The US and GMA / Malay’s grain of salt

While President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo dances ecstatically under a rain of White House adulation, it’s time we all assessed the historic import of her state visit. We’re all taken in by the hoopla, the visual magic, the fulsome US promises, the roseate mists of welcome. As a result, there is now the widening belief GMA with US support will run for the presidency in 2004. I don’t want to be a spoilsport but America is a past master at this sort of thing. Don’t forget that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt shortly after we were invaded by the Japanese Imperial Army, promised us the stars, the moon and the heavens. Every carabao that we lost, every earthly possession would be repaid.

We were also made to understand a huge, mile-long US naval convoy would come in not time to kick the bejesus out of General Masaharu Homma and his bakero-bawling horde from Dai Nippon. We waited. We waited all of four years before Gen. Douglas MacArthur fulfilled his "I shall return promise". And at that, Filipino guerrilla contingents all over the country had the Japs in full retreat and all the US troops had to do was mop up. General Tomoyuki Yamashita got out of his cave in Besang Pass, surrendered to Filipino fighters and I didn’t see any American GIs around.

Until today, 63 years later, the US still has to fulfill its promise of fully compensating and rewarding the herculean efforts of Filipino war veterans, thousands of whom died fighting for the US flag. More have perished of sickness and old age. They clung to the dream they had not fought in vain and America would one day be fair, just, and generous. After all, they fought as fiercely and passionately as any American soldier in the service of his flag. Soon, withered and white-haired, and still dirt poor, they will all die, and I pity them. I too fought as a guerrilla for America.

I just wanted to get that damper in before we Filipinos get taken in again. Oh yes, there’s another one. When the Yankees vacated Clark and Subic in 1990, they left both bases a mess, not even bothering to clean up piles of toxic wastes, refuse and garbage. That was downright mean.

Now, let’s weigh in on the probability that GMA will run in 2004, the American candidate to be sure, the Amgirl par excellence. Will that be good for the country? Here, we must pause. Here we must study the American record of unstinting support for puppet regimes and government, unpopular dictators and brass-knuckled strongmen mouthing the American line. Eventually, we find that out and out pro-American presidents, prime ministers and other leaders came to grief because they lost popular support, while serving their American masters.

This was the case of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. This too was the case of Syngman Rhee in South Korea, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Shah Reza Mohamed Pahlevi in Iran, the Greek colonels, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Chiang Kai-Shek in China, Suharto in Indonesia, Prince Duvalier in Haiti, Haile Selassi in Ethiopia, corrupt royalty in oil-rich Middle East, corrupt tinpot dictators in Africa like Mobutu Sese Seko.

What is the basic lesson to be derived?

That American presence in Third World countries is not necessarily motivated by generosity but by sheer self-interest. That this presence or alliance tends more to corrupt the national leadership of the Third World country than improve its economy, attack the causes of poverty, crime, lawlessness. Those I have mentioned, including Marcos of course, were some of the most depraved and dishonorable leaders of the world during their time. America indulged Marcos his darkest desires because the dictator furnished protective legal cover for Subic Naval Base and Clark Field Air Force Base. And so George Bush the elder praised Marcos’ "adherence to democracy".

This is what greatly worries me. GMA appears to have no brakes on her fealty and loyalty to America. My fear is that, given her biases, statesmanship and patriotism will disappear in favor of giving Washington almost everything it wants in the Philippines. And so the US becomes an occupying power, dictating who is a terrorist and who is not, fighting battles here it has no business fighting, reducing the Filipino once again to a cutter of wood and a hewer of water.

Remember this. At this stage of the international ball game, and the fight against terrorism, America needs us much more than we need Uncle Sam. And since GMA is such an easy touch, much of the US assistance will be military. Social and economic progress will take a back seat. At the same time, American military presence here will tag us as an American lackey and foreign terrorists will want to hit the US soldiery and their encampments here. And that’s where the danger lies.

There will be more and more Filipinos who will realize we are being jobbed, that we hold the short end of the stick, that America is here to project its military power all over Asia and the Pacific, in tandem with its military presence in South Korea and Japan. The Philippines will become a war zone, as guerrillas of the CPP-NPA and the MILF get involved. Our economy goes further to pot, the citizenry gets hungrier, a population of over 80 million twitches miserably in the cross-currents of military turbulence.

I may have painted a dismal picture but the basics are there.

We need a president, a leadership that can effectively and fearlessly negotiate with the US, with Philippine interests uppermost in mind, not a president who sits snugly on Uncle Sam’s laps and sells the country short. The latter is the road to national perdition. And that is why I urge all and sundry to refocus on that White House extravaganza. How much is razzle-dazzle and how much commitment? How much is flimflam and flattery and how much is genuine camaraderie? How much is genuine gold and how much is squalid and silver? Baka maisahan na naman tayo.

Are we hearing Franklin Delano Roosevelt all over again and his promise to refund every pig, every carabao, every donkey lost in the war against Dai Nippon?

* * *

I was probably the youngest cub reporter in captivity when I entered the ranks of journalism in the late 40s and early 50s. The postwar Manila Tribune took me in on the recommendation of Joe Lansang, one of the immortals of the press who eventually edited the Philippines Herald. Well, the idol of many young newsmen then was Armando Malay who wrote the most popular column in town With A Grain of Salt.

There were three other well-known columnists in the stable of the Manila Chronicle, namely Ernesto del Rosario, the paper’s editor, and Horacio Borromeo (hope I got the name right), Indalecio (Yeyeng) Soliongco came in after. Column-writing came into its own. Since then, columnists, it seems, defined a newspaper. And today, the best print columnists are the princes of media despite the phenomenal rise of TV journalism.

Armando Malay was the wittiest of them all in his time, witty and pungent, raining deft political humor and satire on the political villains and quacks of his day. Egad, but that was a long time ago, half a century ago. President Elpidio Quirino must have been a favorite target, his P5,000 bed and his golden orinola. Armando wrote at the same time that Rogelio de la Rosa and Carmen Rosales enchanted the movie crowds and the NCAA basketball tournament held everybody in its grip, what with Ateneo and La Salle diving divinely into their classic cage feud that rages to this day.

Columnist Malay, unlike another famous columnist Arsenio H. Lacson, preferred needles, stilletoes to puncture his political targets. He never roared or used a bludgeon or bombinated like Arsenic. He drew thin layers of blood and he was satisfied with that. His prose was classic English prose, which I find missing today among our new writers in English.

His bigger legacy however – in my view – was his entry into the parliament of the streets. He was never a brawler in his column, no knock down and dragout performer. But when you go out into the streets, as he did during the Marcos years, he was virtually inviting the carabinieri of the dictatorship to do him in. In this respect, he was one with another street gladiator, Chino Roces, former Manila Times publisher. With their street presence, Malay and Roces embellished the opposition against Marcos.

By then, Malay’s hair had already turned grey. He was no communist, no socialist, no rip-roaring ideologue of the left although some of his children were. But he chose to fight his own fight, unflinching and indomitable, without the signature of Karl Marx or Mao Zedong. It showed in his movements, it showed in his many writings, a dogged climber of his own Mount Everest. While almost all of his colleagues had stopped writing long ago, Armando soldiered on, a war veteran of the press who just refused to retire.

Armando Malay was the consummate fighter for lost causes. And so we salute him. As the poet said, there is no cause worth fighting for but a lost cause.