America has lost the moral high ground to lecture on rights abuses

Our very alert STAR Washington Bureau Chief Jose Katigbak was the one who rushed us the dispatch the other day that the US State Department has included the Philippines in its list of 101 countries with "problematic human rights records".

While the report, released Monday by the State Department, conceded that the Philippines generally respected human rights and freedom of religion, it accused some elements of our security and armed forces of being responsible for extra-judicial killings, disappearances, torture and arbitrary arrest and detention.

While our government is happy when Old Foggy Bottom duns the Abu Sayyaf and the New People’s Army/National Democratic Front as "terrorist" organizations, placing CPP chieftains like Joma Sison outside the pale, even in his bolthole of exile in Utrecht, Holland, the Administration sprang to defend its human rights record and express confidence in "the professionalism of the military and law enforcement agencies".

Sad to say, the United States has lost the moral "high ground" which used to entitle it to lecture other countries on their human rights records. In the first court martial hearing in the case of a soldier accused of participating in the Abu Ghraib prison abuses of Iraqi prisoners, Specialist Jeremy Sivita has just entered a "guilty" plea. He claims he just took the photos of the humiliation and abuse incidents. (The trouble with the Americans is that they seem to love to photograph, or make "home movies" of their abuses and atrocities, thus self-destructing by documenting their misdeeds.)

In sum, America ought to list itself as the 102nd country actively committing human rights abuses.

Sorry, Dubya. But these American weirdos and sadists, who took over old Saddam’s former torture chambers, have done you in, and turned the American Dream of democracy for Iraq into the American Nightmare.

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President GMA quickly defended her military and police through her Spokesman, Secretary Ignacio "Toting" Bunye.

She had to repudiate the Washington DC "scolding" with dispatch, particularly since she will have to count on the loyalty of the armed forces and the police in the turbulent days to come, just in case the angry and disgruntled Opposition should whip up street protests, mass actions, and more explicit violence. This loyalty is more urgent since KNP challenger FPJ has at last found his voice and has just declared in Zamboanga City that he is the real winner of the May 10 presidential elections, which he condemned as "tainted with fraud".

The Commission on Elections’ final and official tally won’t be known in the case of the presidential and vice-presidential races for almost two weeks, so, I suppose, nobody can proclaim himself or herself Da Winner. But when it comes to launching a political offensive to rally his supporters, rally the people to his banner, and pronounce himself on a march to victory, alas, I believe FPJ is starting out very late. He should have been, in full voice, at the forefront of the fight weeks ago, instead of playing coy or hostile towards the media. Well, better late than never.

I say late, because the public seems to have sunk into some kind of ennui, full of enthusiasm for nothing at all.

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A few days ago, I met former Senator and former Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Leticia Ramos-Shahani, one of presidential contender FPJ’s staunchest supporters – a breakaway from her brother FVR’s stance – at the National Day of Norway’s Vin d’Honneur hosted by our friend, Ambassador Paul Moe.

At the affair last Monday in the Mandarin Hotel, Letty had walked in with fire in her eye to tell me that the Administration’s people had cheated, suborned, and coerced outrageously in Pangasinan.

"Let’s not overdo our praise of the teachers either." Letty complained. "Some of them were openly interfering in favor of GMA and the government."

There were angrier words uttered, but those will suffice. Many others present heard the complaints, too, so I’m not telling any secret out of school.

I don’t blame Letty for being furious if such "overkill" (her own words) and even more aggressive tactics were used in Pangasinan to overwhelm the FPJ-Loren tandem and prove to the nation that GMA is the Supreme Emperadora in Ronnie Poe’s home province of Pangasinan, as well as demonstrate Da King dethroned in his own provincial balliwick.

If what happened in Pangasinan, on the other hand, was so disgusting and untenable, how come we don’t see fist-waving Pangasinenses out in the streets in the plazas, holding protest rallies and decrying the high-handed tactics of GMA and her bunch? I’ve no doubt – though I can’t prove it under the "gag" rules set by the Department of Justice in which Acting Justice Secretary Maria Merceditas Gutierrez is the prophet – that massive government funds were poured into that province to embellish La Presidenta’s campaign. But where’s the widespread indignation such an "overkill" is supposed to generate? Not present? Or is it coming? It’s now – or never.

As I’ve said, the public seems either exhausted, philosophical, thinking "what’s the use?" – or even "accepting" such a turn of events.

In the meantime, the canvass goes on. One thing is clear. If trouble erupts, it’s bad for everybody.

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It was a stunning act of selflessness in which Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi voluntarily rejected the "Prime Ministership" of India which was practically hers for the taking.

The Italian-born Sonia, the widow of India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated in 1991, apparently spurned the job and the honors and power it entailed, because she did not want the nation’s leadership embroiled in controversy.

Sonia, everybody knew, had a clear mandate from the Indian voters, particularly the rural poor. Yet, following a bitter campaign against her "foreign origins" (mounted with particular venom by the defeated Hindu nationalist BJP) and seeing the stock market, the benchmark Sensex index, plunge over 11 percent at the prospect of her take-over in fear of the confusion her ascent might provoke, Sonia decided to refuse the "crown".

Mrs. Gandhi asserted an "inner voice" had told her to decline India’s top position, so she recommended somebody else, although she said she would retain her post as chosen president of the now-ruling Congress Party.

Our politicians could learn a lesson from the unselfish, patriotic instincts of Sonia – who, while born and raised an Italian, took India to be her one and only country when she fell in love and married Rajiv in 1968. By her altruistic decision, Sonia demonstrated as well that she had no personal ambition to perpetuate the family dynasty – the one started by her great grandfather-in-law, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and carried on with an "iron hand" by her also-assassinated mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi. I believe, however, that her popular daughter, pretty Priyanka Gandhi, 32, already very politically active, will eventually assume that mantle.

What is equally admirable is that Sonia Gandhi – even as one international daily said she "sent Congress into shock" by declining to be P.M. – nominated somebody unexpected, a former Finance Minister, aged 71, named Manmohan Singh.

Indeed, Singh – if Congress accepts Sonia’s choice – would become India’s first Sikh Prime Minister. What’s fascinating is that as a Sikh, he represents the militant religious minority which worships at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in the Punjab, whose anger at her had led to the murder of Sonia’s mother-in-law, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Indira had been assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards, incensed that she had sent the Army to put down a rebellion centered in the Punjab by actually shelling the sacred Golden Temple.

It had been Sonia’s husband, Rajiv, then Prime Minister, who first held out the hand of reconciliation to the ostracized Sikhs, by asking them to rejoin the nation in building a better and happier India.

Singh, of course, has good credentials. He is the acknowledged architect of India’s economic liberalization program, which he initiated as finance minister in 1991. Already, the Sensex index rose by 8.5 percent after rumors began circulating that he might become P.M. instead.

On the other hand, if he assumes the prime ministership, he will be working under a handicap. Everybody in the Congress Party and the other parties, knows where "authority" really lies, and might bypass him to consult Sonia. How Mrs. Gandhi plays it in the weeks to come will determine whether the next Prime Minister (probably Singh, if her decree holds) is to be a success or failure.

But I am in awe of Sonia’s lack of selfishness and personal ambition. I fervently wish we had more leaders like her.