Mellow Melo Report

For a body that was dismissed as being a mere GMA administration ploy to stave off criticism from radical, human rights and anti-Gloria groups, the report of the Melo Commission certainly seems to be kicking up a lot of media dust.

Although a fuller discussion of its conclusions must await our reading of the complete report, there are enough newspaper accounts and instant analyses to support a preliminary conclusion that the Commission evidently didn’t discover any "smoking gun" evidence to, as they say on American Idol, "nail" anyone, not the government, not the Armed Forces of the Philippines, not the CPP-NPA. In fact, the report apparently has a little to satisfy each of the protagonists. Thus, it probably completely satisfies no one.

Not that the Commission had any such intention. Thus, for any group such as Karapatan, for example, to claim that the report is a "vindication" of its position that "extrajudicial killings" have taken place is somewhat mystifying.

In fact, many Commission members have publicly complained that that organization deliberately ignored several invitations to attend its public hearings. On record, it would appear, Karapatan’s claim of over 800 victims of supposed political killings stands debunked. There is simply no evidence to substantiate that claim.

In stark contrast, Commission records indicate that both military and police officials testified at early stages of the hearings. Even the much maligned retired Army Major General Jovito Palparan appeared before the Melo panel.

The Melo Commission report, from all indications, does not conclude that there was an official government policy approving, much less directing, the killings of alleged enemies of the state. United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston, an Australian lawyer who teaches at New York University and heads NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, says he is "clear" on that.

On the other hand, the Melo report does contain a reference to "sanctioned policy in the Armed Forces or in the civilian government" to undertake summary killings. Although this is not quite the same as finding that the government had ordered or sanctioned the killings, Alston is quoted as saying that the government was responsible for a "climate of impunity."

The report puts it differently and seems to place the blame squarely on the AFP, while admitting that it did not have enough evidence of summary executions that would stand up in any civilian court or military tribunal. As reported in this newspaper by our Paolo Romero, the report said that declaring the victims as enemies of the state in effect justified the military assassins in arrogating "unto themselves the power of the courts and of the executive branch of the government."

The indications, the report alleges, are that "a small group in the Armed Forces" carried out the killings of activists after being emboldened by the pronouncements of Palparan and Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon.

Alston says the military is in denial over these killings and seeks refuge in its own propaganda. Gen. Esperon’s riposte is that it is Alston who is in denial over allegations of the military that it is the CPP-NPA itself that perpetrated the killings as part of a purge of its ranks of government infiltrators. The President has made clear that the government itself, which had invited the United Nations to send an observer to look at its handling of the alleged summary killings, is not in denial. "These killings will be resolved," she stressed, "and the Armed Forces shall continue to be a vanguard of freedom."

In that statement lurks a clue as to a deep dilemma facing the government — how to entrust the task of "crushing" the insurgency, as Mrs. Arroyo has repeatedly pledged to do, to the AFP without "emboldening" it or a "rogue" element within the military to take the law into its own hands.

The Melo Commission might have pointed to Gen. Palparan as the "prime suspect" in the killings. But, in a very real sense, he is only the most convenient target, having been the most visible and articulate spokesman of the tit-for-tat and "realist" school of thought which, despite official denials, dominates within the AFP.

This school of thought holds, first of all, that morale within our uniformed fighting force can only be maintained at a high level if the policy in combat is not to turn the other cheek when a soldier is killed by rebels but to immediately retaliate and to exact a high cost for such acts which, they are constantly reminded, are unlawful and destructive of democratic government.

Secondly, and this is the more troublesome idea, the "legal" or "parliamentary" struggle of the leftists and their "armed" components are actually one and the same. They assertedly are two integral, but essentially inseparable, parts of one common objective which is to seize power and assume the reins of government. This may strike some as the exhumation of a discredited and long-entombed Maoist ideology, but if you think it’s so dead and buried, you should think again.

Alongside the release of the Melo Commission report came a Palace disclosure of a 20-year old videotape of Jose Maria Sison "admitting" in Brussels, Belgium in 1987 that the following organizations, among others, some of them party-list groups with sectoral representatives in Congress, were "legal fronts" of the communist underground movement: Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), Gabriela, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), League of Filipino Students, Alliance of Concerned Teachers, and Kadena.

In several appearances in Viewpoints over ANC, Gen. Palparan and Police Deputy Director General Avelino Razon, until recently the head of Task Force Usig, openly and unabashedly made that claim, often in the presence of Honorable Congressmen who, as members of the above organizations, were sectoral representatives.

Palparan and Razon would make no bones about needling the solons about allegedly using their pork barrel to fund anti-government activities. This "nefarious" activity they characterized as the contemporary moral equivalent of frying one in one’s own fat.

The government’s deep dilemma must be our own if we’re serious about ending all communist insurgent activities in this avowedly democratic nation. The real question underlying the Melo Commission report is not principally the killings, although that is undeniably an urgent issue facing one committed to the rule of law, but how the military will achieve its mission of ending that urgency without running afoul of the law.

We need real honest and creative thinking here, not the kind of motherhood statements which have a tendency to bring all efforts to arrive at a democratic answer to a screeching halt.