Those futile talks hit by deep freeze in sub-zero Oslo

As we expected – Pessimists Incorporated that I am about that "surrender-type" peace initiative of the GMA Administration – the Oslo peace talks between a government panel and the two overseas Communist chiefs, Joma Sison and ex-Father Luis Jalandoni, have bogged down – even before they really began.

Sison is insisting the "terrorist" tag be removed from him and his National Democratic Front (NDF) before consenting to any further discussions at the chosen venue of the Norwegian-sponsored peace talks, a 4-star hostelry named the Rica Hotel Oslo, near the train station. Would you believe? One of the reasons I hear this charming place was selected is because it seems to be Joma’s favorite hotel! We’re kowtowing to him already.

Sison, in an exclusive conversation yesterday (at 4:30 p.m. our time) with the STAR’s Chief European Correspondent Vi Massart, declared, "the NDF will not change its position."

He lashed out at President Macapagal-Arroyo’s government in the most insulting fashion, charging that "this puppet government is using the terrorist listing to blackmail the NDF". He assailed our GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) panel for coming to Oslo just "to collapse the talks" and haughtily demanded that the government "issue a statement of apology to the Filipino nation and put on record that it renounces its complicity with the United States over this terrorist listing".

Sanamagan. Sison even heaped abuse on GMA, scoffing she only wanted "to use the peace talks for electoral purposes, for propaganda by the clerico-fascists and the pseudo-Social Democrats in the Philippines!"

Call your dumbstruck Peace Panel home, Madam President, before you do more damage to yourself – and to our nation. You can clearly see Joma didn’t arrive in Oslo to parley; he went there to push you and our government around, and score a propaganda boost to his sagging, crummy, and half-faded image. If our foolish government only ignores him, Sison and his spear-bearer Father Rasputin Jr., Louie the Dutchman, would be a spent force. But our Peacenik Broker, Secretary Silvestre "Bebot" Bello (didn’t he play a role some years ago in the getaway of those Ten Little Indians?) has for more than half a decade been trying to do the Peace Waltz with him – as did a long roster of very prominent politicians, including those now running who made pilgrimages to Utrecht to pay home to him and lay peace offerings at his feet.

And what did we get? More sneak attacks, raids, murders, "tax collection", and electoral blackmail by the NPA and their NDF "Red" fronts.

Now comes this useless expedition to Oslo. Once more, Sison, the Communist supremo-in-hiding, has been given an international pulpit and the opportunity to once again bask in the media spotlight. And kick GMA on the teeth, calling her "servile" to the Americans.

Notice the outmoded, boring Marxist cant Joma continues to brandish like some Red Rip Van Winkle who went to sleep and was re-awakened by our government, to spout the same shopworn inanities and antique ideological phrases.

As for Presidential Peace Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Quintos Deles, the head of the Philippine delegation to Oslo, it appears she’s in near-despair. Why does she still say the "Government will keep its door open"? Hasn’t she felt Sison’s slamming the door in her face and on our GRP panel’s mewing and pleading?

Indeed, in his statement to Ms. Massart yesterday, he sneered that "if all things fail . . . we will just wait for another administration to be elected and we will resume the peace talks".

Gee whiz. Sison is counting GMA and her Administration down and out already.

Talk about "servile" to the US. Our government is just as "servile" to Sison. Even before it went off to Oslo, our GRP panelists, led by Secretary Deles, announced it would release 24 leftist prisoners and "compensate" human rights victims. What "human rights" victims? Salamabit – such juicy concessions, before Joma and Jalandoni agreed to talk.

The feedback I got yesterday is that our panel is hoping the Norwegian government will intercede to get the talks "re-started". It must be dreaming. The Norwegians are "neutral", the self-professed honest brokers. They know, I’m sure, that they stuck out their necks far enough already by encouraging those talks.

If you ask me – we ought to thank them for their concern – but they’ve meddled enough.

* * *

Last December, this writer read a savage new book by David Corn, entitled The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. It had just rolled off the press, copyright 2003, published by Crown Publishers, New York.

Corn is, of course, the Washington editor of The Nation and a Fox News Channel contributor. In his introduction, Corn charged: "George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. He has mugged the truth – not merely in honest error, but deliberately, consistently, and repeatedly."

One of Corn’s accusations was that Dubya had brazenly mischaracterized intelligence and resorted to deceptive argument to whip up public support for the war. After cutting poor Mr. Bush to bits on half a dozen major issues, Corn went on to recount how other US Presidents had lied, too.

What’s fascinating is that Corn wrote and published his diatribe against Bush’s alleged "lies", from campaign trail to Oval Office, months before it was admitted by the Bush administration that no "weapons of mass destruction" had been found in Iraq, and the confession by George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency no less, that the CIA "might have" overestimated Iraq’s chemical, biological and unclear weapons capabilities.

