MANILA - If the going gets tough in the United States, President George W Bush
could always consider a move to the Philippines. He would beat Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo in a presidential race, hands down, no recounts.
Arroyo's approval rate currently stands at 48% - and falling, according to
Social Weather Stations, an independent think-tank. Meanwhile, Bush's approval
rate among Filipinos is 57%, according to a survey by Globescan and the
University of Maryland - taken before truck driver Angelo de la Cruz's
kidnapping by Islamic militants led the Philippine government to an early
withdrawal of its contingent in Iraq. The Philippines was the only country in
the survey in which Bush had positive numbers.
Bush has already been to Manila - last October, as part of a whirlwind
six-nation Asian tour. At the time, he took credit for the United States
building the Philippines into "the first democratic nation in Asia". Every
Filipino familiar with his country's history would strongly disagree with
Bush's rewrite. After the Spanish-American War then-president William McKinley
annexed the Philippines, turned it into a colony, and for 14 years bitterly
fought the Philippine independence movement. More than 200,000 Filipino
civilians and soldiers were killed. The US, for its part seems not to have
learned much from this colonial adventure. Harold Cole, an economics professor
at the University of California, Los Angeles, says, "If Bush had applied these
lessons to the American plans for invading Iraq and transforming the Middle
East, he might have proceeded far more cautiously."
The second front
As far as Arroyo's government is concerned, the Philippines is indeed the
second front in the "war on terror" - a favorite line of the Bush
administration. But local critics, such as Jose Enrique Africa of the Center
for Anti-Imperialist Studies, strongly disagree: "The
US's overall geopolitical agenda for the Philippines goes far beyond just this
[war on terror], and it aims to consolidate the country as a vital strategic
location for regional force projection." Being designated a major non-NATO
(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) ally, or MNNA, last October made Arroyo
very proud. Africa stresses that the Philippines is "the first Asian neo-colony
to be given MNNA status - Thailand being the second, soon after - putting it in
the same league as Israel and Egypt in the Middle East".
Arroyo more than welcomes a de facto US armed intervention, regulated by a
Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) that offers Philippine airspace and
seaports to US forces and includes intelligence sharing and logistical support.
For the moment this involves a rotating presence of at least 2,000 soldiers and
Special Forces through at least 18 annual bilateral military exercises, lasting
from one week to six months. Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) so-called
"training exercises" - to circumvent the Philippine constitution, which
explicitly forbids foreign forces fighting in the country - are now an annual
routine. In May 2003 these forces were handed a special gift from Arroyo:
immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. Bush has
asked the US Congress to increase military assistance to the Philippines to
US$164 million in 2005.
Arroyo's master plan since 2001 has been to turn Manila's fight against Muslim
separatists into an anti-terrorist campaign, in exchange for increased US
economic and military aid. This explains the Bush-Arroyo frenzy in tagging as
terrorists the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People's Army
(NPA) and famous activist Professor Jose Maria Sison, the key political
consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), and
currently exiled in the Netherlands. Labeling them as terrorists seemed the
easiest approach to get them out of the way and force them to capitulate. They
didn't.
As for Arroyo's gamble in the Angelo de la Cruz case, it was not even a gamble.
If de la Cruz had been beheaded, she knew there would have been another People
Power in the streets of Manila - this time against herself. According to Social
Weather Stations, 67% of Filipinos approved the withdrawal from Iraq, despite
fears that US work visas for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) might become
harder to come by. Arroyo lost nothing, apart from being on the receiving end
of the usual barbs from Washington hardliners. There are at least 4,000 OFWs
working in Iraq at the moment. They are civilians only in name and remain
especially valuable because they are engaged in military-related work inside US
military bases in Iraq.
The export of labor is the only thing the Philippines has to offer:
"well-educated, low-cost and English-speaking" workers, according to the
government line. There are already 1.5 million OFWs established in the Middle
East, most of them in public-works and energy-industry projects. There may be a
flurry of new openings in information technology, catering, finance and
accounting. But not in Iraq before the January elections - if they indeed take
place.
Hard talk
Wishful thinking is the name of the game as far as the much-vaunted "special
Filipino-American relationship" is concerned. Respected activist Walden Bello
reminds anyone willing to listen that "when, during the late 1950s, president
Carlos Garcia pushed for 'Filipino First' and imposed foreign-exchange control
to help native industrialization and minimize importation of luxury items,
American foreign-policy makers helped Diosdado Macapagal [Arroyo's father]
defeat Garcia since Macapagal promised to remove the exchange control".
