However there is also evidence that, as one analyst argues, it is a national policy and centrally directed by Arroyo and her top-level security officials.

The aim of Operation Freedom Watch is to decimate the legal Left and to drastically reduce what they see as a “commie front” providing support for the rebels.

Clearly the Arroyo bloc has been unwilling to try to end the abuses. There are two main reasons for this. First, she fears a coup. A leader of a recent attempt was placed in detention, but still got 11.5 million votes in the May Senate election. Second, her disastrous neo-liberal policies are deeply unpopular.

The resistance is country-wide and tenacious. Thus repression has been a necessary strategy for the continuing exploitation by multinational, and national, conglomerates that support her anti-people policies.

For some Filipinos, the Summit with its ventilation of issues and causes and legal reforms, was an important step forward in the necessary resuscitation of the justice system. It remains to be seen whether reforms to the institutions of justice alone will have substantial impact on EJKED.

Others see it as unlikely to make a significant difference directly, a view underlined by slayings during the Summit but welcome the additional pressure which has been put on a regime increasingly being seen as illegitimate across all classes. Contributed to Bulatlat

Gill Boehringer is senior lecturer in law at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

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