The endless chatter about ‘coups’ is simply cuckoo

Another coup? Ho hum. For days some quarters of the media prattled on and on about the discontent of the Young Turkeys from PMA classes this and that. Senator Rodolfo "Pong" Biazon, a former tough Marine and armed Forces Chief of Staff, who’s usually sober and knowledgeable about such matters, even dignified the tsismis about their gripes with the suggestion the government takes them seriously.

Former professional Putschist, Senator Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan – who led several PMA-SFP-YOU coup attempts to overthrow the Cory Aquino government, then, when already a Senator was accused by the GMA government of trying to subvert it and ordered "arrested" but got reelected instead – was quick to seize some credit for the reported unrest. He let it be known that he, Gringo-the-Putschist was "advising" the group. (Why on earth could he be a good adviser when all his coups failed?)

Honasan’s and the RAM’s romantic motto used to be "Our dreams shall never die". Now it’s Gringo’s dream to run for president. He reportedly hied off to the United States to create more mischief – telling Americans that only a new government, my sources say, with him, GH, his patron Johnny Ponce Enrile, and Francisco "Kit" Tatad in the forefront could save the Philippines.

I remember Interior and Local Government Secretary Joey Lina, when I attacked him (among many others) for the Lousy Lina Law (the awful Urban Development and Housing Act) decriminalizing squatting and declaring that squatters could not be removed unless alternative housing could be provided for them, exclaiming to me: "What about Honasan? He not only co-sponsored that law but he was the one who extended its life when it was about to expire!" Well, there you are.

In this finger-pointing Republic, you get to know who the other culprits are. Honasan’s and Lina’s coddling of the squatters has turned Metro Manila from these dreams that never die, into a nightmare.

Columnist Neal Cruz is right to pinpoint the latest culprits in spreading the squatter blight. These are the Malacañang officials who run the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor – created by President Macapagal-Arroyo under Executive Order 152. This inane EO empowered the PCUP (rhymes with hiccup) as "the clearing house for the demolition and eviction of squatters." The trouble is that the PCUP believes its missions is to stop the demolition of squatter shanties and the removal of squatters. So the squatters continue to flood in from the provinces and proliferate shamelessly. If the unruly jeepney driver is the King of the Road, the squatter has become the King of the Urban Jungle.

Believe me, when we were kids growing up in a postwar Manila we lived in a shanty and had to contend with almost abject poverty. But it was never in our minds that being poor was a license to seize somebody else’s land, or to grab at everything, or commit crime. The laws and now the agency coddling squatters have demonstrated that it is right to steal. First the squatters come in and steal the land on which they squat. (Or some of the pay off cops and other sleazy character who steal the land and "rent" it out to them for peanuts). After stealing those plots, they’re tempted to go out and steal other things. After all, when they plead poverty, or threaten to become Communist rebels or other type of insurgents (like Islamic), the government will not merely forgive them but give them more goodies.

This has become a vicious cycle. The al-Ghozi "escape" and the getaway of the two Abu Sayyaf thugs (one of them had planned to blow up the US Embassy, remember?) was not a surprise phenomenon. It was the logical offshoot of a complete breakdown of the law, with the lawmen themselves no longer respecting the law. Or fearing it. What happened to the policemen and jail guards who let Khadaffi Janjalani and Abu Jihad escape from Camp Crame in 1995? Or the ones who let Pentagon Gang Leader Faisal Marohombsar and his two confederates "escape" from Crame, then the drug lord Henry Tan, get away, too, last year? Are they in jail? Were they... well, "executed"? They’ve been prosecuted (and dismissed from the service, a tiny slap on the wrist). But I hear the cases against them are still dragging. Whaat? No punishment?

It’s no wonder crooked officers and cops let al-Ghozi and those two villainous ASG terrorists go. We don’t have to wait for the report – in under 30 days, jeez – of that independent committee of inquiry created by the President. They’ll find the case as impossible to solve as the original question: "Who killed Cock Robin?"

