CLEAR THE TABLE FIRST!

by: CHERYL L. DAYTEC-YANGOT

At this time, we need charter change like we need a hole in the head.

Whether the change is to be proposed by a constitutional convention or a constituent assembly, the result is the same: it will provide an opening for Gloria Arroyo to mess with the Constitution and consign the Filipinos to more years in the economic and political desert called the Arroyo Regime.

On the occasion of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Association reunion last week, I had the privilege to chat with RFM Food Corporation President Jose "Joe Con" S. Concepcion, Jr. He said that if it is unavoidable to change the constitution, he prefers a Constitutional Convention to Congress acting as a constituent assembly. According to him, proposed constitutional amendments will be reflective of the people's will when coming from a constitutional convention because the members are elected by the people.

But so are the members of Congress. Theoretically, they are representatives of the people. Perhaps, JoeCon did not tell me that he believes, as I do, that Congress, particularly the House of Representatives has long ceased to articulate the people's issues. It chose to be Arroyo's sycophant, her weapon against the Filipino forces out to dislodge her, her asylum from political doom. It is nauseating how its members can cavalierly throw out an impeachment complaint like it were some piece of trash. In 2005, some of the Representatives even had the gall to say they were voting against impeachment for the sake of their children and grandchildren.

Even a Constitutional Convention may turn out to be Arroyo's lapdog. What guarantee is there that elections for Concon members will float up the people's will? In this country, elections are sham proceedings. Were they free, clean and honest, Arroyo would not be calling the shots in Malacanang. With the desperation with which she wants charter change, she can field candidates as she fielded party lists of her political mold. Then she can just make a call to COMELEC Commissioners. And many of the COMELEC commissioners are not exactly above question. But again, that is precisely why they were appointed. The Arroyo Regime can survive when the moral fiber of the institutions in this country are weakened. And it has so far flourished because the courts, the House of Representatives, the COMELEC among others have been morally debilitated by electoral fraud and political appointments.

Charter change is neither about solving the Mindanao crisis, nor about boosting the economy as House Speaker Prospero Nograles claims. Didn't his boss boast not more than once that the Philippine economy has never been better? Stripped naked, the "cha- cha" moves are about Arroyo's obsession to cleave to power. And she has reasons to extend her term, not the least her desperation for impunity. Her crimes against the Filipino people are myriad and power is her only shield from prosecution. She believes that while President, she is immune from suits even if the Constitution, unlike the previous ones, has no provision to this effect. There is a Supreme Court all too willing to sustain this illusion of hers. The surest buffer from old age in prison is a lifelong claim to the presidency. That requires charter change, unless she declares martial law as some fear.

I have another reason to believe that "cha-cha" is about impunity. The Philippines already signed the Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court. All that is left to make the Philippines a party to the treaty is for Arroyo to indorse it to the Senate for ratification. Deliberately, she is sitting on it. Why? She is succumbing to US pressure, some quarters suspect. George Bush, to dodge liability for the terror acts he committed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, unsigned the treaty. But I suspect that the US pressure is not nearly as important as Arroyo's selfish reasons. Under the treaty, she may be held liable for the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances committed under her watch, even while she is sitting President. Before the ICC, the Arroyo Supreme Court cannot come to her rescue to cloister her from criminal suits. She cannot invoke immunity. The thick shield of impunity with which her government is committing human rights violations will be smashed once the Philippines becomes a party to the Rome Statute.

Desperately, Arroyo has contrived every situation possible to justify charter change. The worst is the failed memorandum of agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. She dangled some promises that not only she could not keep but also she would not keep. The MILF, driven to extreme anger, ran amok and massacred people.

The mass slaughter fitted well into Arroyo's plans. At last, an excuse for charter change was delivered to her in a silver platter, never mind if it was drenched in the blood of the innocent. And she said, "The problem in Mindanao justifies the need to shift to federalism."

You do not just shift to federalism at the snap of Arroyo's finger. The country's fundamental law which provides for a unitary government has to be amended. When Arroyo preached on the merits of federalism as the solution to the Mindanao question, she was campaigning for charter change. She wants it so much, and when she wants it so much, it must be bad for the nation.

