Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

octor Jeckyll is a respectable member of society. Mr. Hyde is a violent and implacable nihilist. Even Dr. Jeckyll admits that. As a communist insurgent who has taken up arms against the government, Mr. Hyde doesn't write erudite columns. He is not a member of Congress nor does he appear on television talk shows. Mr. Hyde does not hobnob with the big newspaper poublishers and tv moguls. He prefers to speak out of the barrel of a gun, or a remote-controlled landmine. He works only for total victory by the workers and the peasants, led by their vanguard party. Mr. Hyde does not participate in something so quaint as "parliamentary struggle," No. He has Dr. Jekyll for that, who of course, disavows any complicity with him, yet defends, explains, and makes common cause with him, noting his far and lofty goals and the sad state of the country. Dr. Jekyll will not categorically denounce the violent and illegal methods of Mr. Hyde, claiming that the Class Enemy also resorts to them. Yet Mr. Hyde's activities are undeniable. He makes his intentions clear by deadly acts of rebellion. He blows up cellsites. He terrorizes business and citizeny alike, collecting revolutionary taxes to fuel his habits and to keep up the spectre of a "revolutionary government." He is at war with the government and indubitably seeks to overthrow democracy to establish a Maoist dictatorship. He feeds upon our human tragedies and talks of the national condition as if only he, Mr. Hyde, cares about them and has the right answers for them. How can the Filipino People trust either Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? No one deserves to die an unjust death, as many of the current crop of political killings apparently are. But neither can we blithely accept any blanket accusation of who is responsible for all, most, or some of them. Both the Left and the Right have engaged in murder and assassination in the past. There is no reason to believe either side has turned lily-white. But the Center, whatever is left of it, that must hold in these grim times.

RANDY DAVID (Sunday PDI, The Fight Against the Left) describes the Left and the Right as follows:
Randy David: Though the likes of Gen. Jovito Palparan pretend not to know it, there is a huge difference between being Left and taking up arms against the government. To be Left is to be constantly concerned with the basic issues of justice and human freedom. It is to question the existing social order, to assail its assumptions, and denounce its oppressive outcomes. To be a leftist is to be committed to the long-term goal of structural change. In contrast, to be a rightist is to find nothing fundamentally wrong with the structure of society; it is to justify and defend its rules.
At first this looks like an Angels versus Demons comparison. But it's worse than that. It's casuistry like the friars used to practice. Look: I can be committed to long term structural change in society, while justifying and defending its democractic and peaceful rules of social and political change. But If you pit these two against each other, you end up saying, as Randy does that "the means justify the end!" Of course that may be what the Palace is saying and doing too, but two wrongs don't make a right! Randy David distinguishes between the Left and the Right in a rather self-serving manner: "Leftists are Angels of Structural Change, Rightists are Demons of the Status Quo" Put like that, who wouldn't be a Leftist? But it isn't only the likes of Gen. Palparan who are confused by the alleged "huge difference" between the nominally peaceful and the indubitably violent Left. Most of the Public cannot tell either because ALL Leftists claim to be peaceful, if they ever make claims at all. Yet the NPA extortionists and armed enforcers, always piously defending the People of course, don't just drop out of the factories or arise from the unknown peasant masses -- no, the officers and leaders are mostly university students or college professors or defrocked priests and nuns. And of course, no one admits to being a Communist insurgent, not even the CPP's founding chair, table and nightstand, who admits only to being "the Chief Consultant." Hmm..like the Pope isn't Catholic and Mao Zedong is actually a Dutchman.
Randy David: To take up arms in the pursuit of one’s political beliefs is an altogether different matter. The armed option is employed not only by leftists and rightists, but also by religious rebels and some millenarian cults. Not all leftists advocate the violent overthrow of the State, and not all armed groups are leftist. To be Left is to think and speak radically about social problems; to be an armed rebel is to participate in the forcible overthrow of government. Our Constitution outlaws armed rebellion, but it resolutely protects freedom of thought and of speech.
But let's be clear: the CPP NPA is not about religious rebellion or cultish millenarianism. It is armed rebellion financed by organized extortion, blackmail, kidnapping, arson, bombing and continuous advocacy of violent overthrow of the State. And excuse me, Professor, but to "think and speak radically about social problems" is no monopoly of the Left.
Randy David: Having once flirted with leftists when she was a graduate student, Ms Arroyo ought to know these distinctions. That she has uncritically permitted herself to mouth a Cold War mantra betrays the dominant influence of militarists in her administration. These militarists are not just the former generals in the Arroyo Cabinet; they also include former leftists who, having tasted power, now disdain their ideological past. Former Party members usually become the most virulent rightists. Only the ideology has changed; the dogmatism remains.
Well here is strange admission, that dogmatic ideology lays eternal hold on the minds of Leftists, even when they have become Rightists. As if we are not aware of Russia, and China and North Korea and Cuba...but he's referring to the "Clerico-fascists" in the Arroyo Cabinet, notably the Christian social democrat, now National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, that have competed with the "natdems" in the bal masque and costume contest ever since the Jesuits discovered "liberation theology" and social activists, the generous habits of the European and American Left. He may also be referring to various known ex-Communist Party functionaries and Leftist operators who have high positions in the Arroyo administration, such as in the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) and the National Printing Office.

