What's wrong with the picture?
What's wrong with the picture?
Updated 11:43pm (Mla time) Sept 26, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 27, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
PRESS Secretary Ignacio Bunye defends the Oakwood mutineers' act of contrition thus: "It takes courage to admit one's fault and come to the mainstream of public interest." What exactly he means by "come to the mainstream of public interest," I leave him to explain. But he is right to say admitting one's fault and apologizing for it are an act of courage. Neither is easy to do.
You need not go farther than President Macapagal-Arroyo herself to see that. To this day, she has not apologized to Acsa Ramirez.
Ramirez, we may recall, was the whistleblower whom she mistook for one of the whistle-blown and identified as such in a press conference, to Ramirez's chagrin and shame. Rather than admit her mistake, GMA stuck by it. Reynaldo Wycoco, apparently construing an admission of presidential fallibility as a breach of national security, thence took it upon himself to hound Ramirez and pin the rap on her. The ruse failed and eventually he gave it up. But he never apologized. He just asked everyone to forget about it and move on.
Well, Ramirez hasn't forgotten. And the reason this country has never moved on-or has moved only backward-is that it keeps trying to forget iniquity.
So is the Oakwood mutineers' apology to their commander in chief, therefore, an act of courage?
Not at all.
This is so not because they compromised their principles, as their lawyer, Homobono Adaza, said: "I have been taken for a ride. I thought they were willing to stand for what they believed in and what they saw was happening to the country." As he further pointed out, the apology was gratuitous. The cases against 290 of the mutineers have been dismissed by a Makati court and 28 of the remaining 31 soldiers are out on bail.
What would have made their show of contrition and apology an act of courage was if they had issued it not just to the AFP (and by extension to the commander in chief), but to the Filipino people. Their crime was not first and last against the AFP and the commander in chief, it was first and last against the people.
Their statement acknowledges it tacitly: "Last 27 July 2003... we went to Oakwood Hotel to vent our grievances. This we did in our honest, though naive, desire for change. However, as succeeding events have shown, the Filipino people did not agree with our means of expression."
They are right: We did not agree with their "means of expression" even if-as one of Pepe Miranda's surveys shortly after the event showed-most of us agreed with their premises. Those premises included corruption in the AFP and Malacanang, a corruption that went past pillage and took on the aspect of monumental deceit. The pillage had to do with their commander in chief and their generals pocketing the money that should have gone to the foot soldiers, particularly those stationed in Mindanao. I would learn later that it had to do with the P3 billion or so Erap set aside for the Cafgu and other elements that would pacify Muslim Mindanao after the soldiers pulled out. The money disappeared, compelling the soldiers to extend their duties under adverse conditions. The foot soldiers were almost literally on foot: their boots had given out on them.
The deception had to do with Malacanang wagging the dog, or inventing a war against terror in Muslim Mindanao for its own reasons. The mutineers went on to charge GMA and Angelo Reyes with engineering the bombing of a Davao wharf.
Their premises may be right, but none of it is solved by a mutiny or coup. I myself wrote several columns condemning the Oakwood takeover despite refusing to join the ex-civil society leaders who kept calling on us to throng to the Edsa Shrine to fly to the aid of their favorite president while it was happening. The mutineers' charges might be true, but the mutiny did not solve them, it merely made them worse. And it added insult to injury, a group of military officers, well-meaning or not, presuming to speak on behalf of the people without any mandate.
Their apology is owed us first and last, not GMA or the AFP. What makes their decision to prostrate themselves before their superiors a farce rather than an act of courage is that it turns governance and its challenges into something played out only by a few men and women. It turns a crime against the people into a crime against a person, even if that person is the President, reposing the judgment to forgive or prosecute, to forget or punish, solely in her hands.
It does one other thing, which is to free GMA from apologizing herself to a people she has deeply wronged. More than ever, I am convinced that what made the mutiny ultimately possible was not that GMA was an unelected President, but that she had militarized the country through her "war against terror." That was what stoked the fires of military restiveness after more than a decade of relative calm. Grievances alone, however deep, do not make mutinies or coup attempts feasible. Only a militarized culture does. Only the expectation that the people-and not quite incidentally the American government-would accept the outcome does. It is not dire finances alone that have driven the mutineers to discover the virtue of humility, it is the complete disappearance of GMA's war rhetoric, most especially after she too was given a lesson in humility by Angelo de la Cruz's captors. But GMA has not apologized for all of this. Nor is it likely she ever will.
What's wrong with the picture of the mutineers saluting their commander in chief in demonstration of renewed loyalty is what has always been wrong with the bigger picture called "Philippine democracy." It is a democracy without the people.
