A Schilling’s worth - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

I couldn’t resist the awful pun. Whether Jeffrey Schilling, 25, of Oakland, California, was a real hostage, held for seven months by the Abu Sayyaf ruffians, or had gone along with his "captors" willingly, we’ll never really know. (After all, eyewitnesses reported having seen him walking along with the Abus carrying a rifle, and at times a pistol, but he swears they "forced" him to tote those weapons to confuse civilians as to his identity).

What we know is that the Americans are very glad to have him back, especially his mother, and we’re even happier to have him out of our hair. Who knows? Like the former German and French hostages of the Abus, Jeff might have some nasty tales to tell on television or in print about our "government" (once they’re beyond our 12-mile limit, ingratitude mingled with commercialism about selling a "good yarn", often rears its ugly but profitable head, but tant pis, as the Frenchies would say.)

By coincidence, President Arroyo, her husband Mike, US Chargé d’Affaires Mike Malinowski, and our partner, Jose Manuel "Babe" Romualdez, were playing golf at Camp John Hay about 5 p.m. on Maundy Thursday when the radio message came through to the Chief Executive that Schilling had been "rescued." Schilling was swiftly flown from Sulu to Mactan airbase in Cebu, put aboard a Philippine Air Force C-130 to Manila, then up to Baguio City for that "photo opportunity" handshake with President GMA.

Then he was whisked off to the Philippine Military Academy station hospital in Loakan for a full medical check-up, and a debriefing by Philippine and US Embassy officials, among them, of course, Defense Secretary Angelo T. Reyes, Mike Malinowski himself, US Consul-General John Caulfield, Station Chief Jim Nixon of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Military Attaché Col. Russ Lewis, USAF.

Acting "Ambassador" Malinowski threw a party in the US Embassy Residence in Camp John Hay to celebrate the happy retrieval of Schilling, with the President as guest of honor, and Secretary Reyes, Gen. Diomedio Villanueva, our Armed Forces Chief of Staff, etc. Credit was also given, of course, to Lt. Gen. Gregorio Camiling, of our Southern Command who mobilized Task Force Comet whose troops, under Colonels Renato "Boy" Miranda and Romeo Tolentino, engaged the Abu Sayyaf in a 45-minute firefight, at the height of which Schilling was chanced upon, and brought out to safety.

Presumably, the Abus are on the run, with the Army in hot pursuit, but so many officers were airlifted to Baguio (to be included in the photo-taking) that I wonder who were left behind in Sulu to chase the bandits and run Abu Commanders Kaddhafi Janjalani and Abu Sabaya (the one who threatened to "behead Schilling") to the ground.

That’s our problem. Whenever there’s a "victory", everybody wants to get into the "act" – the act, I mean, of picture-taking.

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In any event, why be churlish? A good time was had by all involved, between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Friday, indeed, was good for GMA. She got a phone call from Acting Secretary of State Richard Armitage to "thank her" and express the elation of the US at Schilling’s rescue. (Colin Powell is off, somewhere in Bosnia or Kosovo, lecturing everybody on the Balkan impasse.) She got to talk to the phone, too, to Schilling’s tearfully grateful mom. As for Schilling, he was flown back to Manila yesterday, Sabado Gloria, and shipped off to San Francisco on a Continental Airlines flight.

What bothers me, on the other hand, is the pa-cute remark attributed to the President by a newspaper report from Baguio City in the Manila Bulletin (the only daily, I think, which published a Saturday issue) in which La Gloria was quoted as saying: "I will shake hands with (Abu Sayyaf leader) Abu Sabaya if he surrenders. Of course, if he doesn’t, he will get killed."

