What’s this "Vox Populi" survey? If I remember right, wasn’t it "Vox Populi" that said that Speaker Joe de Venecia was running ahead of the other candidates in the final run-up to the 1992 Presidential elections? I recall it was Fidel V. Ramos who won, followed in the election count by Miriam Defensor-Santiago, then by Danding Cojuangco.
Sometimes, alas, ANC tends to sound like the propaganda broadcast network of the MILF, with the Moro rebels’ chief braggart Eid Kabalu stealing the show as one of their favorite "interviewees" (unless it’s the New People’s Army media "idol" Ka Roger Rosal who also is one of the Most Favored TV personalities of our radio-TV broadcast media).
Sanamagan, columnist Alvin Capino of TODAY was absolutely and painfully correct when he wrote in his column yesterday that "one of the similarities between the unlamented Saddam Hussein regime and the separatist rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is their propaganda prowess."
Capino pointed out that "rebel leaders have been given virtually unlimited access to the media and their propagandists led by Eid Kabalu – who has a lot of similarities to Saddam’s information minister – have been exploiting the media to put out their exaggerated and other fabricated versions of the story." The journalist added that"it is regrettable that Kabalu continues to be given all the time he wants on radio and television although he has been caught in outright lies and should no longer be given media space and airtime."
We in the print media are not without blame in falling prey to this sort of gullibility either. Some of us are under the impression that our armed forces are the "enemy" and the rebels are the "heroes" of revolutionary struggle.
Sure ‘nuff, we’d got "peace" if we surrendered to the rebels, whether MILF, Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah, MNLF or NPA, but believe me, if that happens, the same radio-TV-print media practitioners who glamorized them might soon find this either the peace of the grave, or that of the arrested. Victorious revolutionaries don’t suffer contradiction, criticism, or dissent. A "free" media under MILF control? You already know the answer to the absurdity of such a question.
There would be no vox populi either – which means in translation "voice of the people".
This writer is under no delusions as to the defects of our armed forces – we’ve assailed multimillion-peso frauds, the "bribery" at Lamitan which permitted the Abu Sayyaf to escape the Lamitan encirclement to inflict more grief, murder, and havoc, military abuses and mistakes. (Under the Marcos dictatorship, we were the ones in maximum security military prison in Fort Bonifacio, along with Ninoy Aquino, Chino Roces, Teddy Locsin Sr., Nap Rama, Monching Mitra, Soc Rodrigo, Pepe Diokno, Jose Mari Velez, etc. When some of us were released, we remained under military supervision and "control" for years, prevented from writing, speaking out, or travelling out of Metro Manila.
But this time, the armed forces are fighting to defend us and our free and secular Republic, and preserve the territorial integrity of our country. Let’s not handcuff them with defeatist calls to go "easy" on rebels who murder, assassinate, kidnap, rape, burn and torture. Peace talks? Give us a break. We’ve tried that stupid thing before, without success, and to our sorrow.
Indeed, in every undertaking, we talk too much. No one can field an idea in this benighted archipelago without it getting shot down. We talk big and do little. We mistake speech for action. Our garrulity, and our constant dak-dak and ek-ek are what prove our undoing.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. The MILF aren’t declaring a 10-day unilateral ceasefire because they want to give us a gift, or a breather. The insurgents are the ones who are exhausted, scattered, demoralized by constant military and police attack, and aerial assault and bombing. They’re begging for that ceasefire.
Our government is right to keep on fighting. Don’t let the enemy regroup, resupply, catch their breath. Apply the formula by which the great Ramon Magsaysay destroyed the Communist Huk insurgency: The four F’s – namely, Find ’em, Fool ’em, Fight ’em, Finish ’em!
What about the piteous cries of the sincerely humane, or the foolish "bleeding hearts" about the plight of scores of thousands of refugees and displaced persons?
In every country where there’s rebellion, civil war, or outright war, there will always be many innocents who suffer. I’ve gone through half a dozen wars and that’s always the case. War is wrong, and war is hell – but wars will continue to be waged. The greatest tragedy for our people would be for us, meaning our people’s government, to lose this war.
