March 2007 Archives

I share Manolo's enthusiasm. Inquirer.net's Philippine election map offers political junkies (to borrow that familiar blurb on many a box of toys) "hours and hours of fun." Serious fun too: The interactive map offers visual proof of a defining quality of Philippine politics, at least as this journalist understands it. Filipinos like to vote. (Corollarily, an election boycott is almost un-Filipino.) Consider only the most famous instances: Those in the opposition who took part in the 1984 parliamentary elections ("participation without illusion") and in the 1986 "snap" presidential election had a better grip on what Filipino voters wanted, and thus a better claim to being the electorate's true representatives. I have not clicked on all the buttons in the interactive map, but an early look at many of the areas suggests that voter turnout (measured as a percentage of registered voters in 2004 actually voting in the last presidential election) is in the high 70s or low 80s. That is, by the standards of mature democracies, a remarkably high turnout. (And 2004 was not an isolated case; a "statistical analysis" by the helpful folks at the National Statistical Coordination Board, written just before the May 2004 elections, shows that Philippine elections over the years have been consistently high-turnout events.) True, some of the country's biggest cities have turnout rates in the 60s, but this may be a function of both continuing urban migration (perhaps recent migrants failed to register for the vote) and the cities' sheer size. I did a quick search of the city or municipality with the lowest turnout in 2004. The three lowest were recorded by Malita in Davao del Sur (57.15), San Jose in Surigao del Norte (55.71), and (the record-holder, or so it appears after a first search) Tongkil in Sulu (48.03). Perhaps not coincidentally, they are all in Mindanao. (Santa Maria in Isabela had a 0-percent turnout, but considering that the 2004 vote in Isabela was a battle royale between Faustino Dy Jr. and Grace Padaca, this stat may be a glitch.) Perhaps we can expect a lower turnout in May, because there is no presidential race to focus voters' attention, but my money's on a mere dip, not a drastic drop.

THIS being the information age, they say not only is the amount of information available at your fingertips virtually limitless, but that it's freer and more intimate than ever before. That may be so, but it also requires something that's no different from the manner in which information was accessed and used in the past. That is -it takes time. Time to produce, time to find, and time to digest. And yet, time is something we keep saying we don't have much of, anymore. YugaTech says blogging is like a virtual handshake. Taking off from where Abe Olandres begins, perhaps blogging and so forth have the potential to evolutionize politics because, as populations get bigger, it's the only way to restore something fundamental to politics: it's a process between the candidate and the voter, one-on-one, personal, and up close. Since the stump-every-Plaza-in-the-country style of campaigning is well, going out of style (too many plazas, too many people, too little time, too much money and not enough bang per buck in terms of peso-per-candidate), the most effective virtual handshake before the blog and the internet was the TV ad. And yes, as visiting the helpful links provided by Julius Enerio and wanderlust shows, you can learn something about the candidates through their ads. The heartening thing is that more and more people are unsatisfied with, even offended by, the ads. Even more heartening, to my mind, is that the limitations on media in the past, that made it expensive (often, prohibitively so) to provide data and make it handily available, are disappearing. A newspaper is limited by the number of pages that can be printed, and by the paper only being on sale for a day; unless you record everything, what you see on TV or hear on radio now won't be available to you after you've seen or heard it. And so, you can review things at your leisure, and in a sense, journalists can produce it at theirs, and everyone can benefit from it -including, of course, the candidates. Again, much has been said during the present campaign, about how things are often only a he said, she said, exchange of shouts between the opposition and the administration, with few independent voices getting a chance to be heard. All of a sudden, someone like Martin Bautista of Ang Kapatiran, has a reach as potentially massive as any traditional politician. You can listen not only to his podcast interview on Inquirer.net, but listen to those of all the others who have agreed to be interviewed. And if you don't want to listen, you can read transcripts of their interviews and even leave feedback. And with Eleksyon 2007, you can check on all the candidates, too: see their profiles (click on each candidate's photo). And you can see how everyone else feels by doing your own comparison of survey data. the Survey Says section keeps all the reports together, so that as John and I have been doing, you can compare and contrast figures on your own (and see whether you agree or disagree with our take on the surveys). But the most amazing of all is Eleksyon 2007 Google Map. Seriously, this is hours of learning fun for the whole family. I'm not kidding. You can click on provinces, see how many voters there are, start doing your own version of electoral math: which provinces might carry more weight, electorally-speaking; and refresh your memory of our political geography. My understanding is that, as the campaign proceeds, each of these sections will become even more dynamic!

Inquirer Compact's front page today (March 29). compact-032907.pdf

I was already out of the newsroom when the question occurred to me. Why did Jun Ducat, millionaire businessman and master attention-seeker, schedule the release of his hostages at seven in the evening? Inquirer Compact had already gone to bed, but I still called up Abel, our executive editor, to inflict my take on him. (He was kind enough to hear me out.) The release was set for 7pm because that's when the country's two major newscasts air. (ABS-CBN starts earlier, but by seven in the evening GMA's is on the air too.) Ducat wanted maximum coverage, and he got it, live, on national TV. Or perhaps we should say, Ducat and company? ABS-CBN reports that the police is now looking at the political gimmick angle, in part because the grenades turned out to be duds. (The, ah, prescient Chavit Singson raised the possibility, when he was interviewed over GMA last night, saying for all he knew the grenades could have been real but empty.) Truly, given Ducat's first hostage-taking a decade ago, past is prologue. ABS-CBN also reports that, as reader Jim and I have just discussed over in the previous post's comment thread, both Singson and Bong Revilla did not in fact follow protocol, and defied express police instructions not to enter the bus. (Kudos to ABS-CBN for being the first to bring this story to the next level.) If, as President Arroyo said after the hostages were released, the incident was "prank terrorism," shouldn't charges be filed against those who were, let us say, accomplices in the prank?

Senator Bong Revilla broke a fistful of rules, and perhaps a law or two, when he directly intervened in today's hostage crisis. Radio and TV anchor Ted Failon pointed out one of them: Revilla, he said, caused a "delay" in the negotiations simply by entering the picture. But that did not stop Failon from asking Revilla to keep his cellphone on, while the senator "negotiated" with the main hostage-taker, Jun Ducat. As a result, the listening and viewing public managed to hear Revilla's amateurish intervention ("Pare, mahal kita") and then Ducat's obviously well-rehearsed rant. That, in the proverbial nutshell, was the dilemma that faced journalists, especially those in radio and TV, today. To follow the ground rules, or to bend them for the benefit of an exclusive or a scoop. As a veteran police officer later pointed out on cable TV, the negotiations shouldn't have been broadcast at all (and, contrary to what some radio commentators said, Ducat shouldn't have been given the airtime he asked for). In a situation like today's, print journalists enjoy what we can call second-mover advantage. Some mistakes (such as Julius Babao naming the first child to be released) are made by broadcast journalists because of the difficult, on-the-spot nature of their work; these, if the editors in the newsroom pay attention, can prove to be exemplary mistakes. They can be avoided. Other mistakes are more in the nature of shortcomings; when Ricky Carandang or Marieton Pacheco wonder what will happen when the gas runs out and the bus's airconditioning system bogs down, their reporters on the ground should have tried to find out. (The Inquirer's Volt Contreras found out, from the bus driver, that a full tank of gas would allow the bus to idle for three days.) All this is to say that, in any crisis, a print newsroom's TV sets are tuned in to the TV coverage too. Of course, the assignment editors field even more calls from reporters and correspondents (ditto with the chief lensman and his photographers). Even more than usual, the shaping of the developing story is a creature of both choice and circumstance. Because we have an earlier deadline in Inquirer Compact, it became clear quickly that we would have to take a stab at the story even before all the main facts were in, maybe even before the crisis would end. Abel, our executive editor, made the fundamental choice of focusing on the hostages (rather than, say, the hostage-taker) -- in part because we both felt it was the most powerful, the most moving part of the unfolding story, and in part because he knew that this approach would give us maximum elbow room. Of the many photos to choose from for the front page, he chose a simple, dramatic close-up of one of the hostages, peering out of the bus. We were wrapping up work on the news pages when Ducat, with the high profile help of Chavit Singson (not coincidentally, a candidate for the Senate), released the hostages. There were additional photos to choose from, but Abel decided (rightly so, in my opinion) to go with the original choice. (I will upload the front page tomorrow, when I get back to the newsroom.) Other photos, including one of Ducat in one of his previous escapades, went into the two pages we had reserved for the story.

