My column for today (after a long absence due to illness) is War freaks. It features this photograph courtesy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (update: so this is who he was!). Talking about photos, there are truly amazing panoramic shots (from right after the end of the whole thing) here (note the curious sight of bananas and a water bottle hidden in the wheel well of a Philippine Marines APC), and here (with everyone, media, cops, and soldiers, texting with wild abandon), and here (with Ricky Carandang looking dazed), in Inquirer.net.
Two stories I heard:
First, an anxious Filipino called up Singaporean business contacts who were in Manila, expecting the Singaporeans to be freaked out. The Singaporeans were, apparently, nonplussed: “We went into a meeting when it began and when the meeting ended, it was all over.”
Second, one person apparently overjoyed over the mayhem was someone who, a few months back, had had his laptop stolen out of his car while it was parked in the Peninsula parking lot. Upon inspection of the CCTV film, the person determined that the break-in into his car had been taped from beginning to end. The hotel refused to reimburse the man for his stolen laptop. So when the APC smashed into the hotel’s lobby, the person and his lawyer exchanged gleeful texts.
Let me repeat what I’ve said often enough in this blog and elsewhere. After the Marine standoff in Fort Bonifacio last year, a colleague said to me, “the country can’t afford more of this.” Much as it involves consciously tying one’s hands when officialdom feels no such qualms, I do think a national consensus of sorts exists. It’s a simple one: whatever resolution to the political problems of the country takes place, it can’t involve force of arms. The corollary to this is that even if it places an unfair burden on the opposition, the public’s expects that if the President is to go (and no, I don’t think many will really weep for her), she must be made to leave according to constitutional means. If that can’t be achieved, then by all means, hem her in, keep her on her toes, and narrow her options so that even if she wants to prolong her stay, she can’t. Anything beyond these parameters and a national consensus not only doesn’t exist, but no one will budge (the consensus being built on the understanding that the majority of people think they have better things to do than be engaged actively on either side, anyway).
You can either be impatient and rail over the limits this consensus has imposed, or take the longer view that well, maybe we have to wait until 2010 when the President will either leave no room for doubt she intends to stay, or she’ll go, and that relentless pressure on the president and her people will make it much more likely she will go in 2010 than try to stick around. In which case after six years of lost opportunities maybe the country can actually accelerate its improvement. That’s the price of democracy, no? Some may want to move faster, others, slower, but in the end we all must move at the pace the majority dictates.
So my first reaction to Trillanes’ move was, we can’t afford this sort of thing, again. I understand why he did what he did and why it may be that he had to do what he did -think of the scorpion and the frog. As Ricky Carandang wrote in his blog,
In the above cases, the systematic suppression of mechanisms to peacefully resolve legitimate grievance led people to look for extralegal solutions. As the grievances accumulate, the demands for restitution escalate. In cases where the processes provided resolution quickly within the law, the public was largely appeased and extralegal solutions were not resorted to.
But I don’t like it, I think he betrayed his mandate as a senator, which was to take his fight from the periphery into the heart of government, and I think he was foolish and those with him did the President a favor instead of doing anyone else any good. But I am equally upset with the fire-breathing statements of people who refuse to see why the clusterfuck was inevitable, and that the whole thing could have ended up far worse, if some cooler heads somewhere hadn’t prevailed.
I think the Inquirer editorials had it right: in saying Trillanes committed political suicide, but also, that the administration’s proven itself incorrigible. In his blog, Mon Casiple points out something interesting:
Oakwood has now come a full circle. However, the political context of the present Manila Pen is different than the one in 2003. Then, GMA was at the height of her power, with a comfortable positive public opinion, the support of the majority of the middle class, and with considerable international goodwill. Now, she is facing an increasingly lameduck presidency, a deep distrust of her government among significant sectors, including the middle class, and buffeted by accusations of human rights violations abroad.
The country has entered the period of the transition to the post-GMA political situation. The immediate struggle revolves around the question of who will manage this transition. Logically in our democracy, the president–holding the reins of power–presides over this transition. However, in GMA’s case, this is forfeit because of her political weaknesses.
The Manila Pen incident follows closely on the heels of dramatic and violent events such as the Batasan bombing. A case can be made that incidents such as these fit into the present context of the political transition. Including nonviolent political events such as the LP and NP mediamatic non-proclamation of presidential candidacies, these collectively affirm that relevant political forces in the Philippines are on the march and are staking out their various positions.
I do not think the Manila Pen incident itself meant the end of the military rebels’ own plans; it may be the beginning. However, a much more interesting possibility is the use of their movement for political maneuvering vis-a-vis the contest for the role of transition manager.
On hindsight, what Senator Trillanes and company did in Manila Pen was either a stupid and unrealistic bid for a people-powered downfall of the GMA administration or a brilliant probing attack in a much more complicated strategy. There were simply many disconnects in the event that prevented the achievement of the announced objective to topple the current power in Malacañang. Firstly, there was no evident pre-synchronization of various potential or actual sympathetic forces. Secondly, there was no provision–either in warm bodies or logistics–for a long-drawn siege. It seems, they want to end the drama as it actually did–when the government forces started its counterattack in earnest. Thirdly, there were no observable mobilization of sympathetic military forces beyond the small group that accompanied Senator Trillanes to the Manila Pen. AFP chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon’s assertion of having prevented this from happening cannot simply be be taken at face value given the extent of discontent and ferment in the camps (as shown in the Trillanes protest vote in the last elections).
Let me jot down some notes about what took place last Thursday. A good digest of the day’s events, and various reactions (official and private, including the statement of Manila Peninsula’s PR guy; what no one will say on the record, is that the hotel only got control of the property back on Friday morning, and there are allegations of the cops looting the hotel and partying it up in the rooms: the rebels had occupied only one function room and brought along their own provisions of bread and sardines; it would help if the authorities could debunk these shocking allegations) can be found in Wikipedia’s Manila Peninsula mutiny page. Entertaining live blogging took place at Uniffors. Minute-by-minute account in The Philippine Experience. A journalist’s account is over in Newsbreak.
1. WTF?
So, as reason is the reason eloquently asked, WTF was Trillanes thinking? After the fact, it’s easy to think it was a cockamamie scheme, but I’m not so sure it was, at least from the start. Definitely, it unraveled quickly.
The whole thing could have been nipped in the bud but it wasn’t. A week before (November 20, page A18 of the PDI and also, in the Star) , full-page ads had been taken out in the papers by a certain “Filipino Democratic Nationalist Reform Movement” which has a website and which basically urged the armed forces to rise up; and ominous statements were issued the day before. So no one can doubt there was premeditation here, but that unlike previous efforts, the whole thing was cooked up by a relatively small group, which managed to remain uncharacteristically tight-lipped until the walkout actually began.
Definitely, what Trillanes and Lim were after was the tearing down of the constitutional order, and its replacement with a junta. And they seem to have done pretty complete staff work in that regard (see also Transition group eyed had Trillanes succeeded, says document). The problem is, their plan scared the bejeezus out of people in 2006, why wouldn’t it scare the bejeezus out of people in 2007? And it seems obvious enough that if they wanted to score publicity points for taking something over, why didn’t they take over the Batasan Pambansa? Or hole up in the Department of Justice? See The Journal of the Jester-in-Exile with regards to the tactics (or lack of them) demonstrated that day.
Anyway, as I wrote in my column, the moment I saw that guy with a wig, I knew it would fail, and when some friends texted me at the time, I told them as much. But there were two or three things that made me wonder if Trillanes and Lim actually had some sort of method behind their madness.
