Back to reality; A GMA apologist

If there was another thing the Ateneo-La Salle championship clambake achieved, it was to wrench us Filipinos from the miserable reality of our lives. If only for a brief period, we landed in our own version of Disneyland and shrieked ourselves happy and dopey. We were absolutely enchanted by the Blue Eagles and the Green Archers could still work their NCAA magic of the 50s on us all. And what an enchantment it was! But enchantments don’t last. The curtains lift anew on a Philippines wracked with trouble and problems that don’t go away. And it’s all our media specialists can do to understand what gives, what is there on the horizon, and do we hear the approaching rumble of revolutionary thunder.

There’s a man in Utrecht, the Netherlands, it seems, who orchestrates all this commotion. The message is that once again, the communist insurgency that triggered martial rule in 1972, is back with a vengeance.

His name is Jose Ma. Sison, chairman of the CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army). He has a stern professor’s face, and a sibilant voice that rings like the whine of an angry wind. Joma is an unreformed Marxist-Maoist ideologue who continues to cast his spell on the communist movement here, 8000 miles away. He is often suited and cravated, sartorially a far cry from history’s revolutionary communist giants. Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh wore bedraggled grey uniforms and all-weather caps that looked like abandoned eagles’ nests.

Just very recently, NPA guerrillas exploded in a series of raids in Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, Pampanga, Antipolo, Quezon and Maco Compostela in Davao. The AFP high command called them a "spent force" out to prove they were still alive. Operation Gordian Knot was also launched by the military to flush the guerrillas out of their lairs, a search-and-destroy operation that would finish those terrorists once and for all."

This wasn’t the reading of Joema Sison at all. He and his NPA commanders, like the spooky Gregorio Rosal, firmly believe the revolution is not only in place but will eventually storm the gates of Manila.

There is a misreading on both sides.

Communism as a revolutionary ideology is dead. Nothing symbolizes this better than the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the toppling of Stalin statues all over the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the resort by the veterans of the Long March in China to embrace the sinews of capitalism, the world market, free enterprise, foreign investments, to free more than a billion Chinese from millenial poverty. A renewed communist insurgency in the Philippines cannot prosper. The nation’s Christian culture will spit it out. The Filipino cannot accept a godless ideology.

On the other hand, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and AFP chief of staff, Gen. Benjamin Defensor, are on the wrong side of history as well. They see the CPP-NPA as an ideological aberration, which it is. But they do not see the CPP-NPA as something else – a cri de coeur. A cry of the heart. There is underneath that cry a terribly destitute Philippines, the poor getting poorer, the rich getting richer. Eventually, the CPP will scratch off its communist veneer as a snake sheds its skin. You do not hear anymore about the Italian or French or German communist parties. History, the wonders of science and technology, the Internet, high tech and cyberspace have caught up with them. And they have all disbanded.

The CPP, if I do not mistake my guess, will eventually suit up under another name using the word democracy. Communism just doesn’t ring a bell anymore if it ever really did. I remember as an old Marxist activist in 1950-51 (which I soon renounced) that the Lava-led revolution, together with Huk supremo Luis Taruc couldn’t dig deep roots because it always came against the Christian ethos of the Filipino. At this late date, I am still trying to fathom this Christian ethos, a uniquely Filipino ethos I think still rooted to the mediaeval age. Which our Church has done little to change or transform. About this more in a future column.

I used the expression cri de coeur. What do I mean by this?

At no time in the contemporary history of the Philippines has cri de coeur defined our nation as it does today. It is a nation that weeps, but tries to conceal its sorrow. It is a nation brought to its knees not by a foreign invader but by selfish and power-hungry. Filipinos themselves. It is a nation rich with natural resources. It is a nation nonetheless that is one of the poorest in the world. It is a nation that speaks English but in so speaking, it is a poor lingistic relation cut off from the rest of the developed English-speaking world that enjoys much higher standards of living. It is a nation seeking its national identity, its soul. It is a nation that cannot distribute wealth. It distributes poverty on a grand scale.

It is a nation that prides itself on battles unwon, like the Battle of Bataan and the Battle of Corregidor. The Bells of Balangiga indeed rang and Filipino insurgents bloodied a Yankee encampment. But the larger Yankee army snatched those bells for war trophies and converted surrounding provinces "into a howling wilderness." It is a loser nation.

But to regain this column’s focus. If the CPP-NPA cannot wage a successful revolution, if government officialdom and armed forces cannot see the forest for the trees, whither? Now, I am no longer alone. There are those in media who now see and feel the crisis the way I do, and their Cassandra cries are now shrill and evident. Raffy Alunan, writing in BusinessWorld, states our leadership cannot "think straight and do right." It is "pushing the prescription for extra-legal intervention once more to pave the way for strong-arm rule to cure the nation’s ills."

Raffy Alunan is no hell-raiser or demagogue. He chooses his words carefully But like Prof. Felipe Miranda, he knows how to part and dispel the propaganda mists of the government, and plant his analytical knife where it should be planted. What he says is that a military coup or takeover could be just around the corner, all the more so because the communist peril is back with a vengeance. And only the military can save the republic from the clutches of the communist predator. Get it?

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I have here a letter written on "Office of the President" stationary, penned by one Renato Leviste (Presidential Legislative Assistant), Kiddo, I never heard of you before but the stationary with your missive impresses me as having Palace imprimatur. Mr. Leviste asks this columnist why I can’t give GMA a break. "To just let her be. She knows the limit to her powers . . . for us to leave her alone is for her to do her job her way and according to her best judgement. Must we keep on wondering why past presidents have been made as standards against whom President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has to be measured? Their time has passed. Her time is yet to come." How utterly naïve.

Mr. Leviste, you really fit the pattern of Palace courtiers, counsel and advisers who do not know what leadership is all about, what democracy is all about.

Democracy is not democracy unless it pulls out all the constitutional stops, and allows everybody — cum laude and cum tangengot alike to say their piece. That’s why democracy is the noisiest, most rambunctious political setup in the world. The media gave it to President Bill Clinton without mercy when he had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. In the same manner, and you wouldn’t believe it, Abraham Lincoln staggered under the load of brickbats thrown at him by an abusive and insolent press. Thomas Jefferson likewise. He had sex with a black woman on the sly, Ferdinand Marcos, before he declared martial rule, was slashed to ribbons by media. Elpidio Quirino was on the receiving end of such colorful epithets as El Pedo, El Pito and El Pititing.

Believe me, I have been more than fair with GMA.

I have said again and again GMA couldn’t be blamed for all the ills afflicting the Philippines – particularly poverty – since they could be traced to way, way back, the period immediately after World War II. Academically, with a doctorate in economics, valedictorian since grade school, with Georgetown University thrown in, she was pedigreed. If GMA is constantly criticized these days, it is her manner. She has a mania for photo-ops, a passion for image and illusion, a predilection for hype. She has been criticized time and again for this. But she doesn’t seem to give a hoot. Her photos have to land in the papers everyday, TV footage of her awash at primetime.

Media finds this all very annoying and irritating. It is trivializing the presidency, customizing it to mediocre ends.

GMA should roar and belch, catch big time criminals, avoid the penny-ante pipsqueaks, say something nasty about the Marcoses, take on big blowhards like Juan Ponce Enrile, Miriam Defensor Santiago, Imee Marcos, ride a black stallion and not a surf-board, learn kung fu or karate and smash the wrongoes to the kangkungan.

Get what I mean, kiddo?