I heard the arguments for charter change and I must admit that some are worth pondering. But before we talk about charter change, let us first clear the discussion table.

While the clutter called Gloria Arroyo is all over the table, the discourse cannot begin.

(This article also appears in the Northern Dispatch Weekly.)

MARKY CIELO: THE BOY WHO REAWAKENED IGOROT CONSCIOUSNESS

Charles de Gaulle said, “The grave is full of indispensable people.” Last Sunday, Marky Cielo joined them.

He was at the height of his popularity. As I write this, the nation grieves over his unexpected demise. It will take a long time for the Cordillera to come to terms with the death of this young man who will always be a model to peoples struggling with their indigenous identities and against racial and ethnic  prejudice.

Mark Angelo Cadaweng Cielo was an ordinary person with extraordinary achievements the least being that he reshaped the Igorot consciousness of that strange planet called show business. Igorots are not fascinated by the world of celebrities – a world scourged with scandals and intrigues alien to our cultures. Showbiz is like oxygen to us –we know it exists but we hardly notice it. In Baguio City, celebrities come and go but no one mobs them.

To a certain degree, Marky eroded this nonchalance when he joined Starstruck, a national talent search show. On Day One, the boy, all too cognizant that there is an overwhelming ethnic bias against Igorots, declared, “I am an Igorot,” like it was a badge of honor. Articulating on national television the bigotry against indigenous peoples, another contestant revealed dislike for Marky on account of the latter’s “Igorotness.”

The eyes of a people that used to ignore show business got glued to the television screen. The Igorots’ collective heart was touched by Marky’s proud acknowledgment of his indigenous roots while their collective pride was seriously wounded by ethnic discrimination. As their ancestors congregated around their love for liberty to resist Spanish colonization, they united around their ethnic identity to rise against chauvinism. History was repeating itself.

In the 1950s, Carlos Romulo’s effigy was burned in Baguio’s Malcolm Square, now People’s Park. What did Romulo do to whip up impassioned ire? In his book Mother America, he wrote: “The fact remains that the Igorot is not Filipino and we are not related, and it hurts our feelings to see him pictured in American newspapers under such captions as ‘Typical Filipino Tribesman.’” Igorot students, now our parents and grandparents, mobilized one of the biggest mass actions in Baguio City. Aside from Romulo’s effigy, several copies of the book were reduced to ashes. The former UN President, UN Security Council Chairman and Pulitzer prize winner, was forced to apologize. That was a moment for the Igorots.

The opportunity to again rally around our besieged ethnic identity came in 1988. Ramon Labo, then Baguo City Mayor was quoted by Manila Chronicle to have said: “We will not lose (the elections) to those Igorots. They urinate anywhere . . . that is why we club them. . . . The Igorots are traitors. They are civil in front of you, but once you turn your back they stab you.” Like a blitzkrieg, a massive rally confronted him. I was among the incensed young people in that momentous gathering.

With the same outrage that spurred the burning of Romulo’s effigy and book and the protest against Labo in his own kingdom, Igorots, here and abroad, tremendously supported Marky with text and internet votes. The candid, talented boy topped the competition. Right after his victory, Harry Basingat, moderator of Bibaknets, the biggest online Igorot forum, predicted that Marky’s victory, which he helped propel by spearheading an international text brigade, would make Igorots – even those “in the closet” - proud of their ethnic heritage. And it did.

As Marky reawakened the Igorots’ consciousness of their identity, he also helped reshape the outsiders’ awareness of Igorots.

Igorot history has long been a victim of suppression. Historian William Henry Scott wrote: “It is a strange thing that history textbooks commonly in use in…the Philippines never mention the fact that the Igorot peoples of Northern Luzon fought for their liberty against foreign aggression during the 350 years that their lowland brethren were being ruled over by Spanish invaders.”

Because of our ancestors’ record of resistance to foreign colonization, the colonizers cast Igorots as uncivilized people. The word “igolot” which means “from the mountains” was bastardized. It became synonymous to inferiority, backwardness or ignorance. The bigotry became ingrained in the national consciousness, thanks in large part to the educational system and the media that perpetuated it.