The first thing that struck me was something virtually unprecedented, and that was, the eery silence on the part of the military’s top brass. Never mind Esperon seemingly being caught by surprise, and having to rush back to Manila (the President, too). It was the hours that passed without the expected parade of generals vowing loyalty to the government taking place on TV. At the height of it, the best that government could do was allow reporters to broadcast from an unusually quiet Camp Aguinaldo to basically say, the armed forces could be counted out of the whole thing.
This was something Randy David caught onto, in his Saturday column:
But, if indeed they were alone in this doomed and foolish adventure, how do we explain the fact that, at the height of the standoff, no military commander, apart from the chief of staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., came out or was presented to reiterate support for the Arroyo government? Why did the government rely exclusively on police forces to deal with what was openly declared as a bid to remove the existing government? Was Ms Arroyo afraid that, if compelled to declare their loyalty, a good number of the nation’s soldiers might actually side with Lim and Trillanes?
In short, what did the silence of the camps during this six-hour siege signify? I doubt if General Esperon or Ms Arroyo knows. Perhaps if they know anything at all about the state of mind of the soldiers in the camps today, it might be something that is likely to give them sleepless nights in the next few weeks or months. Could this be the real reason for the sudden imposition of a midnight curfew — that they are seriously spooked by the possibility of troop movements quietly taking place in the coming days?
For it is hard to believe that the soldiers barricaded in their barracks would not care less about what was going on in Makati City last Thursday. If they saw what the rest of the nation saw, and they remained silent, I would consider that a meaningful silence. In a time like ours, when images from live media pack more power than the most stirring statements, what might the silence of citizens and soldiers possibly indicate? Are their senses stunned and their will paralyzed? Or are their souls shaken and courage awakened in their hearts? Who knows?
Whenever an event of this sort takes place, the public takes a wait-and-see attitude, but what’s unexpected is for the military to so obviously adopt the same posture. And it was a posture that, on the whole, they maintained: permitting the military to do so betrayed the disquiet and unease the government felt. Loyalty checks are par for the course; what’s not is that no obvious result could be announced until crucial hours had passed. This is significant because of something I’ll get into, in my next point.
2. War freaks
The President herself is reported to have insisted the hotel should be invaded by 2:30 pm; I can only surmise that people within the administration undercut their commander-in-chief and calmer heads prevailed. Utak pulbura is objectionable whichever side succumbs to it: if you will castigate Trillanes and Lim, then castigate, too, all the chest-beating people demanding that the whole thing should have ended in gunfire. For if it had reached that point, then a vicious spiral would have been the inevitable result. We should recognize that if reports are true, that the President was demanding a swift and violent end to the whole thing, the armed forces declined to do so, and that the police, despite their bravura, also held off using maximum force and allowed things to deflate on their own.
As Roby Alampay, a Filipino journalist based in Bangkok wrote,
Trillanes is not the charismatic personality that the international media may have perceived. For someone who graduated near the top of his Philippine Military Academy class, he’s perceived by many Filipinos as reckless, unthinking, and – worst yet for someone who holds hotels hostage just for the moral victory of having a press conference – he’s fairly inarticulate.
It takes everybody who appears around him – priests, actors, the media, activists – to express the moral campaign that Trillanes offers himself up for, but ultimately cannot lead. Given this assessment, the government made a quick call based on the bet that, even in the worst case scenario, Trillanes, who may have the sentiment of certain junior officers, has never been able to muster crowds, was not going to be martyred…
…Trillanes on the campaign trail represented pure unadulterated contempt for her administration and everything that makes people exasperated with her presidency: corruption, ambition, a thick hide to criticism.
To this day, that’s what Trillanes stands for, and in the aftermath of Thursday’s events that’s all he still represents. Regardless, however, of how small a player Trillanes really is in the grand scheme of things – at best, he’s been seen as an unwitting pawn – what he does symbolize is nothing to totally scoff at. Indeed what makes him dangerous is that he’s the stubborn voice for what people have frankly gotten tired of wailing about.
And yet most Filipinos are now simply resigned to riding out her term until the next elections are held 2010. Two impeachment attempts against her have failed thanks to the corrupted politics and politicians she’s co-opted – some say threatened – in Congress. Last week former president Fidel Ramos, formerly an Arroyo supporter said for all to hear: “Nobody likes Gloria, but what choice do we have?”
Many Filipinos grudgingly take that as a valid point. There are indicators that Arroyo has the economy – or at least the business community – on her side. The Philippine peso is the second strongest performing Asian currency this year, next only to the Indian rupee. The day after Trillanes was arrested, the government announced that Philippine gross domestic product growth for the whole of 2008 would likely hit 7%, overshooting all predictions at the start of the year.
What festers, however, is the feeling that democracy-crazy Filipinos are selling their souls for long-missed stability. Trillanes will never be the center or leader of any new People Power movement. But whenever he’s on the news, Filipinos are reminded that as inconvenient and unsophisticated as this soldier is, the people’s bigger moral issue will still be with Arroyo: the president who they believe was caught red-handed rigging her own election; whose husband they believe was caught red-handed rigging his own multi-billion-peso government contracts; whose government has shown contempt for free expression, human rights and, yes, democracy.
To be sure, it was appropriate and necessary, from government’s point of view, to keep up the pressure, and it was a brilliant move to send in the APC’s to trundle around the Peninsula lobby while refraining from spraying the lobby with high-caliber bullets. The use of tear gas was, tactically speaking, absolutely correct, too: if you can smoke ’em out, why expend ammo? Not least because, if anyone had died, the fence-sitters in the military might just have decided to move, either way.
Yet the inconclusive results of the government inquest also points, I think, to insecurity on the government’s part, it’s still feeling its way to see how far public opinion will let it go. To be sure, I think even during the whole snafu, attempts were being made to lay the case for the prosecution: the firing of warning shots complete with claims the rebels fired back, established the basis for charges of rebellion and not just sedition to be filed.
What was truly frightening was that on one hand, Trillanes and Lim obviously believe a junta is desirable, but also, that the pressure to bomb the rebels to Kingdom Come or have sort of slaughter to end the whole thing, was so intense on the government side. Even more discouraging is that at the moment of success, the administration set about skillfully snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It flexed its muscles, against easy targets (the media, by rounding them up; the public, by imposing a curfew) when the lesson of the day was how a senator, a general, some loyal soldiers and some geriatric fans, had the entire country guessing if the government might fall like some overripe fruit from the tree.
Amando Doronila I think has it right, when he wrote, today,
The Peninsula insurrection may have collapsed, but the grievances that drove the rebels to desperate action remain smoldering underneath unless addressed seriously. The crisis has revealed Malacañang had lost control of coping with emergencies to security forces which determined how to crush rebellions their own way.
There are more than enough grievances to feed plots inside the military to seize power. The more serious plotters have learned the lesson that they can’t seize power by turning their guns at hotels. The next time around, the guns will be blazing at Malacañang.
That’s what the failures of Trillanes and Lim at the Oakwood and Peninsula mutinies have taught us. Ms Arroyo is hostage to the guns of her praetorian guard which she had unleashed at Peninsula.
Doronila’s warning can be made, because cooler heads prevailed and prevented a blood bath; had any killings taken place, there wouldn’t be time or opportunity to even make such a warning, an insurrection would already be taking place. And it’s worth pondering just how eagerly not just some officials, but members of the public, wanted it to come to that. Though Torn and Frayed says maybe the hard-liners have a point:
Yet, although I’m glad that Ayala didn’t run with blood yesterday, maybe the “hang ’em high” mob at Carlos Celdran’s blog has a point. If life in the Philippines was more “serious”, if people faced real consequences for their actions, perhaps they might think twice before doing these things, and surely you wouldn’t have to think more than that to realize the how absurd and ridiculous yesterday’s events were.
