ConAss fallout widens as junior officers warn Arroyo regime

Do you remember the Kawal Pilipino? The Kawal Pilipino is not an unseen group that operates behind press releases. The group is very real. They come from that part of the officers’ corps under the category of non-Philippine Military Academy graduates that comprises 67% of military officers.

Three months before the May 2004 elections, these junior military officers held a press conference and exposed the government plot to involve the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in rigging election results. Unlike other unidentified soldier groups, Kawal Pilipino came out into the open to express their concerns about illegal orders to the AFP preparatory to the 2004 presidential elections.

When they appeared before media on February 2004, they exposed two irregularities. The first was the order allegedly issued to company commanders to conduct surveillance operations on the opposition. In an election campaign, there is no legal basis or justification to assign police or military personnel to spy on other candidates.

Spying on election candidates is an illegal act. To involve a government agent in the illegal act makes it a greater offense, a high crime deserving impeachment. US President Richard Nixon was forced to resign (to avoid impeachment) because of the Watergate Scandal, a spying operation on the rival Democratic Party that did not even involve officers of the police, FBI or military in their official capacity.

The second order involved the plan to orchestrate conditions that would justify putting target areas under military jurisdiction. As the Garci Tapes would later reveal, AFP officers were said to be at the core of 2004 election cheating operations.

Seven of the Kawal Pilipino officers were charged but were later exonerated for their expose. Through recent events related to the aborted February 24, 2006 withdrawal of support, we’ve not heard from the Kawal Pilipino.

They did not cease to exist. In fact, they claim to have grown in membership. They’re back and last Friday they circulated a statement that threatens an escalation of conflict intensity in the event that the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo regime applies brute force to suppress protest actions against Charter Change via Constituent Assembly (ConAss) without the Senate.

The Kawal Pilipino statement in its entirety reads as follows:

"People of the Philippines, we are your Armed Forces. In recent days, we have seen a constitutional coup perpetrated by the very people sworn to defend the Constitution.

The nation is shocked and outraged. All the institutions of society are rising to protest this iniquity. We in the Armed Forces face a choice – we can either use our arms to protect the people or cow them into submission.

We choose to use them to protect the people. That is our duty, that is the reason we exist.

We have been told that huge rallies and marches will be taking place next week. We give fair warning to Malacañang, Congress, and the police: Do not even think to scuttle them, do not even think to do the marchers harm. We will meet push with push, force with force, fire with fire.

We will protect the people. We will protect democracy.

May God bless us all.

Kawal Pilipino December 8, 2006"

Knowing the authenticity of Kawal Pilipino, this manifesto issued last Friday may well be a major factor that deterred Speaker Joe de Venecia and his ConAsses (term for Congressmen obsessed with pushing for Charter Change through Constituent Assembly without the Senate) from pushing through with their plan to convene the ConAss today. Amid threats from the Church and civil society groups, such a clear, no-ifs-and-buts statement from a major segment of the military officers’ corps does indeed deal a sobering blow.

I am not concerned with what happens to Speaker Joe, his ConAsses and their lackeys in media. They made their bed so let us allow them to sleep in it. But the Kawal Pilipino statement has very serious repercussions to our already hyper-charged national situation.

"We will meet push with push, force with force, fire with fire" is a major deviation from earlier acts of the restive military. This is an open declaration of preparedness and resolve to engage in combat those who will brutalize the people.

"We will meet push with push, force with force, fire with fire" means that the soldiers are not thinking anymore of withdrawal of support or marching in the streets with the Church and civil society groups – but to fix bayonet and open fire on those who will repress and harm the ConAss protesters.

"We will meet push with push, force with force, fire with fire" marks a sharp contrast from the sentiment expressed by the soldiers and officers in EDSA I and EDSA II – the intense desire not to fight and kill each other.

This is new and unfamiliar territory for all of us. This is nowhere near the circumstances of the two EDSA events. If this escalates to where it is headed, we are looking here at the possibility of a civil war!

This is where Madame Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Virgilio Garcillano have brought us, ignited no doubt by the recent television performance of Joe de Venecia and his Con-Asses. This is an offshoot of the Garci Tapes crisis and the repression that followed it.

This is what a repressive regime reaps when instead of facing the issue in the proper forum – impeachment – it applied the tyranny of parliamentary numbers and brute force of the military and police to stifle dissent.

When you charge officers for doing what they feel is their patriotic duty to expose illegal orders, when you arrest officers who organized a march and a manifestation of withdrawal of support and put them in the stockade for "attempting a coup" – then you ought to be ready for something like this, the logical option left for the soldier who has lost all legal means.

The immediate issue may be ConAss but do not delude yourself that ConAss is the entire problem. ConAss is dead. Except that Joe and his ConAsses can’t admit it.

Even if we’ve solved the ConAss problem, this crisis will still resurface – waiting for the next flashpoint to ignite it, the next flashpoint promising to be worse than the one before.

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You may e-mail William M. Esposo at: [email protected]