Updated 11:43pm (Mla time) Sept 26, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 27, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
PRESS Secretary Ignacio Bunye defends the Oakwood mutineers' act of contrition thus: "It takes courage to admit one's fault and come to the mainstream of public interest." What exactly he means by "come to the mainstream of public interest," I leave him to explain. But he is right to say admitting one's fault and apologizing for it are an act of courage. Neither is easy to do.
You need not go farther than President Macapagal-Arroyo herself to see that. To this day, she has not apologized to Acsa Ramirez.
Ramirez, we may recall, was the whistleblower whom she mistook for one of the whistle-blown and identified as such in a press conference, to Ramirez's chagrin and shame. Rather than admit her mistake, GMA stuck by it. Reynaldo Wycoco, apparently construing an admission of presidential fallibility as a breach of national security, thence took it upon himself to hound Ramirez and pin the rap on her. The ruse failed and eventually he gave it up. But he never apologized. He just asked everyone to forget about it and move on.
Well, Ramirez hasn't forgotten. And the reason this country has never moved on-or has moved only backward-is that it keeps trying to forget iniquity.
So is the Oakwood mutineers' apology to their commander in chief, therefore, an act of courage?
Not at all.
This is so not because they compromised their principles, as their lawyer, Homobono Adaza, said: "I have been taken for a ride. I thought they were willing to stand for what they believed in and what they saw was happening to the country." As he further pointed out, the apology was gratuitous. The cases against 290 of the mutineers have been dismissed by a Makati court and 28 of the remaining 31 soldiers are out on bail.
What would have made their show of contrition and apology an act of courage was if they had issued it not just to the AFP (and by extension to the commander in chief), but to the Filipino people. Their crime was not first and last against the AFP and the commander in chief, it was first and last against the people.
Their statement acknowledges it tacitly: "Last 27 July 2003... we went to Oakwood Hotel to vent our grievances. This we did in our honest, though naive, desire for change. However, as succeeding events have shown, the Filipino people did not agree with our means of expression."
They are right: We did not agree with their "means of expression" even if-as one of Pepe Miranda's surveys shortly after the event showed-most of us agreed with their premises. Those premises included corruption in the AFP and Malacanang, a corruption that went past pillage and took on the aspect of monumental deceit. The pillage had to do with their commander in chief and their generals pocketing the money that should have gone to the foot soldiers, particularly those stationed in Mindanao. I would learn later that it had to do with the P3 billion or so Erap set aside for the Cafgu and other elements that would pacify Muslim Mindanao after the soldiers pulled out. The money disappeared, compelling the soldiers to extend their duties under adverse conditions. The foot soldiers were almost literally on foot: their boots had given out on them.
The deception had to do with Malacanang wagging the dog, or inventing a war against terror in Muslim Mindanao for its own reasons. The mutineers went on to charge GMA and Angelo Reyes with engineering the bombing of a Davao wharf.
Their premises may be right, but none of it is solved by a mutiny or coup. I myself wrote several columns condemning the Oakwood takeover despite refusing to join the ex-civil society leaders who kept calling on us to throng to the Edsa Shrine to fly to the aid of their favorite president while it was happening. The mutineers' charges might be true, but the mutiny did not solve them, it merely made them worse. And it added insult to injury, a group of military officers, well-meaning or not, presuming to speak on behalf of the people without any mandate.
Their apology is owed us first and last, not GMA or the AFP. What makes their decision to prostrate themselves before their superiors a farce rather than an act of courage is that it turns governance and its challenges into something played out only by a few men and women. It turns a crime against the people into a crime against a person, even if that person is the President, reposing the judgment to forgive or prosecute, to forget or punish, solely in her hands.
It does one other thing, which is to free GMA from apologizing herself to a people she has deeply wronged. More than ever, I am convinced that what made the mutiny ultimately possible was not that GMA was an unelected President, but that she had militarized the country through her "war against terror." That was what stoked the fires of military restiveness after more than a decade of relative calm. Grievances alone, however deep, do not make mutinies or coup attempts feasible. Only a militarized culture does. Only the expectation that the people-and not quite incidentally the American government-would accept the outcome does. It is not dire finances alone that have driven the mutineers to discover the virtue of humility, it is the complete disappearance of GMA's war rhetoric, most especially after she too was given a lesson in humility by Angelo de la Cruz's captors. But GMA has not apologized for all of this. Nor is it likely she ever will.
What's wrong with the picture of the mutineers saluting their commander in chief in demonstration of renewed loyalty is what has always been wrong with the bigger picture called "Philippine democracy." It is a democracy without the people.
posted by Dante at 12:33 PM
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