Footnotes to A Mutiny

It will not help that like the mutineers, the government has no abundant share of mass support to count on. Very few people attended the prayer rally called to express support for the government on the day of the Makati siege. A situation in which the political establishment has negligible mass support is ever a fertile ground for military crises.

By Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat.com

Military rebel leaders present their demands in a video message sent to media  

It was a very visibly jubilant President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who announced at about 10 p.m. last July 27 that the crisis in Makati was over. A group of young officers and enlisted personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), including two honor graduates of Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class 1995, had just ended a mutiny they had staged in Oakwood Hotel, Makati for about 20 hours.

By her explanation before the press that night, the crisis in Makati was over because the about 300 soldiers had stood down and were “returning to barracks.”

But is the crisis really over?

Well-equipped

Although the mutineers did not really have the numbers, they did not go to Makati unprepared; in fact they were apparently prepared for a long fight. They carried high-powered firearms and explosives which are difficult to lug around, as well as food and medical supplies which looked enough to last them for days.

They could not have brought all these to Makati without being noticed. Under ordinary circumstances, being noticed thus would have invited questioning and foiled the plot even before it could be carried out.

In his statements on the siege in Makati, Communist Party of the Philippines spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal talked of “patriotic soldiers” who have had contact with the underground revolutionary movement. It is most probably from these “patriotic soldiers” that he received information on a demoralization seeping through the ranks of the AFP, something which he also referred to in his statements.

That the mutineers were able to carry around all that heavy equipment all the way to Makati and were able to start what they had set out to do means that there were those within the very ranks of the military who let them off the hook because they had silent support for them. This confirms that there is indeed restiveness among the soldiers of the regime.

The composition of the Magdalo group, as the mutineers call themselves, is also a telling indicator. They came from both the Army and the Navy, two of the three branches of the Armed Forces. This reveals a dissatisfaction that has quite a wide base.

Grievances
 
In a statement read before the media, the rebel soldiers mentioned three issues that drove them to stage the mutiny in Makati.

First, the soldiers asserted that the government has been selling arms to anti-government forces such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf, and that higher officials of the military are enriching themselves by pocketing AFP funds while their men are dying in the fields.

Second, they accused the government of responsibility, through Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes and then Intelligence Chief Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, of staging bombings in Mindanao to create a pretext for branding the MILF a “terrorist” group and justify its begging for additional military aid from the United States.

Third, they accused President Macapagal-Arroyo of planning to declare martial law this month in order to extend her term beyond 2004. According to them, the escape of a suspected mastermind of the Rizal Day bombing, Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, was staged as the take-off point for a script leading to a declaration of martial law. This was to be followed, they said, by bombings to be staged in Metro Manila and which will be blamed on Al-Ghozi.

The CPP spokesperson has taken issue with the claim that the AFP also sells arms to the New People's Army (NPA), saying that in fact only a relatively small number of the NPA’s guns have been purchased from some AFP soldiers and officers, and the bigger cache were seized through tactical offensives.

The other allegations have bases in fact.

There is basis for believing that there is collusion between some top AFP leaders and the Abu Sayyaf, as part of the first allegation of the Magdalo group suggests. Footages of the siege of Lamitan, Basilan showing soldiers shooting in the air while Abu Sayyaf bandits were fleeing right under their noses are telling indicators. Suspicions of collusion are
heightened by reports that just as the soldiers in Lamitan were about to catch Abu Sayyaf spokesperson Abu Sabaya’s group, they were suddenly ordered to pull back and attend a “briefing.”

These signs of collusion lend credence to accusations that top military leaders are partaking of Abu Sayyaf ransom money—and to the accusations of corruption among the AFP top brass.

With regards the second allegation, the MILF has a history of owning up to whatever actions it stages, even if fraught with certain tactical errors like what happened in Pikit, North Cotabato not very long ago. Therefore there is a reason to believe its leaders when they deny having anything to do with certain actions.

But the government stubbornly insisted that the MILF did the bombings. Such an accusation could only have served the government, whose top military leaders, particularly Secretary Angelo Reyes and General Corpus, have been agitating for an all-out war in Mindanao.

Aside from that, the AFP has a history of staging bombings, blaming these on either rebels or terrorists, and using these as pretexts for pushing authoritarian measures.

One notable instance is the “ambush attempt” on then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile days before Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law Sept. 21, 1972. Enrile admitted years later that it was staged to provide a justification for declaring martial law.

Another instance is the bombing of Plaza Miranda in 1971. At first the military pointed the finger at the NPA, but shortly after recanted its accusation and said it was the work of an “unidentified group.”

That the government has been pushing for such repressive measures as an Anti-Terrorism Bill under which even legal protest groups and unarmed protest actions can be classified as “terrorist” and a national identification system which could be used to track down anyone considered an “enemy of the state” gives foundation to the claim of militant groups that there is a militaristic mindset in the present administration—and to the allegation that the president has plans of declaring martial law.

Unstable victory

The Magdalo uprising was a military failure because it failed to get mass support. But it succeeded in calling the attention of the world to the rottenness that afflicts the military and political establishments. The Macapagal-Arroyo administration and its generals are now under the close watch of people who are expecting substantial actions on the grievances articulated by the mutineers.

The president formed an “independent committee” that shall investigate the roots of the July 27 mutiny.

But this early there are signs that the investigation will not achieve anything significant. Reyes, whose resignation was demanded by the Magdalo group, said—even before the investigating committee could be formed—that he serves “at the pleasure of the president”—as though he is very certain that Macapagal-Arroyo will not let him go come hell or high water.

It seems, then, that a decisive resolution of the issue raised by the mutineers is a tall order.

On top of all these, there is restiveness in the military which expressed itself not only in the very act of the mutiny, but also in the apparent silent support that allowed the rebel soldiers to move around heavily equipped without being questioned. There are no indications that the sources of this restiveness are going to be resolved. Thus the president should not be surprised if the siege in Makati should either resurrect in a more disturbing form or make itself felt in other manners: for example we may hear of increases in cases of insubordination or even defections from the AFP.

It will not help that like the mutineers, the government has no abundant share of mass support to count on. Very few people attended the prayer rally called to express support for the government on the day of the Makati siege. A situation in which the political establishment has negligible mass support is ever a fertile ground for military crises.

Therefore the president cannot say with certainty that “The crisis in Makati is over.”

The government cannot claim to have achieved a complete victory against the mutiny. What it achieved is at best an unstable victory, a victory no different from the triumph achieved by those who in the latter part of the 1970s captured Jose Ma. Sison and Bernabe Buscayno, then leaders of the armed revolutionary movement. More than 30 years after, the NPA is still a force for the military to reckon with in the countryside. Bulatlat.com

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