AMANDO DORONILA presents a really grim picture of the "all-out war" today, making predictions that civilians will be butchered. This is the same picture that Rep. Teddy Casino was painting for Pia Hontiveros on Strictly Politics last night (ABSCBN News), bringing with him a laptop loaded with a purportedly classified Military planning document called "Oplan Bantay Laya." He and Pia Hontiveros were having fun scaring each other with choice excerpts from the allegedly leaked document. Teddy Casino really is the Willie Revillame of the Leftist stage act--his fervent hope, expressed for an admiring Pia Hontiveros, is the Philippines will become like some Latin American countries now: Leftist and ultranationalist. Him or Joma or Satur as Hugo Chavez in a People's Democratic Republic of the Philippines? Por Dios, por Santo, Señor! But are you nuts? Pia Hontiveros did ask him one good hard question: What can be done about the fact that it was the NDF that unilaterally withdrew from peace talks in 2002 and decided it "will wait for the next administration." Teddy Casino's sheepish answer? "Well..thereare lmany ways of jumpstarting the peace talks ... all it takes is a little creativity and tiaga."

The Fundamental Theorem of Guerilla War is expressed well in Randy's final point:
The communist insurgency has been around for 37 years. That is a long time. It only means that, despite the movement’s own abuses, it has been able to function as an alternative center for our people. There is no way we can wipe it out without killing many innocent civilians. It would be a tragic mistake to treat communist rebels as if they were just another criminal syndicate. We must continue talking to them.
I agree. They are not just a criminal syndicate. They are more like a long term viral infection of the brain. Yes, we must continue talking to them, but as long as the Left maintains and refuses to eschew an armed component, the Philippine government and the Filipino people are entitled to theirs, even under the Law of the Jungle that our communist guerillas operate by anyway. No one should sanction political killings and assassination, but both Left and Right have been guilty of that in this country, and both are undboubtedly capable of it again. It is the Center that must hold.

