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Analysis:
Arroyo Eyeing U.S. Support for 2004 Derby – But at What Price?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo runs the risk of wielding more powers than she can manage and, faced with a deepening economic slump she cannot reverse, tread on the same perilous route taken by her own father and by Marcos and Estrada.

By BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat.com

The U.S. government support for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s election bid in 2004 is as good as guaranteed. The basis of support is the latter’s unflinching backing for the United States’ growing armed presence in the Philippines which is part of the Pentagon’s power projection agenda in Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia-Pacific.

Faced with a weak popular base, a growing political opposition in Congress, poor economic performance and a further dip in public opinion surveys, Arroyo is left with nothing but to win the support of the Armed Forces and its real master – the U.S. government – to stay in office until her transition term ends in 2004. The presidency is up for grabs that year and Arroyo – an accidental president who rose to power via a people’s uprising early last year - will be one among several contenders.

In upholding America’s interest first, however, Arroyo is willing to violate the two governments’ own Terms of Reference (ToR), infringe on the country’s constitution, and betray the nation’s sovereignty rights.

The Philippine presidency has, since the late ‘40s, been a traditional pillar of support for America’s vital interests in the country and elsewhere. It was this office that dragged the Philippines into America’s wars in Korea, Indochina, the Persian Gulf and other places, allowing the use of U.S. military bases for armed intervention in many parts of the region and elsewhere.

At a time when many Third World countries were struggling for independence, neutrality and non-intervention, Philippine presidents were acting as a mouthpiece for America’s hegemonic ambitions in the world thus earning for the country the label as “America’s puppet” in Asia. They also became America’s junior partners in a regional defense alliance, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), under the guise of containing communism in the region.

Yet, when the government began to contest Malaya’s claim over Sabah and the prospects of an armed clash were imminent, Washington chose to support Malaya (now Malaysia) and its main backer, Great Britain instead. (So much for the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.) Irritated, then President Diosdado Macapagal, among other reasons, changed the celebration of Philippine independence from July 4 to June 12. Macapagal – whose daughter would also tinker with the Gregorian calendar for some bizarre reasons later on – quite belatedly tried to reclaim America’s friendship by adopting economic programs palatable to U.S. investors. But by then Washington had already decided to dump him and support Ferdinand Marcos’s presidential bid in 1965.

U.S. mouthpiece in Asia

Under Marcos’s 20-year rule, presidential support for American aggression deepened. As Asian spokesperson for five U.S. presidents – Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan – Marcos would speak before the U.S. Congress several times with much media hype. As a president, Marcos sent the Philippine Civic Action Group (Philcag) to serve as security, auxiliary and psywar accessory for U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam. He also welcomed the deployment of U.S. military advisers and the use of American aircraft in counter-insurgency operations – operations which, during the dictatorship, led to the displacement of some 10 million Filipinos and the killing of thousands others.

But Marcos became a liability to the Americans when, because of a series of economic crisis, the growth of the anti-US-Marcos dictatorship struggle and the Aquino assassination, the revolutionary movement surged and its rise threatened U.S. vital interests including military bases in the country. Marcos, according to the U.S. state department, was both a “problem and part of the solution.”

To allow the dictator a graceful exit and lay the ground for a transition pre-determined by Washington, Marcos had to gulp the bitter pill of “professionalizing the armed forces” and scheduling a presidential “snap election.” Backed by the U.S. state department and funds poured in by the CIA conduit – National Endowment for Democracy – Corazon Aquino won the election but her victory was stolen by the dictator. The rest is history. Offered a sanctuary in Hawaii in 1986, Marcos joined a league of military dictators and despots who were sheltered by U.S. presidents after they were unceremoniously ousted from power – such as the Shah of Iran, Nguyen Cao Ky (who put up a restaurant in California), and many others.

Upon assuming the presidency, Aquino backed the U.S. proposal to extend its bases in the Philippines and launched a “total war” against revolutionary forces using the Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) crafted by Pentagon for Central America. Although the number of human rights violations under Aquino was less compared to the Marcos regime, the brutality that attended the atrocities – in terms of mass hamletting, bombings, massacres and the like – was greater.