Tales of a Backpacker said it well:
The Manila Peninsula siege has elevated civil rights violations to a higher degree, and we all forgot to raise our voice against it because we were so busy demanding a state-sponsored human rights violation – the killing of Sen. Antonio Trillanes and his supporters. We even heckled the media for crying foul over their arrests. Crybabies! Wimps!
We all lost our freedom to travel for five hours (or imbibe alcohol till the wee hours on a Friday night), and none of us complained.
3. On the media
Everyone loves to hate ABS-CBN and nothing riles up the public more, than to be reminded by the media, how essential media is. All the grousing about how media overreacted -or that government overreacted to media’s stubborn refusal to vacate the Peninsula- is essentially an insular discussion. Even if ABS-CBN had left, there would have been, at the very least, up to ten journalists affiliated with foreign news organizations who’d have stuck it out to the bitter end. They included, the Philippine correspondent of the Japanese NHK, of Bloomberg News, a member of a TV news crew of the Associated Press, etc. This is a crucial point: even if the natives had fled, the natives working for foreign media outfits would have remained, which only goes to show their staying was, from a newsman’s point of view, anyway, the legitimate thing to do. By all means, if you have a bone to pick with media at home then what about those who operate according to international standards of the profession? They stayed. See Torn and Frayed’s thoughts on this score:
The original response to the latest stunt from Trillanes and his Magdalo group could easily be justified–meeting violence (and despite what Trilllanes claims, armed men taking over a hotel seems like violence to me) with overwhelming force. If the government had allowed Trillanes to dictate terms–as Gringo Honasan has so often tried to do during similar capers–it would have been disastrous.
Ramming a tank into the hotel entrance and firing off rounds of machine gun fire that could be heard a mile away seems over the top, but the officers charged with ending the siege had to make a lot of difficult on-the-spot decisions so perhaps they deserve the benefit of the doubt, especially as the three main objectives–the end of the siege, the arrest of Trillanes, and no bloodshed–were achieved.
However, the government’s reaction since the ending of the siege a couple of hours ago seems loopy. What is to be gained by arresting and handcuffing a bunch of journalists and members of the ABS-CBN technical crew and carting them off to Bicutan? No-one on TV has come up with a plausible explanation for why such an apparently counterproductive move might be a good idea. As Maria Ressa just said on air, these arrests were illegal and inconsistent with democracy.
If that was bad, Interior and Local Secretary Ronaldo Puno’s announcement of 12 midnight –5am curfew is incomprehensible. All it will achieve is to invest Trillanes’s weak and self-centred band with much more importance that they deserve and to add to the feeling of uncertainty in the capital, rather than helping to dissipate it as soon as possible.
But did media cross the line, in going from covering the story, to becoming the story? And what about the obvious sympathies held by some media people there, for the rebels? Here’s a memo Hunter S. Thompson wrote in 1972, and recently republished in Harper’s Magazine (November 2007):
I still insist “objective journalism” is a contradiction in terms. But I want to draw a very hard line between the inevitable reality of “subjective journalism” and the idea that any honestly subjective journalist might feel free to estimate a crowd at a rally for some candidate the journalist happens to like personally at 2,000 instead of 612–or to imply that a candidate the journalist views with gross contempt, personally, is a less effective campaigner than he actually is. Hubert Humphrey, for instance: I don’t mind admitting that I think sheep dip is the only cure for everything Humphrey stands for. I consider him not only a living, babbling insult to the presumed intelligence of the electorate, but also a personally painful mockery of the idea that Americans can learn from history. But if Hubert meets a crowd in Tampa and seventy-seven ranking business leaders each offer him $1,000 for his campaign, I will write that scene exactly as it happened-regardless of the immense depression it would plunge me into. No doubt I would look around for any valid word or odd touches that might match the scene to my bias. If any of those seventy-seven contributors was wearing spats or monocles I would take care to mention it. I would probably follow some of them outside to see if they had AMERICALOVE IT OR LEAVE IT bumper stickers on their cars. If one of them grabbed a hummingbird out of the air and bit its head off, I think it’s safe to say I would probably use that-but even if I did all that ugly stuff, and if the compilation of my selected evidence might persuade a reader here and there to think that Humphrey was drawing his Florida support from a cabal of senile fascists, well, I probably wouldn’t get much argument from any of the “objective” journalists on the tour, because even the ones who would flatly disagree with my interpretation of what happened would be extremely reluctant to argue that theirs or anyone else’s was the flat objective truth. On the other hand, it’s also true that I will blow a fact here and there.
That being said, was media being petulant? Yes. But only if past precedents shouldn’t matter; not in 1987 or 1989, or in 2001 or 2003 was media rounded up in this way. But of course government can change its mind, the way it’s kept scrapping all the past conventions on what was permissible behavior -but since it unilaterally scrapped the old rules, don’t expect anyone from the profession to thank government.
Might, after all, makes right. That’s the only lesson here. It would be wrong, I think, to confuse that with the “rule of law,” because the official excuses were insulting to the intelligence (much as media’s screeching was offensive to the law-and-order types who later hailed the curfew because, God darnit, it kept them thar people from goin’ a drunkin’).
If the idea was, as proclaimed by the police, to separate the rebels from the everyone else, then by all means round up all the men, but there was really no reason to round up the women and confiscate everyone’s cameras and tapes. Again, obviously the government was frustrated it couldn’t control information, and part of it was it’s own ambivalence over what to do. A kick-ass president would have sent shock troops to the stations to deliver an ultimatum, and quite possibly the public would have cheered; a more sagacious president would have thanked her lucky stars and crowned victory with sending biscuits to the reporters; a flip-lopping president leaves the law-and-order types frustrated that the media simply weren’t exterminated, and the media with its hackles raised: and, in terms of government p.r. purposes, the story being sidelined by media’s very public exploration of its navel.
Anyway, with the New Order it’s just as well Gov’t, media to meet over ‘rules of engagement’ in coverages.
4. My personal view
Something I quoted from Rizal in my column on May 1, 2006, comes to mind:
All the petty insurrections that have occurred in the Philippines were the work of a few fanatics or discontented soldiers, who had to deceive and humbug the people or avail themselves of their powers over their subordinates to gain their ends. So they all failed. No insurrection had a popular character, or was based on a need of the whole race, or was fought for human rights or justice; so it left no ineffaceable impressions … when they saw that they had been duped, the people bound up their wounds and applauded the overthrow of the disturbers of their peace! But what if the movement springs from the people themselves and based its causes upon their woes?
What strikes me is not that the enterprise ended up failing, but that there seemed a moment when they actually seemed poised to carry it off. Personally, much as my instincts were that it was doomed, in retrospect I think the thing wasn’t doomed to failure until it became obvious that what Gen. Lim et al. had in mind was a junta. At that moment -when Gen. Lim made cryptic comments about a new leadership arising- the scheme’s chances for success, already slim, swiftly collapsed. If national salvation, as Lim and Trillanes saw it, would be in the vanguard hands of the armed forces, then no one had any further incentive either to risk their necks or offer support: live by the sword, die by the sword. As far as this is concerned, I think Uniffors said it best:
I didn’t go rushing to Makati to demonstrate my support for the group because I don’t support juntas. And both Trillanes and Lim were strangely quite about what sort of government would replace Mrs. Arroyo had they succeeded in overthrowing her yesterday.
The presence of junta advocates like former UP president Dodong Nemenzo at the scene turned me off.
The most dangerous threat to democracy is a coalition between ideologues and men in uniform, no matter how pure of heart they are.
When a group like that takes over government, civil liberties and human rights take the back seat…
Trillanes and Lim could have drawn the crowds if only they used the occasion to call for a snap election following the resignation of Mrs. Arroyo and Noli de Castro. Unfortunately, they chose not to.