AT 7:05 P.M., along with the rest of the country and maybe the world, I breathed a sigh of relief after hours of anxiety.  The kids started exiting the bus. The hostage crisis is over. The government says the incident was an embarrassment to the country. It's certainly a stinging indictment of life in our country, in the eyes of some foreigners. I hope John Nery blogs about what it's like in the newsroom when situations like the hostage taking in Manila occur. Some things that went through my mind, watching the hostage drama on TV: 1. Jun Ducat was obviously a man who'd already gotten what he'd wanted with a previous hostage-taking: having gotten away with it before surely emboldened him to do it again; and furthermore, giving in to some of his demands might have emboldened him to ask for more. 2. In such a situation media really doesn't know what to do; the only ones with professional training on the scene are the hostage negotiators. There was a Superintendent Miranda who sounded very professional, and sensible, and who said many protocols were broken. Let's hope there's a post mortem so that the authorities can learn from this awful experience. 3. I was quite appalled by the broadcast media in particular, crowding in on the area. It's not enough to excuse it on the basis of the police not preventing them. A high-pressure situation could have been compounded by reporters and cameramen jostling around, and the closing minutes, when what could possibly have been live grenades were being passed from hostage takers, to Governor Singson, to the police, could have gone horribly wrong. 4. Vergel Santos said on TV that media has to remember its duty is to report, and not act as hostage negotiator. The radio stations were particularly anxious to do this and were given too many chances to do so. Santos pointed out radio should not, under any circumstances, have broadcast the negotiations between Senator Revilla and Ducat. 5. I have to say the most startling observation Santos made was that the whole drama seemed scripted to some people. A friend (who is not a politically-minded person) texted me to say the same thing. When Chavit Singson appeared it seemed pretty odd. By the time the whole thing ended with Chavit Singson holding a grenade at 7:08 p.m., then his aide took another one out of the hand of a man (after the man was seen jamming the pin back in one grenade)  and then Singson emerged from the bus with Ducat emerging and then being taken in hand by Senator Revilla, I was tempted to think fact can certainly beat fiction anytime. Setting aside comments that seemed to come too far from left field, what's interesting is how the blogosphere represented a cross-section of public opinion that one could hear in the broadcast media, too.  I think most people believe the hostage-taking was appalling and inexcusable. Some, thought will have a grudging admiration for the guy or even more. To others, it showed the dangers of a Robin Hood mentality.  The whole thing, how now, brownpau said, seemed so typical: sloppy, grandstanding, essentially futile (and he reminds us of how Panfilo Villaruel's dying breath was caught on radio). One blog suggests another great thing about the Internet and blogs when there's breaking news: additional information, even photos, can pop up from anywhere and anyone.

OUR government conducts surveys on poverty, of course. And when surveys emerge that it doesn't like, it actively disputes such non-government surveys. But in the end, government goes where public opinion leads it. The President imposed a deadline on curbing hunger, designated lead agencies, mobilized funds, and along the way decided to stop trying to counter public opinion, and instead, prove itself responsive to that opinion. Yesterday, blogger  Philippine Commentary essentially defended  the President, who has been clobbered in the media for something she said. What she said is true, he said. The blogger's reaction reminded me of how often we debate our national characteristics, and how often we despair of what we consider our national character. Charles de Gaulle once famously said of his fellow Frenchmen, "how can you be expected to govern a country that has 264 kinds of cheese?" The French are often described, and at times describe themselves, as impossible to govern, and impossibly quarrelsome; if you ever have a chance to read the book "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French" (Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Julie Barlow), you would probably enjoy it. It reads in many respects, like a book about we, the Filipinos. How often have we heard something similar to what de Gaulle said? I even once heard a variation of de Gaulle's remark: "how can you govern a country with dozens of different kinds of kakanin?" And in our exasperation, we turn to what some would call "self-flagellation." In some cases, it comes close to either self-loathing, or a furious contempt for our countrymen. It becomes ticklish when criticisms we aim at ourselves, are pointed out by our fellow countrymen as the statements of ignorant foreigners. Rizal's famous essay on the Indolence of the Filipino tried not only  to examine the question, but how to approach it; as he put it, we should do so "without superciliousness or sensitiveness, without prejudice, without pessimism." and perhaps, with the realization that the things that disturb us, other people are disturbed about, too, or at the least, they try to understand and explain it. Sometimes we can look for similarities between our own and the cultures of others. A criticism of our culture, and our national habits, might lead you to explore some things Luigi Barzini wrote this of the Italians (in his marvelous book, "The Italians" (Luigi Barzini):

One fundamental point which escapes most foreigners must be understood and remembered. Most Italians still obey a double standard. There is one code valid within the family circle, with relatives and honorary relatives, intimate friends and close associates, and there is another code regulating life outside. Within, they assiduously demonstrate all the qualities which are not usually attributed them by superficial observers: they are relatively reliable, honest, truthful, just, obedient, generous, disciplined, brave, and capable of self-sacrifices. They practice what virtues other men usually dedicate to the welfare of their country at large; the Italians’ family loyalty is their true patriotism. In the outside world, amidst the chaos and disorder of society, they often feel compelled to emply the wiles of underground fighters in enemy-occupied territory. All official and legal authority is considered hostile by them until proven friendly or harmless: if it cannot be ignored, it should be neutralized or deceived if need be.

