Those cuckoo coup rumors should be ignored, not denied

PARIS – Why President Macapagal-Arroyo keeps on dignifying coup rumors by taking time out to deny them is beyond me. If a coup d’etat is really in the works – the term came from the French – then a ton of denials won’t be worth a pitcher of warm spit.

In the meantime, if there’s really no coup or kudeta being planned, front-page and very public denial by the Chief Executive no less disturbs the foreign business community, shoos any potential investors –if there are any still interested in our paranoid country – and sends the stock market into a tizzy. So, enough already. All President GMA has to do is keep on the alert and do her job. Loyal soldiers will do the rest, if she demonstrates she’s a President worth saving.

All these cuckoo "coup" rumors are usually spread by military men eager to get concessions or personal appointments from the President. (As a result of these frequent "threats", GMA has already put too many military old fogies and farts from the armed forces and the PNP into important civilian positions.)

Pardon me if I speak as an old hand in covering coups in Indonesia, Thailand, and one failed overthrow attempt (the "Black September") in Jordan. If any elements in the armed forces are determined to stage a putsch they won’t issue a press release about it, especially give a calendar of coming events, like the current schedule of October 30 to November 4. Gee whiz. How outrageous can you get?

The President, who’s also Commander-in-Chief, should just carry on. She cannot "buy" loyalty. Officers and men whose loyalty is for sale will sell out to a higher bidder, anyway – after sucking the GMA government dry by their open-ended extortion and blackmail.

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Over here in Paris, for example, some high-and-mighty French executives are bragging that they’ve already "bought" enough officials and generals to make sure they secure contracts ranging from $200 million to other more impressive sums. Are we really that venal and embarrassingly corrupt?

Incidentally, the buzz here is that Defense Secretary Angelo T. Reyes will be coming to Paris next week or so. There’s nothing wrong with the Defense Secretary taking a trip. What would be wrong would be for "Angie" Reyes to travel at the expense of a large French firm which has been bidding for plum contracts from the Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines. If Reyes makes that trip, and worse, if those fast-break "contracts" are approved (the claim is that two of them are already a "done deal"), then tongues will start wagging that he’s coming to France to collect his "reward."

Even if he’s as pure as driven snow, such a conclusion by the public would queer him in the Commission on Appointments (unless his position, since I was away, has already been confirmed). In any event, there will be a Senate investigation, or worse, from angry Congressmen who didn’t get their cut.

The deal being hatched with the French is worse than the anomalous GEC-Marconi "contract" which had to be scuppered by the previous Estrada administration – although it was virtually "signed, sealed and delivered" – because the stink attending it was too much.

If Angie still takes advice, and if he’s not yet "locked into" that sneaky French deal, I urge him to cancel that junket. We know he’s ambitious for higher things. But even if he were not – to borrow from the West Point motto – the upholding of "honor, duty, country" should give him pause.

Europeans and American deal-makers have long been sneering at us as a nation which is "for sale" or at least "for rent." Let’s not prove this slur right.

While we’re on the subject, we ought to reexamine that equally sneaky Lockheed-Martin contract. It didn’t pass through regular channels. One day we woke up, blinked, and found it already there.

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According to the Cable News Network (CNN) here, US military specialists have already arrived in "the Southern Philippines" to help in the fight against terrorism. This can only mean Mindanao.

We can expect some radicals and hot-under-the-collar straw patriots to holler about American "meddling in our affairs." C’mon. We need help. As the plucky late King Hussein of Jordan replied when he was accused of receiving aid from the American government – in fact, from the CIA: "I would take money from the Devil if I felt I needed it to save my country."

If we’re so resentful of foreign meddling, why is the GMA Administration "supporting" a candidate for the governorship of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) who was apparently handpicked by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)?

What our friend Columnist Neal Cruz said the other day is that the guy isn’t even a Filipino, or local "Moro" (I might add), but carries a Scandinavian passport. What if we were to insist that Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, to escape from harassment by the ISAFP’s Col. Victor Corpus, be nominated to run for mayor of Oslo (Norway), Stockholm (Sweden), or Copenhagen (Denmark)? Would the respective governments say: "Okay. After all, we’re friends, aren’t we?" Not on your life. But in the Philippines, it seems, anything goes.

Have the backbone to say "No", Madam President, if foreign pressures prove too much and our national interest demands that we stand up to bullying from abroad.

For that matter, the US specialists and advisers may assist us in getting at the Abu Sayyaf and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terrorists network, which was established by bin Laden himself in 1993 (when he came to the Philippines and was even entertained by government officials as a "foreign investor"). He invested, all right. In rebellion and murder.

However, as we’ve always said, "help" and "assistance" don’t mean dictation. We Filipinos have been fighting bin Laden’s network, not merely in Mindanao (Basilan, Sulu and Zamboanga mainly) but in Metro Manila, for more than a decade now. The Americans may have all the HUMINT intelligence inputs, technology, and – most importantly – the logistics, but they’re new on the ground in Mindanao and Luzon.