Hearts and minds

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.