President Macapagal-Arroyo was admirably firm when she rejected the MILF ploy before she enplaned yesterday for South Korea. Even – surprise, surprise – that determined "peacenik" of the past, the former Surrender Gang leader, Secretary (retired General) Ed Ermita expressed misgivings about the MILF’s "ceasefire" maneuver. Keep up that skeptical attitude, Ed. Better late – than too late!
The global network of editors and media executives simply had to call off its scheduled conference in Nairobi, Kenya, which was supposed to have been held from last Sunday to June 4 (Wednesday).
In their message to us, IPI Director Johann Fritz from our Vienna headquarters and IPI Chairman Jorge E. Fascetto (of Argentina) stated that "after both the United States and United Kingdom governments, among others, warned their citizens about an imminent terrorist attack on foreigners and commercial aircraft and British Airways suspended all flights to and from Kenya, IPI believed it could no longer guarantee the safety of its Congress participants and that it was only prudent not to go ahead with the meeting in Nairobi."
"IPI hopes to hold its 2003 World Congress in another country in September and to hold a future Congress in Kenya in the coming years."
I’d say, it will be several years from now that poor Kenya could be declared "safe".
Now it can be told that our IPI Executive Board meeting in Paris in October 2001 – two years ago – (as a Lifetime Fellow of the organization, I attend and participate in Executive Board sessions) had already explored alternatives to Nairobi, just in case there was trouble there.
Our friend Director Fritz had asked me whether I could offer Manila as an alternative host for the IPI World Congress in case Kenya went "bust". When the IPI met in its World Congress and 51st General Assembly in Lubljana, the beautiful capital of the Balkan republic of Slovenia, May 9th to 11th, 2002, or last year, I was no longer being requested to consider "hosting" the World Congress and General Assembly. The IPI had apparently, though it was too polite to say so outright at our Board meetings, written the Philippines off as a place also plagued by "terrorism" and, even more unsettling, political and economic instability.
In any event, I had earlier warned, while declaring I didn’t propose Manila, that Kenya would prove very iffy. In fact, at our special meeting to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the transfer of IPI headquarters from London to Vienna (last November 20 to 24, 2002), I had announced that no Philippine delegate, including myself, would be going to attend the Nairobi conference.
"Why?" our fellow IPI delegates and Executive Board members inquired. I said that Nairobi was too ‘"dangerous", and our Congress and General Assembly might prove too tempting a target for al-Qaeda assassins or other terrorists. Ten days later, after our Vienna sessions had adjourned, I was saddened to have been proven right: A bomb destroyed a beach resort hotel in Kenya (remember?), with many fatalities, while a commercial jet taking off from Nairobi’s airport was almost hit by a terrorist-fired rocket.
The world has become an unsafe place.
However, we must not give in to the terrorists by cowering in fear. We have to fight back, relentlessly, on every front.
This dispatch, datelined Manila, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times and simultaneously in the International Herald Tribune.
Bonner quoted "Western and Philippine officials" as revealing that "the southern Philippines has become the training center for al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asia affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, drawing recruits from several countries . . ."
"For the last six to nine months, recruits mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, but a few from as far away as Pakistan and the Middle East, have been trained at inaccessible, rough-hewn sites – basically a few huts and some tents – in a marshy region on the island of Mindanao . . ." That’s what Bonner reported.
Those are the Liguasan Marshes, the MILF’s heartland, which have been the target in the past few months of our armed forces’ assaults, which zeroed in, for instance, on Pikit and the Buliok complex. Now you can see the logic of the ongoing military offensives.
The US intelligence services, my insider sources told me two months ago, have agents very thick on the ground here. Why? Because the Pentagon and the NSA apparently view the Philippines as one of the potential Osama Gang and Islamic terrorist bases in Asia, one of the "bases" replacing their lost stronghold in Afghanistan.
The reason? It’s not flattering: Everybody in the RP, it’s said, can be "bought". Meaning, I guess: Our police, our military, our officials, our courts. Gee whiz. I wish I could furiously and indignantly retort: No way.
But when you think about it, what can you say?