Of course this is just my opinion, but my column stemmed from my belief that there’s a lot of after-the-fact chest-thumping from born-again supporters of the administration: born again, because they were shitting in their pants when things seemed unclear. Kudos to those who made up their minds for or against, early on, and have stuck to their guns, whether in derision or admiration for Trillanes and Co. But I don’t think they represent, either way, the majority view. And that was: while no one moved to support the rebels, no one moved to defend the administration, and for the hour or so things could possibly have gone either way, the overwhelming public response was a deep ambivalence.
As The Economist commented,
In hindsight the mini-coup seems ridiculously ill-considered, but its failure to pose a real threat was mostly due to public disinterest rather than any dramatic improvement in the government’s popularity….
But it would be a mistake to interpret the failure of the mini-coup as a popular vote of confidence in the government. The problems facing Ms Macapagal Arroyo have actually increased significantly over the past couple of months, largely owing to allegations of corruption surrounding the negotiation of a contract for a national broadband network. For reasons that have not been fully explained, an agreement between the governments of China and the Philippines awarded the contract to the ZTE Corp of China–even though companies from the US and the Philippines submitted substantially lower bids. Ms Macapagal Arroyo cancelled the contract in October, but the negotiations raised questions of possible graft that still have the potential to trigger her removal from power.
The failure of what was probably their final bid to remove the president from power using legal means has also infuriated the president’s opponents. In October a third attempt to impeach Ms Macapagal Arroyo fell at the first hurdle–as did the two previous ones, in 2005 and 2006. The administration, through the dominance of pro-government parties in the House of Representatives (the lower house), has a comfortable majority on the justice committee that vets any impeachment file before it is presented to the full lower house. Owing to the fact that the constitution bans consideration of more than one impeachment charge within a 12-month period, the president will not face another charge until October 2008.
With their legal avenues of opposition now effectively blocked, increasingly frustrated opposition groups may be more likely to take to the streets. Eventually, one such attempt could pose a serious threat to the government. For now, though, the failure of Messrs Lim and Trillanes to spark a popular rebellion suggests that the country is far from being a dry tinderbox of discontent.
Disquieting, too, are murmurs that the problem was not what Trillanes did, but that he literally jumped the gun. As Asia Sentinel reports,
But as silly as seizing power via hotel lobbies may seem, it was not a spur of the moment action, but rather a well planned move, political analyst Earl Parreno told the Asia Sentinel, judging from the fact that the detained soldiers found quick access to high-powered guns.
“Their goal was the same as their goal during the mutinies of 2003 and 2006 — a military action supported by civilians to topple the government. People power, in other words,” says Parreno.
However, “the move was premature.” The analyst says that, based on his informants, an action such as what took place Thursday was being planned for the first quarter of 2008. This would have given the opposition time to create further social unrest so that their move would generate sufficient civilian support, which would, in turn, encourage the military top brass to withdraw their support from the government — the tipping point in Philippine-style uprisings.
Oh?
5. Other views
And there’s a kind of raw nerve the failed caper struck: my choice for book for the week suggests that we’re not far off from the Japanese, in at least admiring those who fail but go down, guns blazing. In a country starved for heroism, Trillanes couldn’t even commit hara-kiri, and I think quite a lot of people are madder about that than over anything he specifically did.
Tongue in, Anew, however, takes a different look at the whole thing (and a fascinating exploration of the military mentality, too):
Any marketing professional knows his AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. The four stages are carefully designed, complete with fall-backs, auto-responses and scripted pitches very much like those annoying telemarketers who drive you crazy because they are saying all the right things you are left with just all the lame excuses, if not buying their products right then and there! In the end, you may not realize it but you find yourself agreeing with them.
This is the pattern I read in these activities. Why repeat where you failed before? The idea is not that you are expected to act immediately, the Trillanes-Lim plan works much like a raingauge. It is a method of measurement, at the same time it rubs in, or more significantly, nails in, in a calculated manner the ideals of the movement, what it aims to achieve, how it plans to get there. Later, it provides the details how your personal involvement will make it necessary for the movement – the social transformation of the country – to succeed with everybody else in. Not just the elite politicians.
The reactionary government saw it the way I did, they know the unheeded call to gather at Manila Pen was not the end of it. They knew the act had to be sustained by forces not limited to the incarcerated officers or the commands they previously held. The “A” has been achieved and the “I” is about to begin. What keeps Malacañang guessing is the timetable of the execution. Is the “Interest”-soliciting group coming out hours after Peninsula? Or the next day? Or the next month? They didn’t have many choices so they took the more conservative option, also the less-riskier one: to assume that the next wave will happen in the next hours or probably coincide with the next day’s Bonifacio Day rallies, hence, the declaration of curfew and setting up of roadblocks and intensified checkpoints.
It would be foolish to assume Trillanes and company didn’t know how gov’t would react, blockade of absolutely all roads leading to Manila Pen IS the elementary response!
What they didn’t know is that, in the ongoing word war between the incarcerated officers in Fort Bonifacio and Tanay on one hand versus Esperon and his camp on the other, it was jellyfish Esperon who will turn sissy first and hide his tail between his legs.
A few weeks ago, Esperon had been provoked by the Tanay group of Querubin, Miranda and Lim to tell all about Hello Garci and his cheating participation as a response after he tried to scare them that he will come out with the video of Lim’s supposed announcement of declaration of their withdrawal of support in February of 2006. Nakakalalaki na ang hamunan. Who will blink first?
Lim did it again, this time live on national TV while clueless Esperon was watching (adoring?) his new recruit, Manny Pacquiao, on the latter’s first military service day somewhere in Mindanao. Lim’s act in Peninsula, therefore, was a continuance of their challenge to Esperon to come clean with the charges of cheating in Hello Garci. Lim et al have done their part, it was now up to Esperon to do his. Esperon defaulted. As far as Lim and Trillanes are concerned, their score with Esperon has been settled, they are the macho soldiers, Esperon was the weakling. And they did it even if they were under heavy guards. A big open-palm slap on Esperon’s face.
Anyway, a roundup of other bloggers’ opinions is in Global Voices Online.
And for those upset with Trillanes, here’s not one, but two, online petitions: Expel Tonyo Trillanes From The Senate (42 signatures) and Condemn the Mutiny at the Manila Peninsula (132 signatures), via Now What, Cat?. Get clickety-clicking if you’re mad, because so far many more signed the Calling for the immediate resignation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Noli de Castro and for the Holding of Special (“Snap”) Elections within 60 days petition (3,469 as of this posting; apparently. Ang Kapatiran added its voice for resignation around the time of the Peninsula Caper).
And a student leader’s view: Ateneo de Manila Sanggunian President: Statement on the Manila Peninsula Siege.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, journalism, media, military, philippines, politics, president, society
Ronin’s mention of “ang tagal naman blog spot dot com”, and its accompanying countdown to Gloria’s exit (let’s presume it will push through, humor me, will you, cvj?) made me think about what we individually are doing to prepare for the day.
For the “talsiks” (patalsikin si Gloria), what do you think should the “move on” crowd be doing to prepare for that day? For the “move on” crowd, what should the “talsiks” be (legally) doing to prepare for that day?
I have no “gotchas” hidden behind this question – am honestly curious what each group believes the other should be doing for 2010. What is it, 900 days to go? Enough time to prepare, I think. (Again, cvj, humor me on this one.)