When I was a university student, people would express their awe that I, a relatively good student, was an Igorot. My experience is not isolated. Our parents and grandparents talk about how the unenlightened country would goad them about their tails!

The stigma was and remains strong that some feel the need to capitulate to prejudice by denying their Igorot identity. There is a story about a girl who grew up among the Igorot Community in St. Lukes Hospital Compound, Quezon City. Asked if she is an Igorot, she replied, “No. It is my parents who are Igorots.” To this day, many Ifugaos and Kalingas, perhaps to insulate themselves from ethnic bias, refuse to be called Igorots. But since Marky’s victory, many also soared above prejudice and are now proud to claim Igorot roots.

Marky’s success did not totally surface our suppressed history, but it contributed to the rectification of outsiders’ misconceptions and the emergence of many Igorots from their cocoon of cultural inferiority. In media events which are powerful purveyors of consciousness, he would claim his Igorot roots when the opportunity presented itself. And since he lived an unblemished life, the cultural majority’s group psyche long soaked in stereotypes and bigotry against Igorots, underwent restructuring. Marky was the specimen of the Igorots. On the part of the cultural majority, disdain slowly took the form of admiration. On the part of closet Igorots, shame slowly metamorphosed into pride.

In the world of show business where scandals are so generic, Marky was a cut above the rest. There was no smear on his reputation and not a whisper was breathed implicating him in anything disgraceful. He lived his life beyond reproach, and this was itself a war against the prejudices suffered by his people, a war where he had the upper hand. He showed the world that the Igorot is not uncivilized, the Igorot is courteous, the Igorot is humble, the Igorot has talents. And yes, there are Igorots who are evil, but aren’t there such scum in every ethnolinguistic group? The Arroyo administration’s record on human rights violation is a telltale sign of civilization’s erosion, and Arroyo and her henchmen responsible for it are not Igorots.

In death as in life, Marky continues to shatter stereotypes against Igorots. I surfed the net and read hundreds of entries about him. Every article that spoke of the boy’s remarkable character mentioned that he was an Igorot.

Manang Mildred, Marky’s mother said that she hopes that people will remember him for the good he has done. Her son’s life will be fossilized in our memory, if not in future history books for many reasons. He has left footprints that future generations of Igorots can always follow and this is a lasting legacy. But for me, his biggest contribution to our struggle as indigenous peoples is that he united Igorots from all the nook and cranny of the earth around their beleaguered ethnic identity, a reassurance that the Igorots are not a vanishing species, a guarantee that Igorots will not succumb to ethnic discrimination, a ray of hope that the ethnic prejudice will one day be conquered.

Albert Einsten said, “Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. “

A young star burst but its light will shine eternal in the hearts of a people proud of him for being proud of them in spite of the formidable odds.

Rest in peace, Marky. Thank you for your life.

PHILIPPINE DEMOCRACY AN ILLUSION

I am able to write this piece not because of democracy but in spite of its absence.

The past weeks, thousands of protesters took over Thailand’s main airport to force the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai, brother-in-law of former Prime Minister Thaksin who was ousted on charges of corruption. They did not destroy a single airport equipment. A Thai court dissolved the ruling party and banned Somchai from exercising powers as Prime Minister after a party executive was convicted of electoral fraud.

Asked to comment on the events in Thailand, presidential mouthpiece Anthony Golez declared that the Thai experience will not happen in the Philippines "because our people have reached a high degree of political maturity whereby our people respect due process and the rule of law."

What gumption! Kulkumut Sinharana Ayudhaya, Thai Ambassador to the Philippines, was quick to demand an apology from Golez. He said, “The protest is only an indication that the Thai people are free to exercise their political right based on democracy.”

Golez should be red in the face until now. Kulkumut’s retort is a veiled rebuke on the state of the Philippine political climate. Philippine democracy is an illusion. Our human rights record states it in the plainest language. The Thai envoy knew he was standing on a moral high ground when he demanded an apology from Golez.

