The birth of a new nation – or the first step to disappointment?

Chairman Haydee Yorac of the Presidential Commission on Good Government rang me up yesterday to assure me that she, too, wants the benefits of the coco levy to go to the coconut farmers and the coconut industry.

"But this must be done in the right way," she asserted.

In the next day or two, Haydee promised, she’ll send me an explanation. One of the aspects that bother her about the Davao compromise agreement, she added, is who will be the trustee or trustees of the proposed "perpetual trust."

You’ll notice that I used the title "Chairman" for Yorac, not "Chair" as some newspapers more gender-delicate put it, because I’ve long known and admired this "electric-haired" lady. She reminds me of how they used to describe the late Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. They called her, "The only man in the Cabinet." (The more vulgar used to put it: "The only one with balls in the Cabinet.)

This is in sharp contrast to the present Israeli Prime Minister, the hawkish General Ariel Sharon, who seems to be all balls and no brain. But what the heck: Who can blame the Israelis for pounding the Palestinians with their gunships and rockets for that outrage on innocent children and young people in Jerusalem last Saturday and the blowing up of an entire busload of passengers in the port city of Haifa?

When Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, after Gaza and Ramallah were assaulted from the air, asked CNN the plaintive question: "Where is the reaction from the world?" Though there was some headshaking over the massive Israeli response, the reaction of the world was tepid. It’s not just the angry Americans but almost everybody else (including us in the Philippines) who’re sick and tired of Islamic "suicide bombers." Let them go to Allah if they choose, but kindly don’t take other unwilling victims with them.

Back to Yorac: She complained to me that when she took over the PCGG three months ago, she found the records there "a mess." She noted: "There wasn’t even an inventory!" She’s been feverishly trying, she remarked, to put that chaotic place in order.

In my estimation, Haydee has much to do in that nest of vipers. I suggest that President Macapagal-Arroyo just pack it in, allow the PCGG to expire – and give Ms. Yorac a better job in her Cabinet.

As for that besieged P100-billion coco levy fund and shareholdings, for heaven’s sake, let’s not debate till kingdom come. Give it to the struggling coco farmers and our coconut industry which has already begun to emit a death-rattle. Let justice be done!

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The more explanations are offered about how government men connived to dispatch a P17-million ransom to pay for the release of Abu Sayyaf hostage Reghis Romero II, who was among the 21 kidnapped from Dos Palmas, the more murky and distressing the matter becomes. Sen. Serge Osmeña’s admission that his plane was borrowed, but only used as a back-up, means that he, too, a senator of the realm, knew full well about that disgraceful move to violate government policy about "no ransom."

Then there’s the bizarre twist in which, after he "escaped", the same Rhegis Romero asked if Osmeña’s plane could now transport him, his lady companion, and the small boy with them, to Manila. Osmeña’s reply as quoted in a newspaper interview was that his single-engined plane was good only for short hops. He told those who conveyed the request to tell the Palace to send a C-130 to fetch Romero.

Do we realize what’s happening here? Nobody seems to respect government policy, so how can the government be believed in this and other matters? Won’t anybody be punished in this disgusting imbroglio? Osmeña goes even farther. He alleged in the same interview that the P17 million ransom had come in three tranches: P10 million for the Abu Sayyaf, P5 million for the military (sounds like Father Nacorda), and P2 million for the local government officials involved in the negotiations. (Everybody got a balato!)

Even more shocking is Serge Osmeña’s claim that Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Diomedio Villanueva and Brig. General Romeo Dominguez "were present when the ransom was paid." He added the charge that they were "micromanaging the whole thing."

Sanamagan. What chicanery and what treason! Unless Osmeña recants, à la Philip Medel, and asserts he was misquoted, a lot of gooses are cooked. Imagine giving P10 million to the Abus so they can use that money to finance their bloody rebellion, kidnap more victims and create more havoc and misery? Five million bucks to the military? If true then, we finally know why the war in Basilan is going badly. Giving the local officials P2 million would indicate that the same thing happened when foreign funders were ransoming the original Sipadan hostages. Have we become such a bandit country?

This is, of course, the land of the quick accusation and the quick denial. "Deny to the death" appears to be the motto of too many people. And the pity of it (woe to our beloved country!) is that too many get away with it.

As for Romero, what makes him so special? Because he’s rich? Because he used to be a newspaper publisher? Because he used to be the "garbage king" of Smokey Mountain? What about the other hostages? Until we regard each life sacred, the safety of everyone rich or poor paramount, and the punishment of crime inexorable, we’ll never be able to claim to be a democracy. Just an idiocracy of the venal.

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The stunning collapse of the Taliban which came as a surprise to everyone, including the Taliban, leaves embattled Kandahar province (homeland of Taliban chieftain Mullah Mohammad Omar) the only significant stronghold of Afghanistan’s expiring leadership and their terrorist prophet Osama bin Laden.

It can’t be denied that massive US airpower, applied in non-stop bombing, turned the tide in favor of the rebel Northern Alliance which originally had hung on precariously to merely a tenth of the country, but now controls Kabul, the capital, and most of Afghanistan.

