It was not so long ago that this writer punched out a series of columns on leadership hoping you would take notice.
We even underscored the supreme value of communication, of "brining the nation to school." You had to impart knowledge, information and wisdom because, after all, the nation’s best teacher and guide was its president. We also urged you, Mrs. President, to listen because knowledge was a two-way street and because more and more sectors of our society were beginning to question the presence of America’s elite, heavily wired combat troops in our country.
Instead of listening and seeking to understand, you earlier labeled them communists. That was unfair. Then when they persisted and their ranks increased, you became pikon, you got out your verbal bazooka and –lot and behold!–you razed them to the level Abu Sayyaf lovers, an outcast breed of non-Filipinos who should be shot at the Luneta.
Now the whole slop is on the floor, a pigsty bottoms up, but like toothpaste from the tube, it cannot be returned. You have wittingly or unwittingly, Mrs. President, released the genie from the bottle, and not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can stifle the genie’s growl and stop his long, hairy arms from the havoc of spreading more confusion, more turbulence, more black smoke on Balikatan 02-1. How easy it would have been if from the very beginning if you announced 660 US Special Forces were here exclusively to annihilate the Abu Sayyaf – period, period, period.
But you and your government dug into hair-splitting mumbo-jumbo. You served up the legal gobbledebook the US troops were simply here for joint military exercises under the Visiting Forces Agreement. They wouldn’t touch a single hair on the head of any Abu Sayyaf unless fired upon. They were under the authority or command of field commanders of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. They would never get out of line. They would simply observe from afar in Basilan even if the roar of combat had become a crescendo. They were here just to train. Get it?
Well, Mrs. President, nobody got it. Except your stool pigeons.
Everybody, or almost, believed these were lies. You prevaricated. And there’s where you dug the first layer of your perceived political grave. And now we know, or think we know, why there were so many lies cooked up by the White House and Malacañang. First, the US has so far been unable to furnish solid, incontrovertible proof of Abu Sayyaf is a spin-off of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. So they are not the international terrorists earlier pinpointed as justifying the extension of the war in Afghanistan to Muslim Mindanao. The New York Time’s Nicolas B. Kristof has exposed Balikatan 02-1 as a "con game" – that nasty word – allegedly cooked up by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for the purpose of getting $100 million in "fresh military aid" from America. Is this true, Ma’m?
Mr. Kristof, writing from Camp Cabunbagta, Mindanao, reports the Abu Sayyaf are just ordinary criminals, not international terrorists, "unlike the Taliban who fight for a cause." If the Philippines, Mr. Kristof writes, "can get $100 million because of gang of 60 crooks, think how much New York is entitled to!" after September 11 if the city had demanded help to rush "international terrorism." The refreshing cynical Kristof reported that even without the 660 US combat troops, the Abu Sayyaf bandits "could have been extinguished soon enough" by Philippine soldiery. In his interview with you, Mrs. President, Kristof said you considered the Abu Sayyaf "terrorists because they instilled terror." Hello. How about the drug lords, Ma’m, don’t they instill terror? Why don’t you go after them? And notorious smugglers, big-time thieves and criminals some of whom frequent Malacañang. Don’t they instill terror? Why do you coddle them?
To boot, Mrs. President, Kristof says "Mrs. Arroyo has astutely used the new partnership with Mr. Bush to shore up her previously wobbly presidency." Ergo, he admits "I have a grudging admiration for Mrs. Arroyo’s shrewdness."
This is where I guess the New York Time’s star reporter Nicolas Kristof could be wrong. In seeking to imitate, even surpass President George W. Bush in fistic ferocity, Mrs. President, you have grievously crossed the line. And it is a line that jangles like a live electric wire. The perception now is that you are an American doll, a puppet. A stoolie. Maybe a lot of ordinary Filipinos don’t’ mind that. But these are the silent majority. They don’t march at all, wave flags and banners, storm and demonstrate in the streets, It’s the minority who do. But it is an active, muscular, noisy even obstreperous minority, a pivotal courageous and largely nationalistic minority, many highly educated even, their hands banging the drum of patriotism.