Devils
Like I said…everybody thinks this is a game from the PC World. May 3 lives ka…maybe more….;-)
Miketymoc:
Ako…continue being productive for the Philippines…whoever sits there at the top…
I think it’s worth revisiting one of Randy David’s essays, written more than a year ago but still very relevant today:
davaotoday.com/what-is-to-be-done
Some excerpts from it:
We are citizens of a state. But we are also, in our daily lives, member of communities. We belong to kinship networks, to neighborhoods, to churches, to schools to civic organizations, to residential villages, to social clubs. We are consumers of goods and services. Our children attend in the same schools, and we go to the same social functions. We even live in the neighborhoods and shop in the same places. In short, we sare the same social spaces. Those spaces are governed not by one law alone, but by moral norms of acceptable behavior. These are the sources of our moral identities, and they are far richer and older than the wellsprings of our common citizenship. We have not consciously mobilized the power inherent in these moral identities. We continue to regard and receive those individuals who cheated massively for Ms Arroyo in the last election and who participate in the continuing plunder of our economy as if their actions were the most natural in the world and do not bother us at all. I hope you are getting the drift of what I am saying here. If we want to stop corruption in our national life, we must begin to show outrage over the loss of decency in our public life.
We have underestimated Ms Arroyo. She has been more clever and more systematic – and also more brazen – on her quest to replenish her rapidly vanishing social and political capital. I am sure all of you have noticed that in the last two months alone, the newspapers have reported her every social visit to Catholic bishops and archbishops all over the country. Photographs of these visits have been published in major newspapers. In some instances, the leaders of the various churches have been unveigled into giving her the “pray overâ€Â. I am sure they are aware that this formal display of peity is part of a systematic attempt to prop up a troubled presidency.
If religious leaders allow themselves to be used like this, sooner or later they will find themselves being confronted by their flocks, who, while they may accept their bishops’ silence on political issues, would feel revolted by their uncritical anointment of a politically beleaguered president. Ordinary priests and nun themselves may call their bishops to account for their actions. Parishioners themselves, the laity who constitute the core of the church as a community of the faithful, may one day whisper to their parish priests their own misgivings.
What may begin as misgivings could soon ripen into an explicit resolve to avoid any contact with persons who seem in mindful of the imperatives of decent behavior. Such avoidance may soon translate into open ostracism. This is the extreme form of assertion of the power of a moral community. Its intended effect is social isolation. It is the equivalent of a consumers’ boycott in the realm of social relations.
–and–
The Arroyo government is sidestepping all these urgent issues by offering charter change as a cure-all for our problems. It is a clever ruse that attempts to bolster Ms Arroyo’s political legitimacy without risking anything. If she succeeds. She remains president till 2010, and possibly beyond. This is to me is not a viable option. It keeps the trapos in place, starting with the queen of trapos herself, GMA, while promoting the illusion of system change. If charter change through people’s initiative becomes a reality,then we will have a government without an effective opposition. This situation is not sustainable. Sooner or later,the government will be engulfed by an even more radical crisis. This may hopefully pave the way to a new political era of modernist governance led by an awakened middle class. Or it may spawn fresh demands for revolutionary transformation.
Whatever happens, we need to prepare ourselves by nurturing even now a new breed of leaders, in addition to the handful of existing ones who have not been corrupted by the system. More importantly, we must begin to examine all facets of public policy which have so far governed the routines of our everyday lives. Some groups have already begun this process, and the products of their work are now available in different websites.
If we must rebuild this country, we must start by rebuilding the nation in ourselves. We must get organized, we must prepare ourselves for a long fight, a fight beyond Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a fight that will take us to some election, and beyond, to a future we can all be proud of, to a nation we can proudly bequeath to our children. That nation has to be free, prosperous, just, decent and competently governed. We can start building that future here and now.
You have to hand it to benny. Simplifying complexity always looks good on paper (and websites). You always get that sense of ‘Oo nga ano’ when reading a carefully prepared simplifying analysis and youd be hooked into that ‘that’s all there is to it’ mindset if youre not careful, or if you dont have a mind of your own. It’s when it runs into the real world that you get into trouble. Plus there’s also the problem of being sure you have your finger on the problem’s center of gravity. If one exists, that is. More often than not, you run into a problem of infinite go-around: to solve A you have to solve B which in turn is dependent on solving C, and so forth and so on, which is dependent on solving A. But no matter. I find benny’s visits entertaining. Welcome back, benign0.
gawd almighty. just for that you want someone to die for us? can’t we wake ourselves up? no wonder we keep lacking visionary leaders. we keep asking them to die for us just so we could “wake up from the stupor.†– devils
hi devils! pls don’t get me wrong. my answer to cvj’s query is a sarcastic one directed to…well…yes, the stupor that we (i mean collectively) are apparently in nowadays. we know what is wrong…have done a lot of things to address it (impeachments, demos, ranting in this blog ;-)) and still nothing happens.
am i bloodthirsty? no. my point is, something is needed to galvanize everyone into action and do the right thing. remember when the marcos regime overreached itself and assassinated ninoy aquino?
it’s not so much about bloodletting as injustice writ large. ninoy aquino came home to confront marcos about martial law, and he gets a bullet in the head instead. the injustice, the brazenness of the murder, all these galvanized filipinos and woke us up from the stupor we had been for close to 20 years.
of course, trillanes is no ninoy, far from it. but consider this: this pathetic and inept army-officer-turned-mutineer-turned-senator and his merry band occupies a posh hotel and calls for a people power to end arroyo’s reign, and in turn gets cut down in a combined military/police assault right in front of tv cameras. the issue of whether he’s just a wayward and hallucinating mutineer or a puppet of trapos in the wings would become moot and academic, replaced by the realization among us that this regime would willingly and ruthlessly shoot down a bunch of wackos and in (to use cvj’s word) vivid color, that this same administration has finally crossed the line dividing democracy and authoritarianism, that i believe, is the tipping point. that, i believe, will finally wake up the fence-sitters from their stupor and would pave the way for a genuine people power.
yeah, it’s ironic if someone like trillanes would become a martyr, but heroes and martyrs are not necessarily saints. what sets them apart is their willingness to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. trillanes was given this chance last thursday. he blew it. what a pu*sy!
“But no matter. I find benny’s visits entertaining. Welcome back, benign0.”
Thanks Mr. Jeg. At the end of the day, it’s all about what entertains. Pinoy dysfunction can, in fact be entertaining — specially when you dot it with colourful imagery and lots of bells and whistles. ABS-CBN makes billions on that reality. Their BAndila news format is a testament to that.
Moron’s like Trillianes are not the ones that turn the Philippines into global laughingstocks. It is Pinoys’ reactions to the moronisms of these morons that do that job for them.
Kaya nga my favourite taunt to Pinoys at the moment is “sayaw Pinoy sayaw”. All we do is dance — and write, and blog, and comment — to the tune of the moronic antics of politicians. We cheer — and jeer — on command (with the ironic twist that we foolishly imagine this privilige to cheer and jeer them as ‘democracy at work’). Far from that, even the cheering and jeering around us are engineered by the very politicians that are the object of these. Pinoys are just too small-minded to realise this.
– 😀
Great minds discuss ideas;
average minds discuss events;
small minds discuss people.
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Perhaps the same can be said for Australia’a A Current Affair, a very popular evening program? Some of the topics include:
Online shopping
Post baby weight
Five cent flights
Mortgage saver
It’s not news, but even then, “serious” news programs can’t stop obsessing over Brtiney and Lindsay. Probably the only channel that consistently shows anything substantive is SBS.
What’s on Australian prime time? Quiz shows, sing-along game shows, reality TV shows, cartoons (Simpsons), Hollywood sitcoms and series.
Manong Benigno is complaining about Bandila because that’s the Filipino news show they air on Aussie free TV.
In general, corporate media is going for infotainment more then serious newscasting of a few decades back. Just look at CNN and FOX.
micketymoc, no short answer, but both camps need to think about what they would do given the following scenarios (or combination of) scenarios:
– regular presidential elections
– a coup succeeds, military takes over
– a snap election is called
– campaign & referendum for charter change or new constitution
– parliamentary elections
– populist (Erap-like) president or prime minister is elected
– conservative (Gloria-like) president or prime minister is elected
– anarchy / revolt (Devilsadvc8’s scenario)
Broadly, the actions would range from active collaboration, to tacit acceptance (aka moving-on) to active resistance.