Barzini further observed,

The first source of power is the family. The Italian family is a stronghold in a hostile land: within its walls and among its members, the individual finds consolation, help, advice, provisions, loans, weapons, allies and accomplices to aid him in his pursuits. No Italian who has a family is ever alone… Scholars have always recognized the Italian family as the only fundamental institution in the country, a spontaneous creation of the national genius, adapted through the centuries to changing conditions, the real foundation of whichever social order prevails. In fact, the law, the State and society function only if they do not directly interfere with the family’s supreme interests... This is, of course, nothing new, surprising, or unique. In many countries and among many people, past and present, where legal authority is weak and the law is resented and resisted, the safety and welfare of the individual are mainly assured by the family. The Chinese, for instance, in their imperial days held the the cult of the family more praiseworthy than the love of country and the love of good. This is why the Communist regime of Ma Tse-tung tried to stamp out the family, recognizing it as its most powerful opponent. Similarly, wherever the Jews were allowed to settle in Europe, they outwardly conformed to the local laws and impositions, but in their hearts obeyed only their religious rules and the immemorial code of their family life, which allowed them precariously to survive persecutions. It is therefore not surprising that the Italians, living, as they have always done, in the insecurity and dangers of an unruly and unpredictable society, are among those who found their main refuge behind the walls of their houses, among their blood-relatives. Italians have, after all, many points of contact with the Chinese: the Chinese, too, love ceremonies, feasts, elaborate rites, deafening noise, fireworks, and good food; love children and produce many of them; their art is also highly decorative and ingenious but not always deep; they fashion lovely things by hand, and are astute negotiators and subtle merchants. The Italians are also, in many ways, similar to the Jews: the Jews have the same disenchanted and practical outlook; are among the few people who laugh at their own foibles; they entertain a wary diffidence for other people’s noble intentions and always look for the concrete motives hiding behind them. There is, however, this fundamental difference between the Italians and most other people who use the family as their private lifeboat in the stormy seas of anarchy. Anarchy in Italy is not simply a way of life, a spontaneous creation of society, a natural development: it is also the deliberate product of man’s will, the fruit of his choice; it has been assiduously cultivated and strengthened down the centuries. The strength of the family is not only, therefore, the bulwark against disorder, but, at the same time, one of its principal causes. It has actively fomented chaos in many ways especially by rendering useless the development of strong political institutions. This, of course, brings up a complex problem: do political institutions flourish only where the family is weak, or is it the other way around? Does the family become self-sufficient only where the political institutions are not strong enough? However it may be, political institutions never had much of a chance in Italy. The people gave birth to but a few of them: they had to import most of them ready-made from abroad, from time to time…the constitution, the bi-cameral system, liberalism, democracy… The family extracts everybody’s first loyalty. It must be defended, enriched, made powerful, respected and feared by the use of whatever means are necessary, legitimate means, if at all possible, or illegitimate…

And it sounds like us! Doesn't it? There's a marvelous book, now sadly out of print, in which one of the leading Filipino minds of his generation tried to do what Rizal did, that is, explain us to ourselves and along the way, to others. That man was Leon Ma. Guerrero and his book was a collection of essays titled We Filipinos. If we take a cue from Barzini, then Guerrero has something similar to say (and he said it about a decade before Barzini wrote his book!), in his essay, What are Filipinos Like? In it he says Filipinos are extremely self-reliant -but only when they have to be, in crisis situations (for example, the Japanese Occupation). He goes on to say,

There is another aspect of self-reliance which has nothing to do with colonialism and its residue.... [Some Americans] cannot understand why grown-up sons and daughters keep living with their parents even after they have been married and begotten children of their own, or why we should feel obliged to feed and house even the most distant "cousins" who find themselves in want. This trait is not exclusively Filipino; it is common to all rudimentary societies. Modern man looks to his government for security but where the government, whether native or foreign, is still regarded as an alien, selfish force, the individual prefers to trust his bloodkin for what are in effect old-age pensions or unemployment insurance. The family is an indispensable institution in these circumstances, and one cannot be too sure that people are happier when it has been supplanted by the state as the center of society.

Sounds like the Italians, doesn't it? And indeed just the other day someone told me, "we are like the Italians -it's not that we want better government, it's that we're happiest when there's no government." Which might just explain why public opinion tends to be skeptical of government-announced action plans and solutions -could it be, what we really want, is to solve our problems for ourselves? Any government initiative, taken from such a perspective, is just a hassle. And about government -more on what Guerrero had to say, next time.

By Monday night, or Tuesday morning at the latest, our discussion of survey "trends" will either be instantly obsolete, or confirmed. Well, maybe not confirmed, but at least made marginally more useful. That's when the latest SWS poll results will be released. In the meantime, let's resume crunching the numbers again (again, keeping the usual caveats in mind). 4. TV advertising has had a marked impact on some, but certainly not all, campaigns. Chiz Escudero is an obvious beneficiary: From a low of 19.3 in November (statistically in the same ballpark as his July rating of 20.2; if the absolute numbers mean anything, however, the slide must have been due to the early end of the second impeachment proceedings in the House), he rose to 23.2 in January and then, after the campaign period officially started (and TV started airing his ads), zoomed up to 35.5 in March. Ralph Recto and two of his colleagues in the Wednesday Group, Joker Arroyo and Manny Villar, also enjoyed the advantage of effective TV advertising: from the mid-20s in January, Ralph, Villar, and Joker all improved to the mid-30s in March. The biggest ad spender in the first two weeks of the campaign (as measured by AC Nielsen) enjoyed an even bigger bounce from TV advertising, but because he started low, Butch Pichay is still in the low double-digits. He was 1.8 in July, did not figure in the November survey, improved to 5.6 in January, and (after his "pro-Pichay" ads started airing) rose to 13.7 in March. That's way more than double, but the question is: Does he have enough time to improve all the way to, say, the relatively safe mid-30s? 5. I think Pichay shares the Biggest Improvement runner-up award with Vic Magsaysay, who rose from 10.1 in January to 22.4 in March. The top honor, of course, goes to Sonia Roco, who virtually tripled her rating from 7.5 to 22.4. But I can't include Magsaysay and Sonia in the list of TV-ad winners because, in his case, his ads didn't come in until late this month, and in her case, she is running on, how do we say this, an extremely limited TV budget. In fact, I've seen her ad only once. Something else must be at work in their campaigns; if you have a handle on this (aside of course from the usual suspect, name recall, however vicarious), let me know! 6. In the 2001 elections, Villar and Joker were consistently in the 30s, in the (SWS) surveys. It seems to me that, this year, their heavy advertising on television has been, at least in the first month of the 90-day campaign, an expensive attempt to recover lost ground. 7. Among the heavy TV advertisers, Sonny Osmena seems to me to have had the smallest bang for the buck: from 17.9 in January, he improved to only 21.9 in March. He has one ad about his grandfather's legacy, another one about e-VAT, and a third about the Osmena "brand." Perhaps he's muddling his message?