Contrary to Golez’s claim, there is no rule of law in this country. His boss who mastered sinister Machiavellian tactics placed herself way above it. We have a Rule of Arroyo characterized by repression. The Constitution which says that the Philippines is a republican and democratic state, that sovereignty resides in the people and that all governmental authority emanates from them, is just a scrap of paper. How can authority emanate from people who shiver in fear of their government? In a democracy, people can dethrone officials who seriously violate their trust even if they have to seize control of airports to do it. If officials betray the public trust by stealing votes, by bargaining away part of Philippine territory for political expediency, or by ordering the murder or abduction of political dissidents, the people may oust them. It is not only an act of political maturity, it is also an act of sovereignty. In fact, when people revolt against a despotic regime, they do not violate the Constitution. To assert sovereignty is to uphold the Constitution.

The Philippine political climate hinders political discourse which thrives in democracy. A friend serving as a Philippine Consul-General in Europe said to me: “You cannot say that the Philippines is not democratic. You are still free to speak out.” In a democracy, you say the truth without fear of the whip or the gun. In this country, you do so conscious that you invite great peril unto yourself. You condemn corruption in the military, you are court-martialed. You protect the rights of indigenous peoples, you are forcibly disappeared. You fight for the rights of peasants and laborers, you are indicted for rebellion. You expose the involvement of the First Family in corrupt acts of unparalleled magnitude, your father gets booted out as Speaker of the House of Representatives. You defend human rights, you are targeted as a terrorist. This is democracy? This is totalitarianism. And it is flourishing in a country that ratified most core human rights instruments enshrining political participation and which was one of the first 48 UN members to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. The rule of law means nothing to Golez’ boss. Philippine democracy has been purged of spirit.

Close to a thousand activists and journalists have fallen victims to extrajudicial killings and hundreds became desaparecidos during the eight-year Rule of Arroyo. This shames the record of the Marcos dictatorship which lasted for over two decades. The Philippines remains unbeaten in its record as the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. According to the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines, Areteo Padrigao is the 62nd (not 52nd as I earlier wrote) journalist killed since 2001.

Journalists and scribes in Manipur, India went on protracted strike over the murder of their colleague, Konsam Rishikanta on 17 November 2008, the same day Padrigao was killed. Publications suspended operations to demonstrate their righteous indignation. Lawyer Babloo Loitongbam of the Manipur-based Human Rights Alert furnished me a record showing that Rishikanta is the fifth journalist to be killed in that state since 1993. Padrigao is the sixth this year!

And yet, how is the Filipino nation responding? Not with political maturity because unlike the Thais, we are not “free to exercise (our) political right based on democracy.” Except for the privilege speech of Senator Richard Gordon, the murder of Padrigao did not stir up a hornet's nest. Has the spate of killings desensitized us that one more name added to statistics on the murdered no longer shocks us?

Prof Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions said: "(N)umbers are not what count. The impact of even a limited number of killings of the type alleged is corrosive in many ways. It intimidates vast numbers of civil society actors, it sends a message of vulnerability to all but the most well connected, and it severely undermines the political discourse which is central to a resolution of the problems confronting this country."

The political atmosphere is ripe for protests if not a popular uprising or a revolution. But the Filipino people have been rendered politically immature. If one death is enough to send a chilling message, consider that there are more than 900 deaths and hundreds of disappearances under the Rule of Arroyo.

Mr. Golez, the Filipino national apathy is not sign of political maturity; it is symptomatic of alienation, of resignation, of hopelessness, of many other things, not least of all the death of democracy.

Your boss has been presiding over its wake and you are a pallbearer.

(This article also appears in The Northern Dispatch under my weekly column Smorgasbord.)

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a very moving ballad written by Robert Dwyer Joyce, an Irish poet and professor of English literature. It is about an Irish revolutionary saying his final farewell to his beloved, as he was joining the resistance movement against British colonization. Caught between his love for the woman and his love for the Motherland, he chose the latter. After all, as the Filipino revolutionary Andres Bonifacio said, what love could be greater than love for one's Motherland? This young man must have been all too aware that by choosing to join a revolution, he was also choosing to die. And he had to say goodbye to his sweetheart for the last time. Now I am being too sentimental here. The song is both distressing and rousing. Read the lyrics while you listen.