Oh and I forgot sports. 4 different footie matches on four different channels all at the same time!
cvj,
“Anthony Scalia, which goes to show how simplistic that bromide is.”
referring to the 3-liner of benignO? simplistic?
“That statement ignores the reality that people’s actions drive events and are motivated by ideas.”
very true. but it does not mean we cannot limit discussion to ideas. the ultimate in discussion is the separation of the idea from the person espousing it. we can beat up an idea, but not a person. thats why attacking the person instead of the idea is an ad hominem argument.
“Taking these three elements in isolation and placing them in an artificial hierarchy of values restricts the normal flow of conversation and therefore makes it less productive.”
to echo an earlier post, i dont think benignO meant to make a hierarchy out of those 3 concepts. Remember, he wants to simplify things. Thats his way of simplifying the concepts – making a comparison using 3-lines, as if a writing a poem. if benignO wrote it in paragraph form you won’t get the notion of a hierarchy, but it won’t come across as simplified.
less productive? i differ. “less productive” could very well refer to discussions on ellentordesillas.com where ONLY persons matter. a dissenting idea makes one a paid gloria hack. a different take on the manila pen incident makes one get an invective.
what can i say: all this domino-tumbling effect of power struggle and disregard for the ‘rule of law’ began with edsa 2. ain’t no suprise to me–i would still anticipate something more explosive dramas to come.
who started these telepoliticas anyway? look back in 2001… inodoro ni emilie
so frustratingly true. damn evil society.
Unfortunately, the sense I get is that most people thought Trillanes’ action was really crazy and could have been just as much about getting out of jail as about toppling Gloria. So while it would have been a “moment of glory” perhaps for him to go down guns blazing, it would probably not have bolstered the anti-GMA cause. A waste, in other words.
no force entry eh?
“Unfortunately, the sense I get is that most people thought Trillanes’ action was really crazy and could have been just as much about getting out of jail as about toppling Gloria. So while it would have been a “moment of glory†perhaps for him to go down guns blazing, it would probably not have bolstered the anti-GMA cause. A waste, in other words.” – Mike
That’s one way of looking at it, Mike. As I said in my post, it’s not so much about Trillanes going down for the sake of dying for his beliefs (or vested interest, for that matter). It’s actually more about Gloria revealing to one and all her tenacious clinging to power, that she is so desperate to stay in Malacanang that she would ruthlessly cut down the Manila Pen hold-outs, given enough provocation. As it happened, Trillanes backed down and didn’t walk his talk, and so that moment for the tipping point has passed.
Guingona was just a “spectator”. Ohhhhhhhh, I see.
What’s wrong with treating these mutineers with what they deserved. No people were hurt.
It’s been kid glove’s treatment all the time for these destabilizers ever since Cory.
Danilo Lim was one of the rebel soldiers during the time of Cory. Soliers and bystanders died. But look, he was promoted to Brig. General.
During the time of Estrada, there was no coup despite the
overwhelming evidence of the corruption.WHY? Because the military were afraid of what he will do. The military had to wait until there are enough people power to back them up to withdraw their support. Sometimes, I think that it is more of a man and woman thing.
They knew that women can be forgiving but wait until Loren Legarda is installed as President.
IS that why this invisible group is desperate to overthrow the government?
Cat, nothing’s wrong with what they did as what others here are saying. let’s hear it from the other Legarda.
If politics were amoral, then GMA is one helluva good player. If politics were a game and the objective is to cling to power as long as possible, then an amateur opposition is playing against a pro. GMA’s greatest strength lies with the opposition itself: their incompetence, short-sightedness and utter lack of political sophistication.
Chronicle the events from Edsa 3 all the way to the recent Trillanes’s afternoon tête-à-tête and you get an idea how the opposition thought they got the game with a straight flash, only to be trumped by this administration’s full house.
And how naive of opposition forces to think that by simply having morality and truth (or at least, being perceived by the public as possessing such) on their side, power will come to them like manna from heaven.
This is the age of secularisation. The Church has lost the power to define morality for governing the public. You want to impose your version of the truth, you have to slug it out in the legal courts. Lawyers have become the priests of our times, and the Constitution our bible. That’s the mind that GMA operates. She has successfully clung to power because from the start she has correctly read the times way ahead of her foes.
Notice the opposition’s 7-step game plan:
step 1: uncover as many scandals as possible.
step 2: wait for media to smell shit in the air.
step 3: expect the bishops to issue a pastoral letter.
step 4: form a coalition of civil society groups.
call them with something catchy like black
and white.
step 5: trumpet surveys about hunger, corruption and
(un)popularity ratings.
step 6: when people are so disgusted (based on step 5),
throw a protest action and hope for people power.
step 7: wait for people or the water cannons to arrive,
whichever comes first.
contrast that with this administration game plan: Dodge a scandal. If not possible, fight it all the way to the supreme court.
Get it?
“What’s an incoherent, posturing senator compared to the parade of government Tarzans whose chief regret is they weren’t able to atom bomb Makati?”
This kibitzer wished the government Tarzans did what they wanted to do with the incoherent, posturing senator.
So while apologists are snapping off their drivel and smelling blood on the punishments to be meted out (in the spirit of the holidays), GMA and her junket are spreading it large in Europe. While the country is still messed up by natural and man-made disasters, the so-called leaders are partaying away, unmindful of the…what the hell…effin pipz don’t care anyway…
At least Lim and Trillanes have the balls to decry in a very, very spectacular fashion the debased reality we are in…that we are being screwed big time and the majority of us are just jivin’ fine with it…
Heck the late Raul Manglapus was right all along; while being raped, the best that one can do is try to have an orgasm.
Characteristics of Dictatorships :
For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Suharto’s “New Order” and our very own , Marcos’ ” New Society”. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining dictatorial power.
Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.
These basic characteristics were prevalent and intense in these three regimes:
1. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
2. Identification of the opposition as the enemies/scapegoats to serve as a unifying cause.
3. Too much reliance on the military to stay in power.
4. Attempts to control mass media.
5. Obsession with national security.
6. Deliberate weakening of political institutions to eliminate check and balance with the Executive.
7. Promoting the idea that there is no better alternative to the Leader .The Leader is the “lesser evil” compared to other leadership options.
8. Obsession with punishment on political “destabilizers”.
9. Rampant corruption.
10 Fraudulent elections.
Should we ring the alram bells? Maybe,maybe not.
as soon as the reports that military camps where standing down, it seemed to me that the game was over even before it had begun, and the outcome was not in doubt.
the show of force of government forces at the pen — not to mention the containment actions made (shutting down the NLEX and the SLEX, as well as taking a roll call of camp commanders) — was made with speed, poise and audacity, and although i sympathize with the feelings of the media people who were inside the pen at the time, i can’t say i fault the tactics demonstrated, and i believe them to have been appropriate.
if trillanes et al had truly planned for a successful takeover, they should have taken malacanang and a few key military installations… so in the case of the manila pen standoff, gma 10, magdalo (?) 0.
manolo is right — it’s not the wait-and-see attitude of the public that’s of note, it was the wait-and-see attitude of the AFP (not high command, but that of the field commanders) that should worry gma and esperon. i think we can expect a shuffling of field commanders and troop units within the next few months to preempt the possibility of a better-planned attempt.
re ronin’s 12/4 1:01 PM comment — trillanes et al didn’t have the numbers nor the firepower to effectively force such a scenario, at least on the street level. at worst, there’d be a CQB inside the manila pen, and the collateral damage (meaning, casualties among the unarmed media and others) would depend on the level of training of the responding SWAT team… and even then i’d guess that the public would not lay blame at the feet of government security forces.
yes, i read this article of Katrina and i agree with her.
