New Analysis
Is the Defense Chief Up to Something?

Recent moves and policy directives – including the MLSA - by the defense department have been criticized as non-transparent, raising speculations that Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes is up to something. That Reyes, when he went to Pentagon last week, was not shopping for guns but is also gunning for the presidency were some educated guesses that could prove to be true if the defense chief holds on to his “neither confirm nor deny” knee-jerk reaction.

By GERRY ALBERT-CORPUZ
Bulatlat.com

Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes left for the United States last August 10 to meet his counterpart, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and discuss ways and means on how the two countries could strengthen their defense relations in the midst of " threats" from international and domestic terrorist groups.

It was a career move on the part of the highest defense official of the land allegedly training his gun to become the next Fidel Valdez Ramos of the Philippines, the general-turned-minority president from 1992-1998.

Militant groups sensed this “game of the general” carried by Reyes a few years ago when he became ousted President Joseph Estrada’s Armed Forces chief. His aggressive stance in the all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was exceptional.

Recent reports show Reyes had set his eyes on the 2004 presidential elections. Behind those military punch lines quoted by the Philippine press, was an obsession - fatal attraction - on the presidency. He wanted to be the next military general installed as president after Ramos.

Political observers say Reyes may become the country’s next president – with American backing - under a scenario similar to or worse than the Vietnam war.

The political buzz about Reyes's plan to run for the highest position has been going around coffee shops and hotel lobbies and even inside the Armed Forces headquarters. Reyes has, however, neither confirmed nor denied the speculation.

Verbal tussle

Reyes took the front seat for the Macapagal-Arroyo administration in its word war against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its founding chair Jose Maria Sison after the latter allegedly ordered the New People’s Army to step up offensive operations against government forces in response to the president’s directive to launch all-out military operations against the Marxist guerillas.

Sison has denied the allegations, saying that he was writing as an analyst when he reacted to Macapagal-Arroyo’s orders to wage an all-out war against the NPA.

Last week, Estrada's ex-AFP chief was at the helm of the week-long verbal tussle and exchange of barbs against Sison. It was Reyes's political demonstration of loyalty to and ideological affirmation on the U.S. geo-political and military agenda.

On the eve of his Washington visit, Reyes even tried to outsmart U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell by announcing the CPP/NPA/NDF as a terrorist group ahead of Powell's August 9 memorandum designating the CPP and its armed political organization as the 34th foreign terrorist organization (FTO). The NPA has been in fact in the FTO list of the U.S. state department for years now.

Money matters in war

Reyes’s visit to Washington was also a business trip of sorts in connection with military’s modernization program. The office of defense secretary has been silent on why it hired the services of U.S. PR firm Rhoads and Weber-Shandwick to lobby for the local armed forces' fund sourcing for its ambitious program.

Rhoads and Weber, said to be the biggest PR firm in Asia, was first introduced to Reyes by Defense Undersecretary Alejandro Melchor III – son of the late Marcos’s executive secretary - according to a special report by Newsbreak, an online news magazine. (The deal was first exposed by Bulatlat.com last May.) The deal signed between Reyes and representatives of the Washington-based PR firm was clinched during the defense chief’s U.S. visit last year.

Under the two-year contract, the PR firm will head the lobby work for the AFP's thrust to generate funds for its modernization plan.

At present it is still unknown where the AFP will get the funds for the lobby contract, but speculations are rife that aside from the traditional route in Congress, defense officials would get the amount from the $55 million in military aid promised to Macapagal-Arroyo by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Whether the fund will come from the U.S. military aid or from Congress, the Filipino taxpayers will eventually pay Rhoads and Weber $20,000 a month for this contract or about P24.5 million for two years.

The contract, according to same sources, was held in secrecy from Department of Foreign Affairs officials and from National Security Adviser Roilo J. Golez. Sources from Malacañang said Reyes was adamant at first in pushing for the contract with Rhoads-Webber. The company was relatively new having been in the business for only two years and Palace officials were looking for another PR firm.

Meantime, militant groups have called for a congressional inquiry into the secret deal urging lawmakers to scrutinize and move for its scrapping.

Shopping for guns, scoring for pact

One of the groups, the Promotion of Church for Peoples' Response (PCPR), said Reyes went to the United States to seek military aid and shop for guns.

PCPR spokesperson Fr. Jose Arsebuche said aside from a shopping spree for weapons of mass destruction, the defense secretary would also bring another instrument for war - the polished version of the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA).

Although Reyes denied that MLSA was ever discussed in his meeting with Rumsfeld, critics insisted that the two held discreet talks over the fate of the U.S. basing agenda in the country. The two affirmed a new five-year military cooperation program and agreed form civilian bodies that would oversee the program’s implementation.

Pamalakaya, a federation of fisherfolk activists, had also asked the powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and Archbishop Cardinal Sin a number of times to be true to their position against the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) by rejecting the same evils espoused by the ongoing Balikatan exercises and MLSA.

Reyes and other military officials have been apparently exploiting the CBCP’s favorable views on the government’s anti-crime and anti-terrorist campaign at the expense of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, human rights and civil liberties.

Members of the government's negotiating panel should be warned on the apparent desire of Reyes to pummel any efforts aimed at reviving the peace talks with the communist-led NDFP.

Most likely, the secretary's trip in the United States was also meant to get an official directive from Washington regarding his decision to collapse the talks and proceed with all-out war against the leftists. Bulatlat.com

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