From Jasmine Trias to the Fraudulent Elections:
2004's Top 10 Events

The Nov. 16 massacre of striking workers leads Bulatlat’s “Top 10” newsmakers for 2004. Several people including journalists and leaders of non-government organizations chose this year’s top events for Bulatlat.

BY BULATLAT

This was supposed to be a simple “Top 10” type of article. Painless to write, effortless to research. But after asking several people, mainly journalists and leaders of non-government organizations, to choose the top 10 events of 2004 and rank them according to significance, it became apparent that screening all news events to choose the “top 10” was going to be difficult, given the explosive year that we went through.

But finally, here they are, the results showing how Filipinos root for their kababayan (compatriots) whether in the Philippines or in other countries, the crazy but deadly color of Philippine politics, as well as the yawning divide between the elite and the poor.

10.  Fil-Am idol Jasmine Trias

The third finalist in the immensely popular show American Idol captured the hearts of Filipinos and proved to be a great crowd drawer, even for Philippine news websites. INQ7.net, according to reports, experienced one its highest number of hits ever when Trias visited the Philippines last month.

9.       Silencing of journalists

The Philippine press will remember 2004 as a year of infamy, with 13 journalists victimized in possibly work-related murders. It showed that the so-called “freeiest” press in Asia is not so free after all, with journalists’ most basic right, the right to life, being attacked. Most remarkable however is how media practitioners, who traditionally found it hard to work together because of professional and personal competition, found themselves standing together, issuing statements and joining protest actions, to protest the assaults on press freedom.

8.       Manny Pacquiao and his knockout performance

Filipino featherweight boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, a.k.a. “The Destroyer,” pounded the daylights out of Fahsan 3K Battery Por Thawatchai in the fourth of a scheduled 12-round International Boxing Federation (IBF) elimination bout held at The Fort in Manila.

According to police reports, even criminal elements took a break from their usual activities in order to watch the fight. The same was true in May when he fought Juan Manuel Marquez in Las Vegas, Nevada which judges declared as a draw but which Filipinos believe Pacquiao won. Victory was thus even sweeter with the opponent’s early defeat. Not even Regine Velazquez’s beautiful rendition of “Lupang Hinirang” and round girls Diana Zubiri and Juliana Palermo could distract the millions of boxing fans in the Philippines.

7. The culture of corruption

Winston Garcia, the Cebuano president of the Government Service Insurance System and Gen. Carlos Garcia, former comptroller of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, became symbols of the corrupt politician and military officer, respectively, as they gained notoriety for the corruption cases filed against them. 

The general in particular raised the hackles of the public, with his multi-million dollar bank accounts and houses in posh places in the United States. While the lowly soldier waits impatiently for new combat boots and his pittance of a pay to arrive on time, the general’s wife complains that their money, illegally brought to the US, was being withheld by US Customs, asking why they should be stopped when they have done it several times before.

6. Bidding the King farewell

Thousands and thousands trooped to the Sto. Domingo Church in Quezon City where Fernando Poe Jr.’s remains were laid, and several thousands more joined the funeral march to bid the action king farewell.

Two things stood out from the incident: One, how much grief and love were being expressed over the death of a movie icon with whom the poor identified partly because of the roles he played and partly because of FPJ’s well-known generosity to those around.

Second, how the massive turnout of grieving fans and supporters sent Malacañang into a frenzy, with Macapagal-Arroyo exhorting her troops to “stand by me.” The public saw her barricading Malacañang with barbed wire and container vans, deploying truckloads of fully-armed soldiers and policemen, with tanks to guard all entrances to the Palace – all to keep her safe. Malacañang employees were in fact made to cross the Pasig River by barge to get to work.

Bulatlat even received the following text message in the morning of the funeral march: “Please join your PNP in a Thanksgiving Mass now ongoing at grandstand, Camp Crame for a generally peaceful situation in the conduct of security operations at FPJ burial and for our nationwide peace keeping… pls. Pass. Thanks you! – PSSUPT BATAOIL, CPIO.”

5.  A “Supreme Disaster”

It was another case of “Only in the Philippines.” The Philippine Supreme Court, in a vote of 10 to four and one abstention, reversed itself last Dec. 1 and declared the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which it said on Jan. 29 was unconstitutional, constitutional.

The 180-degree turnaround paves the way for the entry of transnational mining in the country, violating a host of human and people’s rights, including the indigenous people’s rights to their ancestral land and resources.

The Supreme Court coming out with such a ruling is like the house master opening the doors wide to give robbers easier access to the family jewels and furniture. Indeed, only in the Philippines!

4. Nature’s fury

There were 23 typhoons in all that hit the Philippines in 2004, according to reports, with Yoyong and Winnie bringing up the rear and making the biggest impression. Around 1,800 people were left dead or missing, with the retrieval of bodies still ongoing.

What shocked the country as much as the high death toll were the pictures of logs floating on rivers, providing stark answers to the question of why the tragedy happened. The handiwork mostly of illegal loggers, the calamity jolted the nation into awareness regarding the state of the country’s forests and mountains. It was a masterstroke though for Malacañang to blame the New People’s Army for the proliferation of illegal logging, finding a convenient scapegoat as it escapes responsibility for the disaster.

3. Angelo dela Cruz: the Filipino “Everyday Man”

The 46-year old Filipino truck driver’s abduction by Iraqi rebels last July gave the Macapagal-Arroyo government an enormous dilemma: whether to withdraw the Filipino troops in Iraq as demanded by the Iraqis and save the life of Angelo dela Cruz or to continue to support the US war in Iraq. 

Dela Cruz became a symbol of the new Filipino everyday man: the migrant worker forced to work abroad, even in the war-torn Middle East, in order to feed his family. Nobody blamed dela Cruz for wanting to save his family from starvation. On the other hand, the public blamed the Macapagal-Arroyo government for supporting the US invasion of Iraq.

Just when the crisis has already faded with the pull out of Filipino troops and the subsequent release of dela Cruz, by his captors, two other Filipinos were abducted: Angelito Nayan in Kabul, Afghanistan and Bobby Tarongoy in Iraq.

Despite all these, Filipinos continue to line up for jobs abroad, including Iraq, illustrating the depth of poverty and hopelessness in the Philippines that Filipinos are willing to face bullets and bombs just to make their families live.

2. May 10 elections and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s midnight proclamation

The words “Shut up” and “Noted” will never be the same again after the controversial joint Senate and House canvass of the election results last May.

Yes, the whole country noted how Macapagal-Arroyo was hastily proclaimed at 3:35 a.m. of June 24 by her buddies in Congress. It was in fact a fitting cap to an election campaign characterized by systematic fraud and violence, unabashed use of government resources and funds, and expert manipulation of surveys and mass media.

The elections also saw how the line between politics and show business have clearly blurred, with movie stars running for public office while veteran politicians used movie stars either as part of their tickets or as decorations in their campaign sorties.

1. The bloodied land of Hacienda Luisita

With their starvation wage of P9.50 a week and the one to two workdays a week allowed each worker, the strike of the sugar plantation and milling workers was inevitable. The violent dispersal that resulted in the massacre of at least seven strikers demonstrated the unyielding position of the Cojuangco clan not to give in to the strikers, showing how feudal oppression continues to this day.

With the outpouring of public support for the strikers, the Hacienda Luisita strike has become a flashpoint for the Philippine peasant movement as it brings to the fore the problem of bogus land reform programs, as well as for the trade union movement, as it highlights the unfair use by capitalists of the Labor department’s assumption jurisdiction powers.

THERE are of course other issues that could not be accommodated: the fiscal crisis, endless oil price increases, government plan to impose more taxes and, of course, the former President Joseph Estrada’s transfer from jail to his resthouse and, recently, a Christmas trip to Hong Kong. Bulatlat 

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