Why is GMA so eager to shake hands with everybody? She shook the bloodstained hand of priest-killer, brain-eater Norberto Manero and even chirped, "Welcome back" (as though his third jailbreak had only been made so he could go on holiday). Now, she’s willing to shake that villainous Abu Sabaya’s hands. Salamabit! Can’t she be consistent? When she got pissed off with Sabaya’s insolent brag that he would "gift" her on her birthday with Schilling’s head if she didn’t kowtow to his demands, she had uttered the war-cry: Pupulbusin ko sila! (I’ll crush them to powder!) Now, she acts as if she only wanted to powder her nose. Get those Abu Sayyaf monsters, Madam President. Remember your original command: "Take no prisoners!" If you do too much urong-sulong in Mindanao, you’ll get our soldiers confused. And confusion creates hesitation. On the battlefield, when a soldier in combat hesitates with his finger on the trigger, he’s the one who ends up – dead.

You gave the Army the command to fight. Don’t tell them, now, to shake instead. They might, indeed, start shaking, and when that begins, it’s hard to stop.

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Speaking of insolent demands, have you seen the latest "press statement" issued by Communist Party Chieftain Joma Sison as "National Democratic Front of the Philippines" chief political consultant? It’s a demand that our government surrender first, then those subversive gutter rats will deign to grant us an "indefinite nationwide mutual ceasefire."

Sanamagan! That Joma gives us indigestion with every remark he tosses out. He’s making it appear that the GRP (which is what he calls the "Government of the Republic of the Philippines") is the one desperately begging for a ceasefire, not them.

Without embellishment, this is what Sison said: "It is of crucial importance that the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations first address the roots of the civil war before there can be an end of armed hostilities. As set forth by The Hague Joint Declaration, the sequence of hearings in the substantive agenda must be followed. The end of hostilities is the last heading in the agenda.

"If an indefinite nationwide mutual ceasefire comes ahead of comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms, then the GRP would have attained the objective of pacifying the revolutionary forces and the people would have no more reason or incentive to engage in peace negotiations with the NDFP.

"There is a sea of difference between pacification and the striving for a just and lasting peace by addressing the roots of the civil war through peace negotiations. The NDFP cannot accept pacification and surrender in any manner or form. It cannot be pushed by any hype or attempt to convert the peace negotiations into a scheme of pacifying the revolutionary forces and the people and forgetting about the social, economic and political demands of the people.

"The only way for the GRP to persuade the NDFP to agree to an indefinite nationwide mutual ceasefire, prior to the comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms, is for the GRP to recognize the political authority and territory of the people’s democratic government."

There’s more. But let me pause at this juncture to laugh – ha, ha, ha, ha. Joma and his bunch haven’t even begun to negotiate, but already they’re insisting the Philippine government recognizes them as an EQUAL "government" with its own political "authority" and sovereign "territory." Considering the devil-may-care manner in which the Communists, the NDF, the New People’s Army, and, heck, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (not to mention the "expanded version" of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, ARMM) have been carving out chunks of our Philippine islands for themselves, the Philippines could end up looking like a jigsaw-puzzle and not an archipelago.

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Joma Sison concludes, in the same arrogant vein: "But I do not think the GRP would be willing to immediately recognize the political authority and territory of the people’s democratic government in exchange for an indefinite nationwide mutual ceasefire. Even if the GRP were willing to do so, the peace negotiations would become preoccupied with the joint and separate management of such ceasefire as well as with charges and countercharges of ceasefire violations.

"For the time being, it is enough that mutual ceasefires of limited scope of time and place for specific purposes, like the safe and orderly release of prisoners of war, carrying casualties across battlefields, allowing health personnel of both sides to conduct health, sanitation and anti-epidemic campaigns, and celebrating Christmas and New Year."

Aw, Joma. Dry up! Of course – or is it "of course?" – the government won’t agree. Didn’t you notice? This rascal is already talking about "ceasefire violations." The thought and intent ergo are already in his head.

President Arroyo and her merry men (Ermita, Bebot Bello, Jess Dureza, and GMA’s other official peacenikkers) ought to wake up from their fantasy of achieving "peace" through begging for one with Joma, defrocked Padre Luis Jalandoni, and their gang. To begin with, aren’t Sison and Jalandoni already Dutch citizens, no longer Filipinos? They should clarify their status first. If they’ve opted for Dutch citizenship, then they’re "foreign" mercenaries and interlopers, and our government has no business parleying with such meddlers.

A limited "ceasefire"? Better none at all. The only way for our nation to win is fight, fight, fight. Not hem and haw, compromise, dicker clumsily, give away concessions, and grant, even from the start, its mortal foes, the Communists, the NDF and the NPA (all one and the same cabal under different labels) the status of belligerency and of being "co-equals." They are not. They are rebels out to overthrow the government and topple our democracy as we know it, so they can impose their own brand of totalitarian control.

Indeed, old Joma is saying nothing new. What’s there, then, to negotiate? And he calls what his cadres have been waging a "civil war." If we fall for that self-serving definition of his, then we’ve lost in the semantic and propaganda battlefield. If we allow such an absurd thing to happen, our armed forces – losing heart – will lose on the field of combat as well.

Once more with feeling, the Magsaysay Doctrine: Find ’em, Fool ’em, Fight ’em, Finish ’em! Just as a woman cannot be half-pregnant, this is a fight which cannot be half-won.

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During the years in which this journalist used to visit the Soviet Union (on se-veral reporting trips), the Soviets acknowledged no god but Lenin in his granite mausoleum in the center of Red Square fronting the Kremlin. Old Lenin’s waxy corpse is still there (they don’t know what to do with him), but the queues of devotees and rubber-neckers have long ago disappeared.

The beautiful and ancient churches and cathedrals of Russia had been converted after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution by the atheistic Communists into warehouses and, in the case of the "luckier" ones, museums. God is, after all, non-existent in the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist lexicon, remember. The most vicious act of vandalism was the blowing up, into rubble, of the wonderful Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer on the orders of Josef Stalin in 1931. Over the site of this cathedral, the Soviets built an ugly but utilitarian communal swimming pool. When the Soviet regime (and empire) fell, the Mayor of Moscow Yuriy Luzhkov undertook to rebuild the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer on Ulitsa Volkhonka, its original site. The work took place between 1994 and 1997. The total bill for reconstruction came to an astounding US $200 million in that sprawling cash-strapped city, although Muscovites suffered from the most abject poverty. But Luzhkov, eliciting donations from local and foreign sources as well as drawing on the state treasury stubbornly persisted. When we visited Luzhkov four years ago, he proudly showed us his handiwork. He’s the most unlikely-looking church-builder – beady-eyed, bald-headed, with the mannerisms of a waterfront thug. But his act of faith – bombarded by criticisms from every side as he was – resulted in what is now one of the tallest edifices in the "new" Moscow. Luzhkov, who still nurses his pet dream of becoming President (although Vladimir Putin has put that idea very much in the shade), will at least go down in history as a man who rebuilt what the Dictator Stalin destroyed by sheer force of his will.

Indeed, the Kremlin’s Savior’s Gate now shines brightly anew with its holy icon, restored to its tower. The Kremlin’s gold-gilded houses of worship – the Cathedral of the Dormition (a.k.a. as the Cathedral of the Assumption), the Cathedral of the Annunciation, the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles, and the Church of the Deposition of The Robe – are now sites of religious pilgrimage and church services once more.

The Russians, being orthodox Christians, celebrate Easter on another date (not today) but even during the bad, old Bolshevik days, I recall, on Easter morning, Russians would greet each other in whispers: "Khristos Voskrese" (Christ is Risen!). The reply was always, "Vo istinu voskres" (He is risen, indeed).

Glory be! Truly He is risen again in Holy Russia, for all the troubles that beset that vast land of 150 million people.

I remember during Nikita Khrushchev’s era (the guy who banged his shoe at the United Nations), I was a guest of the Soviet Foreign Ministry on a sidetrip to Tbilisi (Stalin’s birthplace in Georgia). Something went wrong, and my Foreign Office guide, a young fellow with a sense of humor as it turned out, exclaimed in exasperation: "Goddamit!" I seized on this to say: "So, you believe in God after all!" To which he replied, without hesitation: "Of course, we Russians believe in God – but not officially."

In this light, may I greet all of you, Dear Readers, with the same joyful words this Easter Morn: "He is risen!"

That says it all.