The ballad was inspired by the Irish Rebellion of 1798 which was the climax, at that time, of the Irish struggle for independence from British rule. Many patriots joined the resistance movement. The revolutionaries would carry barley oats in their pockets for sustenance while engaged in the battlefields. According to Wikipedia, "this gave rise to the post-rebellion phenomenon of barley growing and marking the "croppy-holes," mass unmarked graves which slain rebels were thrown into, symbolizing the regenerative nature of Irish resistance to British rule."

The rebellion was quashed. Many revolutionaries were massacred, civilians were slaughtered, women were raped, villages were burned. The failure of the rebellion was one thing, but the heroism of the men who gave up their lives for freedom from "foreign chains" was another. It continues to inspire all freedom-loving peoples everywhere and the Irish in their unwavering quest for independence.

My friend Butch Espere (aka Alex Munoz, the poet) called my attention to the ballad saying that it could be an inspiration for a poem. I played it over and over again. I was not kindled to write a poem (Butch caught me at a very "un-artistic" time), but I was impelled to surf the net for more information about the Irish struggle for independence of which I knew little. I came out of the experience richer in knowledge and more driven to advocate freedom.

Says Butch: "The wind that shakes the barley is an idiomatic phrase that has become part of the Irish language as early as right after the failed Sein Finn rebellion, the one led by Guy Fawkes...before the Irish rose against the British in the Gunpowder Plot. The phrase was more about the barley that grows almost anywhere in Ireland...but after the failed Gunpowder Plot, it was more about the wind that kept shaking the barley, symbolizing ...the regenerative element of Irish rebellion. It is more about the wind that kept fanning the flames of the Irish revolutionary spirit...as to nurse a rebellion that might have been quelled many times over but, nonetheless, refuses to die."

A 2006 film by Ken Loach borrowed the title. The film is set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) and the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) and explores the story of two brothers who joined the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from the United Kingdom.

I did not watch the film but I promised myself I would. Maybe I can do it this Christmas break in between work and work. The film, said to be Loach's most successful, is internationally acclaimed having bagged the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

Listening to the ballad, I reflected on the life of Bonifacio, the renowned Filipino revolutionary who consecrated his life for the liberation of his people from foreign bondage. We celebrated his birth anniversary last November 30. His was a spirit no different than that of the Irish who was ready to give up the love of a woman, however painful it was, to embrace the cause of freedom.

OF HEROES AND HEROISM

Under a regime anchored on falsehood, all it takes to be a hero is to tell the truth.

During the National Union of Peoples Lawyers first anniversary, Jun Lozada, the whistleblower who linked the First Family to the multi-billion ZTE bribery said, "They say I am a hero because I came forward to tell the truth. I did not know that just by telling the truth, one becomes a hero.”

Heroes do not rise in times of comfort. While ideal, telling the truth at such a time is not heroic. But in times when to tell the truth is to invite a tyrant to train her gun on your head, it is heroic. The Arroyo administration has invested most of the resources at its disposal to kill truth. It dreads truth, as the Spanish colonizers feared a mass revolution. At that time, you rose up in arms, you were marked for death. In our time, you tell the truth, you are marked for death or enforced disappearance. Yes, Jun Lozada, you are a hero.

To the Arroyo administration, Lozada is no hero. He is a termite threatening falsehood, the foundation of its tyranny. Her heroes are abroad. Annually, she presides over the Bagong Bayani Award and lauds them- Filipinos pushed to seek greener pastures from the desert that is the Philippine economy where employment is a miracle. Why, their dollar remittances are saving the Philippines from certain economic doom resulting from economic mismanagement. Indeed, no one can deny the contributions of our OFWs. But far from being heroes, they are victims.

