News Analysis

Arroyo’s Iraq Gambit a Matter of Political Survival

BY CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat

Angelo dela Cruz, the 46-year-old Filipino truck driver whose abduction by Iraqi insurgents last week has resulted in one of the Philippines’s most emotional crises in years, has become a symbol of the new Filipino everyman: the migrant worker. His ordeal resonates among a people who instinctively look abroad when they dream of a better life.

With little or no opportunities for a better life here, millions of Filipinos like Angelo dela Cruz, who agreed to drive his truck into Iraq because he would be paid double, are willing to gamble with their lives.

When the government suspended the deployment of workers to Iraq last week due to the abduction, dozens of Baghdad-bound Filipinos protested. “If I die in Iraq, at least I’m sure my three children here will get something out of my death. If I remained here, we will die hungry,” one of them, a woman, angrily told reporters at the airport. Every day, hundreds of Filipinos still line up at employment agencies for jobs to the Middle East, Iraq included.

It is this desperate determination among Filipinos to toil abroad so their families back home can lead a better life that makes the plight of Angelo dela Cruz politically explosive, and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo knows it.

“Keep in mind that, prior to this, she was a staunch supporter of the United States. The only logical explanation for this change in policy and her willingness to risk disappointing the U.S., is to tame the protests at home,” said Teodoro Casiño, a congressman of the progressive political party Bayan Muna (People First), said.

Pullout

Iraqi militants had threatened to kill dela Cruz, the father of eight children from Buenavista, a dirt-poor agricultural village in Mexico, Pampanga province just north of Manila, unless the Philippine government withdraws its 51-member contingent from Iraq. On Friday, the government said 11 troops, including the head of the contingent, were on their way home.

While the pullout had elicited sharp reactions from other nations, including the U.S., many Filipinos couldn’t care less about the criticisms against Arroyo. She initially vacillated on the insurgents’ demand but later acceded, mainly due to the potentially explosive backlash she would face if dela Cruz dies, analysts say.

Reflecting this sentiment are the television and text-message polls, not to mention the almost daily protest actions by cause-oriented groups, that show most Filipinos want Arroyo to withdraw the troops.

In dela Cruz’s hometown on Thursday, his neighbors, relatives and friends jumped and yelled for joy when Al-Jazeera aired a video showing an upbeat dela Cruz, who said he would be home soon. People in his village reacted by tying yellow ribbons around trees and electric posts; some promised to cook his favorite dish when he returns.

Competing needs

Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the Senate committee on national defense and security, said this crisis “is not just about the life of one Filipino.” Right now, he said, the Philippines “have opposing needs: to maintain a good relationship with the family of nations, as we did many times in the past when we sent troops to fight in the Vietnam War, in the Korean War, in Kosovo, in Somalia, in Kuwait, in Haiti.”

The other “competing need,” he said, is to maintain political stability. The Arroyo government, he said, will be destabilized if dela Cruz dies. “Maintaining political stability is more compelling than our need to cooperate (with the U.S.) in this confused war,” Biazon said.

Biazon said Arroyo’s action had been misunderstood by the U.S. and its allies. “Without understanding the context of why our country is doing this, nobody has the right to question our loyalties,” he added.

Serious and damaging

Foreign leaders do not seem to agree, however. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized Manila on Thursday. “We are blessed with coalition partners -- just to name two, South Korea and Bulgaria -- who are not blinking, who are not faltering, even though they are being tested mightily by kidnappings and beheadings,” he said in Washington.

A U.S. diplomat stationed in Manila described Arroyo’s move as “very serious and damaging” to Manila’s relationship with Washington. He said the U.S. did not expect this from Arroyo, who is widely considered the strongest U.S. supporter in Southeast Asia and whose country has received by far the biggest military aid compared to other countries in the region. 

Eduardo Dagdag, a national-security expert who teaches at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, said Manila’s move “will raise a lot of questions as to how dependable the Philippines is going to be as an ally in the fight against terrorism.” He said the Philippines needs the U.S. in fighting terrorism. “So if we are vacillating now, I doubt if we can get the U.S.’s full support,” Dagdag said.

The Philippines has been described as the “weakest link” in the campaign against terror in Southeast Asia, where members of the terror network Jemaah Islamiyah had allegedly infiltrated the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front and co-opted some of its members to commit acts of terror, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group in a recent report.

Since the U.S.-led war on terror began in 2001, the U.S. has considerably increased military aid to the Philippines, from $38 million in 2001 to $114.46 million last year. The U.S. has also sent hundreds of its troops to the Philippines to train their Filipino counterparts in hunting down terrorists and, in some instances, provided logistical support during operations targeting terrorists.

A new round of “training exercises” by American and Filipino troops has been scheduled later this month in central Mindanao, the hotbed of the country’s Muslim insurgency.

Political implications

Casiño believes that the withdrawal will have a huge political implication in the U.S., especially for President George W. Bush, who is becoming increasingly unpopular mainly because his administration misled Americans about his justifications for occupying Iraq.

He said Arroyo did not have much choice because of her untenable political predicament at home. “She still has not convinced a significant section of the population that she won fair and square” in the last election, Casiño said. “She does not need this kind of controversy so early in her term.”

Ibon Foundation’s Antonio Tujan said the lack of a clear mandate has become a political straitjacket for Arroyo. “If she had a clear mandate, she would say, ‘The people elected me because they believed in my agenda and, therefore, I should not face the terrorists anymore.’ And she would not have withdrawn.” 

If dela Cruz gets killed, the resulting backlash from the public will surpass the rage they displayed in 1995, after Singapore executed Filipino maid Flor Contemplacion. That incident was considered the single most crucial test of the presidency of then President Fidel V. Ramos. Arroyo, Casiño said, would not allow a repeat of that experience.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. agreed. “If he (De la Cruz) is beheaded, there is no question that his death would be blamed not on his captors but on the President. His execution would explode into another Flor Contemplacion situation which could undermine the already shaky presidency of Mrs. Arroyo," the senator said in a statement this week.

Unpopular measures

Complicating the picture, Casiño said, are the measures Arroyo wants to implement in the coming months -- measures that are sure to elicit protests and add fuel to the fire. Among these are higher taxes, cuts in government spending, and increases in electricity and fuel prices and fare rates.

The dela Cruz crisis could also galvanize opinion against Arroyo from the millions of overseas Filipino workers, whose dollar remittances have been propping the economy for decades but who feel that the government has not been doing enough to protect them. Many of these overseas workers come home abused and, in many instances, dead.

“She seems to think that it would be far easier to explain to the U.S. her action on the hostage situation than to appease an angry public in case Angelo dela Cruz dies,” Casiño said. “She’s being pragmatic, and if Mr. dela Cruz is released, she will definitely make it up to the U.S.” Bulatlat

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