I took a look at the data John put together and since I'm a visual person, I tried to graph the survey results. Here they are: I think that looking at the numbers as colorful lines helps us see, straight off the bat, the relative positions of the candidates vis-a-vis each other; the distances between each can be quite large. Second of all, by looking at the numbers as color-coded lines, we can try to see if the various candidates are on an upward trajectory, or are waning, waning in their rankings. And where their momentum, such as it is, might bring them in terms of the other candidates. Most candidates are headed up (Joker most sharply of all), though mainly on a kind of gentle movement upwards, but two seem firmly headed down an equally gentle but still clearly downward slope: Sotto, Pimentel, and Aquino-Oreta. As for Cayetano, he  seems to be creaking along. Just for fun, I decided to provide the top 6 candidates with triple color-coded lines. They represent the spread, so to speak, that each survey number actually represents. The figures, after all, usually come with the caveat that they are within a certain margin of error, usually plus or minus 3 points. So the three lines for each represents their maximum (reported score plus three), their actual (reported score) and minimum (reported score minus three) and it helps show how some candidates like Legarda are verging on the phenomenal (approaching 60% if you look at her maximum) while the rest are really practically neck-and neck: Over the past couple of years, I've come to the conclusion that broadly speaking, we can break down the political constituencies as follows: that when it comes to public opinion, you can basically break them down as follows: 25% support the President; 25% are undecided, but inclined to keep the status quo; and 50% oppose the President, but among themselves, are divided anywhere along 5 different options as to what to do. In contrast, supporters of the President are divided only two ways: absolute or conditional support (absolute meaning, backing her until 2010, conditional being, so long as she continues to support certain agendas such as charter change, etc.) The result is basically a fifty-fifty split, with the edge actually belonging to the President. Now it's from that perspective that I view these colorful lines. If we view the President's partisans as a maximum of 25%, then that is the constituency that the administration can mobilize best of all; an additional 25% is in play for them; and for the administration candidates, the question becomes, can the candidae appeal to the loyal 25%, the undecided 25%? And for an opposition candidate, can you either maximize the a big chunk of the 50% temperamentally suited to respond to an opposition message, or reach out to the 25% undecided (presuming the 25% hard-core loyalists of the administration are beyond any opposition candidate's reach). john notes that the scores of the various candidates, opposition or administration, are pretty weak compared to previous races. Which suggests to me that both slates aren't particularly inspiring, even to the basic constituencies of both sides. Though there are exceptions. Again, Legarda seems able to harness a very big chunk indeed of the opposition constituency, and if you look at her maximum numbers, she may actually be crossing over from the territory of the opposition, and enticing part of the undecided. Lacson among the opposition, seems the runner-up in mobilizing a broader range of opposition voters. But Recto, Angara and Arroyo (Joker) on the other hand, seem the most capable in harnessing both the administration chunk of votes, and the undecideds, though none of the administration candidates seem capable (yet, anyway) of fully maximizing what their administration affiliation should be able to offer: if a really energizing administration candidate, for example, would be able to tap into a constituency of 50% (the President's loyal 25% plus the undecided 25%) even if the candidate were to totally alienate opposition-minded voters, no administration candidate has managed it yet. And others, for example Aquino-Oreta (who has probably alienated opposition voters) are doing miserably even within the administration's partisans, indeed. Back to Joker: he and Pangilinan could be said to have mobilized, or appealed to, the undecided 25% best of all; the rest (about 10% or so for each) either comes from the administration or the opposition, or both. Recto, Angara and Villar too: this makes them, in a sense, the centrist candidates. But those are just impressions, an approach based on politics as an art and not hard science. For that most crucial thing, the bandwagon effect, it seems the only big bandwagon, right now, is Legarda's though there are mini bandwagons taking up the rear.

Let's take a look at those Pulse Asia results, in the rather crude chronology I strung together. Aside from those old workhorses, name recall and heavy adspend, what other factors do we see pushing up, or pulling down, the candidates' prospects? 1. Two of the consistent Top 3 candidates ran in the last elections: Loren Legarda for vice president, of course, and Ping Lacson for president. That simple fact must have added to their electability. Running a national campaign forces a candidate to put up a national organization; Legarda's organizational prowess in 2004 was especially impressive. Ping's presidential campaign was no slouch, either; it met its stated goal, of securing over 3 million votes. (This, in my view, effectively cost Fernando Poe Jr. the margin of error he needed to counter any election fraud, but that, as they say, is another story.) But organization is not the only advantage Loren and Ping enjoy; the publicity they reaped from running strong campaigns (and of course from the post-election positions they took) has, in my view, helped them retain their impressive ratings. Ping did not do as well the first time he ran for the Senate; SWS surveys showed him at 27-28 percent in the last three months of the 2001 campaign. He eventually placed 10th. Loren, as any political junkie knows, topped the 1998 Senate elections. In the first two months of the 1998 campaign, however, as measured by SWS surveys, she was solidly in the middle ring of the winners' circle. One possible implication for 2007. Loren may become only the second person in our history to top the Senate elections more than once. (Jovito Salonga holds the record. He ran three times, and topped the race each time.) One possible implication for 2010: A reelected Manny Villar will run for president, even against Mar Roxas. He has nothing to lose, except another sackful of his millions. 2. Kiko Pangilinan is the third member of the Top 3; he even topped the latest SWS survey, although Loren and Manny Villar were well within the margin of error (thus Inquirer.net's more accurate headline: Kiko, Loren, Villar share lead). I was a little puzzled why he was consistently doing well. (He sees the jump in his SWS rating as a fruit of his decision to decline GO's offer and run as an independent; I would agree, as long as it's clear we're talking about the increase in his numbers.) Is his good fortune, as Dean Jorge Bocobo suggested in Newsstand a while ago, purely the result of the support of "Sharonians?" I am not so sure. But a look at the SWS surveys in the run-up to the 2001 elections tells me he may be right, on that point. (I know, I know! Better if we use Pulse Asia data, but unfortunately I don't have access to that kind of information right now; I use SWS results, with the usual caveats.) My point: in the last three months of the 2001 campaign, Kiko was receiving ratings similar to what he is receiving now. But in 2001, Kiko placed 8th. He never even entered the top half of the winners' list in any of the surveys. The question is: If he has essentially similar ratings in 2001 and in 2007 (on the back, let us say for argument's sake, of his wife Sharon's fan base), what explains his consistent top ranking now? He's running against fewer big guns. No Noli de Castro, no Frank Drilon, no Serge Osmena, no Juan Flavier, no Jun Magsaysay. And the big guns he ran with in 2001 and who are running again this year, Joker Arroyo and Manny Villar, have slipped somewhat in the ratings; today, their powder isn't all dry. Thus: in 2001, a rating of 38 (SWS) was good only for eighth place; today, 39.4 (Pulse) is good enough for second-to-third. 3. Gringo Honasan remains an enigma. Could he enjoy the same residual goodwill that Erap Estrada used to enjoy when he was still an active candidate? In the low- to mid-30s: That's the range of Gringo's usual ratings. In 1995, this was good for ninth place; in 2001, it was good for 13th. (He won a three-year term, essentially to serve out what was left of Tito Guingona's term of office, after Tito was named vice president.) These days, he is in the mid- to high-20s, which however is good enough for 11th place (insert my big-gun theory here). Will his ratings improve to his usual range in the next two months, or is the spike in his numbers in the latest Pulse survey a last hurrah for the controversial candidate who cannot campaign in person (he is, yet again, under detention) and who has not yet spent a centavo on TV advertising? That last fact makes him a certain target for either junking (by those temporary alliances he carries or who carry him) or fraud. Maybe both. It's past 2 am. What say we continue this number-crunching tomorrow?

  A discussion in Newsstand led me to collate the following poll results from the four Pulse Asia surveys -- July 2006, November 2006, January 2007, March 2007 -- on the current Senate race. I think a closer look at these results, now strung together in a crude timeline, will prove profitable (with the usual caveats, of course). The first three have a margin of error of plus/minus 3; the fourth, which was conducted as though it were an electoral exercise, had a bigger sample and is more accurate, with a margin of error of plus/minus 2.  I realize that pollsters can, at times, make mistakes. But if we limit ourselves to the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia surveys, bring our own experience to bear on our reading of the results, engage the polling process critically, and bear in mind that  successful politicians read the surveys too, perhaps we can get somewhere, yes? pulse-2007.htm Let's crunch the numbers later.