My friend in arizona who was asked to check on the house of a friend while they were away forgot the code to deactivate the burglar alarm system. after a few minutes, the police authorities were there handcuffing her for robbery attempt or trespaasing one’s property. they did not need to have a warrant of arrest because she got ‘caught’ in place where she is not supposed to be there.
It took a lot of phone calls to reach the homeowner to verifiy that she was indeed tasked to oversee the property while they’re gone.
can she accuse accused of illegal arrest. Of course not. they have 36 hours to detain her and file charges if she’s not cleared. so what are these media and other people in the vicinity of the crime whining about illegal arrest ?
I wonder.
if the police did not act quickly, they will be criticized. damned if they, damned if they don’t. galit na naman ang mga yan dahil natalo na naman sila ni gma sa larong chess.bwahaha
david, as far as i know, one of the media people rounded up was the bbc’s man over here. he was relying on obtaining video from a local network, but was obviously covering the whole thing from first to last. so he was among those rounded up.
the parameters used by foreign news organizations you posted make for useful reading, though some might quibble over how precisely relevant they are to what took place.
mlq3,
It would be interesting to know ABS-CBN’s, GMA7’s and other media organizations’ Editorial Guidelines, if any, and how these compare to the international standards of journalism.
david, it’s easy to guess. whatever sells is what they show. whatever doesn’t is what they edit. whatever will show them in a bad light is a must-edit footage. whatever shows them up as heroes (or victims) they over-emphasize.
have i said it here before? Lopez and Gozon are the biggest enslavers of Filipinos? bec given the power that they have, they choose to exercise it for profits only. no sense of social responsibility at all.
david, it’s easy to guess. whatever sells is what they show. whatever doesn’t is what they edit. whatever will show them in a bad light is a must-edit footage. whatever shows them up as heroes (or victims) they over-emphasize.
have i said it here before? Lopez and Gozon are the biggest enslavers of Filipinos. bec given the power that they have, they choose to exercise it for profits only. no sense of social responsibility at all.
mere attempts to control media and free speech is not enough. every sitting leader anywhere in the world tries to do that. it’s called damage control.
a dictatorship will shut down and take over media. in a dictatorship, free-thinking blogging won’t be possible and internet access will be limited…and we won’t be here writing down our thoughts as candidly as we are doing.
broadcast is a business. there is currently no industry as heavily taxed as broadcast. if Filipino audiences took themselves more seriously, we’d get better. just look at the broadsheets…puro lifestyle section…
has anyone heard the news about the KBP and government dialogue to address these issues that came up with the Pen incident?
True to form, the very first comment of a self-confessed member of the middle class is that she got stuck in traffic:
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=connieVeneracion_dec4_2007
david, thanks for the informative excerpts from the BBC editorial guidelines and the AEJ’s Guidelines for Covering a Law Enforcement Action. It appears to me that the acts of some, if not all, of the media people present in the manila pen invasion, did not conform to most of the guidelines you have cited. aside from trying to be part of the “news” (see how some crowded each other to serve as backdrop while lim was reading his “declaration” beside a morose-looking trillianes) i think their biggest impropriety was in providing the rebels a “forum” to air their demand and obvious propaganda.
as if to underscore the undeserved “power” of the media industry (which, perhaps, give it an arrogant and exaggerated false belief in its own infallibility), pandering senators from villar to pia cayetano, and administration officials from gma herself to raul gonzales, try to outdo each other “condemning” the police action against the stubborn media people. how in the world can anyone expect a fair and just adjudication by the human rights office in the face of all those prejudicial pronouncements from those officials.
the media should know that their “press freedom” is not a license to say or do, or publicize, whatever they want to in the guise of “serving” the interest of the general public. while absolute freedom of thought for individuals (as distinguished from freedom of expression) may be acceptable, absolute freedom of expression for profit or self-interest driven entities is gravely dangerous and should be regulated. no entity, public or private, nor any person, in our democratic society is above the law, and no one should be. the president, as all other officers of the government, are accountable for their actions. why not members of the media? who ever said they are special in our overall scheme of things?
mlq3, to those who might “quibble” about the relevance of the guidelines observed by civilized press in other parts of the world, i can only say they are planting the seeds of their own destruction. everybody talks about rebellion against the government. how about a rebellion against a megalomaniac media?
Maybe you didn’t understand me when I said “humor me”, cvj, but I meant – what are we doing for the most probable scenario, which is Presidential elections in 2010. Let’s set aside our fears for a moment and ponder what each camp is doing/should be doing to prepare for Presidential elections.
At ““ang tagal naman dot blog spot dot comâ€Â, the clock is down to 967 days. My main frustration with both Nacionalista and Liberal camps is that their sites are chock-full of motherhood statements, but haven’t seized ownership of any clear programs of action for 2010 and beyond. I’d like to decide which candidate to support this early, but neither party is making it easy for me.
Shouldn’t civil society be, at this point, searching for a candidate to support? Manolo boasts of having the online numbers (it remains to be seen whether online support translates to votes, see Ron Paul). Who’s the Opposition candidate for 2010, and what platform will he/she have? In my opinion, anybody can do a better job communicating their platforms than Roxas and Villar are doing right now.
an overflowing anger towards the local media, especially the local broadcast media. okay.
here’s a suggestion: switch channels or turn off your tv. if you hate ch2 or ch7 because of their me, myself and i –megalomaniac– ways… find other networks to support. i saw the mics and personalities of net25, untv and abc5 in all the video shown even on ch2 and ch7, they were there and they seem to have carried their jobs as journalists without being the story, why not tune in on them for a change instead of fixating your anger towards the stations that are rating? puro tayo angal, pag may gumagawa naman ng tama di natin sinusuportahan. it is not as if we don’t have any other options? o nasanay na tayo umangal na lang ng umangal?
and by the way manolo, welcome back and i agree with your point about the foreign media most probably opting to stay put at the pen even if the locals decided to leave.
more power to all of you and our options!
Reading Ellen Tordesillas’ version of the events at dub-dub-dub.abs-cbnnews.com/ storypage. aspx ? Story Id=10 12 22.
Incredible, the sense of privilege a media ID can provide! (“Media kami!”) Tordesillas et al refused to follow police instructions and they resisted every move by the police to get them out of the way of the operation! Is this part of our right to a free press – a press that arrogates to itself the privilege to disregard SOP for police actions?
No wonder Katrina Legarda is so pissed off.
“Incredible, the sense of privilege a media ID can provide! (â€ÂMedia kami!â€Â) Tordesillas et al refused to follow police instructions and they resisted every move by the police to get them out of the way of the operation! Is this part of our right to a free press – a press that arrogates to itself the privilege to disregard SOP for police actions?”
Media behave that way because Filipinos put them on that pedestal. We essentially handed over a blank cheque to them to represent our voice.
The media today fill a lucrative niche in Pinoy society by presuming to be the articulation channel of the grievances of common Pinoy folk. They capitalise on the pathetically weak intellectual and articulation faculties of the general Pinoy public by presenting themselves as our only credible mouthpiece.
In the same way that organised religion presumes to be the sole and infallible representative of the word of God, the Philippine media today PRESUMES to speak for the Filipino people, act like some kind of moronic martyr in the name of “freedom of speech”, but at the backstage rake in billions in easy money.
Well, as with everything else, Pinoys deserve each other. We crowned the Philippine press like a prince, and that’s exactly what we got — Prinsipe Aburido.
