Arroyo
basks in hero's aura, and keeps her
job By Leslie Davis
MANILA - By now, Angelo de la Cruz is being
showered with a grand homecoming fiesta in his rural
barrio 60 kilometers north of Manila, in a party that
will no doubt last for days, if not weeks. Aside from
his eight children, his wife and the inevitable stream
of relatives, friends and neighbors, the former Iraq
hostage and now free man is busy glad-handing a steady
stream of politicians and businessmen, all of whom are
literally trying to outdo one another to bask in the
truck driver's glorious limelight.
Mark Lapid,
the governor of Pampanga, de la Cruz's home province,
prepared for the return on Thursday of the Philippines'
newest hero by having the dirt road to de la Cruz's
village covered in stone. He has also offered
educational scholarships to de la Cruz's children.
Several senators have also chimed in with offers of
money and assistance. A local builder wants to give de
la Cruz a house and lot to replace his shack. A doctor
has come forward and said he will give a free eye
operation to de la Cruz's ailing child. And, of course,
a film company wants to buy the rights to de la Cruz's
story.
Already Senator Lito Lapid, the father of
the current governor, a popular actor and himself a
two-time former governor of Pampanga, has said he wants
to play the role of de la Cruz in the upcoming movie.
Don't be surprised if in the near future de la Cruz
starts appearing in situation comedies on television or
becomes a judge on StarQuest, the local version
of American Idol.
In the Philippines
you can't go wrong being seen associating with a
cause celebre. In this case, the cause represents something
that is literally keeping the Philippine economy afloat:
the 8 million plus Filipinos who, like de la Cruz, have
been forced to leave their families and work in often
menial and backbreaking jobs around the world to put food
on the table of those they left back home.
In the course of two and a half
weeks in which de la Cruz's truck was ambushed and he
was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents, paraded before the
cameras and threatened with beheading, he has
become the
symbol of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
Not that de la Cruz has done
anything particularly heroic, but his sorry plight represents every one of
those involved in what is one of the greatest diasporas
in the world today: 10% of the population
responsible for US$10 billion a year in remittances, or
18% of the gross national product.
That is why
72% of Filipinos approve of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's
decision to give in to the Iraqi insurgents
and withdraw the 51-man Philippine contingent in
Iraq a month early so that de la Cruz's life could be spared.
The argument that the Philippines' negotiating with
and giving in to terrorists will only put other
Filipinos in the Middle East in danger holds little
weight with people here. Already the million or so
Filipinos in the Middle East live on a daily diet of
danger, involving inhospitable working conditions,
abusive employers, job insecurity, prolonged separation
from their families and a status in their host country
just slightly above vermin. There's not much more these
voiceless people have to lose.
Many
Filipinos didn't see the sense in backing the United States
in Iraq and considered the minuscule 51-man
military contingent a liability. As for the 4,000 Filipinos
still in Iraq working as cooks, construction workers and on
other jobs, nobody is under any illusions. Everyone
knows individuals go at their own risk and that things
can, and surely will, happen to them.
President
Arroyo has said she will not parade de la Cruz before
the country when she delivers her State of the Nation
address on Monday. But with little good news to offer
her impoverished countrymen, and a host of new tax
measures ready to make life even more miserable for
them, she will most assuredly make the plight and
successful release of de la Cruz one of the highlights
of her speech.
While much of the world spews
scorn at her for giving in to terrorists and howls that
the Philippines is a nation of cowards, Arroyo has
proclaimed that she did the right thing and is sticking
by her decision. She says she based her decision on
national interest, meaning she did so because her
administration cares first about the welfare of its
people working overseas. Some see her decision as a new
dawn for Philippine foreign policy, a chance for the
country to slip out from under the shadow of perennial
"big brother" the United States, and chart its own
independent course.
All this may be true. But a
look at the circumstances on the ground reveals other,
more personal motives - most importantly, her very survival
as a president and politician.
In this light,
Arroyo had no choice but to give in to the kidnappers'
demands. If de la Cruz had been beheaded, the backlash
against her would have been so strong that politically
she might not have survived. She is well aware of what
happened to former president Fidel Ramos back in 1995.
Ramos was then riding a wave of popularity for seemingly
having spurred the previously moribund economy to life.
Then along came Flor Contemplacion.
Contemplacion was a Filipino maid working in
Singapore who had been accused of deliberately killing
the young child in her care. She protested her innocence
but was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
Even when new evidence emerged pointing to her possible
innocence, the Singaporean government wouldn't go back
and reinvestigate. Ramos could have gone to Singapore
and pleaded for her life, but he refused. Eventually,
the Singaporeans put Contemplacion to death.
