Pubdate: Wed,  7 Aug 2002
Source: Philippine Star (Philippines)
Copyright: PhilSTAR Daily Inc. 2002
Contact:  http://www.philstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/622
Author: Teodoro C. Benigno
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)
Note: To read more about the Philippines latest anti-drug crusade visit
http://www.mapinc.org/areas/philippines .

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT / HOW DEFINE TERROR

We'll give her a first round of applause, but that is all. If President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her handlers think we are now in her thrall
because she has launched her rip-roaring roseate roadshow against crime,
they err greatly. Sure we do sit up as we see Malacanang for the first time
besieged by a slew of arrested felons in the custody of police. And we are
no less stirred when media, particularly TV, laps this all up with La Gloria
in the midst of it all, smiling, taunting, gloating the "real termites" of
society are now helpless clay in the hollow of her hands. 

Cheers, Mrs. President, but one swallow does not a summer make. If you must
war on crime, I submit we can only sit bolt upright when you haul in the big
fish. 

Those who have been brought with melodramatic flourish to the Palace are
common penny-ante criminals. They are the riffraff, the stuff of everyday
crime, pickpockets, carnapers, bagsnatchers, cellphone thieves, child
molesters, second story thieves, highway holduppers, suspected drug-pushers.
But these can be hauled in by our police and law enforcement agents any day
of the week. Routine really. Except that the Palace has put a spin on the
news. GMA in her SONA declared war on crime. And - lo and behold! - Justice
Secretary Hernando Perez, PNP chief Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. and Chief State
Prosecutor Jovencito Zuno occupy pride of place astride GMA as criminal
elements are brought in. The bugles blare the still phoney message that the
days of crime are numbered. 

Are they? I don't think so. All this reminds me of the time when Vice
President Joseph Estrada as newly appointed head of the PACC (Presidential
Anti-Crime Commission) savagely barked to the heads of organized crime:
"Your days are numbered." It turned out after hardly three years into the
presidency that Erap Estrada found himself accused as the nation's top
criminal after EDSA II kicked him kicking and screaming into the calaboose. 

What now, Mrs. President? Those photo-ops are fine. They show you in
immaculate, long-sleeved white ensemble at the Palace in proud dominion as
the criminal suspects are brought in. We are summoned to treat them like
vermin which in all probability they are. And we are to look at you now in a
different way. Henceforth, we must rip out all our doubts and skepticism
about you as president and realize, what you want us to realize, that you
are the next best thing to Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale. 

Ma'm, we prefer to hedge our bets and wait. 

We want the big fish, the sharks, the barracudas, the killer whales. We want
corrupt colonels and generals in the PNP. The same corrupt colonels and
generals in the AFP. The big narcotics lords who have bought their way to
power while jabbing carefully at their teeth with golden toothpicks. We want
the thieving gorillas of the Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Internal
Revenue. We want to see some SOB senators and congressmen hauled in because
they occupy prominent positions in the political rot that begins at the very
top. We want some name multimillionaires and billionaires in the business
community who are the nation's most notorious tax-evaders. We want past and
present members of the presidential cabinet, notorious for their greed and
rapacity, brought to the Palace in handcuffs. We want name smugglers. We
want somebody arrested immediately and shipped out because he's a fugitive
from US justice. We want justice to descend on the Marcoses, keehaul the
guiltiest ones to jail. Pronto. Tomorrow. Jeez, this Imee Marcos is
beginning to make me sick. 

A big order, Mrs. President? Of course, it's a big order. 

But that's where your war against crime really begins. I have seen this
happen in other countries. In Italy, more than a decade ago, the government
in a fit of uncommon anger cast a big wide net against crime. Wriggling in
the net were present and past cabinet ministers -- even prime ministers I
remember well - like Aldo Moro, Giulio Andreotti, Amintore Fanfani. They
were among the biggest names in Italian politics. Bluebloods actually. But
that didn't matter anymore. Operations Mano Pulite (Operations Clean Hands)
was sprung and Italian justice struck with the unerring aim of a Sicilian
blade. Even if no arrest warrants were issued as yet, those summoned and
investigated agonized for weeks in the stockade. Some committed suicide.
Those found innocent or relatively were released. But already, their once
pious armor was badly dented, their reputations shattered. 

In South Korea, hardly a decade ago, then president Kim Young Sam scoured
society for the nation's top crooks and criminals. 

