ago in this column), once the new GMA government took over. La Gloria must beware of these serpents offering the Forbidden Fruit.