Speaker De Venecia will ‘recognize’ warrants of arrest if served on House members

Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo told me that what most concerned the foreign ambassadors he called to a dialogue in the Department of Foreign Affairs last Thursday afternoon were: Was there a threat to press freedom? Was Proclamation 1017 an indication of more stringent government curbs to be imposed in the country? And was the recently aborted "coup" move a sign that elements in the military might once again threaten the stability of the government?

All these points, Bert said, had been eloquently addressed at the briefing by Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz and Executive Secretary Ed Ermita Jr., and he believed that the foreign envoys who were almost all in attendance now understood the situation better.

Secretary Romulo who met with me Friday said that he felt that with the increasingly stronger peso, the resolute government measures being implemented by President GMA, her officials and the military and police establishment, the international community has been reassured of stability in the Philippines. One of the next major events on the calendar, he disclosed, is the interfaith dialogue to be held shortly in Cebu City, a follow-up to the meetings chaired by GMA in New York City at the United Nations a few months ago. In sum, it’s business as usual.

Incidentally, the DFA Chief confirmed that Ambassador Christy Ortega will soon be leaving to take up her post in Brussels as our envoy to the Kingdom of Belgium, as well as to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Agrement has already been reached with Brussels on this score. Ambassador Ortega, who was our envoy to Canberra, Australia for the past three years, up to last week in fact, speaks fluent French, having previously served in both Brussels itself and Paris. La Presidenta, in turn has named the very capable, just-retired Flag Officer-in-Command of the Navy, Vice Admiral Ernesto De Leon our new Ambassador to Australia. Although, De Leon, who also speaks excellent French, and had trained in the Ecole’ Militaire of France (he holds the French Legion of Honor) had been considered for Brussels, it was decided that his posting in Canberra would be more beneficial to our interests, since a considerable number of military aid and cooperation arrangements with the Australian government are in the works. De Leon knows Australia intimately as well, having trained there for some years in naval strategy and maritime matters.

There will be a number of further diplomatic "rearrangements", but these are still on the planning board and cannot be discussed, Romulo admitted, until the President is ready to reveal them.

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I received more details about the Thursday discussion at the DFA from Defense Secretary Nonong Cruz who came to see me later and debriefed me on that dialogue and the developments in the military, such as the fallout from the so-called aborted "coup".

He said that when the Ambassadors inquired about GMA’s declaration of the State of National Emergency, he pointed out to them that it was nowhere near the Marcos Martial Law proclamation of September 1972, and certainly was not a prelude to dictatorship. Emergency measures had been imposed before, Cruz reminded the assembled envoys, even during the Cory Administration at the height of the RAM-SFP-YOU coup attempts, as well as by GMA herself in the wake of the May 1, 2000 "assault" on the palace by a mob which attempted to overwhelm Malacañang. Some of the same dramatis personae, if you will recall, were also allegedly involved in that violent Labor Day incident.

In the case of Proclamation 1017, he asserted, GMA had issued it since there was "clear and present danger" in the various plots to topple the government.

Anyway, as a former leading light of The Firm, meaning what was known in the old days as Carpio Villarasa Cruz, Nonong is a brilliant lawyer and was able to mobilize his arguments with clarity and finality.

He and Ed Ermita had further clarified the dispatch of policemen to the offices of the Daily Tribune, a matter which the diplomats brought up in the dialogue.

The policemen, Cruz had insisted, had not been sent there to shut down the newspaper, nor did they interfere with editorial work, editorial policy or the reporting in that daily.

I still think as I expressed earlier in this corner, that sending cops to "occupy" a newspaper office was a serious mistake. And I still don’t understand what the government had hoped to accomplish by this strange move. Certainly, the government should have anticipated that the invasion of any editorial or media office would be regarded by everybody, including foreign governments, as a threat to press freedom. How could they say that the policemen did not interfere with the editorial content of the Daily Tribune when the very thought of a policeman looking over your shoulder as you write is already ominous? If seditious material was really being published by any daily or media outlet, the editors and writers should have been charged accordingly on the basis of what had already appeared in print, not subjected to a preemptive strike.

We later talked about the findings in the inquiry into the aborted February coup (which many officers are now claiming was not actually a move to topple the government or withdraw support), but the details are still pending and I won’t attempt to dissect them. What’s clear is that the coup instigators, one of the chief suspects a prominent ex-Putchist and politician, did not get the widespread support they had hoped to generate.

For example, the other elite regiment of the AFP, the Special Forces, under the command of one of the most admired officers, Medal of Valor holder Col. Arturo Ortiz, did not waver in its support of the government. As Ortiz told his men: "We are soldiers. Let us leave the politics to the politicians." Ortiz is renowned for having led his men in Negros Occidental through 11 hours of hard trek through forest, sugarcane fields and hilly terrain, then, scaling a 1,000 foot ravine, took a large force of communist New People’s Army guerrillas by surprise, killing 300 NPA cadres and wounding many others, and recovering dozens of weapons and a large amount of ammunition. In the 30-year war against communist insurgency, this action still holds the record as the most celebrated singular feat of arms in the annals of the military.

Sometimes, I feel that we in our society don’t value enough the sacrifices and effort exerted by our soldiers, marines, navy men, and air force officers and personnel in our defense and in the safety of the republic. Right now, elements of one infantry division are moving through the mountains of the north, through ambush-type territory, to stalk a large force of NPA. In short, just as the NPA insurgents never sleep, neither does our Army. "Our warriors" are always in danger of their lives so that we can sleep peacefully in our homes.

One of the things Secretary Cruz and I discussed was how to beef up both the moral and equipment of our Armed Forces. This will take not only money but savvy. Cruz said that he favors the P100 billion one-time budget which was proposed in this column to modernize, re-train re-equip, recruit – in short, streamline our Armed Forces to effectively crash the insurgency. This is being seriously studied, he said, as well as a P50-billion budget to make the Philippine National Police more responsive and effective.

One of the things that surprised him when he became Defense Secretary, Nonong recounted, was that when he conducted a study into the matter, he found that the average age of our soldiers was 44 years old! Indeed, we have a brave but aging military, when what we need to meet today’s challenges is a lean and mean – and younger machine.

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If warrants of arrest are issued for any or all of the so-called Batasan 5, Speaker Joe De Venecia told me Friday night, his office would, of course, have to honor those arrest warrants. He did his part, he said, when he … well, played Pinoy Big Brother to the five left-wing Party List Members of the House by letting them use his office (which they took over completely for a few days). But now they are back in their own offices.

Who among them will be served warrants of arrest? The five Members of Congress in question are Saturnino Ocampo, Teddy Casiño, Liza Masa, Joel Virador and Rafael Mariano. They cannot invoke parliamentary immunity, I guess, if serious charges of subversion or other crimes against the state are leveled against them and properly documented. What De Venecia indicated, in effect, is that the House of Representatives will not bar the arrest of any solon facing such charges.

With GMA yesterday vowing "to go for the jugular" in the fight against those who are striving to overthrow the government and our society, it’s clear that events will be unfolding forcefully in the next few days. Need I say more?