Instead of endless bickering over Senate and House positions, why doesn’t our Congress sit down and pass a law sending such cops and jail guards to prison for life, or even worse punishment? We’re said to be a nation suffused in shame in the wake of the Great Escape of a terrible terrorist. A bombing incident at this time will compound this shame. But are we really capable of shame? We’ve seen too many crimes committed in which there were no culprits found. Nobody ever loses an election without crying out, "I was cheated! I was robbed!" Nobody admits a fault. Nobody confesses to a crime. Nobody even accepts responsibility.

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What I fear is that that this bomb-maker of the Jemaah Islamiyah, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, may soon remind us of our stupidity by some big blast. No, sir. He hasn’t fled abroad. The stage here has been set for his most tragic and spectacular performance.

Eleven Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have just arrived ostensibly to study the "security" situation for a still possible visit of President George W. Bush this October. (I hear the duration of the visit is now being quietly debated in Washington DC, being pared down from two days to a few hours.) What I suspect is that those FBI agents are here to track down al-Ghozi. In the international fight against terrorism, we’ve let everybody down from East to West, by letting loose one of the worst implementors of terrorism, who’s admitted killing 22 Filipinos in bomb-attacks already, and had planned to blow up the US Embassy, other diplomatic establishments and additional targets in Singapore. Indonesia is especially tense, as well, since, being an Indonesian, al-Ghozi’s next target could be their own President, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

I knew Megawati’s father, the late President Sukarno well. The flamboyant Bung Karno, in his signature black songkok and his starched khaki uniform, cut a picaresque figure as he strutted around with amazing insouciance, but his harsh and ruthless Tjakrabirawa, his Presidential Guards, were constantly on the alert for any false moves or assassination attempt. I remember when my fellow NEWSWEEK man, senior correspondent Bernard Krisher (now publishing his own magazines in Tokyo and running a newspaper in Cambodia) rushed forward to head off Sukarno as he strode down the steps of the Istana Merdeka. I tugged at Bernie’s hand desperately, hissing, "Bernie, stop! stop!" We could hear the bolts clicking as the Guardsmen’s submachineguns and automatics were cocked and they levelled their weapons at us. Then the Bung recognized me, and waved them down: "Well," he boomed, "What do you want? "Krisher, his brashness undimmed, sang out: "Mr. President, I want to ask you a few questions!"

"Do you speak Bahasa?" Bung Karno grinned wickedly (meaning, Bahasa Indonesia). When Krisher shook his head "no" (actually Bernie speaks Japanese, being married to a Japanese lady), the Bung shook his head and retorted: "Come back when you’ve learned how to speak our language!"

Naturally, he intended this as a joke, since he allowed Krishner an exclusive interview later. Those were the days which were immortalized in a book, by Ed Koch, then a movie starring a young Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, called The Year of Living Dangerously. In that period, we were all billeted in the Hotel Indonesia on Jala Thamrin. Across the "Welcome Statue" roundabout in front of our hotel, we were all there watching the mob burning down the British Embassy – just in the vicinity of where the Mandarin Oriental Hotel now stands.

The Indonesian Muslims (87 percent of the population) were the most tolerant and easy-going of the world’s Muslims in that era. Sukarno had banned the Darul Islam movement as too radical and vicious. Very few women wore the jhilba or head scarf, and the sarong kebaya was not indecent but it was stylishly form-fitting and curvaceous, accenting the attractiveness of the young girls and matrons. Now, they’re marching back two centuries to Wahabbi-type puritanism.

The other day (Monday, July 21), however, there was a heartwarming story on the front page of The Asian Wall Street Journal. It was headlined: "Ms. Inul’s Fans Force Indonesian Clerics to Back Down."

The article by Timothy Mapes in Jakarta recounted how, in less than six months, a 24-year old named Inul Daratista had risen from dancing for a dollar a song in seedy beer halls in rural eastern Java to headlining programs on primetime television.

Her success was due to a provocative dance she invented dubbed The Drill, in which she would bend over and furiously swing her tightly-clad backside. "Skin-tight, low-cut and brightly colored outfits added to her appeal. Even President Megawatti Sukarnoputri’s 60-year old husband was mesmerized by Ms. Inul – at one point joining her onstage and hugging her enthusiastically in front of shocked viewers."