AHA, as Charlie Chan supposedly said when he examined a stab victim: "the clot thickens." The Inquirer editorial today takes strong exception to the attempt to transfer Rep. Satur Ocampo to Leyte and compares it to the style of the German Gestapo. Columnist Amando Doronila says official actions (the Ocampo "kidnapping," as he puts it) are belied by official rhetoric (the President's speech to the graduating class of the Philippine Military Academy). But for every expression of concern over the government's handling of persons and groups it considers threats, there are also equally strong manifestations of support. Their claims to the contrary notwithstanding, radicals have always been a minority in our society: but among radicals, believers in Mao Zedong Thought (see the entry under "Maoism" in the Encyclopedia of Marxism) compose the majority of radicals though even they are divided between those who want to pursue a "people's war," and those who've decided to pursue a peaceful political path (more or less). .John's last post suggests to me that while Mao Zedong himself viewed victory as inevitable, Filipino believers in Mao are stuck with the reality that victory hasn't been achieved for forty years -and isn't about to take place anytime soon. And thus, they (the followers of Mao, or those influenced by his thinking) have to find a reason why it is that most Filipinos haven't embraced Marxism when its believers think it provides the answer and the solution to everything. In a sense it's easier to blame outsiders for the lack of local support. So, as John said, blame America. This is something the Marxist may find comforting because it latches on to a widely-held assumption, anyway. Here's something that used to be said of our country in the 1960s. Who, the question went, were the three most important people in the Philippines? The answer went, 1. The US Ambassador 2. The head of the Lopez family3. The President of the Philippines. In that order. What John discussed has been the subject of academic interest. I particularly recommend "Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960 (Modern America)" (Nick Cullather) for those interested in reading on the subject further. But I'm wary of getting bogged down in the finer points of dogma concerning Mao and whatever interpretations his local followers have adopted in turn. To be sure, we have to try to understand what all the fuss is about. But we should also pay attention to a larger question, if you will. The question is: how should a government defend itself and the people it claims to represent? Benito Mussolini was a Socialist before he became an exponent of Fascism (Socialism can be different from Communism, see the Internet Modern History Sourcebook for more), and he was a gifted journalist before he became a politician. Something he wrote (found in "In Defence of Politics" (Bernard Crick) I'm certain, will appeal, and make sense to, some readers:

Was there ever a government in history that was based exclusively on the consent of the people and renounced any and every use of force? A government so constituted there never was and never will be. Consent is as changeable as the formation of the sands on the seashore. We cannot have it always. Nor can it ever be total. No government has ever existed which made all its subjects happy. Whatever solutions you happen to give to any problem whatsoever, even though you share the divine wisdom, you would inevitably create a class of malcontents… How are you going to avoid that this discontent spread and constitute a danger for the solidarity of the state? You avoid it with force –by employing force inexorably where it is rendered necessary. Rob any government of force and leave it only with its immortal principles, and that government will be at the mercy of the first group that is organized and intent on overthrowing it.

A specific word Mussolini used -"inexorable"- to describe how force should be used, is at the heart of the objections expressed by Doronila and the Inquirer editorial. Force is such a dangerous thing to use, that the last thing that should be done is use it promiscuously. But such an attitude -that insists on nuances- can lead to impatience. Particularly since nuances take time, and they don't offer immediate gratification. A case in point is today's story of a general who offered government a share of his loot, if charges against him are dropped. One story like this illuminates just how complicated, time-consuming, and frustrating something like counterinsurgency is. Can a military with crooked generals, ever defeat insurgents? And which is the chicken and which is the egg: corrupt and abusive officers incompetently leading the AFP, or poverty that breeds insurgents, for which you need the AFP to crush it? Which should come first: cleaning up the military, or cleaning up the countryside of rebels? And the questions can go on and on, with infinite variation. Problems can get so tangled-up that they become a kind of Gordian knot, and like Alexander the Great, leaders are tempted simply to hack through the whole  knotty mess with a sword. Clean the AFP later. Fight poverty later. Just get rid of the NPA now -and anyone who might help them. Now.

In the Philippines, what do the Right and the Left have in common? They both think the United States, effectively, still runs the country. I once shared a panel with the eminent Luis Teodoro, the professor of journalism and tireless columnist whose leftist creds are the stuff of legend. We were taking part in a forum in the University of the Philippines, and for his closing remarks the man many journalists simply call Dean (a post he once held) chose to remind the audience (college journalism students, most of them) about what for him must have been a central fact of life: "Nothing happens in the Philippines without the Americans." I smiled when he said that, and took careful mental note of exactly what he said. (To be sure, he may have said "in our country" instead of "in the Philippines," but the start and the end of his sentence I vividly remember.) It was decidedly non-academic of him to phrase his conclusion in absolute terms. Nothing? Absolutely nothing? In my turn, I said something about living in the world as it is, not as we think it is, but I did not really engage his point (or, for that matter, his audience). I do not doubt that the United States still exercises inordinate influence in the Philippines, but does it in fact still run the country? Perhaps Dean would have done better to nuance his position, say by limiting his observation to pivotal events in recent Philippine history (then perhaps it would be possible to make a case), but where's the fun in that? Another Dean, the equally indefatigable blogger behind Philippine Commentary, Dean Jorge Bocobo, tacks to the right as reliably as Dean Teodoro leans to the left. Dean (Bocobo, that is, a grandson of the great Jorge Bocobo, first dean of the UP College of Law) wrote some of the most interesting, most unexpected analyses of the political situation during the Hello Garci scandal. I truly found his posts bracing. But on one point, I thought Dean showed his true, American, colors. When the notion that President Arroyo had been bugged by United States security forces was first raised, Dean positively jumped at the issue. As usual, he wrote well, lucidly, about the possibility, but I got the distinct sense that he was energized by the possibility precisely because it involved the Americans. It fit in with his view of things. The country's biggest political scandal in the 21st century, and conveniently the US government was (or so he argued) possibly in the center of it. This similarity had occurred to me before, and it occurred to me again when I read through the comments to our first posts in Current. I am disconcerted when I read, from Concerned FilAm's two comments, for example, that the Philippines has not outgrown its colonial status.

Again, the Philippines is still pretty much a US colony whether we like it or not. Even other Asean countries are trying to gang up on PI, judging it as #1 in corruption.

And again:

For me, the Philippines is still under Uncle Sam’s influence anyways. Even here in the United States, there is no single organization that unites the whole FilAm nation.

As a journalist, as someone who tries to work with information about politics as it is really practiced, I must say I like the second quote better. But both comments seem to me to originate in one source: Dean Teodoro's unreal assumption that "nothing happens" without US intervention. Stuartsantiago also left two comments. This one was particularly disorienting:

i think you are completely off-track. dont believe government propaganda. the leg, though diseased, has not been been sawn off–you’re just blind to it. gma (and most politicians) sees it very clearly, which is why she allowed daniel smith’s midnight escape from the makati city jail. among other things.

I agree about Daniel Smith's midnight transfer; it was done, without a court order, to please the Americans. (Admiral William Fallon, who ran the Pacific Command at the time and is now in charge of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had abruptly cancelled the Balikatan exercises, putting severe pressure on the Arroyo administration.) But for every such craven politically motivated decision favoring the Americans, we can point to dozens of other craven politically motivated decisions that do not favor them. Where does this leave us? I'm afraid that the school of thought that believes that, indeed, "nothing happens in the Philippines without the Americans" is the Philippine political equivalent of a conspiracy theory. It chooses the facts, in fact it recognizes as factual only those it has chosen, to fit a grand, an ambitious, theory. I am also disturbed by the idea, assumed in stuartsantiago's comment, that a journalist would base his thinking on government propaganda. Now I certainly do not wish to say, I certainly do not believe, that I have a monopoly on the right information, or that journalists do. (In fact, I have an abhorrence of the journalist who traffics in "inside" information; you see some of them validating each other's "scoops" in coffeeshops every morning.) But come on! Government propaganda? Surely even a rookie journalist would have, aside from actual experience living in the Philippines, better sources than that. Dean Bocobo was also kind enough to leave a comment. But it is the kind of comment that raises questions about our individual "blind spots."

