A tale of ground zero

Ground zero is used to describe what happened in Cambodia when Pol Pot destroyed an entire country to what he wanted it to be.

It is a fitting subject to dwell on in the New Year, with our country faced with problems that demand change. But how do we achieve change? It is an alluring philosophy to attempt to achieve ground zero. The history of man is littered with such efforts – of good intentions that turned into nightmares.

The Aquino administration has pledged itself to abolish corruption. It is a good intention. But it has its pitfalls most of them coming from an arrogance of power. It is a delusion to think that human failure can be pronounced abolished by any one man. There lies the danger. If one embarks on a mission that is impossible, that mission will generate its own evils. 

In recent days there is a sense that this “matuwid na daan” is being attempted through short cuts, even to the extent of destroying institutions that would soon make democratic life impossible in this country. This is scary and all thinking Filipinos must resist it if they want to continue living in a constitutional democracy however imperfect. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Those who seek their vision of good when in power can be more frightening because they are unable to see themselves as being wrong. 

Democracy after all is about building consensus under the rule of law. It will always be a market of conflicting interests and these are resolved through various vehicles for negotiation and compromise.

Taking short cuts to achieve what one wants without recourse to law is dangerously undemocratic. Compromise is a necessary virtue of democracy.

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Here is a description of what became of a good intention in Pol Pot’s Cambodia. It can happen here.

It is from Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War, 1984:

“After five years of bloody civil war, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on 17 April 1975. There was no resistance from the forces of the toppled republican government and the whole city, its population swollen by refugees from the fighting, was relieved that peace had come at last.

That relief was short-lived. On the pretext that they were expecting the USA to bomb Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge forced the whole population to evacuate the city on foot. Those who refused were shot, as were hospital patients who were unable to walk. The roads out of the city were clogged with bewildered people, clutching a few belongings. Children were separated from their parents; the old and infirm who could not keep up were left to die at the roadside.

The same thing happened in all the cities and towns, and the whole country was effectively turned into a vast forced labour camp. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, was achieving his dream of Year Zero, the return of Cambodia to a peasant economy in which there would be no class divisions, no money, no books, no schools, no hospitals. ‘Reactionary religion’ was banned in the constitution of January 1976.

Those who had had any connection with the previous regime were eliminated. People who were deemed to have been the lazy elite, in other words the educated and the skilled, were also disposed of. Every vestige of the former corrupt way of life had to be destroyed. Many people tried to conceal their identity or former occupation, but were eventually found out or betrayed. Whole families would be executed. Even babies were killed by smashing their skulls against trees.

Pol Pot summed up the policies of the Khmer Rouge in 1978:

“We are building socialism without a model. We do not wish to copy anyone; we shall use the experience gained in the course of the liberation struggle. There are no schools, faculties or universities in the traditional sense, although they did exist in our country prior to liberation, because we wish to do away with all vestiges of the past. There is no money, no commerce, as the state takes care of provisioning all its citizens.

The cities have been resettled as this is the way things had to be. Some three million town dwellers and peasants were trying to find refuge in the cities from the depredations of war. We evacuated the cities; we resettled the inhabitants in the rural areas where the living conditions could be provided for this segment of the population of new Cambodia. The countryside should be the focus of attention of our revolution, and the people will decide the fate of the cities.”

The way the P-Noy government is going about it, it can happen here. There are already parallels.

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Four-time Speaker Jose de Venecia, fondly referred to as JDV may have his faults, but he understood the art of compromise and worked hard as a consensus builder in his long stint as speaker of the House of Representatives.

He was a successful speaker because he did not have to prove anything. He wanted lawmakers to have a say in what was decided in Congress. No wonder so many came to attend his 75th birthday last Monday at the Golden Bay Restaurant to celebrate the man who exemplified what democratic politics means. He was often a butt of jokes for saying yes to everyone he got the monicker — Sunshine Joe. He was a charmer but an intelligent one. He understood effective realpolitik — how to get things done. Although he shepherded many bills in Congress that redounded to the good of the country, he was derided for the very character that made him an effective politician. He would have made an excellent prime minister in a parliamentary government but alas that was not to be.

I was in China at the recent International Asian Political Parties Conference in Nanking and I saw the man in action translating his political skills in the local scene to bringing warring factions together in the region – Thailand vs. Cambodia, North vs. South Korea and Pakistan vs. India among others. Indeed the very notion that the Communist Party of China would host such a conference is in itself an achievement.

 A happy and prosperous 2012 to all my readers.