A man who quickly ‘grew up’ to be a crisis president

I can hardly believe it. Why are we such slowpokes? The Malaysian government still has not received a formal request from our government for the hand-over to us of renegade ex-Governor Nur Misuari.

Misuari has been in Malaysian hands since November 24, after he was nabbed trying to sneak into Sabah. If we don’t act immediately, Kuala Lumpur will probably decide to let Misuari go. Then what will we do?

The Macapagal-Arroyo administration is becoming a disappointment for procrastinating on many issues and problems. Let’s get Misuari back so we can bring him to court. The Malaysians, growing impatient, regard the Moro rebel in their detention as a hot potato. If we don’t grab him, he’ll go free to seek asylum in a "friendly" Muslim country.

Once in "exile", he could become another Joma Sison.

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The prosecution and defense panels in the Estrada "plunder case" are right in joining hands to ask that a permanent, not temporary, Sandiganbayan Justice be appointed to replace Third Division Chairman Justice Anacleto Badoy who was ordered by the Supreme Court to go on indefinite "leave" of absence.

Justice Badoy’s reputation for impartiality in this celebrated case is already in tatters. By his own admission, he’s sick. It’s time he bowed out of this matter.

The idea is to get the case, its hearings and its pleadings going, instead of stalling everytime the Justice has asthma or a high-blood pressure attack. Justice Badoy, let’s face it, simply can’t hack it.

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Of course, our overseas workers (OFWs) are not sending as much money to their families back home this Christmas. They don’t know whether they’ll still have jobs after New Year’s.

Businesses everywhere – in Japan, Europe and America – are going belly-up. Hong Kong, where many of our domestics are employed (up in arms over a government-sponsored ten percent cut in wages), is in the economic doldrums. Even in upmarket, bustling Singapore, business is going blah.

Last year, our OFWs sent home US$6.05 billion. This year, the money from them has gone down by about $6 million, maybe more.

The entire world is hurting. This doesn’t mean that Filipinos won’t be able to have a "Merry Christmas" the old-fashioned way. As the only Catholic nation in Asia, we’re still rich – despite our troubles and faults – in things of the heart. And Christmas is in the heart.

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The socio-economic summit didn’t bring out any great revelations or new initiatives. To begin with, as a garrulous nation we talk too much and do so little. And how can we expect the business community to "monitor" the performance or compliance with the targets set when our businessmen are themselves hostage to the licensing, red tape, and other impositions of the same departments and agencies they are now supposed to monitor? They may not be so brave as to criticize Cabinet members, government officials and our graft-ridden bureaucracy.

What the GMA administration, Congress, and the judiciary must do was self-evident even before the summit meeting. Let’s start with law and order, and I don’t mean just the eradication of the kidnap gangs, the drug syndicates (a tall order), and assorted crime. People must be able to feel safe on our streets, in public vehicles and in their homes. This is a basic demand not only of our own citizens but any foreign investors.

Secondly, they should stop grandstanding and infighting in Congress. The opposition has to learn not to oppose simply for the sake of opposing. A happy balance has to be struck between the pro-administration solons and the opposition’s fiscalizers so the legislature can move on from those endless accusations and investigations. We’ve been a nation in crisis for so long, I guess, that we’ve forgotten that we are in crisis.

Finally, the judiciary must be reamed out so justice can be done, not dished out by corrupt judges who peddle their decisions, such as temporary restraining orders (TROs) etc. Business is paralyzed by such dirty decisions.

That’s only for starters.

Finance Secretary Lito Camacho may be a genius and he’s doing his best in a difficult job, but I like the commonsense approach of his mother, the formidable Narda Camacho. During a forum in a school a couple of months ago, she wowed the students with her direct remarks, easily understood by all. She told her audience that one reason foreign investment is not coming in and local investment is not expanding, is because money does not like dirt and garbage. Money seeks, she said, a clean and neat environment. For where there’s garbage everywhere, the streets are dingy and pollution is a daily reality. Narda concluded: Why should money be attracted?

