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Absurd
coup has a sting in the tail
By
A Lin Neumann
Sunday's
shopping-mall putsch in the Philippines gave us just
what we have come to expect from the failed Philippine
political system: 
absurdist
entertainment.
Some 300 heavily armed soldiers
stole through the night, apparently unnoticed despite a
week of coup warnings preceding the event, seized the
richest chunk of the capital city, cordoned off their
prize with explosive charges and proceeded to hold forth
on their gripes to a rapt television audience.
"We are not attempting to grab power - we are
just trying to express our grievances," one of their
leaders, Lieutenant Antonio Trillanes, told reporters as
the group detailed alleged abuses of power and
corruption in the ranks of the armed forces.
At
the conclusion of this soap opera, President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, on the eve of her annual State of the
Nation address, asserted her claim to legitimacy and
raised her hands in triumph, a broad smile on her face,
when the rebellion ended. "I assure the world that this
event does not in any way injure our national security
and political stability," she said. "Once more, this has
been a triumph for democracy."
Arroyo is dead
wrong in saying the country's stability was not hurt.
This replay of the many coup attempts against the
Corazon Aquino government in the 1980s is more than just
made-for-TV melodrama. It is a demonstration that, at
its core, the Philippines seems to be a country that
remains unreliable, unstable and, very possibly,
ungovernable.
This latest fiasco comes just two
weeks after convicted terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi,
said to be a key link to al-Qaeda, walked out of a
Manila jail cell apparently unnoticed by his sleeping
guards. That a major terror figure jailed by a key US
ally could simply stroll away from captivity pointed to
the porous nature of the corrupt Philippine security
apparatus and was a major embarrassment to both Manila
and Washington.
The shopping-center stare-down
is more than an embarrassment. Arroyo's government is
reaping the whirlwind sown by its own popularly backed
successful coup against the corrupt, but lawfully
elected, regime of her predecessor, Joseph Estrada. That
event, in January 2001, saw a coalition of political,
church and military leaders short-circuit a stalled
impeachment process by seizing power in the streets with
military support to install then-vice president Arroyo
in power. Estrada remains in jail on corruption charges.
Arroyo loyalists seemed to worry on Sunday that
this coup could catch fire and depose their boss. "So
far the situation is in hand," a senior intelligence
official told Asia Times Online by telephone during the
Sunday crisis. "But we have to worry about popular
support spreading." Could that happen? "It is always a
possibility," said the official.
Arroyo will
likely not be forcibly removed from office. She is
unpopular but probably not that unpopular, and besides,
the joint pillars of the Catholic Church and business
that brought her to power have not entirely dropped
their support for her. They seem content to wait for the
2004 elections, in which she has promised not to run.
Still, the laments of the dissatisfied and
idealistic young officers resonate strongly and
underscore the many seemingly insoluble crises besetting
the United States' chief ally in Southeast Asia. That
raising grievances through force of arms is considered a
viable option by elite young officers is itself a
dramatic example of how far the rule of law has been
eroded in the Philippines and how deeply corruption
undermines confidence in the country's many failed
institutions.
"They are absolutely right in what
they are saying, and unfortunately they will get
nowhere," said a wealthy Filipino businesswoman reached
by phone on Sunday. "These officers are just trying to
change things."
Their demands, their concerns,
their excellent command of English and their status as
graduates of the elite Philippine Military Academy put
these young officers in the tradition of charismatic
reformists trying to change a corrupt system. They are
very similar to the young captains and majors who led
the military revolt against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
Now the soldiers, many of them combat veterans,
complain that senior military officers are colluding
with Muslim rebel groups in the south, supplying them
with weapons and materiel. The government, they say,
even staged a deadly bombing in Mindanao recently in
order to strengthen calls for more aid from Washington.
Arroyo has now ordered an investigation into the charges
but, sadly, there is nothing new in such allegations and
they have long been talked about in diplomatic,
intelligence and military circles in Manila.
Gracia Burnham, the former American missionary
who was held hostage by Abu Sayyaf rebels for more than
a year before a botched rescue attempt saved her but
killed her husband, said nearly the same thing in a
recent book. "You may wonder how such a group as the Abu
Sayyaf seemed to be well supplied with weaponry. Were
their al-Qaeda friends sending them supply boats in the
middle of the night? No, no - nothing so exotic as
that," Burnham wrote in her book In the Presence of
My Enemies, published in May. "The Abu Sayyaf told
us [its] source was none other than the Philippine army
itself ... I was amazed. The fact that such firepower
could quite possibly wind up killing one's fellow
soldiers seemed not to matter at all."
After the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United
States, US military aid to the Philippines was increased
to more than US$100 million from just $1.9 million the
previous year in order to combat Abu Sayyaf. In May,
when Arroyo visited Washington, President George W Bush
pledged an additional $65 million in aid to battle
terrorists, 30 helicopters and heightened status for the
Philippines as a "major non-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] ally" of Washington.
With many of
the young officers prosecuting that "war on terror" in
revolt against the government and a chief terror suspect
on the run, Bush may have trouble getting new aid
through Congress.
But it is not only Manila's
security relationships that stand to suffer from the
further unraveling of confidence in the government. The
Philippine economy, long in the doldrums, is likely to
be pushed even farther off the radar screens of
investors. "This comes close to what I would call a
worst-case scenario," said Peter Wallace, a leading
business consultant in Manila. "But the Philippines is
already a subsistence economy and things cannot get much
worse than they already are. In a subsistence economy
you are just getting by, and that describes the
Philippines."
If these young officers represent
a core of resentment in the fractious military, the
stage could be set for the Philippines to return to the
years of instability and negative growth rates that
characterized the post-Marcos period. While countries
such as South Korea and Thailand have largely solved the
deadly cycle of military intervention in politics, the
Philippines has yet to implement an effective method of
democratic transition - leaving the military as a
crucial arbiter of power. Since Marcos declared martial
law in 1972, only two Philippine presidents, Estrada and
retired General Fidel Ramos, have been elected to
office.
With elections scheduled for next year,
things might get even worse. Two of the leading
contenders are celebrities - a newscaster and an action
star - and neither has any substantial experience in
government.
The real loser in all of this, of
course, is the Philippine public, already battered by
rampant poverty, neglected infrastructure,
overpopulation and a host of other ills. It does not
look set to get any better any time soon. "The
reputation of the country is hitting its nadir," said
Today newspaper in an editorial after the Sunday
rebellion. "The question the citizen must ask is that
with things such a mess, what would make this country
worth wanting to rule?"
A Lin Neumann
is the Asia consultant to the Committee to Protect
Journalists.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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