After Oakwood – no more ‘mutinies’? Nobody can predict what will happen

The very idea of a Senate-House inquiry into recent allegations concerning public officials "on the take" in jueteng, including insinuations President GMA’s relatives received "kickbacks", is absurd. We’ve had quite enough of those phoney-baloney inquisitions launched by our politicos in Congress, especially the Senate ostensibly "in aid of legislation."

Can any miracle "legislation" be passed to stop jueteng, outside of the anti-illegal gambling laws we already have? And an inquiry at this time clearly smacks of intent to blackmail President GMA or subject her to political torture. Why, in the same manner former President Joseph Estrada was toppled from office, some opposition bravos are already muttering "impeachment".

We’ve got troubles enough already. These hot summer days, there’s a widespread feeling of ennui, drift, and lack of direction. With the Presidency finding itself besieged by the hot breath of another "scandal" (not even "news" really, since one of the nation’s biggest and most unrepentant drug lords hails from La Gloria’s own hometown of Lubao, Pampanga) how do you think this Administration will perform?

Sanamagan. This is not the season for politicking fun and games or malicious muckraking. By all means, if jueteng kickbacks and other hijinks can be proved, arrest those involved, charge them in court, and clap them in jail. Otherwise, let’s stop this pernicious practice of "killing by innuendo."

The eyes of the world, when they wander (but less frequently) in our direction, already see us as Asia’s "second most corrupt" nation, as stated in a recent survey. The latest rumors and published insinuations are already circulating abroad. One more nail in the coffin of our economy.

Sanamagan. I guess it’s the curse of what the Washington Editor of The Atlantic monthly, a weekly commentator for National Public Radio, James Fallows, once tagged in a famous, oft-quoted article, the Filipinos’ "damaged culture". Fallows lived in Asia for four years, and is, for that matter, also an award-winning Japan expert.

Owing to our damaged culture of selfishness and lack of patriotic cohesiveness, it seems that each of us is born, or, from infancy at least, conditioned, to pushing a built-in button labeled "self-destruct".

Our media relishes reports of chicanery, scandal, murder, violent and bloody scenarios, non-stop crime, and graft and corruption. Somebody ought to statistically compile how often the terms "graft and corruption" are used in everyday reporting and in everyday conversation. The result is bound to be mountainous.

When the public reads, or watches on television, such daily reports ad infinitum, the people begin to regard such crimes and violence ordinary and commonplace. It adversely affects our national psyche.

Right now, our Bureau of Internal Revenue is embarked on a very high-profile campaign to expose and bring to book alleged tax cheats and tax evaders – among those targeted by the BIR have been top movie stars and entertainers. The latest to tearfully appear on the griddle has been popular movie-TV personality Judy Ann Santos. (Judy Ann, if you may recall, campaigned very effectively for now Senator Jamby Madrigal).

I guess BIR Commissioner Guillermo "Willy" Parayno’s shame campaign has had some effect, since the BIR announced last week its largest tax collection success in many years. Remember the Chinese proverb, "You kill the chicken to scare the money?")

The impression has been reinforced that we’re a nation of tax evaders. By the same token, the widespread impression is that, in sharp contrast, Americans pay their taxes conscientiously. Sorry to say, this is not quite correct. Sure, their Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scares the shit out of middle class and salaried individuals, and small corporations. But tax evasion in the US is big-time.

The IRS only last March released a report in Washington DC that in the year 2001, individual taxpayers failed to pay as much as $353 billion in taxes. (Why, that’s almost as is needed to finance the Iraq War).

The study, released March 29, examined the "tax gap", or the difference between the amount of taxes owed by taxpayers and the amount collected – representing the revenue agency’s first major study on the problem since 1988. As the report put it, the IRS is embarked on a crackdown on wealthy persons who cheat on their taxes and on corporations which evade income taxes through tax shelters.

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One of the scandals which has continued to hog frontpage treatment in the US – during the more than two weeks I was there recently I read such reports in The Wall Street Journal, (New York edition), The New York Times and Bloomberg reports almost daily, and frequently in The Washington Post involved the giant insurance conglomerate, American International Group (AIG), mother company of Philamlife here in the Philippines. Last May 2, as reported in Wall Street Journal AI, Inc., chaired for decades by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg publicly confessed in effect that had had lied about its finances and its net worth! Salamabit! Isn’t old man Maurice Greenberg one of our own President GMA’s top advisors, billed as the most senior of her international "Council of Advisers"? No wonder we’re in a financial and economic mess.

Greenberg, 79, after ruling AIG as its Chief Executive with an iron hand for an entire lifetime has, of course, been "fired" by AIG, even from the ornamental title of "chairman" he was supposed to have been left with. He is currently being interrogated and possibly will be prosecuted by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, as well as New York Regulators and the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Spitzer, by the way, in the latest poll surveys is running far ahead of incumbent Governor if he decides to run for Governor of New York).