Funny how Democrats get front page treatment in the Philippines when they hold hearings on the Philippines. As if there haven’t been dozens of US Congress and Senate hearings that have tackled foreign aid to the Philippines all these years. But of course those were run by Republicans and didn’t hear the testimonies of leftist “bishops."

Dean misrepresents the news value of the Boxer hearing in the Philippines by attributing its "front-page treatment" to the leading role played by Democrats. In fact, it is the topic of the hearing -- extrajudicial killings in the Philippines -- that guaranteed its high profile in Philippine media. Of course if the Democrats had not won last November, we wouldn't be talking about the hearing today. Of course if there was no US aid involved, there would be no hearing either. But all this is the back story, not the actual movie. Dean does all of us a disfavor by deliberately mistaking one for the other. Lastly, a comment from the dent, who shares Amando Doronila's view that US military aid to the Philippines might soon dry up.

if the premise or as circumstantial evidence/s reveal that the State security forces are behind the killings as found by the Melo Commision then the aid has to stop otherwise it would appear that America is a party implicit and complicit to the killings by giving the arms/logistics to the security forces perpetrating it!

Of course Congress has the power of the purse, but this does not necessarily mean that a cut in aid is in the works. The Bush White House does not exactly roll over and play dead, when the Democrats in Congress say so. The Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress in November because of widespread American disenchantment with the war in Iraq. Since then, Democratic leaders have repeatedly called on George W. Bush to start a troop pullout. Five months after the elections, has he complied with the clear, stark message behind what he himself called a "thumping" at the polls? Well, how do you spell s-u-r-g-e?

MLQ has started a new topic, but I still have a few things to say about the first one (American influence in Philippine politics) and also some housekeeping points to list down.  Let me, for now, write the following notes on this "work in progress." We welcome comments, of course, but unfortunately they have to be moderated. My own idea of a public square is approximated by an unmoderated comment thread, with the occasional offensive or obscene comment deleted after (if possible, immediately after) it is posted. But as Joey Alarilla has made clear to Manolo and me, the comment thread is also available by RSS feed.

... once a comment is posted, it's already been sent out via RSS even after we delete it, plus our readers might already have been exposed to something very offensive.

Registration is also required, but that seems to me to be a reasonable tradeoff: convenience for content (or at least that is the idea, in discouraging anonymous feedback). Of course, we also need to follow the Inquirer.net template; we understand the need for Inquirer.net's growing family of blogs to, well, retain a family resemblance. As for the "type face" being hard to read, as reader Francis suggested, we're working on increasing the size of the main text (and reducing the size of the block quotes). At the moment, our blogroll consists of only two blogs: the personal blogs Manolo and I keep. It will not stay this way, of course (as a look at our respective personal blogs will readily suggest). We're working on how to properly categorize the blogs we will include -- again, in a way that allows us to follow the Inquirer.net template. This blog, as you can see, is still very much a work in progress. Next up: A response to some of the content-related comments this blog's first readers were kind enough to leave.

THAT was originally the title of a December 2005 column of mine. Lest we forget, 2005 was the year the President basically put to a close the Ramos-era policy of attracting rebels by means of an amnesty policy. The debate between the government and its critics boils is often portrayed as boiling down to this. The government says, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army are the enemy; and that the enemy derives aid and comfort from organizations that use their legal status as a means to camouflage what basically amounts to treason against the Republic. Critics of this policy, on the other hand, say that the government is wrong, because it cannot prove that the National Democratic Front, and parties, such as Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, etc. either endorse or actively support the CPP-NPA. And that furthermore, it is scandalous for the government to deny that members of these legal parties are being targeted by assassins linked to the military. Let's begin with where the CPP-NPA are now, and what they're accused of doing. According to scholar Patricio Abinales, who has written extensively on the Communist movement, the NPA, today, has returned to its strength as of 1980:

The NPA has largely survived on its own, amassing its weapons from carefully planned small attacks against government forces. Military victories in the countryside have been complemented by successes in "revolutionary taxation". Businesses and entrepreneurs operating in the rural areas have now come to include NPA extortion as part of their annual budgets, with such allotments sometimes going as high as 2 million pesos.

In its summary of events for 2006, Human Rights Watch says of the CPP-NPA that,

The NPA and CPP continue to enact “revolutionary justice” against civilians in areas under their control, including the killing of individuals they consider to be criminals, despotic landlords, or business owners.

That's the CPP-NPA. Does it represent a threat, though? And is it really linked to organizations that the government says are tied to it, but which those organizations say they're not? In his testimony before the US Senate, G. Eugene Martin was pretty blunt in stating that the CPP-NPA are not only a threat to the government and democracy, but that the CPP-NPA also includes the NDF:

The communist insurgency is a serious threat to the Philippine government and democracy. The world’s last remaining Maoist insurgency, the NDF, uses violence and abuses democratic privileges to advance its power. As a legal political movement, NDF leaders are elected to Congress where they continue to oppose the administration and seek to block or destabilize government policies. During election campaigns, the NDF uses kidnappings, “revolutionary” taxes, threats and violence to support its candidates and harass opponents. The Party’s political goals are to weaken the government, gain power through coalitions and eventually replace the democratic system with an ideological communist dictatorship.

That being said, Martin then goes on to point out that even if the threat is there, there remains something disturbing about government forces lacking discrimination in going after those threats. Only our government makes the link between the CPP-NPA-NDF and party list groups. And this, I think, is the issue that lies at the heart of the question I posed earlier.

Many government officials, particularly in the armed forces and police, reciprocate the mistrust, seeing a communist hand behind civil society protests against administration policies and actions. Powerful elites influence local police or military commanders to use force against farmers’ complaints over land grabs or workers’ demonstrations over working conditions. Murders of activist farmers and labor leaders in rural provinces are covered up. Journalists investigating the crimes become targets. Similarly, prosecutors and judges are intimidated. Tragically, the result is further alienation from and resistance to the government.

As I understand it, Martin's suggesting that this lack of discrimination is counterproductive. But there's an irony at work here: here in the Philippines, only potential targets seem upset:

The killings have become a major issue within the Philippines, yet there is little public outrage despite the release of the Melo Commission report and the initial criticisms of the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council. Public perceptions are influenced by military and official attributions that most of the killings are internal CPP-NPA purges. Most civil society reaction has been from leftist oriented NGOs rather than mainstream organizations, further limiting public concern.

But Martin also points out that one reason only those in the line of fire are crying foul, is that the AFP and the government have been effective in downplaying accusations of rubouts as really, the handiwork of the CPP-NPA. In other words, whether Filipinos appreciate it or not, the issue is an important one. To my mind then, the question boils down to this: not whether or not the government is entitled to, and duty-bound, to go against the NPA which itself says it is fighting a civil war, but rather, does it make sense for the government to target the National Democratic Front and include political parties like Bayan Muna, its members, and leaders? Amando Doronila, in a September 2006 commentary pointed to the problems the new policy was causing:

On the counterinsurgency front, the efficiency for ending the slaughter of the noncombatants does not show. The objective of ending the communist insurgency in two years is tied to the killings of the leftists and journalists. They are the two sides of the same coin. The campaign on this sector has stumbled because of wrong policy assumptions. The military, police and justice department are inhibited from bringing the first case against the invisible death squads by the fact that they are looking for culprits in the wrong direction. They had, even before they could start their jobs, already concluded they had to hunt for the killers in the ranks of the leftists. They have put blinders on their eyes, shutting them from searching their own ranks, which are the main suspects of human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International.

