Never again? (2)
Never again?
Updated 01:34am (Mla time) Sept 22, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
(Conclusion)
UP UNTIL several years ago, I was also confident the public would never allow martial law to happen again. The prospect of martial rule replacing a democratic one seemed ages removed.
The difference between then and now, I said then, was that then people had not experienced martial law-it was an unknown quantity, they were willing to give it a try. Now, they know what martial law can do, they know that things can always get worse than they are. They know authoritarian rule gives neither bread nor freedom, and they are not suckers for punishment. The people themselves, I said, would never allow martial law, or whatever guise it took, to happen again.
Besides, we had just had two EDSA People Power uprisings. You can't have any clearer proof about the extent to which people would bestir themselves to end tyranny than that. Both ended the rule of a thug, even if the first rule had arisen by design and the second by accident. Or indeed, as the "Eraptions" showed, by Joseph Estrada bungling into it with blissful ignorance.
I said, too, in several columns that the people were no longer as docile as they were when Marcos declared martial law. The two EDSA People Power revolts proved they were capable of exploding after being stoked to rage; the second EDSA People Power uprising, in particular, which showed a public capable of spontaneous action. EDSA People Power II had no definite leader, though the usual suspects -- Cory Aquino, Jaime Cardinal Sin and Fidel Ramos -- subsequently made a strenuous bid to claim it as their own.
I am not so sure that is the case today. 9/11 demonstrated how brittle the foundations of people power really are. The problem is not stoking the populace to heroism, it is sustaining it. Indeed, the problem is that it is easier to stoke the flames of bigotry than the fires of heroism among the populace. That was what 9/11 did -- or what a non-elected president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo --
did with it. She stoked the flames of this country's most deep-seated biases, which were its love for Americans and hatred of Moros [Filipino Muslims], to justify importing George W. Bush's idiotic version of "war against terror" into these shores.
Overnight, democracy disappeared. One is tempted to say, ironically, because the entire enterprise unfurled the banners of freedom and defense of the democratic way of life. But that in fact was how Marcos justified martial law, too: as a defense of freedom and the democratic way of life. Only the concept of whom they were presumably being defended from changed. Then it was communists, now it was terrorists. But overnight after 9/11, democracy was replaced by the rule of the generals, or at least the militarists. Overnight, the people in charge of the country were no longer the President and her Cabinet, they were the commander in chief and her National Security Council.
How martial the whole country became, I've written about countless times in the past -- and got a lot of flak for it. The people who dished out the flak are silent now, in the wake of their idol Bush's monumental blunder in Iraq. Only a year ago, they were shouting their heads off about defending God and flag by bombing the Iraqis to kingdom come.
How martial this country became, you saw in movie and TV fare that extolled martial virtues and even turned the CIA, author of the massacre of Allende et al., into a misunderstood hero. Indeed, how martial this country became you saw in Ms Arroyo, Roilo Golez, Angelo Reyes and their ilk beside themselves with glee at the US donation of surplus planes and weapons in reward for our joining the "coalition of the willing" like boys with newfound toys.
Nobody protested it. Least of all civil society, which stopped being civil and became thoroughly martial with what truly ironically was called "Peace Bonds."
Finally, up until a few years, I was confident we would not see another man who had the same appetite for power or would be as wiling to raise the stakes to have it as Marcos. Cory had given up power, though she could easily have held on to it. Law has never deterred this country from deeds good and bad; it has lawyers precisely to help people skirt it. Ramos wanted to, but gave it up after being felled by the Asian crisis of 1997. His moral authority plunged as swiftly as the peso. And though Estrada was a thug, he did not have the same scale of ruthlessness, quite apart from astuteness, as Marcos. He left woefully on a barge on Pasig River bound for his San Juan hometown.
Well, true enough no man came along possessing the same ambition and resolve as Marcos. A woman has. And sublimely ironically one birthed by an act of people power. A woman who has recklessly thrown this country itself, quite apart from the OFWs in the Gulf, into the path of harm by an aggressive posture of war, a woman who has unleashed a reign of terror in the name of fighting it, a woman who has shown no compunction for telling the country one thing and doing another.
There are in fact only two things standing in the way of authoritarian rule as a possibility in future. The first is minor, and has to do with Charter change, which would allow the president to stay in power as prime minister. The second is major, which is the only real deterrent against it, and that is the control of the military. That was what Marcos had that nobody else, man or woman, has had since, a complete control of the military. He didn't just have the loyalty of the generals out of gratitude, he had it out of fear. Nobody dared defy him, until much later when he was ravaged by disease. And the wonder of it was that he wasn't a general himself; he was a lawyer. Easy to unleash the rule of the generals, the question is: How do you prevent a general from ruling himself?
But the way things are, with dire and uncertain times having us in their grip, you never know.
Never again?
Guess again.