ducation's Highest Priority Myth Debunked: After a long absence, Blogger and broadcast journalist Ricky Carandang posts a recent Inquirer article on the crisis in Philippine education, which is suffering from a lack of classrooms and an influx of students
Depending on who you talk to, the backlog in classrooms (which the palace has quietly acknowledged) could be as low as 3,000 to as high as 60,000. But there are other numbers that better illustrate the state of education in the country.
A few years ago, when I was writing an article for Newsbreak magazine about the slowly vanishing middle class, the Department of Education provided me figures that show that in the 1970s, about 70 percent of high school students were enrolled in private schools, while 30 percent were in public schools. By this decade, those figures were reversed. Today, more than 70 percent of students are in public school, while only 30 percent more or less are enrolled in private schools. The gradually diminishing purchasing power of the average Filipino has led to a slow but massive migration from public schools to public schools. At the same time, despite a constitutional provision requiring that the biggest budget allocation be given to education, public spending for education has declined in real terms.
But in his own PDI column last Sunday, The Education Crisis, constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas points out that
The Supreme Court, however, made short shrift of that argument, saying that while “it is true that under Section 5(5), Article XVI of the Constitution, Congress is mandated to ‘assign the highest budgetary priority to education’ in order to ‘insure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment,’ it does not thereby follow that the hands of Congress are so hamstrung as to deprive it the power to respond to the imperatives of the national interest and for the attainment of other state policies or objectives.”
In other words, it is but common sense that there could easily be some national priority higher than education, such as food, shelter, clothing or physical survival. In the case Fr. Bernas cites, the petitioners in 1991 questioned the larger appropriation automatically given to paying the national debt on the basis of the commonly held notion that the Constitution requires the biggest budget allocation to be given to education. Fr. Bernas continues--
The Court concluded that “Congress is certainly not without any power, guided only by its good judgment, to provide an appropriation that can reasonably service our enormous debt, the greater portion of which was inherited from the previous administration. It is not only a matter of honor and to protect the credit standing of the country. More especially, the very survival of our economy is at stake. Thus, if in the process Congress appropriated an amount for debt service bigger than the share allocated to education, the Court finds and so holds that said appropriation cannot be thereby assailed as unconstitutional.”
However, it should be noted that under the re-enacted 2005 budget for the 2006 fiscal year, the Education sector gets about 130 billion pesos in cold hard cash, 90% going to salaries, and accounting for 33% of the total 390 billion pesos that will be allocated to Departments of the National Government. Paradoxically, Fr. Bernas rejoins the herd when he concludes, like Ricky Carandang, that we are not spending enough on education! I think it is just that free, universal public education is such an attractive, durable and almost unassailable ideal among Filipino liberals. But he deserves credit for blowing up a durable and persistent myth. There is no Constitutional provision that requires education be given the "biggest" budgetary allocation, and its priority, while being the "highest" may be ignored by the Congress when required.

16 comments:

Deany Bocobo said...

I'm depressed about this too, JMakabayan, I mean that it has come to this. Maybe Neal Cruz is right, that the P1 billion is just an unsubtle bribe to the police and military as part of the impeachment flak, the killings ought not to intensify.

Who do you think IS behind the killings, or is it a mixture?

Anonymous said...

I agree JMakabayan, Jm na lang that we should not label.

pare preho tayong mga tao dito
na nasa bottomless pit.

About another two billion wasted,

Lord dracula or Arbet blogged about it.

AWBholdings.com

Unknown said...

Hi Dean,

Been thinking of the 3rd top man in the Marines.

Pretty surprising move - to throw away 28 years of service ain't easy; Marines don't do that, leaving the corps unless something dastardly was happening.

Have met Col de Leon a couple of times when he was a junior officer; can't say he impressed me as anyone other than a Marine.

This resignation is futile! I believe he was "pressured to resign" - Mayuga didn't have to say it to his face; Mayuga probably asked Allaga to "freeze" de Leon and it got to him.

Could've only been that or mebbe de Leon was "challenged", "pressured" to resign somehow - either that or he was told he wasn't going to the US for the schooling after all (what with his links with Querubin) and in a fit of stupidity, he put his foot in his mouth! Dumb thing to do! Now he will be useless as a wet newspaper.

Dumb thing to do really. He's better off fighting 'em rotten pigs (Mayuga after all is gonna be FOIC for only few months more, he's retiring in December 2006) from within than from the outside. Allaga wouldn't be there forever; guys retiring in a couple of years too!

He'll have the AFP counter-intel service on his back from now on when he could have pooh-pooed them while in service.

Oh well... Tell that to the Marines, you say? Yeah, tell de Leon that was one dumb thing he did - resign his rank when he could"ve toppled Gloria with the rest of the Marine Corps.

Dumb thing to do!

Deany Bocobo said...