But Ms. Inul, alas, also caught the eye of Indonesia’s Islamic preachers, "sparking a cultural dispute over the limits of religious orthodoxy in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. The clerics wanted Ms. Inul and her hot pants banished from public view until she cleaned up her act. Several issued fatwas declaring her dancing a disgrace. Concert promoters cancelled her shows. Network executives considered pulling Ms. Inul off the air."

"I felt so desperate and without hope," Ms. Inul recalled. "I thought my career, which I had built up since my childhood, would be shattered just like that."

Wrote Mapes: "But her fans thought otherwise. Within days, they began imploring her, via phone calls and text messages to return. ‘Don’t give up. Fight for your rights," one message urged, according to her manager. A nearly blind former Indonesian President (obviously "Gus Dar", Abdurrahman Wahid), himself an Islamic leader, went on TV to label The Drill ‘an art form’ that should be protected as a free speech. Supporters organized rallies, including one in which hundreds of women performed The Drill in Jakarta’s main circle, snarling traffic."

The uproar revived Ms. Inul’s spirit and emboldened TV executives, "offering a glimpse of the increasingly lively debate here between advocates of Islamic orthodoxy and defenders of Indonesia’s typically more-liberal attitudes towards sexuality and drinking." An effort last year, in fact, to impose Islamic (Shariah) law was soundly defeated in Parliament.

"Ms. Inul," Mapes concluded, "became a hero for millions of moderate, modern Indonesians. "These people are trying to take away our freedoms. We won’t stand for it," says Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, a member of Indonesia’s upper house of Parliament and Secretary-General of the Indonesia Women’s Coalition.

Nowadays, says the AWSJ, "Ms. Inul’s backside is everywhere. After a two-month break to brush up her act, Ms. Inul dominates Indonesia’s weekend television line-up. Friday nights feature her two-hour variety show, where she appears in sexy outfits to perform The Drill. On Saturdays, she reprises her life story in a soap opera ("Why Does it Have to Be Inul?"), loosely based on her journey from the rice and tobacco fields of eastern Java to Jakarta’s media circus."

"The support I received gave me the strength to come back," she says today.

I’ve covered Indonesia off and on for many years, from Bung Karno to Suharto – and the post GESTAPU Coup massacres in which half a million people were killed by howling crowds gone amok in an anti-Chinese, anti-Communist backlash which was mindless in its extent, and in which countless personal vendettas were also played out. But you’ve got to admire the Indonesians, too, for their pluck in fighting back when their freedoms are threatened by intolerance and hate.

The Bali bomb blasts – triggered by the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists – devastated Bali’s tourism, and disgraced Indonesia. Now they’ve begun to climb back by sheer tenacity (with the help of friends) from blackest despair. As the Inul case demonstrates, the intolerant and the Islamic fundamentalists are still powerful, and their power seems to grow instead of dissipating. Yet, the Inul episode gives hope that common sense and tolerance will eventually prevail.

Our own Catholic church, in its time, was intolerant, too, in some silly ways. I remember that when my wife graduated from college in St. Scholastica’s, the Junior-Senior Prom was abolished and the Graduation Yearbook had been cancelled, because these were deemed "vanities" by the then Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Vagnozzi. In fact, ballet was almost banned completely because the Nuncio considered ballet "indecent". Perhaps those ballet tights and tutus were deemed as sexually provocative as Ms. Inul’s spandex.

But the world turns. We hope that reason will finally prevail. As for al-Ghozi, let’s go get him! By every means at our command.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . Our friend, former Executive Secretary and Defense Secretary Renato de Villa rang me up yesterday to say he had never been in the group urging the President to junk PNP Director General Hermogenes "Jun" Ebdane and replace him with PNP National Capital Region Commander, General Reynaldo Velasco. "I only get invited to Malacañang from time to time to discuss Cabinet oversight committee matters," Rene said. "If I ever recommend anybody, I always do it in writing." General De Villa, who hails from PMA class ’57, recalled that when he was Armed Forces Chief of Staff, he made certain that there were no intrigues in the military – pointing out that senior officers who’re jockeying for position were engaged in "conduct unbecoming" of officers and gentlemen. It’s true, Rene asserted, that he is officially listed as a "Presidential Adviser", but he underscored that he went to the President only when she would call him and ask his advice. That should put an end to the rumors by which contending factions try to invoke his name.