The Americans in their unrestrained fury over the September attacks on New York, which took 5,500 lives, and on the Pentagon in Washington, came over like swarms of deadly mosquitoes to bombard the Taliban and sustained such a barrage of thunderous death like that.

I think the US was trying to send not just al-Qaeda but the rest of the globe the message that you don’t sneak-attack the American people in their own homeland without provoking the destruction of yours.

Yesterday, however, the inevitable happened. When bombs rained down from B-52 bombers flying high overhead, on the edge of Kandahar, they exploded among US Marines. Two US servicemen were killed and dozens wounded. That’s the problem when aircraft unleash explosives from thousands of feet above their perceived targets. No technology in the world can guarantee those bomb clusters won’t go astray.

The B-52G Stratofortress which delivered that lethal load on their own Marines dates back to October 1955 and is an improvement on the earlier B-52D so widely used during the Vietnam War and by the Strategic Air Command since 1955. It can attain a maximum speed of 630 miles per hour, and fly as high as 55,000 feet. Given such a height, I’ve always wondered how even "smart" bombs (a misnomer) can be guided to each target with pinpoint accuracy. Of course, innocent civilians were killed in such raids. And now, US Marines, too.

The funny expression in the military is that US servicemen slain by their own weaponry is that they were hit by "friendly fire." There will be mourning today all over America for those boys whose lives were so senselessly and accidentally snuffed out. But if you send men into combat you put them in harm’s way.

During the fight to capture Bessang Pass and overrun the cave-redoubts of General Yamashita’s rear-guard, the guerrilla of the 121st Infantry and the Field Artillery component of our USAFIP-Northern Luzon had to fight their way up the mountain and many were killed by American "friendly fire" from US P-38s and other aircraft also attacking the Japanese positions. Just a gust of wind and the bombs struck the Filipino lines.

Bessang Pass, on the other hand, was the only Filipino"set-piece" battle victory of the Pacific War.

* * *

After a week and a half of frenzied discussion, acrimonious debate, and some discord, the delegates to the conference near Bonn to cobble together an ad-interim ruling government for Afghanistan have done just that.

The incoming "administration" will take over December 22 from acting President Burhanuddin Rabbani (who was reluctant to yield power). Rabbani, a Tajik from Badakshan, could not have prevailed since his own fellow Tajiks of the Northern Alliance politely informed him that he had to step down. After all, Rabbani who had led the Jamiat faction during the jihad in the 1980s against the Soviet invasion had been, after all, the President who lost Afghanistan. "Selected" in 1992 as President, Rabbani was ousted by the attacking Taliban in September 1996. He fell because he failed to quell civil war and address increasing misery.

The new "Chairman" – chosen to lead that war-wracked country for the next six months begin to rebuild and prepare for elections two years and a half from now – is Hamid Karzai, a tribal leader of the Pashtun ethnic majority (40 percent of the population), and from which race the Taliban also sprang.

This will please the Pashtuns, and also Pakistan, I’m sure Islamabad had made it clear Pakistan would wish the new government to be broad-based (meaning, let our Pashtuns from our Pakistani Northwest Frontier into the leadership circle.) The triumphant Tajiks and Uzbeks of the Northern Alliance and the United Front will be well-represented in the new committee and have secured a significant number of Cabinet posts, although I’m almost certain the unfortunate Hazaras (descendants of the former Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan) have been left out again. Two women, a significant step, were shoehorned into the incoming Cabinet, too.

The "Rome faction" also copped many Cabinet seats. These are the supporters of the former king, 86-year old Zahir Shah, who had reigned for 40 years from 1933 to 1973 until he was overthrown by his own cousin, Mohammad Doud, while travelling in Italy. He has lived in Italy since then. To be sure, Zahir Shah wasn’t a very effective monarch, and ruled weakly. Yet, we must never discount the power of nostalgia. The dethroned monarch represents to many Afghans a golden yesterday when the fields were green, there was no drought, and the laws were benign.

The conference to hammer out a new leadership took place, not in Bonn but across the river above the town of Koenigswinter, in the historic mountain top "Petersberg" Hotel. It was in this same hotel that Adolf Hitler had seduced England’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain into signing the Munich Pact, assuring Chamberlain that he meant no harm to Britain and the West, if only they would give him the Sudetenland, Poland. And Czechoslovakia.

So here we are. Will the Afghan people accept this leadership forged in German milieu? Certainly they will. They’re sick and tired of war and want only food, shelter, and hope for the future. Will the warlords agree? There are "blank" Cabinet posts in the scheme probably reserved for those still engaged in the field.

Now comes the hard part. We can only wish them well.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . It was a serious mistake on my part to have said that the oil find in Malampaya could reduce our oil importation by "almost half." Sorry. After calculating the relatively piddling production of 8,000 barrels per day, I find that our oil imports will be reduced by only two to three percent. But I’m a cockeyed optimist. There’s more oil down there . . . More ERRATUM: The proofreaders changed the name of the Palestinian rebellion against Israeli "occupation" from al-Aqsa Intifada to an erroneous "al-Qaeda Intifada." No such thing . . . Aceh province, the oil-rich Indonesian province, was also bungled in spelling. Oh well. As they used to excuse errors during my schoolboy years, "even Homer nodded." Not being a Homer, I goof more often.