In short, Tenet admitted the CIA had given the President a bum steer. In other countries (except our own, where liars and those who commit grave blunders are instead promoted), heads would have been chopped off. But Bush didn’t fire George Tenet for having, well, misled him into plunging the US into war – which gives rise to the suspicion that old patriotic Dubya, the two-gun kid from Texas, was spoiling to bash Saddam, WMDs or not. What’s equally bad was that Tenet didn’t honorably tender his resignation – at least to save his now-flustered-looking Commander-in-Chief from embarrassment. Gosh, those Americans are beginning to act like us Filipinos, or did we learn those sinverguenza ways from them? An honest-to-goodness Jap Samurai would have honorably committed suppuku, alias  hara-kiri, after banging his head contritely on the tatami.

In the meantime, sweeping up those Democratic primaries, Massachussetts Senator John Kerry, seems headed for the nomination, and is no longer hitting out at his Democratic Party rivals (even Old Soldier Wesley Clark of NATO has dropped by the wayside and wearily trudged back to Little Rock, while Howard Dean is squeakily in extremis). Kerry is punching at the Defending Champ, Dubya Bush – who’s beginning to look like dear old Dad at the same iffy stage of his ow Presidency. It’s sad, because I like Dubya Bush. I think he’s sincere, but, alas, he’s beginning to wilt. Perhaps he’ll get his second wind, or Kerry may stumble on his way to the hustings.

Meanwhile, TIME magazine the other day (Feb. 16) all but rendered its own verdict. In a cover photo of Bush, nose to nose with himself, TIME grunted: "Believe Him or Not. Does Bush have a CREDIBILITY GAP?"

Has Dubya run out of time? Or will he recover? Current surveys put him below the winner’s edge, And the elections are in November.

* * *

I got invited to observe another election, this time in next-door Taiwan, where, astonishingly, 12 million Taiwanese are expected to vote on March 20, out of a population of only 23 million. Ambassador Hsin-Hsing Wu, who’s gingerly called by our government – eager not to offend Beijing – merely the "Representative" of the "Taipei Economic & Cultural Office", called on me to explain Taiwan’s situation. He asked me if I could go to Taiwan to see how the vote goes, as their guest, but I had to say that we were involved at this time in our electoral follies.

Perhaps later, he suggested, even next October for the "Double Ten".

Would, indeed, have enjoyed, as a journalist, returning to Taiwan after an absence of more than seven years, to see how the Land of "Meteor Garden" and the F-4 (no relation, I guess, to GMA’s suggestively acronymed K-4?) looks nowadays. The coming March polls there are crucial elections, especially when the ill-disguised Taiwan-Firster, the scrappy and courageous President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) is pitted for re-election for a second four-year term, against a powerful Kuomintang (KMT) challenger, Lien Chan, with the formerly dominant KMT seeking to regain power.

Chen’s Vice President, Ms. Lu Hsiu-lien, moreover, is one of the most hated by Beijing – and was recently denied a visa to visit the Philippines.

I think that our government has, for years, been pusillanimous in dealing with the bullying of the People’s Republic of China, which insists on shutting out Taiwan. For pete’s sake, let’s show some backbone and let Taiwanese officials come here. We’re so eager to get 80,000 OFWs currently working in Taiwan better breaks, and sweet-talk prosperous Taiwan into hiring more. But where’s the reciprocity? When Beijing huffs and puffs, we run for cover, bleat that we slavishly subscribe to the "One-China Policy" and cold-shoulder Taiwanese officialdom.

A major aspect of the March 20 elections in Taipei is that the Taiwanese will also be asked in a so-called "Peace Referendum" to which Beijing angrily objects two vital questions.

Number 1 is the following: Should Mainland China refuse to withdraw the 600 missiles – yep, six hundred missiles estimated to be levelled by 2005 – targeted against Taiwan and "openly renounce the use of force" against Taiwan, should the Taiwanese government acquire more advanced anti-missile weapons for self-defense, or not? And (2): Do you think Taiwan’s "democratization" can be recognized by Mainland China in the negotiations for peaceful "cross-straits interactions", such as the results of Taiwanese elections, laws passed by Taiwan’s legislature, and decisions made through referendums like this one?

Those are vital questions, indeed. No wonder Beijing is irritated – and even Dubya Bush, startled, tried to talk the Taiwanese out of asking them in the coming referendum. Why on earth not, Mr. Bush. If the Americans want to bring "democracy" to Iraq, why should they deny a democratic referendum to Taiwan’s people, in which the people can express their will? Susmariosep. No wonder the world is confused so often about America’s intentions.

If it’s true that, by year 2005, China will have deployed 600 ballistic missiles against Taiwan, this is cause for worry, indeed.

As for Ambassador Hsin-Hsing Wu, I found him engaging indeed. He comes from Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s industrial city, and holds a B.A. in English literature from Soochow University in Taiwan, an M.A. in International Relations from the New Mexico State University in New Mexico, USA, and, finally, a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Melbourne in Australia.

He was a Vice Minister for Overseas Chinese Affairs in the Cabinet, which they call the Executive Yuan. Before that, he was Deputy Secretary General of the Straits Foundations (the semi-official body in charge of negotiations and exchanges with China). He has written over 200 academic and newspaper articles and book reviews in Taiwan, Japan, Australia and the US.

Whom did we send over to represent us in Taipei? What else – but a retired Marine General, close to GMA and the First Gentleman. Fair exchange, don’t you think?