Furthermore, when Ferdinand Marcos "imposed martial law to perpetuate his
presidency beyond the two-term limits of the Philippine constitution, America
disregarded the 'showcase of democracy' in Asia and instead supported Marcos -
because he promised to send Filipino troops to Vietnam and let [the US] use
military bases in bombing Vietnam".
But as far as the Filipino elite are concerned, the "special relationship" is a
God-given fact. Arroyo's government saw the "correct" positioning of the
Philippines on the "war on terror" as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get
rid of Muslim separatism, especially in strategic Mindanao - located close to
Indonesia and critical checkpoints in the Strait of Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and
Makassar, areas through which at least 40% of Japanese and ASEAN (Association
of Southeast Asian Nations) trade transits.
Arroyo is a protege of former president Fidel Ramos, who brokered an agreement
with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1996 that would guarantee
autonomous rule for the Moro areas. Critics in Manila say this only formalized
the surrender of the MNLF. Nothing much has been done since then, apart from
negotiations between the government and the more militant Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF), brokered by the Malaysian government.
Arroyo has recently approved, in principle, a so-called integrated peace plan
to solve all the ills of Mindanao. This plan spells out the "continuation and
conclusion" of peace talks not only with the MILF
but with the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP; implementation of the peace agreement
with the MNLF, as not much happened since 1996; amnesty and rehabilitation for
former rebels; rehabilitation and development of the areas involved in the
conflict; a "catch-up development program for the Autonomous Region in Muslim
Mindanao [ARMM] and affirmative action for Muslims"; and a lot more dialogue.
Elections in Mindanao are tentatively scheduled for next May.
But in Mindanao, the overall sentiment is that the region has been forgotten by
the central government. There are no jobs: seven to eight people in 10 go to
Sabah, in Malaysia, to find work. Muslims are being driven, maybe not to direct
support, but at least to sympathy toward the MILF.
As for the communists, the CPP and the NPA, they are even more active under
Arroyo than before. The military says the NPA currently has 10,000 fighters
with 7,000 weapons. Their network is spread out all over the country, and not
only in the north. The MILF has even struck a working alliance with the NPA: it
has learned that guerrilla warfare can be very effective.
And as for the Abu Sayyaf, the Muslim extremist group operating in the southern
Philippines, the consensus in Manila is that it is completely neutralized. Its
ties to the Philippine military are notorious. "The Americans created them
themselves," says Bobby Tuazon of the independent website Bulatlat.
If anyone asks Colonel Alfonso Bernate of the 201st Infantry Brigade in
Calauag, Quezon, he's figured it all out. Bernate has launched a campaign in
elementary and secondary schools teaching students that the real reason for the
Philippines' poverty is insurgency. According to this brigade commander - whose
opinion is far from being an exception in the Philippine army - many of the
country's neighbors solved their insurgency problems while the Philippines was
left behind along with Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos because of their economic
difficulties. Sounds like bureaucrats in Manila blaming the capital's urban
nightmare on the poor.
What about China?
Luis Jalandoni, the chief negotiator of the NDFP, and Maulana Alonto, a member
of the MILF peace panel, have both accused Arroyo of bad faith. According to
Alonto, the MILF has not talked formally with the government since negotiations
broke down in Malaysia last year. Alonto charges that "the US supplies lethal
war materials to the Philippine army, which they use to devastate Moro
communities".
Jalandoni, based in the Netherlands, says his end of the peace talks were
postponed so the government would remove the CPP, the NPA and Professor Sison
from the US and European Union lists of foreign terrorists. Jalandoni even
accuses the Arroyo government of black ops, as it has accused the MILF of
collaborating with Jemaah Islamiya and al-Qaeda. But both the NDFP and the MILF
leadership insist they want to talk peace - provided Arroyo's government
respects the agreements it signed with them.
Arroyo also has to balance seriously her US addiction with the Philippines' key
potential economic and strategic partner in Asia: China. Rommel Banlaoi, a
professor at the National Defense College and author of The War on Terrorism in
Southeast Asia, writes that "although Manila has an irritant issue with
Beijing on the issue of the South China Sea, there is now a growing recognition
among Philippine officials that the South China Sea unites rather than divides
China and the Philippines". Banlaoi adds that "if the US is using the
Philippines and other allies in the region as counterweights against the
growing influence of China, the Philippines can also utilize China as a
counterweight against American well-entrenched influence in Philippine foreign
and security policy".
There are serious doubts in Manila on whether the positioning of the
Philippines as the second front of the "war on terror" has done any good for
the country, has improved its economy or made the Philippines safer. And as
"special" as the relationship may be, answers to these crucial questions are
not likely to come from Washington.
This is the final article in this series.
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