It was they, Mrs. President, who burned bonfires in the streets and the Senate in 1991 and ignited the historic Senate vote that evicted US military bases Clark and Subic and ended about 400 years of foreign troop military presence in the Philippines. They don’t trust you. They suspect you are laying out red carpet for the restoration of US military presence. They want to know what the Mutual Logistic and Servicing Agreement (MLSA) is all about. Is it another Trojan Horse like the VFA? Why all the mystique and misery about the MLSA? Is it true Mrs. President that the Philippines is now in the American loop "because of concerns about the rise of China, a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan, increasing instability in Southeast Asia and excessive American commercial interests in the region" (International Herald Tribune, Feb. 8, 2002, byline Michael Richardson). Have you been conducting secret negotiations with Washington in this regard?
What is Filipino?
With utter simplicity, with a cavalier disregard for nuances, and almost like a shyster lawyer, you defined him thusly: "You are not a Filipino if you are opposed to the welfare of your own soldier. You are not a Filipino if you refuse the help being offered by a friend. You are not a Filipino if you don’t want the peace and prosperity promised by Balikatan 02-1." Number One, we have nothing against the hardy and often heroic soldier. Our quarrel is with some ranking members of the top military brass who are corrupt, who may have received bribes when they allegedly allowed the Abu Sayyaf to escape from the Basilan hospital where they were trapped. For them, war in Mindanao is a business, according to the book Under the Crescent Moon. Number two, the help offered by the US is welcome enough. But we want to see all the cards on the table to find out if we are dealing with Altruistic America or Imperial America. Number Three, Mrs. President, think again. You may have a Pandora’s Box in Mindanao instead of peace and prosperity as a result of Balikatan.
What you sorely need is to get into the labyrinths of international diplomacy. You have not training or experience here. If you have read "The Edge of the Sword" by Charles de Gaulle, a leader has to have three crucial qualities: To chart the right path, he needs both intelligence and instinct. And in order to persuade people to follow that path, he needs authority." Instinct enables the leader to strike deeply into the order of things. And you can’t do that if, like bat wings whirring in the dark, you brand critics as Abu Sayyaf lovers simply because they are opposed to the presence of American troops. Define that presence, Ma’m. Explain its terms and procedures and processes. That way we clear that boards. That way we’ve got democracy at work.
Your larger problem, Mrs. President, is you cannot strike – so far – the proper balance between order and freedom. You want order, you desire national unity, you want the citizenry to close ranks behind you, but how can they? Many do not understand you, You sometimes talk in riddles, in extravagant hyperbole about how well the nation is faring – much of it false. Ask the poor. And now you talk like George W. Bush. It’s all right for Bush. He’s got the American people behind him and the mightiest armed forces in the world. What do you have? Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes? Chief of Staff Gen. Diomedio Villanueva? Right now, as the New York Times’ Kristof said, there are only 60 Abu Sayyaf brigands, and thousands of Filipino soldiers cannot pin them down.
So what happens? Freedom runs riot in a democracy without stable moorings. As a result, our leadership cannot impose order, authority. This is the Latin American syndrome – the crazy pendulum between freedom and authority, and we have the worst of it.
Excuse me, Ma’m, another weakness of yours is a tendency to boast, to roll your one-year presidency to the high notes of the political and economic piano. C’mon. The nation is in its worst state – crisis is the better word – in 50 years. But you refuse to admit it. Sure there are a few bright spots but all our institutions are archaic and crumbling. As Jim Wallis (The Soul of Politics) commended on the state of the world, "our great macrosystems have both failed, morally and spiritually. They have failed the poor, the earth and the human heart." Again and again, the World Economic Forum recently held in New York struck that theme. The rich have abandoned the poor. Whence the terror that rises from the bowels of poverty.
Gloria, you have a blessed name. Give it the wings of an eagle.