The Submariner--General Mayuga was actually on TV last night, seeming to back de Leon. He was apparently Mayuga's 2nd chief of staff (?), so not a dumb guy. But as you say it would've been dumb for him to resign his commission NOW. That means he DIDN'T resign but was pressured as you surmised. Part of the cleaning out from last February no?

Deany Bocobo said...

MB--Puzzle me this...I am right-handed (like most people) but when I brush my teeth in front of the mirror in the morning, I seem to be using my left hand to do so. And it doesn't matter what position I take in front of the mirror: I can twist around, even lie down in front of the mirror: my "other" is left-handed! Yet the mirror never reverses me head to foot! How in the world does the mirror do that? It reverses me left to right but not up to down. How does the mirror know what position I've assumed in front of it?

You can observe your own reflection in a mirror to verify all the above.

(The explanation is not at all simple.)

Anonymous said...

Come on DJB, you are the Physicist.

SIRIT na!

I know it has something to do with light and wachamacollit reflection,refraction

nagkataon lang that what you see in the mirror again has to pass your eyes and eventually to the brain...

MB,
ikaw na lang, ..sinubukan ko lang.

Bernardo F. Ronquillo said...

Left, center, Right, Left-off-center, Right-off-center. DJB, labels do not a make a man but rather it is men who invented those labels to EXPLAIN AWAY every actions and utterances of men. Sa akin, wala silang pakialam. I refuse to be labelled and I don't want to be ruled by those labels.

De Leon should not have resigned. He should have stayed on and followed Rizal's SIMOUN from the inside and not as an outsider. Malacanang will ignore the resignation and will even put a spin on it that is favorable to Gloria. However, I believe that he is anything but dumb and must have something up his sleeve and his sacrifice will not be ignored by the people.

A man like Rizal, who will use his genius not to enrich himself but to serve his people to the point of sacrificing his life for them, comes only once to a nation. "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." But there are those who can approximate even half of what he was.

Deany Bocobo said...

"No one falls under a simple set of labels!"...Fleetwood Mac.

But like "Jew" or "Gentile", or "kuffar" among the Muslims, labels can be a powerful force. Labels are memes. Durable, sticky memes.

You can't fight memes by ignoring them. They just take over more brains. You have to have better memes, better ideas, better logic.

I think, it's how we got to be this way. We are enslaved by several powerfuyl ideas.

Bernardo F. Ronquillo said...

Labels are something that OTHER people put on you; but POWERFUL IDEAS are something you subscribe to YOURSELF. And if these ideas guides your life, it is because you voluntarily want them to.

Labels are how people look at you; but powerful ideas are how you look at yourself. You should not act the way other people expect because of their label on you but because of the powerful ideas that you believe in and live by.

There is nothing more powerful than the message of the Saving Grace of JESUS CHRIST. And by HIs Words, Life, Death, and Resurrection, I live, no matter what label other people put on me.

Deany Bocobo said...

MB--The reason the NDF gave for breaking off peace talks was the Philippine Government's refusal to do something beyond its power or wisdom that the NDF wanted: for the CPP NPA to be removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations of BOTH the US and the EU. Those lists are reviewed annually and their presence on those lists has been reaffirmed by both EU and US 5 times in a row since 2001.

Now what that means is that the US and the EU certainly consider the CPP NPA at least as potential threats against them, not just the Philippines itself.

There really isn't anything decisive the Philippine govt can do about it.

Besides, they ARE terrorists. And they're only using the peace talks to hide the fact that they are actually at war with the prosperity and peace of the Filipino people. That they are engaged in a violent revolution to overthrow the govt. But in nearly 40 years of trying, their revolution has degenerated into organized extortion on a nationwide scale.

I don't care if the peace talks ever get started again. They have no endpoint for the CPP other than our complete surrender to their crazy ideas.

I'll take GMA over Joma any century. Any election, if those were the only choices. You? Be honest MB. Who would you vote for in a fair and free election?

Joma or GMA?

(That by the way is her present gambit).

Unknown said...

hullo guys!