One does not rise to heroism from being a victim as what Arroyo made of Angelo dela Cruz, a truck driver abducted in Iraq by Islamic militants with threats to behead him unless the Philippines pulled out its troops from Iraq. He was released after 17 days. The accidental hero is no hero. Heroes are conscious of the risks they assume for the common weal. Andres Bonifacio whose birthday we celebrate today knew that by leading the Philippine revolution against Spain, he could lose his life. Yet the ferment of his spirit urged him to resist colonization. Our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) took plane rides out of the country not to keep Arroyo’s economy afloat but to silence grumbling stomachs.

Arroyo’s definition of heroism removes the element of struggle against an oppressive structure. It removes the issue of truth. Which present day Philippine heroism must push to the fore. Which she wants to shove into a shredder. The human rights defenders, political dissidents waging a principled struggle, and journalists in the forefront of resistance to lies are the heroes in these times, but Arroyo tagged them Abu Sayyaf lovers, communists and terrorists. One by one, they are being killed or are made to disappear. The perpetrators obviously believe that they do not only abduct and kill bodies; they also abduct and kill truth.

From its early days, Arroyo and her minions have been telling lies after lies to the Filipino people, suppressing truth when it slackened her grip on power. Her decision to run for President in 2004 after she made an announcement not to a few months earlier was a portent of more lies to spew out of her mouth. When the Senate, through its congressional investigations, was piecing truths about her regimes’ lies, she issued E.O. No. 464 preventing cabinet members, police and military generals, senior national security officials, and "such other officers as may be determined by the President" to attend congressional hearings without her permission. With that EO she had power over truth and lies. The wimp Romulo Neri appeared before the Senate but refused to tell the truth. He got the top Social Security System post as a prize!

The House of Representatives has always been a willing instrument to promote the Arroyo regime’s falsehood. In 2005, the House of Representatives schemed to kill the truth about fraud in the 2004 presidential elections. Last Wednesday, in behalf of Arroyo who is quaking in fear over the possibility of the truth about her role in the ZTE scandal being exposed, it put the impeachment complaint into a train bound for eternal damnation. Even the most hallowed vanguard of truth became a tool to perpetuate an environment of falsehood and promote a national consciousness pervaded by lies. In the Neri case, the Supreme Court ruled that to hide the truth is protected by executive privilege. So what if the truth will set the Filipino nation free?

And it has been oft-repeated that truth sets us free. Truth presided over the ouster of the Marcos and the end of the Estrada regime. Unfortunately, the truth that quashed the Estrada regime saw the rise of the Arroyo principality of falsehood.

Every move of the Arroyo regime is calculated to ensure her stay in power, not to increase the purchasing power of the poor family’s peso. By that, it has to promote lies, using money from the public coffers. Even before former House Speaker Jose de Venecia announced last week that legislators were bought in 2005 to vote against the impeachment complaint, the fact was already well-known. Equally well-known is that many local government officials are given money and legislators are taken to junkets abroad at the public’s expense to buy their loyalty to her lies.

With a huge chunk of the Philippine budget allotted for the promotion of falsehood, it is no wonder the national consciousness is a false consciousness. In an atmosphere of lies, the casualty is freedom: freedom from repression, even freedom from hunger. The streets are begging for mass actions like the ones staged during previous regimes. But as long as Arroyo keeps feeding the falsehood machines and neglects restructuring the economy, the masses will continue to be weighed down by worries over the next meal. The crowds in the mass protests will continue to thin, while queues in offices issuing passports and foreign visas grow day by day.

Hunger, which is worse now than it has ever been in the country, has driven the people to a state of lethargy if not apathy. Enforced on the nation, hunger is a form of repression. It silences protest and resistance to falsehood with as much force as the barrel of a gun.

Enforce hunger among the masses, enforce disappearance of activists and freedom fighters, slay the heroes, slay the truth, keep giving chocolates to the legislators and officials. A combination of all these has given teeth to a tyranny of unparalleled magnitude in the Philippines.

These are the times of living most dangerously. But these are the times that call on us to emulate Andres Bonifacio and be heroes.

These are the times to speak the truth and reject lies.

(This article also appears in The Northern Dispatch.)