The
reaction to her execution hit the Philippines like a
tidal wave. The anger of the people spilled out on to
the streets, with huge protest rallies erupting
throughout the country. Their ire was focused squarely
on Ramos. He was perceived as callous, caring more for
his image abroad than for the ordinary people who toil
long hours in faraway lands for peanuts just to send to
the folks back home. The backlash eventually passed, but
only after nearly driving him from office.
The
lesson was obviously not forgotten by Arroyo. If that
could happen to Ramos, who was fairly popular, what
about her? Arroyo's recent election victory was
extremely controversial, and there have been widespread
accusations that she and her party engaged in massive
cheating, cheating so pervasive that it may have altered
the results of the election. Although she proclaims she
has been given a fresh mandate, only her most rabid
supporters think she did it fair and square.
Thus, with a suspect mandate, she could ill
afford to risk any kind of hostile response this close
to the recent election. Arroyo's confidence in her
victory can be judged by the treatment accorded to
unarmed, peaceful protesters. Gatherings of as few as 20
people have been regularly broken up by police wielding
water cannons, tear gas and truncheons. Her
administration has clearly been terrified that any
congregation will soon swell, get out of control, and
then call for her ouster. It's very possible that had de
la Cruz been beheaded, she could have been the next to
go. Knowing this, she had to do something to stave off
what surely would have been a major domestic crisis.
The greatest desire of every politician in the
Philippines is to be seen as a champion of the poor
masa, or masses who make up more than 60% of the
country's 80 million Filipinos. Arroyo harbors this
desire perhaps more than any of them. She was catapulted
into office in January 2001 in highly suspect and
controversial means, replacing Joseph Estrada, who had,
and still has, a natural common touch with the ordinary
folks. Her entire three years were spent desperately
trying to connect with the masa, to gain their
trust and confidence. She was, however, a member of the
elite who spoke and acted like an elitist. In the end,
she failed. So in this sense, de la Cruz has been like a
godsend to her.
The incident has also spurred
intense debate throughout the Philippines that this
event will signal a major shift in foreign policy for
the Philippines.
"There are over 100 countries
who make their decisions based on national interest,
even if it displeases the West," Professor Roland
Simbulan, an expert in Philippine-US relations at the
University of the Philippines, said in a recent
interview. "We lose respect by kowtowing too much. We
are not being given the treatment we deserve. We should
diversify our foreign policy. We would be in a stronger
position if we [are to] relate to as many countries as
possible."
Forever in the shadow of the "great
white father", successive Philippine governments have,
with a few exceptions, bent over backward to follow
whatever it is their former colonial master wants,
especially when it comes to foreign policy. Of all
Philippine presidents, nobody has been more pro-American
than Arroyo.
After September 11, 2001, Arroyo
was one of the first leaders to back US President George
W Bush's "war on terror", going so far as proclaiming
the Philippines full of terrorists, even though most
Filipinos considered the problem to be a local
peace-and-order issue. She then allowed US troops to
come to the country and even wanted them to fight the
Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf in the southern
Philippines despite the fact that the Philippines'
constitution forbids the use of foreign troops on its
soil.
When the Iraq war came around, she never
hesitated in backing Bush, even when he didn't have a
mandate from the United Nations. Critics in Manila
warned her about the consequences of supporting a war
that didn't have the backing of the UN, saying it would
put the more than 1 million Filipinos toiling in the
Middle East in harm's way. And with hundreds of millions
of dollars at stake, it wasn't worth angering
governments there. Even now, after giving in to the
insurgents' demands and making a run for the border,
Arroyo has not said it was wrong to go to Iraq.
"She's getting too much credit," said Professor
Simbulan. "She should have stood up to the US when it
was discovered that no WMD [weapons of mass destruction]
were found."
Obviously those expecting any
radical change in Philippine policy will be sorely
disappointed. In the coming days, Arroyo will surely
claim she wants to reach out to governments other than
the United States, especially those in the Middle East,
if anything to show her concern for the OFWs there. But
Arroyo also knows that the United States will never
abandon the Philippines, as it recognizes the southern
part of the country as a focal point in its "war on
terror" and realizes the Philippines cannot be left on
its own. Thus it is a sure bet that Arroyo will soon go
out of her way to make it up to the United States.
For the moment, de la Cruz has become a
convenient symbol of every Filipino forced to go abroad
to earn a decent living, and Arroyo and her fellow
Filipinos will rightly bask in the euphoria of his safe
homecoming. But this jubilation is sure to fade, and
perhaps quickly. That's not to say that de la Cruz won't
remain a symbol in the long term. He is indeed a symbol,
but a symbol of something else: the failure of Arroyo
and rest of the ruling class in the Philippines to
provide enough jobs at home.
But on Monday, when
she addresses the nation and lays before it her plans
for the coming years, don't expect Arroyo to acknowledge
that.
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