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The
day irony failed
By Gary LaMoshi
During the predawn hours in Manila on Sunday, disgruntled junior officers
of the Philippine armed forces seized a shopping and residential complex in the
fashionable Makati district. Their act not only spotlighted the soldiers'
grievances against the regime of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, but it
focused attention on how badly the sense of irony fails today's leaders, news
media, and, apparently, those of us who abet and tolerate those failures.
The 20-hour standoff brought an outpouring of endorsements for the loyalists.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer expressed his nation's support for
the "democratically elected government of the president of the Philippines".
That declaration must've come as quite a shock to Joseph Estrada, winner of the
Philippines' most recent presidential election, in his prison cell,
particularly given Australia's previous reticence regarding Estrada's
two-and-a-half-year confinement.
Similarly, Singapore's Foreign Ministry declared, "The resort to
unconstitutional means by the rebels is unacceptable." That statement would
have been far more apt at the time of the "People Power II" demonstrations and
military maneuvers against Estrada, such as fighter jets buzzing Malacanang
Palace, that brought Arroyo to the presidency. Those events also confirmed that
following the constitution is hardly a reliable path to power in the
Philippines: of the country's last five presidents, only Fidel Ramos entered
office via election and left at the end of his legal term.
Bush league
The US State Department weighed in on the Makati crisis by backing "the
legitimate civilian government of the Philippines". The US cleverly avoided use
of the word "elected", but any comment on the Philippines from the Bush
administration registers big numbers on the irony scale.
Presidents George W Bush and Arroyo each took office of the same day, January
20, 2001, with dubious Supreme Court decisions substituting for electoral
mandates. Each of these offspring of former presidents has deployed the "war on
terrorism" as a cover for their failures to mend their national economies.
In fact, Arroyo's embrace of the US anti-terror campaign was a key issue for
the rebel soldiers in Makati. It has also been seized upon by unarmed critics
as evidence that Arroyo completely misunderstands the genuine concerns of the
Philippine people.
That's not the only area where Arroyo suffers from delusions. When the Makati
standoff was concluded peacefully, Arroyo declared the outcome "a triumph for
democracy".
Burma shave
It wasn't just the Philippines where irony detectors in officialdom failed on
Sunday.
Malaysia stepped up its pressure on Myanmar's military junta to release Nobel
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from detention. Last week, Malaysia refused to
let its own political prisoner No 1, former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, out
of jail for medical care to treat injuries from beatings he claims he received
in captivity.
In Washington, as part of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean
Armistice, the Pentagon declared that in the event of another military
confrontation with North Korea, there would be "no doubt about the outcome: it
would be end of that regime". That confident prediction begs the question as to
why the United States tolerates Kim Jong-il's moves to produce nuclear weapons
rather than ousting this (yet another) presidential changeling filling daddy's
shoes who boasts a resume far worse than Saddam Hussein's.
It's hard to decide what's more frightening: that political leaders and
foreign-affairs and military spokespeople don't see the irony of what they say,
or that they see it all and just don't care what they tell us. Does Gloria
Arroyo believe she was democratically elected? Does Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad really think he's on the side of justice when he advocates
freedom for a political prisoner that threatens a nearby regime's grip on power
and captivity for one who may threaten his own? Do George W Bush and Tony Blair
think they told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the
Iraqi threat? Are they fooling themselves, too, or just us?
High-tech Lynch-ing
Journalists bear some responsibility for aiding this culture of delusion,
contributing to the high irony diet we're all force-fed. For example, here in
Asia journalists are guilty of referring to the second-generation president of
Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri, as "democratically elected". In fact she was
chosen by an assembly of elected and unelected representatives to complete the
term of the president that small circle previously chose, without reference to
the popular vote, and then impeached on dubious grounds.
It's difficult to determine whether journalists should be excused or excoriated
when we live in a world where a soldier who gets lost, shot in the ass and
captured is hailed as a hero. Aside from the hyping and alleged stage-managing
of the Jessica Lynch rescue, the idea that a POW can qualify as a hero violates
a basic rule of armed combat that George C Scott articulated as the title
character at the start of the movie Patton: "No son of a bitch ever won
a war dying for his country. You win wars by making the other son of a bitch
die for his country."
In today's sophisticated world, perhaps such statements are too devoid of irony
to be taken seriously.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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