Indeed, our worst example is EDSA, the main street of our country. It’s bumpy, eroded, and disgracefully shabby. Another failing of ours is our failure to light our streets adequately. A metropolis in darkness is where crime flourishes. Most of all it shows our citizens and foreigners alike that our officials, congressmen, senators, and other leaders are not giving our people the essential services they need not just for everyday existence but for survival. The situation is much worse in the provinces.

Look at the great cities of the world: New York, Paris, London, Tokyo. They’re ablaze with lights. We can’t afford it? Why then can we afford junkets?

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Yesterday’s banner headline in the International Herald Tribune, quoting a dispatch by New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall, reported: "Scores of Taliban, Held in Containers, Die on Way to Prison."

Aside from the hundreds of Taliban prisoners slain in what is described as an uprising while being detained in an old fort by the Northern Alliance, "dozens more, maybe hundreds, died of asphyxiation in shipping containers as they were being taken from the town of Hunduz to Sebarghan prison, a journey that took two or three days for some of them."

We can only conclude that the harsh treatment accorded the surrenderees is typical of Uzbek general and northern Afghanistan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose base is located in Sebarghan. We’ve written of him in a previous column, and he’s running true to form, it seems. But even if Dostum wanted to abide by the Geneva Convention (he probably never heard of it), conditions in Afghanistan, after 23 years of incessant war, are rough. Transporting troops, not just prisoners, is difficult in those primitive areas. Feeding and caring for surrenderees is not one of the top priorities.

The trouble is that when they hear of this latest lamentable development and they do have radios, the militants of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, now trapped in Tora Bora, will never surrender. Even if they’re reeling from daily B-52 bombing, it’s better, they must be saying, to die on your feet than to choke to death in a closed container or be gunned down in prison.

That’s a reality the Afghan anti-Taliban fighters and the Americans will have to face. The militants will cry out that they’re dying for Allah. Perhaps it would be more likely that they don’t want to die, anyway, in the hands of their captors.

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US President George W. Bush delivered a graceful, eloquent and forceful address at the third-month anniversary of the September 11 tragedy which, he noted, brought starkly to Americans how "vulnerable" they are. Bush’s approval ratings are 90 percent, not merely because he (and his speech-writers) are saying the right things, but because Bush, once a "gee whiz" sort of guy, has obviously grown into his Presidency. He now acts and talks presidential, unlike his earlier "down-home-on-the-range" Texas image. If you’ll recall, when he first appeared on TV in the wake of the September outrage, he looked rattled and startled. Now, he’s playing his role as a wartime President with maturity and gravitas. He even looks better, now that he’s lean and mean.

Do events make the man, or does the man make events? Both do. In a sense, Bush is lucky. If it weren’t for the patriotic fervor over the anti-terrorist battle, and the newly-rediscovered unity of spirit, Americans might have blamed Bush for the rise in unemployment, the bankruptcies and the economic recession – just as they had blamed his father and elected Bill Clinton. Yet it goes farther than that. Americans are lining up behind his leadership.

At almost every occasion, the Americans are now singing that Irving Berlin song, God Bless America. It’s becoming the second national anthem. They used to ban public prayer in their schools. Now, Americans are turning back to God.

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ERRATUM: Yesterday’s column was another embarrassment. Two lines were dropped from the published column so as to make my paragraph incomprehensible. The missing lines are hereby inserted in italics. What I meant to say (but the proofreaders muffed it) is that it's rumored "the newly-elected Governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the man who replaces Misuari, Parouk Hussin was "anointed" by the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) for that vital post. Have we become a satrapy to the Muslim umma, their worldwide Islamic society and a slave to the Marcos-signed Tripoli Agreement?"

See how those "missing" lines affected the sentence? Yes, Virginia. They do it frequently to the publisher himself.