– 😀
bencard, you not only have the right, but the duty to vote with your pocketbook as far as media is concerned. and there’s not a blessed thing media can do about it except respond to angry viewers and readers and try to woo them back.
but see, this is the problem with an undiscerning protest against media. taken to extremes, your only option would be to turn off your computer, and your tv, your radio too and stop reading anything except milk cartons. or, you could restrict your reading to the office of the press secretary website. but i don’t think it would keep you either informed or even stoked up for very long.
but you are right in that media lives at the mercy, not of the authorities, but of the audience.
mickety, again it’s a matter of perspective. you consider elections in 2010 the most probable scenario, i’d consider it, for example, a 1/3 possibility, with 2 other possibilities equally high, a last-ditch effort to mount constitutional change being one and some sort of atavistic emergency rule being the other. it will take all of 2008, to my mind, to actively eliminate the 2/3 chances of those other options and only in 2009, if the other two don’t materialize, can we really consider elections in 2010 the most probable scenario.
mlq3, fine i can turn off my tv, my computer, and refuse to read misleading “opinions”. but how about the so-called masses, the ordinary folks who are a push-over for anything said or printed by the media? they are like lambs being led to the slaughter house. consider how the media turned the likes of honasan and trillianes into matinee idols and “heroes” for attempting to bring down the government by force.
oh, so you think the media should only be answerable to its audience and not to the authority of the law; that the only sanctions appropriate for it is the rejection by its audience and loss of revenue? that’s a very disappointing point of view even coming from you.
in my view, slanting and manipulat5ing the “news” is bad enough. but interfering with police work and giving aid and comfort to perpetrators by any one, including members of the media, is a crime and must be dealt with accordingly.
“in my view, slanting and manipulat5ing the “news†is bad enough. but interfering with police work and giving aid and comfort to perpetrators by any one, including members of the media, is a crime and must be dealt with accordingly.”
Last I heard, “martyrs” had blanket immunity to criminal prosecution.
Thing is, the Philippine Media had through the years engineered that image of themselves and ingrained it into the vacuous minds of the Filipino people.
Yet again, tough luck for justice in Pinoy society.
– 😀
bencard, either they are very different from you and i, or not so different. i have met quite a few ordinary people who have boycotted abs-cbn and gma7 and who only watch the government network, nbn, for news. an option, oddly enough, irate middle and upper class people don’t consider. and in the provinces, there are people who tell me they have dropped the national papers in favor of provincial papers, while others shift papers depending on how biased they believe the paper to be (e.g. they will substitute the star for pdi and then maybe bulletin for the star, depending on their mood, the era of the multi-paper subscription family is obviously coming to an end). others read only inquirer online because they find it more sober than the print version (in terms of headlines, organization, captions, etc.).
i don’t know if the majority are pushovers, you’d have to wonder why, for example, the ratings war between the more aggressive abs-cbn news people and the conflict-averse gma7 people seesaws the way it does: this means people vote with their feet in measurable quantities. what is pretty certain, i think, is that what used to be the big three -radio, tv, and tabloids- is rapidly becoming the big one -tv, only- as far as where people prefer to get their news.
but that will sort itself out, not least because no sector of our society can remain as insular as it once was, if only because of the ofw phenomenon.
as always, the romans said it best, who will guard the guardians?
bencard, there is the law of libel (which, however, should be decriminalized), but yes, i don’t think that officialdom which rules by grace of the people and not the grace of god, ought to be intruding on the media. the public should determine who it trusts, and not be told who officials in the hot seat happen to like or not.
then again, our perspectives differ in that you do not question the wisdom, applicability, and relevance of the revised penal code, while for some time now i’ve viewed it as anachronistic, dangerous, and that it should be revoked and replaced with a law devoid of such obvious colonial provisions. it is a law that was already out of synch with the 1935 constitution, it is positively medieval in light of our present constitution and national experience since the penal code was passed in 1933.
therefore i look askance at any effort to uphold its provisions for the same reason that there are malaysians and even singaporeans opposed to their countries’ national security acts, and thais opposed to the lese majeste laws in that country.
i recognize, however, that we are part of the tradition of american jurisprudence and that as far as their first amendment is concerned, the public and the press are all entitled to the same rights, and that if anything, the only privilege media can demand, is freedom from prior restraint.
definitely, prior restraint was not exercised by the government last thursday. everything subsequently can be declared a police action to which the state is entitled -but again, there is the point of past precedents. it was unprecedented, and so, when a precedent is broken and a new one established, of course people unused to it will cry foul.
manolo: I find it interesting that both you and cvj have difficulty considering the possibility of 2010 elections on its own.
My question is simple: what should each of us be doing to prepare for the 2010 elections, assuming it is the future that awaits us?
Let’s leave probabilities behind us; I’m simply asking what each of us is doing to find a suitable platform and a candidate to stand on it come 2010.
Let me rephrase the question: let’s assume 2010 is here and Jinggoy wins the Presidency. Inevitably we will be saying to ourselves, “we had since 2007 to do X to ensure this outcome should never have happened!” What, then, is X?
“but that will sort itself out, not least because no sector of our society can remain as insular as it once was, if only because of the ofw phenomenon”
Then again, you are talking about a society that elects morons to sensitive government posts, most recent of which is the laughable triumph of a jailed chonic putschist in the senatorial polls.
You cite Singaporeans and Malaysians who are opposed to their countries’ security frameworks. Yet the inescapable fact is that those societies you cite are by any measure societies that have magnificent achievements dotting their history books.
It comes back to that old argument about how to get the balance right between FREEDOM (particularly our society’s moronic regard for it) and STRUCTURE.
Misleading news are not just the domain of the opposition Media but Both sides, the administration and the opposition and the administration has all the advantage on this part, because they have the means to eavesdrop and the have the means to gather the intels of what the other side have and let us not pretend, and maybe madame Mita will again suggests it’s part of my defeatist attitude, but some of the Media entities are either playing the game of the politicians’ “campaign people” or just simply ‘paid hacks’ instead of journalist professionals. It has nothing to do with being the culture of Philippine Media, it’s the culture still of Corruptions that has already taken roots to almost every nooks and crannies of the society…
Benigno
It seems like there are similarities between CVJ’s and your thinking on how our society should evolve into.
CVJ advocates a popular dictatorship. Is that what you’re also thinking?
I can;t remember but I also read somewhere (not in this blog) that some people are willing to give up some of their political freedoms in order to attain economic propsperity. DO you agree to that scenario?
“can;t remember but I also read somewhere (not in this blog) that some people are willing to give up some of their political freedoms in order to attain economic propsperity. DO you agree to that scenario?”
Yes I do. It is blatantly obvious that Pinoys tend to abuse most priviledges, least of which is our sacred “freedom”.
Would anyone in their right mind give a 5-year-old boy a blowtorch to play with? That’s essentially what we did to Pinoy society when we granted ourselves all these “freedoms”.
Ideologues are a funny bunch. 🙂
I support the Philippine media’s freedom and laud their courage to do their job. I support proactive (if risky and zany) journalism.
Some things I appreciate about our media – there are (so far) no consolidation of media outlets into huge conglomerates the likes of AOL-Time-Warner. Our journalists stay with the action even given the administration’s tendencies to allow them to disappear.
With regard to Manong Benig’s benighted Australia:
Rupert Murdoch (who is Australian by the way) owns 100 newspapers in Australia. Murdoch, as you all know, also owns the Republican mouthpiece FOX news network.
The Australian Press Council seems very worried the Government has been passing legislation that curb press freedom in the name of national security. From the APC’s 2007 report:
Oh, and just to show we Filipinos do not corner the market on vacuousness, here’s the APC’s report on Aussie newspaper Courier Mail using sports analogies to cover the elections:
With regard to blurring boundaries between fact and opinion: