God loves us, but we don’t love ourselves

President Macapagal-Arroyo now has cause to cheer up. Despite the barrage of personal and very public accusations (of corruption, making private deals, etc.) and the attacks on her husband Mike, the First Gentleman, the latest Social Weather Survey (SWS) is telling her: the people are behind you.

In short, the message is: Go, Gloria, go! Don’t blink, don’t compromise, don’t be scared of controversy, don’t be afraid of pressure groups – even of us in the media. A true President lives according to her conscience. I don’t want to read too much into it, but that upbeat 53 percent satisfaction rating, I believe, is a signal that this desperate nation is sick and tired of the eternal finger-pointing, investigations, carping, sanctimonious posturing, squabbling and the maneuverings of vested interests and cause-oriented Leftist groups. These waves tug President GMA here and there, threatening to capsize her ship of state.

We want a President who’s not wishy-washy. Who isn’t afraid to make decisions. Where a decision is wrong, she can, after all, correct it. The worst thing for a Chief Executive is to not make a decision at all. If we have a leader who’s always playing safe, we won’t feel safe at all in 2004.

That 53 percent satisfaction rating, I hope, won’t on the other hand make GMA smug or complacent. It ought to inspire her to dare to do better. Imagine such "a record high," when other Presidents have sunk below minus 2 percent. This indication of high approval won’t last forever: It can either go up or go down. But it has given GMA a timely boost, just when she must have been feeling low.

* * *

God really loves us. Just when our economy was sinking off the charts, Shell Philippines Exploration found a huge natural gas field in Malampaya Sound, just off Palawan. Now comes the clincher: There is a large oil reservoir there, too, initially estimated to be capable of producing 8,000 barrels of oil per day!

If this production estimate comes true, we will be able to reduce our expensive oil importation by almost half! Think of it. When we least expect it – or deserve it – we get manna from heaven.

The natural gas alone, unless we bungle the matter with too much government imposition and bureaucracy, will earn our government no less than US$1 billion per year.

We’re talking about revenue for the government alone. I don’t exactly understand how it’s to be done, but there is a move to "securitize" the expected $10 billion income for ten years so our government can get billions of dollars "in advance." Will that help save the economy, or will it?

Moreover, if things pan out, the government will be earning another $700 million to $1.3 billion annually from the oil "find." Thanks to Shell Philippines for having the faith (and the geological enthusiasm) to keep drilling those wells where everybody else had given up. For, if you will recall, some 40 years or so ago, newspaper headlines were trumpeting "Oil Found in Malampaya Sound." Then the story petered out.

This time, it’s for real.

* * *

The Palawan oil discovery comes at the strategic moment the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has been meeting frequently to program drastic drops in their own oil production so as to force the price of oil up – and the hell with the consumers. Without our own resources, we would mercilessly have been caught in the crunch, despite the fact that we are, by comparison, a tiny oil importer in a world hungry for oil and fossil fuels.

Moreover, the American oil companies recently abandoned all their oil wells in the rebellious Achen province of Indonesia, alarmed at the violence there and the growing anti-American feeling. Here’s food for thought. At the height of production, Indonesia earned only $7 billion annually from its oil exportation. Our overseas Filipino workers in the same period sent home $8 billion. You see, God loves us, indeed.

* * *

Yet, we don’t love ourselves. We’re forever quarreling and trying to pull each other down. Politics pollutes the air and poisons our hearts.

For instance, take the coconut levy controversy. After 16 years in which the billions of pesos worth of coco levy funds were "under sequestration" by the Presidential Committee on Good Government (PCGG), the funds were paralyzed, giving not a single centavo to its intended beneficiaries, the coconut farmers and the ailing coconut industry. Who fattened on the sequestered coco levy and the shares it owned in San Miguel, the United Coconut Planters Bank, and other entities? Why, the PCGG and Malacañang, of course. Using those shares grabbed by means of sequestration, each administration was able to reward its own supporters and pals by gifting them with lucrative memberships in the Board of Directors of every sequestered firm.

When a breakthrough seemed in prospect, with formerly contending coconut farmers’ groups signing a compromise agreement in Davao, the PCGG moved to torpedo it. Embarrassed when the name of one of her chief consultants, the "celebrated" Dante Ang (never one to hide his light under a bushel), surfaced in connection with pushing the compromise agreement, La Gloria blinked, wavered, then abjectly threw the matter back into the lap of the PCGG which wants to scupper it. What a fine kettle of fish. (As for Ang, did he or didn’t he broker the deal? He should have kept his fingers off the first compromises in 16 years that promised hope for the coconut growers and their industry. Where’s the lost virtue of delicadeza?)

I love Haydee Yorac dearly, and was surprised when she agreed under GMA to take over the Chairmanship of the decrepit PCGG whose reason for existence gave up the ghost years ago. What has the PCGG accomplished? It has not recovered any of the Marcos loot. It has not helped send Imeldific or other criminal cronies to jail. It has made its own deals with cronies like the late Robert Benedicto and others, absolving them in exchange for piddling "compromise" settlements. Now comes Haydee, my old friend, declaring the compromise agreement "illegal and immoral." What’s really illegal is the way the PCGG for a decade and a half held on to the levy fund assets. And what is immoral is that its benefits were withheld from the coconut farmers and the decaying industry for which it was intended.

We’re waiting, naturally, for the Supreme Court to render its decision on one segment of the controversy (my sources say it will be this December), and after that the Sandiganbayan, if that court, wracked by dispute and confusion, survives its present troubles. Whatta life. Whatta country.

It’s reported that the PCGG wants Congress, the Senate in particular, to pass a law declaring the coco levy "public." Does this mean it will be thrown into the general fund to be squandered by the politicians? Pity the struggling coconut growers!

I’m afraid that the real target is business magnate and former Governor Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco. They claim it will be Cojuangco who will benefit from the release of the coco levy at this time. The only benefit I can see he would derive would be to free the San Miguel Corporation, which he has managed to high profitability in a time of worldwide corporate bankruptcies, from the dead hand of the government. Do you know how much the "coco levy" owned shares in prosperous San Miguel amount to? P51 billion. If we include its shares in other corporations, the coco levy funds would be worth P100 billion (not P130 billion as the newspapers are telling it). Imagine P100 billion being utilized to generate income, whose interest alone would serve the coco farmers!

But no. Danding Cojuangco must be shot down! So, to shoot just one man down, they’ll sacrifice the hopes and dreams of millions of other people, meaning the coconut farmers and their families.

Once more with feeling. God loves us, but we don’t love ourselves. Or each other.

* * *

Brig. Gen. Marciano R. Ilagan, the commander of the Tactical Operations Command of our Philippine Air Force, contacted me yesterday to refute the misimpression that our helicopter gunships "attacked the rebel headquarters building . . . missing their target."

"Manong Max," our anguished friend Gen. Ilagan said, "I was there when it happened. As newly-assigned Commander of all PAF tactical units in Visayas and Mindanao, I was right on the scene from Day One of the crisis in Zamboanga.

"Our planes were the first to respond at 4 a.m. on my instructions. But you were right in your previous column. Our pilots could not see in the dark. But as soon as light broke and clearance to strike was granted, our planes started hitting their targets."

Ilagan revealed that the large building depicted in the TV footages was not their target, so it remained untouched. The designated targets, blasted by MG-520 and OV-10 Bronco attack, "were all destroyed." He enumerated these as the Moro National Liberation Front’s eagle checkpoint, the mortar and machinegun emplacements and other targets in the complex.

"Sixteen of Misuari’s men succumbed to the air assault. And the hexagonal building, symbol of Misuari’s arrogance, collapsed under our five-hundred pounder bombs."

General Ilagan added: "We only hit what SOUTHCOM (Southern Command) directed us to hit. And we hit well!"

Ilagan recounted another interesting incident. "Not many also know the story behind the destruction of Nur Misuari’s house in Silangkan, Sulu. Airstrikes were directed at Misuari’s house that left it burning and rendered its tactical communications facility and the symbol it carried useless." Mind you, he pointed out, "Misuari’s house happened to be located among a cluster of houses in Silangkan Village. However, no adjoining or neighbor’s house was affected."

He concluded: "Our OV-10s, MG-520s, UH-IHs (Hueys) and SF-260s have no precision guided munitions, targeting computers, and weren’t helped by any laser designators, but they did their job very well and consequently turned the tide of battle."

I must say, hurray for our Air Force! And for the brave pilots whom we compel, in this cyberage, to do it the old- fashioned way – fly by the seat of their pants.

* * *

Who say that journalists, like soldiers, don’t lay their lives on the line?

The impression is that the "power of the press" makes us some kind of bulletproof glamor-types, who’re constantly being wined and dined (and flattered by politicians and business leaders who, if truth be told, despise us.)

Yet, journalists are on the battleline, and we bleed and die. In the news recently were the eight journalists who were slain either from treachery or the fighting in Afghanistan. It’s a "war zone" out there, with thugs fighting an all sides, it might be said. But don’t forget, this year alone three journalists were killed in the Philippines – and we’re supposed to be living in "peacetime" (except in Mindanao).

Our organization, the International Press Institute (IPI), confirms that 53 journalists have been killed so far in 2001. The Philippines got dishonorable mention in the dispatch from headquarters in Vienna, along with the ten murdered in Colombia (the land of drug cartels), and the three in the Palestinian territories. Journalists were listed as having been murdered in 23 other countries, but we lead the hit parade.

The death toll for year 2000 was 56 – but the present year isn’t over yet.

Why does the stale old saying persist that "the pen is mightier than the sword?" Von Clausewitz and Mao Zedong disagreed, and were unanimous in putting their finger on where real power really lies, brutal as the truism may sound: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

And yet, the press does have a certain power: It is a power that grows not out of a gun-barrel but its own credibility.

Napoleon once remarked that "four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets."

Still, there’s Oscar Wilde’s definition: "There's much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."