Here’s what Ian McDonald and Theo Francis of The Wall Street Journal wrote: "In an extraordinary admission of accounting impropriety, American International Group, Inc., said it would restate more than four years of financial statements, a move that will reduce its net worth by $2.7 billion or 3.3 percent. The company also admitted that former executives at times had been able to ‘circumvent internal controls over financial reporting’."

The article added that "AIG also has again missed a deadline for filing its 2004 annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

"The 11-page statement issued last night (May 1) acknowledges that certain reinsurance deals that burnished its books in past years involved insufficient risk transfer to qualify for favorable insurance accounting. It also says that rapid trades in and out of hedge funds near the end of reporting periods was one of several tactics the company used to improperly convert capital gains to investment income, further polishing its results."

Et cetera.

"The company said it would restate financial statements for 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, and for 2004’s first, second and third quarters."

What? The AIG under Greenberg had prevaricated, the polite term for "lying", about its worth and improperly "used accounting maneuvers" and so forth? Sus, weren’t Greenberg and AIG lavishly praised by our top businessmen as prime examples of "good governance", ethics, and reliability, and introduced to President GMA as such?

Could Hank Greenberg go to jail? Remember, he used to be a "Power" in New York and Washington DC. You never can tell.

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A couple of my friends in the foreign diplomatic corps have expressed concern to me over what they discreetly termed the "lenient treatment" given 181 soldiers convicted of participating in the July 27, 2003 failed coup, known as the "Oakwood Mutiny" having been released after two years in military detention. In sum, the diplomats feared that the Philippines being too "soft" on rebellious soldiers and mutineers would only encourage future coup d’etat attempts.

I agree with this assessment, but there’s a special background to the case which I can now reveal, my having been one of the negotiators who convinced the 296 mutineers to surrender, and diffuse the explosives they had set in one of the most important sectors of Makati’s financial district, that July 27th two years ago.

I was the only non-government member of the negotiating panel which went into the barricaded Oakwood Hotel building (at the Glorietta) that afternoon. I had gone there because the rebel officers had specifically asked to talk to me, and had requested me to convince the President to delay the assault by government troops, artillery, armor on the barricaded building.

When I arrived in the area, under military escort, my cellphone had rung. It was the President calling. "Don’t attack yet, Mrs. President," I told her. "I’m going into Oakwood now."

There were other remarks, but they’re not for publication. She concluded with, "I hope you can talk some sense into those young men."

She confirmed that she had reset the deadline for attack to 7 p.m. "For Chrissakes, Mrs. President," I exclaimed, glancing at my watch, "it’s already 6 p.m. and I’m just going in this very minute."

The mutineers sent one of their officers, a captain in civvies (t-shirt and shorts) and a uniformed sergeant to guide me in through the minefield they had laid from the Shoemart (SM) corner to Oakwood, and all over Rustans, Glorietta, the parking lot, and next-door Inter-Continental Hotel.

The government panel which arrived, too, was headed by former Armed Forces of Staff, General (now Ambassador) Roy Cimatu. He became our Chief Negotiator, and I must say he and all our "team", if I may say so, did a good job – the best way we could.

I assure you, those 296 officers and men – silly in retrospect it might seem their rash enterprise was – all of them veterans of combat, many with battle decorations, were prepared to fight and die. That’s what we concluded from what we saw during the four hours we "negotiated" to them. Negotiation consists mainly on listening to their gripes and feeling out their anger – then offering them an alternative.

Believe me, if they fought, it would have been a bloody shambles, the entire area would have been razed to rubble, and we would have been gazing at those ruins for the next three or more years. (And we nervous negotiators, as Roy Cimatu afterwards admitted, would have been in bits and pieces, too, having stayed there way beyond the attack deadline). But at least the putschists agreed to a "back to barracks" formula, provided they were tried "under the Articles of War." Meaning, of course, court martial.

The coup leaders, Trillanes, Gambala, Maestrecampo, Alejano and Layug, asked for clemency for the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers in their group, and we promised them that. However, we said they would still have to go through military trial. That promise has been fulfilled with the release of the 181 soldiers.

What has not been fulfilled – and is a doublecross (as I’ve already written) on the part of the government – is the pledge that the mutineers would be tried only under the "articles of war," not in a civilian court.

I’m certain the more senior officers and the leaders of the "Magdalo" Mutiny won’t get off the hook so readily – and will be meted out harsher punishment than the 181. But in effect we also promised them that they would get a break.

Did we negotiate "with a gun to our heads" as some critics stupidly say? You bet. We weren’t afraid for ourselves – you get to a point when you say, "What the hell, if it’s Dying Day for us, then, God help us, but so be it." We were afraid they would blow up one-fifth of downtown Makati, and our country’s reputation to boot. That’s all.

I offer no apologies for the deal we made. I ask our government to honor it, though, in its entirety.