This is why the debate has been stuck for two years now, resulting only in increased international pressure on our government, which is unable to understand why there's foreign interest in what's going on. Pressure that the March 18 editorial of the Inquirer says should be welcomed. And which Doronila says in his commentary, today, is poised to have an effect on US funding for our government's counterinsurgency operations. Our officials are arguing apples while the rest of the world is arguing oranges. The result is that what the government hoped would be a sign of strength, the arrest and trial of Satur Ocampo, is turning into a farce. But let me close by referring you to someone who knows the targeted party lists up close. In her blog, Ina Alleco gives the party list perspective on why to their mind, the links being made are unfair. My own view is that we cannot just turn our back on over a decade of expanding our democratic space.

On another note, what I can only describe the "fashionista-pundit fight". It didn't appear in the Inquirer, but the quote come from an Inquirer editor, and the quote has caused a ruckus in the blogosphere. I'm referring to Tim Yap, whose quote I came across by way of The Spy in the Sandwich and which I linked to in my blog the other day. Gibbs Cadiz, another writer for the Inquirer, thinks the comment a colossal blunder; ExpectoRants quotes the burning indignation of a poem by way of a response; caffeine sparks denounces the statement while blurry brain says all the denunciations are a good sign .I remember someone telling me that in the bad old days of the Soviet Union, stadiums would be filled by the proletariat, genuinely eager to hear poetry recited. I mention this only to prove that culture -literature, the arts, even in most formal manifestations, such as opera, ballet, the symphony, the play and the painting-  is not the enemy of the masses. But confusing celebrity shindigs with culture can make the masses rise up against such self-proclaimed culturati: the problem begins with confusing fashionista society with culture. In the 1960s, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil said the society pages should be abolished. They were, for a time, during martial law. With freedom in 1986 came the return of the society page, now known as lifestyle. In truth, society, showbiz, and gossip, trumps the more "serious" stuff, not just here but everywhere. The magazine industry in the Philippines is booming due to lifestyle magazines: political and news magazines are dying if not dead. And for every reader of this blog, there's literally a hundred who are more interested in Tim Yap. C'est la vie.

TODAY'S Inquirer editorial tackles the same issue that has consumed the attention of this new blog in its first days: the Boxer hearing in the US Senate. The crux of the newspaper's position:

Does the Boxer inquiry constitute interference in Philippine political affairs? We say No, for two specific reasons. We say this despite the well-known fact that the US government still exercises inordinate influence in the Philippines.

FIFTEEN years after the US military bases in the Philippines closed shop, the political reality Manolo described yesterday remains disconcertingly accurate:

The test of the mettle of a Filipino leader has always been how he negotiates with Uncle Sam, and the proof of the ability of a Filipino administration is whether it gets a friendly hearing or not from Washington.

By and large, this is still true today despite the growth in closer Asean relations, despite President Macapagal-Arroyo's symbolic first visit to Malaysia upon assuming the presidency, despite the many overtures to China. I do not think, though, that any Philippine politician working today (or, ah, not working) actually conceives of Philippine-American relations as a special relationship. What we have, or so it seems to me, is the detritus of a colonial relationship or, to change metaphors, the amputee's sense that the leg long since sawn off is still there, below the knee. (Besides, the term "special relationship" has no meaning to American politicians except perhaps as an infrequently used reminder of the state of US-UK relations.) It is only right to acknowledge that official American interest in the Philippines is more serious and sustained these days, precisely because certain parts of Mindanao form part of the second front in the Bush administration's war on terror. It is also only right to note that the ongoing inquiry of a key subcommittee of the US Senate committee on foreign relations into extrajudicial killings in the Philippines wouldn't have been possible if the Democrats had not regained control of the Senate. But old habits are truly hard to break. Now Filipino politicians of all stripes are scrambling to turn the hearings in Washington, DC to their own advantage. (Despite the Arroyo administration's protestations, about alleged foreign intervention, one gets the sense that, if the shoe were on the other foot, we would hear Palace spokesmen defending, rather than attacking, the hearings.) Or hearing, because as of this writing, Sen. Barbara Boxer's subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs has held only the first one. I found the testimony of the following (already available on the US Senate's website) most interesting: Eric John, who oversees policy for East Asia and the Pacific in the State Department; Jonathan Farrar, also of State, who spoke on the human rights situation in the Philippines; and G. Eugene Martin of the US Institute of Peace (a federally funded but nonpartisan agency). Martin's, in particular, is especially noteworthy, because it tries to present the whole picture (I have a quibble here and there, but in the main it seems to me on the money) without being limited by the language of diplomacy.

I believe the present rash of violence and killings is the result of political nstability and weakness. President Arroyo has expressed her determination to address and resolve the killings. She established the Independent Commission to Address Media and Activist Killings, headed by former Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Melo. She also welcomed the investigation of Professor Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council. However, I question her capability to take the necessary steps to end the killings. She has been politically weak since her controversial election in 2004, depending upon support from military and provincial leaders to counter impeachment measures by her opponents in Congress. She has promoted military officers who support her and placed retired military and police officers in high-level civilian offices. Her challenge to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to eliminate the decades old communist New Peoples Army (NPA) insurgency within two years has given the AFP a green light to take any action it wishes against the NPA and their allies. Faced with a persistent low-level NPA insurgency, the military resorts to stretching counterinsurgency strategies to branding leftist organizations as enemies of the state that can be intimidated or eliminated by any means. The communist insurgency is a serious threat to the Philippine government and democracy. The world’s last remaining Maoist insurgency, the NDF, uses violence and abuses democratic privileges to advance its power. As a legal political movement, NDF leaders are elected to Congress where they continue to oppose the administration and seek to block or destabilize government policies. During election campaigns, the NDF uses kidnappings, “revolutionary” taxes, threats and violence to support its candidates and harass opponents. The Party’s political goals are to weaken the government, gain power through coalitions and eventually replace the democratic system with an ideological communist dictatorship.

I've seen letters circulating on the Internet, purporting to report what transpired in the hearing and concluding that, "on the floor," there was a consensus that the killings were the responsibility of "the butcher in Malacanang." Not having been at the actual hearing, I cannot say with certainty that the letter-writer was wrong. But my news sense tells me this "conclusion" was a prejudgment and needs to be verified. News reports about the hearing certainly lead me to think the letter writer was an advocate, not an analyst. And yet: I think we all do understand that, precisely because nothing much seems to be happening in the Philippines on the issue of extrajudicial killings, hearings like Boxer's gives those of us who want the killings stopped some reason to hope.

Buffeted by natural and unnatural calamities, the Philippines has carded the worst economic performance among the ... Asean grouping last year. What is more tragic, in the midst of all these miseries, Filipinos are still killing each other in ever increasing numbers. This bloodletting must stop. This madness must cease.

That quote is 24 years old (that is, it was spoken almost an entire generation ago). It was written, and said, by opposition Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. His audience: The subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the US House of Representatives. Those of us who read the entire testimony some two months later (that is, after Ninoy was assassinated) sensed hope stirring.

WHEN INQUIRER.net editor in chief JV Rufino asked John Nery and myself to start blogging for the online counterpart of our mother paper, I leaped at the opportunity to work more closely with John, and with the good folks at INQUIRER.net. But it took me some time to figure out how on earth I'd differentiate this new effort from my own blog. In the end, it seems to me, the medium defines itself. My own blog is, well, mine -while this one is shared. My own blog is my personal soapbox, and is written for a general audience. Therefore, from the universal (my blog) we go to the particular (this blog), and from the personal, to a joint effort. This blog is very clearly part of the Inquirer family of publications, upholds the regulations and ethics of the whole, and is aimed at a particular kind of reader: you, the loyal reader of the Inquirer. So to differentiate my writing here from my writing elsewhere, I decided, first of all, to limit my advocacy to my Inquirer column or my blog. Personally, because I have never been a reporter but always, an opinion writer, I happen to think commenting on the political scene necessarily leads to some kind of political involvement. But that that is something I can do in a column and my personal blog, but which doesn't serve the best interests or hopefully, helpfulness, of this blog. Second of all, this is a current events blog so the takeoff point for each entry here will be the issue of the day as the Inquirer reports it. My purpose here is to amplify or, perhaps even clarify, the issues I personally feel are the most interesting, or relevant on the days it's my turn to comment in this space. Third of all, if I'm an opinion writer (with a tendency, as the late Teodoro M. Locsin Sr. wrote of himself, to "thunder and shrill" as all opinion and editorial writers do), John Nery is a reporter and an editor. The reporter and editor points out the Who What When Where and Why, though personally I've always felt the first four are so difficult to do professionally that the last, the Why, often gets done least best of all. I think John and I will therefore spend a lot of time focusing on the Whys, from our own perspectives -- which will be different because our professional backgrounds are different. Finally, John also brought up, in the private e-mail exchanges that took place prior to this blog's birth, that what defines blogging is the idea of a "conversation," and it begins with a conversation between John and myself, and then hopefully between one or both of us and you, the reader. In my personal blog I have the freedom of choosing when to have a conversation or not, and in some ways, a conversation is dispensable over there, because I've always viewed my personal blog more along the lines of the pamphleteers of the 18th and 19th centuries; here, I don't have that luxury. Don't get me wrong -a painful lesson I've learned in that space, is that the price of advocacy is often civility; so this place will be a more civil one, because over here, I'm part of a team. So welcome and let's hope this blog evolves into something useful for you and me. For some time now, the question of what Washington, D.C. thinks about the Philippines, and who in Washington is thinking what in particular, has been the grist of news reports and commentary. This editorial cartoon from the 1930s says it all, to my mind. The test of the mettle of a Filipino leader has always been how he negotiates with Uncle Sam, and the proof of the ability of a Filipino administration is whether it gets a friendly hearing or not from Washington. Pomp and circumstance has always surrounded the sending of delegations to lobby Uncle Sam for this or that. The ill-fated delegation that tried to wrangle a rethinking of test-retake requirement for Filipino nurses affected by the exam scandal, belongs to a tradition as old as the First Independence Mission of 1919. But there's a difference. Our politicians like going to Washington with all the pomp and extravagance of an Oriental Pasha, because they're playing to the gallery at home ("Look, I am your knight-errant!") and making a point to the Americans they're poised to meet ("You want something done in the Philippines? I'm the man to do it!"). It's part of the political game, but we forget the game was refined prior to independence, and remained relevant, perhaps, to a different kind of Washington in the 40s, 50s, 60s and even 70s, had its "Last Hoorah" in the 80s with Cory Aquino's address to the US Congress, but was firmly buried in the 90s when the US bases closed down for good. But old habits die hard: we've been conditioned to think we're important to America, though realpolitik on the part of Americans has resulted in a marginal -definitely far from enormous- increase in Philippine importance. American resources have been devoted to lending assistance to the fight against the Abu Sayyaf and the "War on Terror." The problem now is that there's a clash of priorities between our own government and that of the United States. The Americans may be fairly satisfied with what they consider the Number 1 priority, the hunt for the Abu Sayyaf, and how the Philippines is conducting it; but I don't know if we can say the Americans care one way or another about what's the Number 1 effort for our own government -- fighting the NPA. Which brings us to what's been in the news, an investigation mounted by a committee of the US Senate into the human rights situation here at home. The committee is chaired by Barbara Boxter, who is a popular US senator representing a district with a heavy Filipino-American vote, and she belongs to a party challenging the Bush administration's strategies in fighting the "War on Terror." The focus of reports and commentary have been on the testimony delivered -- and who delivered it -- Senator Joker Arroyo's belief that the hearing represents meddling in our internal affairs, as well as on a delegation led by PNP Director General Avelino Razon. The delegation had to backpedal because it hadn't been invited. The Razon delegation, again, shows that old habits die hard: it's "On to Washington!" but unlike the old days, when the habit began because we had a reason for lobbying Washington, neither the question of our political independence (settled by 1946) nor those of security (settled with our decision to close down bases in 1991, limiting our importance to a minor strategic consideration), guarantees us that most precious American commodity: access to the White House or Congress. But Senator Arroyo may have a point: why is the US Senate conducting hearings on the human rights situation here at home, when the hearings obviously have little to do with what America's concerned with, the "War on Terror"? The answer lies in how American foreign aid has become tied to the human rights situation in countries receiving that aid. This has been the case, more or less, since the Carter administration. Up for discussion is the US budget, and it contains a portion on foreign operations, which covers our part of the world, involves oversight over US government spending over the past year, and contending views on policy with the executive branch of government (see the PDF for an example of how the US executive responds to challenges on policy raised by the US Congress). So the answer to Sen. Arroyo is that since the US government gives aid to the Philippines, and our government accepts it, we can't avoid coverage by appropriate US policy tying aid to human rights. What then, is the basis of the Boxer hearing? See the report prepared the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the US Department of State:

...Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces; however, some elements of these security forces committed human rights abuses. During the year there were a number of arbitrary, unlawful, and extrajudicial killings apparently by elements of the security services and of political killings, including killings of journalists, by a variety of actors. Many of these killings went unsolved and unpunished, contributing to a climate of impunity, despite intensified government efforts during the year to investigate and prosecute these cases. Members of the security services committed acts of physical and psychological abuse on suspects and detainees, and there were instances of torture. Arbitrary or warrantless arrests and detentions were common. Trials were delayed and procedures were prolonged. Prisoners awaiting trial and those already convicted were often held under primitive conditions. Corruption was a problem in all the institutions making up the criminal justice system, including police, prosecutorial, and judicial organs. During a brief "state of emergency" in February, there was some attempted interference in freedom of the press and in the right of assembly. In addition to the killings mentioned above, leftwing and human rights activists were often subject to harassment by local security forces. Problems such as violence against women and abuse of children, child prostitution, trafficking in persons, child labor, and ineffective enforcement of worker rights were common. In addition to killing soldiers and police officers in armed encounters, the New People's Army (NPA, the military wing of the Communist Party) killed local government officials, and ordinary civilians, including through the use of landmines, and were suspected in many of the killings of leftwing activists. The NPA also used underage soldiers in combat roles. Terrorist groups committed bombings that caused civilian casualties, and these groups also used underage soldiers.

That's the professional opinion of US diplomats. In other words, the US Senate isn't operating in an information vacuum, or is taking only the world of certain groups for it. What the US Senate is thus attempting to get testimony on the matter to see if the report was accurate. What's at stake isn't diplomatic relations between our two countries, but American policy towards our country -and new policies that might have an effect on further aid being conditional on a better human rights situation. It is fundamentally an internal matter of Americans, involving the US Congress and the Executive branch of the US government.