The result was the same. No big name was spared. The erstwhile sacred
chaebols were hit. A thick cluster of the nation's most prominent business
leaders were hauled in on charges of large-scale corruption. So were a
handful of frontline politicians who not only abetted corruption but waded
waist-deep into it and stuffed millions of dollars into their private bank
deposits. Two past presidents paid the price of runaway greed, namely Chun
Doo-hwa and Roh Tae Woo. Who can forget that gripping scene? Chun and Roh
were handcuffed, garbed humiliatingly in rugged grey prison uniform, their
once haughty rhetoric reduced to a murmur. Their heads were bowed low as
they were indicted then convicted. They lived many years in prison unwept,
unhonored and unsung. Until they were amnestied by President Kim Dae Jung a
few years ago. 

Can we do the same in the Philippines? 

Today, Operations Strike Hard continues to claim hundreds if not thousands
of victims in China. It is the Beijing leadership's relentless war against
corruption - in the government, in the armed forces, in the business world.
Derided at first as concentrating only on the small fish, Operations Strike
Hard eventually lifted its dagger into the high echelons of government.
President Jiang Zemin really cracked the whip. As far as we can remember,
one top-level minister and two deputy ministers were arrested and summarily
executed. In one report, it was claimed that China in just one year arrested
more criminals than the rest of the world put together. The majority
underwent brief trials, then were herded to public plazas. Retribution was
swift. They were made to kneel down, en masse, in long rows. One bullet,
drilled into the brain, sufficed. Each delivered by a single soldier
standing behind These mass executions are almost a daily feature in China. 

I do not know how far our president is determined to go in her "total war"
against crime. 

I suppose, however, that she is beginning to learn the lessons of history.
As George Santayana said, those who do not learn history's lessons are
doomed to repeat them. There comes a time in every nation's existence when
the waves of crime, soared to critical levels. Then they threaten the soul.
And the catharsis begins because they threaten the very existence of
so-called civilized society. To survive, society has to evict and punish
them. The blood must flow for that is how a society renews itself. Reading
that towering historian anew, Will Durant, in his latest tome before he died
(Heroes of History), he recounts: 

"The condotierre violence and sexual license of the Italian Renaissance
under the Borgias led to the cleansing of the Church and the restoration of
morality. The reckless ecstasy of Elizabethan England gave way to the
Puritan domination under Cromwell, which led, by reaction, to the paganism
of England under Charles II. The breakdown of government, marriage and the
family during the ten years of the French Revolution was ended by the
restoration of law, discipline and parental authority under Napoleon II. The
Romantic paganism of Byron and Shelley and the dissolute conduct of the
Prince of Wales who became George V, were followed by the public propriety
of Victorian England." 

How very apt and eloquent! We Filipinos are very close to that crisis. And
every historic crisis brings its catharsis. That is why rebellions and
revolutions occur, convulsions as the daggers leap in the night, the swords
whistle and bring down the heads of tyrants. I do not know if GMA or her
advisers have studied history (I doubt they have, looking at Dante Ang,
Conrado Limcaoco and Ronnie Puno in the eye). But if they have, they must
tell GMA that all this road-show (so far anyway) against crime is so much
mammary moonshine. The biggest crooks and malefactors have to be brought in,
a great many of them. Then and only then, can we start to believe the little
lady with the prominent mole beside her pert nose is serious, afraid of no
one, rides her chariot without fear or favor. 

If, at the same time she carries the war to communist guerrillas, GMA may be
biting off more than she can chew. That is, if this war should be
categorized as a war against terror. And if in the course of such a war
American combat troops join the battle (the Pentagon has listed the CPP-NPA
as a terrorist organization), then we are in for a sequel to Afghanistan. In
the American mind, it's possible the CPP-NPA is now the Philippine
equivalent of Taliban. This must never be allowed to happen for it would
plunge our nation into a vast slaughterhouse. The CPP-NPA insurgency is an
internal affair. 

Outside of the Abu Sayyaf - a murderous terrorist crew indeed but never the
ideological enemy of the US - the Philippines has never been known to harbor
"terrorists" as this word is now defined by George W. Bush. The MNLF and the
MILF were never known as terror organizations. They were and are armed
secessionist Muslim organizations, whose yon years go far, far back when
Spain first then America colonized the Philippines. They sought independence
or genuine autonomy. They were never labeled terrorist. It so happens they
bear the emblem of Islam, a struggling Islam at times, a defiant Islam
seeking its place in the sun. Once America labels them terrorists and
therefore prey to the American war against international terror, heaven help
this country. 

Madame President, you call the shots here, not the Americans.
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MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk