STREETWISE*
U.S. Interference
To the doubting Thomases
out there who insist that we are a bona fide republic and that the
U.S. is not in the habit of interfering in the country’s domestic affairs,
think again. But one may well ask, isn’t this kind of interference, a
good-intentioned and benevolent one? Unfortunately, such is not the track
record of the U.S. government’s involvement in the volatile political
situation in this country especially at its most critical junctures.
BY CAROL
PAGADUAN-ARAULLO
Business World
Posted by Bulatlat
Now the cat is out of the bag. Resigned Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz
recently revealed, in so many words, that the Arroyo administration
contemplated declaring martial law last January in light of intelligence
reports of a looming open rebellion in the military cum massive street
protests calling for Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s ouster. More telling
is Mr. Cruz’s admission that the U.S. government, through then Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Director for National Intelligence John
Negroponte, explicitly nixed the plan and signaled that the Bush
administration would not support such a move.
That Mrs. Arroyo eventually stopped short of declaring martial law but
instead settled for the proclamation of a legally ambiguous “state of
national emergency,” Presidential Proclamation No. 1017, last Feb. 24,
says a lot about whose word matters with her administration.
To the doubting Thomases out there who insist that we are a bona fide
republic and that the U.S. is not in the habit of interfering in the
country’s domestic affairs, think again. But one may well ask, isn’t this
kind of interference, a good-intentioned and benevolent one?
Unfortunately, such is not the track record of the U.S. government’s
involvement in the volatile political situation in this country especially
at its most critical junctures.
At the turn of the century, the McKinley government deceptively offered
assistance to the first Philippine republic under General Emilio Aguinaldo,
in the revolution against Spain, only to subjugate and colonize the
Filipino nation for the next half century after a bloody war of aggression
and occupation.
In more recent
history, the Nixon government backed then President Ferdinand Marcos when
he declared martial law and thereby established a fascist dictatorship. In
later years, then Vice President
George H. W. Bush praised him for his “adherence to democratic principles”
at a time when Mr. Marcos was being universally reviled for his regime’s
gross violations of human rights and the wanton plunder of the economy by
his favored foreign and domestic business partners. It didn’t take long
for the Reagan administration, to drop Mr. Marcos like a hot potato when
his authoritarian rule was rapidly coming apart and threatened to drag
down as well vital US economic, political and most especially, military,
interests.
The lesson is not lost on Mrs. Arroyo and her cabal of advisers. No matter
whose administration is at the helm of the US government, it will not
allow the strategic and medium-term geopolitical interests of the world’s
sole superpower to be compromised, much more, threatened by the political
crises besetting any ruling regime in the Philippines.
The warnings from Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Negroponte were meant to drive home
the point: declaring martial law in a desperate bid to shore up Mrs.
Arroyo’s hold on power is a risky, messy business that the U.S. considers
a serious threat to its own interests. Corollary to this, if Mrs. Arroyo
can’t hack it as the dependable and stable U.S. ally, some say puppet, in
the Philippines, while maintaining the trappings of a democratic regime,
she is in deep trouble and cannot rely on the U.S. to back up a
bare-faced, iron-fist rule.
Thus, the Arroyo regime’s resort to PP 1017, not yet an open declaration
of martial law but with enough legal verbiage to cloak the regime with
“emergency” powers. She used these powers to ban mass demonstrations that
she feared would mature into an actual people’s uprising ala “people
power”; to preempt the plan of anti-Arroyo military and police officers
and men to “withdraw support” and thus nip an outright military/police
rebellion in the bud; to illegally arrest and detain her political
enemies, especially
those she claimed to be behind a so-called “Left-Right” conspiracy to
overthrow her widely perceived illegitimate government; and to clamp down
on outspokenly critical and increasingly adversarial mass media
establishments that had the propensity to fuel mass discontent and could
trigger an explosion of outrage at her unpopular regime.
Thus, Mrs. Arroyo’s renewed declaration of “all-out war against the Left”;
that is, against both the armed revolutionary movement and the legal,
unarmed democratic mass movement. This has resulted in the stepped-up
extrajudicial killings, attempted killings and enforced disappearances of
at least 1,400 activists, their supporters and those who happened to be in
the way of the regime’s urban death squads and military campaigns of
suppression in the rebellious countryside.
Thus, the unprecedented filing of countless harassment suits against Mrs.
Arroyo’s political opponents – from leaders of militant mass organizations
to local government officials to legislators to media practitioners to
former government bureaucrats.
All these without having to resort to a martial law declaration, as Mrs.
Arroyo’s principal foreign backer, the U.S. government, had made clear its
preferences, its inclinations and its not-so-benevolent intentions.
Business World / Posted by Bulatlat
*Published in Business World
1-2 December 2006
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