The piece was the kind of superficial prattle which feeds the misguided notion of some hysterical and panicked members of the political opposition that this country can get anywhere just by asking a United States President, who is himself beleaguered, to "warn" his Philippine counterpart not to "undermine" our "hard-won democracy."
It’s just as well that the US government clarified that the Times editorial did not represent official US policy. I would assume then that President George W. Bush does not intend to divert himself from pressing domestic priorities on, among others, the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the dilemma of Iran, and a divisive immigration bill upon which he can’t even get a consensus from his Republican congressional majority.
The man’s trust ratings have plummeted to an all-time low in a local election year, for heaven’s sake. And the New York Times wants him to lecture another President about how to do her job? On the other hand, I’m not totally surprised that the Times, journalistic bastion of Eastern liberalism and one of the favorite whipping boys of Fox News, would dispatch one of their regular neoconservative targets, George W himself, on a fruitless foray into the jungles of blatant interventionism.
The point is not that the editorial’s evocation of "bad memories of crony corruption, presidential vote-rigging and intimidation of critical journalists" are totally wrong. The Times editorial simply betrays the paper’s unperceptive analysis of the Philippine situation since the departure of Ferdinand Marcos.
Memories? When have crony corruption, presidential vote-rigging and intimidation of journalists ever departed the Philippine scene and become mere memories? GMA didn’t invent these aberrations, whatever you might think of her. Her critics claim she has escalated their practice to new levels of sophistication and greed. But that, as her defenders irrelevantly respond, is a matter of proof.
Every president since Marcos has been accused of keeping his or her own Kamaganak, Inc., watering-hole buddies or midnight cabinet well provided for. Media outlets have been threatened with advertising boycotts, covert or undisguised, and blackballing of reporters, usually at the behest of Palace functionaries.
We routinely chalk up among the highest numbers of slain or injured newspersons per year in the world. Why didn’t the New York Times ask first George Bush or Bill Clinton to stick his nose into our affairs during those "dark days"? Why ask George W now, when he’s saddled with huge problems? The faster to sink him perhaps?
It’s shocking how ostensibly sensible local politicians jumped on the New York Times bandwagon to trumpet the "international commentary" on GMA’s shortcomings. They actually exulted that there was international support for their call for her resignation. In fact, there is no such support, except maybe from their relatives in America and Australia, and I’m not even sure of that.
The reference to the editorial as a "wake-up call" for Gloria is wishful thinking, just as the attempt to label concurrence with people’s initiative as equivalent to voting for her perpetuation in power is a cynical attempt to falsify the issues behind Charter change. Filipinos don’t recognize supposed wake-up calls from foreign newspapers which are indubitably looking out for US national interests, not Philippine interests.
Our countrymen are a lot smarter than some anti-Chacha pitchmen desperate for political survival give them credit for. On both sides of the Chacha fence, most realize that what’s essentially at stake here goes well beyond GMA’s incumbency. Charter change has implications more far-reaching than the duration of her presidency. When we make our choice on Charter changes, it’s with the nation’s future in mind, not hers.
The Times glosses over what, to my mind, is a key point. For what is that "hard-won democracy" that the paper is convinced GMA is undermining? The impression given the Times reader is that that "democracy" is no other than the political system which replaced Ferdinand Marcos after he was ousted by "people power," billed as our country’s unique "gift to the world."
The US has made it its business to keep that "democracy" atop the pedestal which it helped to create in 1986, and then maintain it by such means as those "persuasion flights" from Clark Air Base in 1989 (not that said flights were entirely unwelcome, mind you). The Times evidently regards that "democracy" as a veritable paradise, an unqualified blessing, which no upstart like GMA should "undermine."
Moreover, the New York Times seems to have appointed the US President as the guarantor of that "democracy" against "dark days." The gross oversimplification in this posture is manifest. George W. Bush himself cannot possibly want his current political problems aggravated by his taking an untimely hard stance against GMA.
The democracy bequeathed to us by the 1986 revolution and by its most avid practitioners in government since then, is what we see today, that same democracy that has featured unrelenting political and economic instability in our country. Sure, all of us share some responsibility for this condition. But when the Times refers to "the ideals that inspired the 1986 ‘people power’ movement," with which GMA has "completely lost touch," I have difficulty finding a clear articulation of what those "ideals" are.
Today we are far enough from 1986 to agree with historians that the most positive result revolutions can achieve is the speedy overthrow of a despot and the sweeping away of the worst manifestations of authoritarian rule. Thus, Marcos and his entourage were flown from Malacañang to Hawaii where he eventually died. To my knowledge, there are no more "safe houses" maintained by secret agents into which accused persons disappear.
But beyond that, it’s a crap shoot. Some say we have the trappings but not the substance, much less the benefits, of a democratic system. Others insist our democracy is defined mainly by its obsession with elections. But the exercise of suffrage does not exhaust what a democracy is all about. Elections can, and often do, result in undeserving, unqualified and undemocratic people holding the reins of government.
Is this the democracy, I wonder, that the New York Times wants George W to warn GMA against undermining? Even so, if any warning is to be done, it ought to be by Filipinos themselves, with our own interests and future in mind, not anyone else’s.
Their will, not the will of the New York Times, be done!