GMA challenges coup plotters to a fight!

Wow! My jaw dropped when President Macapagal-Arroyo last night went on television, direct from her Cabinet meeting in Malacañang, to declare that there was "mutiny" afoot, and some officers in the plot would meet the full force of the law. GMA further warned politicians tempted to get involved they would be dealt with severely, et cetera.

The Cabinet members behind her, however, did not look overly concerned. But imagine a Cabinet meeting on a Saturday night! Must be serious. In any event, our sources say 50 officers and men had been arrested and would be court-martialed (other insiders claimed as many as 90). The Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Narciso Abaya, emerging from a command conference in Camp Aguinaldo, in which Philippine National Police Director General Hermogenes "Jun" Ebdane (who rushed back from Cotabato) also participated, announced that four captains, ten junior officers, and other soldiers had left their posts in places like Camp Tecson, etc. Did they go dancing? Or are they mounting a coup? Salamabit, such goings-on! It's Saturday Night Fever, indeed.

To compound the climate of anxiety, His Political Turbulence, Jaime L. Cardinal Sin, D.D., our Archbishop of Manila, yesterday afternoon issued an urgent Pastoral Letter entitled, "Lord, Guide Our Feet in the Way of Peace" (Luke 1:79). When His Eminence starts quoting the evangelist St. Luke, there must be serious mischief afoot.

I thought the Cardinal was ill and soon to be retired by the Holy Father – but yesterday he issued a sort of call to arms, well almost, like he did when he called us to the EDSA barricades in February 1986. (But we civilians went there to face tanks, armored cars and bayonets in that People Power stand to "protect", among others, Johnny Ponce Enrile and Lt. Col. Gringo Honasan who were holed up inside, first Aguinaldo then Camp Crame. Today, Honasan, now a Senator, is one of those who’re being suspected of fomenting the alleged Susmariosep! coup, along with another "usual suspect", Sen. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson.

Here is the Cardinal’s opening paragraph: "We believe from credible sources of the government and military sectors and civil society that there are at present ongoing plots, organized and already in operation, set on destabilizing our society, undermining and if possible overturning even with violence the democratic institutions of our country."

His Turbulence, er, Eminence, urged all of us "as citizens of our Republic and faithful Christians" to be "intelligently alert and vigilant".

While we cannot doubt the Cardinal’s prayerful sincerity, I wonder who his "credible sources" are, particularly the one who confirmed on the part of the military, the so-called clear and present danger of a coup attempt. From my insiders, I learned that it was Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus who submitted his "findings" to the Cardinal at the meeting with clerics, and civil society representatives at 11 a.m. yesterday in the Villa San Miguel (the Archbishop’s Palace in San Juan), presided over by Bishop "Soc" Villegas.

Among the civil society’s leaders there was former PMS Secretary and Presidential Adviser Vicky Garchitorena, and we now know that Corpus, as chief of the ISAFP (Intelligence Service, Armed Forces of the Philippines) has the blessings of President Macapagal-Arroyo in doing so yesterday.

Is there really another cuckoo "coup" in the offing? It has been pointed out that today is perfect for the creation of an atmosphere of trouble, since it is the birthday of the Supreme Bishop of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), Ka Erdie Manalo, and the traffic jam leading to his palace in Quezon City and the inevitable crowd conditions would be a magnet mischief-makers. Then, tomorrow, comes the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) before a joint session of Congress, with all the government VIPs and foreign envoys assembling in the Batasan building, also in Quezon City. There will be, it’s foreseen, demonstrations, protests by Erap’s "urban poor", and other sectors, presumably again some kind of attempted Leftist Fourth Quarter Storm. (The original First Quarter Stormers who threw a stuffed crocodile at the late Apo Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s have since grown old, long in the tooth, and many have – after all their anti-American Imperialist rantings – emigrated to the US and become American citizens.)