Updated 01:34am (Mla time) Sept 22, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
(Conclusion)
UP UNTIL several years ago, I was also confident the public would never allow martial law to happen again. The prospect of martial rule replacing a democratic one seemed ages removed.
The difference between then and now, I said then, was that then people had not experienced martial law-it was an unknown quantity, they were willing to give it a try. Now, they know what martial law can do, they know that things can always get worse than they are. They know authoritarian rule gives neither bread nor freedom, and they are not suckers for punishment. The people themselves, I said, would never allow martial law, or whatever guise it took, to happen again.
Besides, we had just had two EDSA People Power uprisings. You can't have any clearer proof about the extent to which people would bestir themselves to end tyranny than that. Both ended the rule of a thug, even if the first rule had arisen by design and the second by accident. Or indeed, as the "Eraptions" showed, by Joseph Estrada bungling into it with blissful ignorance.
I said, too, in several columns that the people were no longer as docile as they were when Marcos declared martial law. The two EDSA People Power revolts proved they were capable of exploding after being stoked to rage; the second EDSA People Power uprising, in particular, which showed a public capable of spontaneous action. EDSA People Power II had no definite leader, though the usual suspects -- Cory Aquino, Jaime Cardinal Sin and Fidel Ramos -- subsequently made a strenuous bid to claim it as their own.
I am not so sure that is the case today. 9/11 demonstrated how brittle the foundations of people power really are. The problem is not stoking the populace to heroism, it is sustaining it. Indeed, the problem is that it is easier to stoke the flames of bigotry than the fires of heroism among the populace. That was what 9/11 did -- or what a non-elected president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo --
did with it. She stoked the flames of this country's most deep-seated biases, which were its love for Americans and hatred of Moros [Filipino Muslims], to justify importing George W. Bush's idiotic version of "war against terror" into these shores.
Overnight, democracy disappeared. One is tempted to say, ironically, because the entire enterprise unfurled the banners of freedom and defense of the democratic way of life. But that in fact was how Marcos justified martial law, too: as a defense of freedom and the democratic way of life. Only the concept of whom they were presumably being defended from changed. Then it was communists, now it was terrorists. But overnight after 9/11, democracy was replaced by the rule of the generals, or at least the militarists. Overnight, the people in charge of the country were no longer the President and her Cabinet, they were the commander in chief and her National Security Council.
How martial the whole country became, I've written about countless times in the past -- and got a lot of flak for it. The people who dished out the flak are silent now, in the wake of their idol Bush's monumental blunder in Iraq. Only a year ago, they were shouting their heads off about defending God and flag by bombing the Iraqis to kingdom come.
How martial this country became, you saw in movie and TV fare that extolled martial virtues and even turned the CIA, author of the massacre of Allende et al., into a misunderstood hero. Indeed, how martial this country became you saw in Ms Arroyo, Roilo Golez, Angelo Reyes and their ilk beside themselves with glee at the US donation of surplus planes and weapons in reward for our joining the "coalition of the willing" like boys with newfound toys.
Nobody protested it. Least of all civil society, which stopped being civil and became thoroughly martial with what truly ironically was called "Peace Bonds."
Finally, up until a few years, I was confident we would not see another man who had the same appetite for power or would be as wiling to raise the stakes to have it as Marcos. Cory had given up power, though she could easily have held on to it. Law has never deterred this country from deeds good and bad; it has lawyers precisely to help people skirt it. Ramos wanted to, but gave it up after being felled by the Asian crisis of 1997. His moral authority plunged as swiftly as the peso. And though Estrada was a thug, he did not have the same scale of ruthlessness, quite apart from astuteness, as Marcos. He left woefully on a barge on Pasig River bound for his San Juan hometown.
Well, true enough no man came along possessing the same ambition and resolve as Marcos. A woman has. And sublimely ironically one birthed by an act of people power. A woman who has recklessly thrown this country itself, quite apart from the OFWs in the Gulf, into the path of harm by an aggressive posture of war, a woman who has unleashed a reign of terror in the name of fighting it, a woman who has shown no compunction for telling the country one thing and doing another.
There are in fact only two things standing in the way of authoritarian rule as a possibility in future. The first is minor, and has to do with Charter change, which would allow the president to stay in power as prime minister. The second is major, which is the only real deterrent against it, and that is the control of the military. That was what Marcos had that nobody else, man or woman, has had since, a complete control of the military. He didn't just have the loyalty of the generals out of gratitude, he had it out of fear. Nobody dared defy him, until much later when he was ravaged by disease. And the wonder of it was that he wasn't a general himself; he was a lawyer. Easy to unleash the rule of the generals, the question is: How do you prevent a general from ruling himself?
But the way things are, with dire and uncertain times having us in their grip, you never know.
Never again?
Guess again.
posted by Dante at 4:28 PM
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