Reports said that Fidel Ramos, then Armed Forces chief and later, defense secretary, had to consult first the U.S. Embassy in Manila before he would declare his support for Aquino each time a coup d’etat was mounted against her. Ramos, whose loyalty to the Americans had never been in doubt since graduating from West Point, became the president who made America’s globalization policy in this part of the world possible. Under his watch, the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States was signed, allowing U.S. access to Philippine ports and airfields and the conduct of joint war exercises.

It was the misfortune of Joseph Estrada that, at a time he was confronted with the same fate (a people power uprising) as his presidential idol, Marcos, America was in a presidential transition – from Clinton to Bush. Reports also said that one of Estrada’s loyal associates – Police Gen. Panfilo Lacson – tried to save the situation by going on a secret mission to Washington to seek U.S. support for a civilian-military junta, with the beleaguered Estrada as figurehead president and himself (Lacson) as the man in charge.

At beck and call

At the moment, Washington has no problem with Arroyo. Aside from being the architect of America’s globalization prescription for the Philippines, the president seems to be always at the beck and call of Bush – and is delivering more than is expected of her. Aside from supporting the Pentagon’s plan to build a military base in Mindanao and the forward basing of U.S. special forces through a continuing series of “joint military exercises,” she has also won U.S. approval by scuttling peace talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF) and going on a brutal military offensive against the leftist guerrillas.

As the United States tries to maintain its global hegemony, the Pentagon needs minions and regimes for its expanding power projection in Asia. By her show of support for the U.S. military and a preference for war instead of peace in the contention with the NDF, Arroyo tries to fit this role in exchange for Washington’s support for another crack at the presidency.

Arroyo supports Bush’s call for war against “terrorism” in the region particularly against alleged groups linked to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. But America’s war involves more than fighting what it perceives as terrorist threats in the region. It also means waging war against Muslim separatist movements, ethnic and Marxist revolutionary struggles that – according to Pentagon – generate instabilities and, in the long term, hurt America’s vital interests in the region. It is also aimed at deterring the growth of any regional power – China or Russia – that would bring about a power imbalance and, hence, threaten American hegemony in Asia.

Even if objectively such “threats” are rooted in the region’s capitalist impositions, neocolonial structures, backward class systems, social inequities and systemic poverty and, in the case of China, in the sheer drive for modernization using the same capitalist dogmas championed by American multinationals and financing agencies, these are considered by the United States as “danger points” that warrant intervention and a collective and proactive response with its allies in the region.

That is why Arroyo’s declaration of support for everything that is American – especially its “war on terrorism” – or war by terrorism, as Filipino patriots describe it – is also essentially a war against nations and peoples in the region aspiring for self-determination, non-interference and progress. It is a declaration of support for America’s hegemonic drive to keep Asian nations and the rest of the developing world as its own vassal states consigned to their Third World status as U.S. capitalism’s source of raw materials and cheap labor and a market for its surplus products. It is a support for superpower bullying that since the ‘50s, according to recent accounts by international human rights groups, has resulted in the extermination of at least 15 million people worldwide and the destruction of small-nation economies and welfare structures affecting several hundreds of millions – probably billions – more.

In short, Arroyo’s support for Bush’s war is an endorsement for butchery and large-scale terrorism.

As she plays her role, Arroyo will be forced more and more to circumvent the constitution and adopt more and more authoritarian power. She will then be more and more beholden to the Armed Forces, particularly to Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes who, recent observations show, could also be grooming for the presidency. But she runs the risk of wielding more powers than she can manage and, faced with a worsening economic slump she cannot reverse, dangerously tread on the same perilous route taken by her own father and by Marcos and Estrada.

If she is a good ally and friend of the United States, however, Arroyo should be as cunning and pragmatic as the Americans. It’s still two years away from the next presidential elections and anything can still happen. U.S. power brokers are known to be pragmatic – propping up those who continue to promote effectively America’s vital interests or making expendable those who have become a thorn in the U.S. drive for world hegemony. Bulatlat.com

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