Obviously, those who fret about it in the government, once more seem to think this would be the opportunity for coupsters to strike. Since the President and Commander-in-Chief herself gone public to declare a "mutiny", this makes it official. She’s convinced this time there’s a coup conspiracy being put into operation. Was it wise to announce this in advance?

If you ask me, this idea is nutty, but since this is a nutty country, no paranoid idea can conclusively be struck out. Who would have thought, for example, that a top terrorist of the Jemaah Islamiyah, the mad bomber Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, would be placed in a cell whose barred door could be unhinged, tiptoe past a "sleeping" guard (who now angrily vows he was not sleeping), and vanish into the dark – with his "escape" only being discovered much later by the janitor?

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What bothers me was yesterday’s banner headline in this newspaper, which read: "Troops Moved to Metro." The report here and in other dailies was that hundreds of troops including a company of Scout Rangers, from Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija, an army battalion from Camp Capinpin in Tanay, Rizal, and other units had been brought into Metro Manila to guard the SONA (and "protect" the President and Palace, probably from a possible kudeta). Sanamagan. Why are we announcing troop movements and redeployment? Aside from panicking the stock market, sending business confidence into a tailspin, justifying all those adverse Travel Advisories from foreign countries from the US to New Zealand, aren’t we telegraphing to the New People’s Army rebels that our provinces are now undefended, and telling them where to attack?

Gadzooks and Godzilla, the enemy doesn’t need to spy on us, or infiltrate our camps to discover our military plans and force dispositions. All he has to do is listen to the radio, watch TV, and read the newspapers.

A coup? By acting so paranoid, and cracking down on the officer corps, what we really fear is that our anxious government officials might provoke one. This reminds me of a remark of the late US President Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ had said to J. K. Galbraith (as quoted in Galbraith’s book, A Life in Our Times, 1981): "Did you ever think, Ken, that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems not to you, but it never does to anyone else."

The fact is that it seems that they’re worried enough in Malacañang for President GMA to have called a Cabinet meeting last night. (To discuss what to say in tomorrow’s troubled SONA? Or measures to be taken to stop a coup? In this town where rumor, as the bromide goes, is faster than a speeding bullet, you can take your pick).

Speaking about our "big mouth" syndrome, perhaps there might have been a chance – just perhaps – to recapture or kill the fugitive al-Ghozi in Mindanao, but when our Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople opened his big mouth in Bali and declared to the assembled foreign ministers there that al-Ghozi would be caught "within three days", any possibility of this was snuffed out.

Every source, and all deep penetration agents and informers in the vital area where al-Ghozi had been pinpointed, immediately went to ground, snapped off their cellphones and radios, scurried into hiding, or disappeared from the radar.

When the wire service agency report first came out of Bali, in Indonesia where the Asian-European Ministers (ASEM) conference was being held, the Department of Foreign Affairs here tried to tell The STAR that probably Ople had been misquoted, but Blas himself subsequently confirmed he had truly said that. Who’d told him? No less than Police Director General and PNP Chief Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. It turns out that Ople had rung Ebdane up last Wednesday from Bali and asked him what was going on about al-Ghozi, since the Jemaah Islamiyah’s mad-bomber’s "escape" was one of the hottest items of concern at the meeting, and the PNP Chief, already in Cotabato to supervise he expected the recapture of the JI fugitive, confided that they were closing in on al-Ghozi and might be able to nab him before the weekend.

Ebdane asked Secretary Ople to keep this information confidential. Telling a politician to keep something secret is like asking him to trumpet it from the rooftops, and, sad to say, that’s exactly what Ka Blas did – blasted the "news" to the four corners of the world.

Presidential Spokesman Ignacio "Toting" Bunye chimed in with the speculation that the terrorist might be captured very soon. Those announcements were enough to scare all possible tipsters out of their wits. Their "reward" might be death, not the promised P10 million. So they retreated and fled into silence. End of story.

Sorry about that.