Dean, just one comment - technically, it was GRP that announced that peace talks were suspênded when JdV went to Utrecht in July last year to announce the suspension - he caught poor Joma in the jaw there.

MB,

I agree with you - both are despots and I AM PUTTING them in the same basket (I know both personally and are on speaking terms with both.)

Dean, if you asked me to choose between the two, you'd be disappointed coz I'd refuse to choose. I'd rather the nation went into an all out frontal war - the dreaded civil war - than choose between the two coz one or the other represents violence and war just the same - between them they will destroy the last remaining fabric of national sanity, with one or both around, the nation cannot aspire for anything other than a war of attrition with the majority of the poor being the collateral damage...

I'd rather take a chance and have you, MB, Quezon (not Luis Teodoro), Lito Banayo, Ellen, Ducky, Randy David, (even Archbishop Cruz at the helm of the govt than one of those 2.

MB, got ur message...

Unknown said...

Dean,

Ninez O Cacho might be wrong here (appearing in her tomorrow's column): "Simple. With his resignation, De Leon is now free to speak out his mind, and even more important, De Leon is no longer covered by Executive Order (EO) 464, Gloria’s gag rule which has already been struck down by the high court, but which Gloria and her cohorts in the military continue to enforce, clearly to keep up with their cover-up operations."

The military service doen't recognize an officer resigned for as long as his resignation papers haven't been "processed" by the service, i.e., accepted by the board, given the ANCS-N1 imprimatur "retired". Technically, until that's done, de Leon may be tried in a court martial (UCMJ).

From what I've read, your note included, he resigned his position but not his commission yet... dunno, mebbe am wrong - mebbe he's already out of the service, effective yesterday?

Deany Bocobo said...

HB,
Right! I am hoping that de Leon has figured that out about eo464. That is, if he is inclined to rat on his buddies or superiors. Is that "allowed"? Of course, if the SEnate compels him to testify!
Say, this was what I was saying they should ALL have done last Feb 24 is resign en masse, drop their uniforms, commissions and all...and joined Cory.

Unknown said...

Dean,

(Btw, it's 12°c here!)

Re: Feb 24 is resign en masse: Unrealistic Dean!

Re: "Is that "allowed"?" Not a question of being allowed (he can even defy a superior command if he really wants to)... but he's gotta ask himself, if he would "allow" an "underling" to do the same.

Why is the resignation en masse unrealistic? Coz it's not strategic, wasn't the order furthermore... Anyway, Marines are human beings too (even if they were trained not to "think" but just to obey) - you can't expect a couple of thousand Marines officers and men to resign en masse - there's bound to be half of them who will stay compelled by their belief that it's their sworn duty to the republic to stay on, etc.

And even if half did, Gloria would have fielded PSG to quarantime them - in the end you'd have a showdown and a fratricide.

The Marines wouldn't do that - fight brother officers or they wouldn't be the Marines anymore.

If de Leon hasn't resigned YET, he shouldn't. He must be among his men. It would be useless to resign. Unless of course, he's decided to go all out by squealing to the Senate but I don't think he would do that (not now or not yet)within the next couple of weeks or a month at most, otherwise, no use!

I wonder... if you have the Marines being divided and having self-doubt like they seem to be today, the AFP leadership may be in worse trouble than what we see.

Anwyay, the Gloria gambit that you pointed out is, shall I say, the BEST gambit - no soldier, (even if he's only "grunt", "grunt") would wanna be called a commie lover.

Bernardo F. Ronquillo said...

MB, I am with you. De Leon should not have resigned. Nuong araw sa tambayan namin sa kanto ang tawag diyan ay "INIS TALO." Ang unang mainis ay talo. Nainis si De Leon, umalis, talo siya, panalo si Gloria.

Now, those who are against Gloria in the marines are depleted by one good man. That is substraction. You are right it should be the other way around.

Unknown said...

MB,

I never said he should resign - on the contrary, I don't think he should! That's why I said it was a dumb thing to do if he did it.

As BFR said, inis, talo!