[APWSLMembers 212] alarming situation in the Philippines

[Kilusang Mayo Uno]

Situation alarming, says US think tank

AN American think tank finds the political situation
"alarming" and expects it to worsen if Gloria Arroyo
continues to hold on to power.

In a roundtable assessment of the situation in
Southeast Asia organized by BrooksBowerAsia held in
Washington D.C. yesterday, Ernie Z. Bower said if he
were to advise Arroyo, he would tell her that at this
point, "she has to take care of her legacy and how she
will be remembered in history," a source who attended
the meeting said.

Bower, former president of the US-Asean Business
Council, is a partner of BrooksBowerAsia, a top
advisory firm for multinational companies in the
United States.

The source, who asked not to be named, said the US is
watching closely the Philippines and Thailand. Bower’s
assessment, the source said, is that Thailand has a
stabilizing element in the Thai monarchy.

"The assessment on the Philippines that I got was that
the situation in Manila is much more volatile. They
feel that Arroyo has nowhere to go. She is finished
but they expect her to dig in. That’s why they are
alarmed because things could get bloody," the source
said.

Bowers’ "alarming" assessment is a departure from his
July 2005 reading of the Philippines when the "Hello
Garci" controversy was just beginning. Apparently
sympathetic to the Arroyo administration, Bowers then
said the Philippines "risks scaring off foreign
investors, not just American investors, if it
continues to question its elections after the fact."

"For the near term, it’s fair to say following the
constitutional process should be the top priority in
Philippine competitiveness," Bower said then.

The source said the problem of a viable alternative to
Arroyo was also raised during the discussion. He said
the name of Sen. Mar Roxas was mentioned.

Last March 3, Arroyo lifted her week-old declaration
of the state of national emergency following a visit
by Christopher Hill, assistant secretary for Asian and
Pacific Affairs in the US State Department. ­ Ellen
Tordesillas/Manila Times

====================

Saturday, March 18, 2006

THE OTHER VIEW
By Elmer A. Ordoñez
US interventions

THERE were two reported US interventions in the recent
aborted “coup plot” leading to 1017 followed by its
lifting a week later but belied by continuing
repressive police/military actions (on party-list
members, the media, leftist and opposition figures and
users of cyberspace).

The first version of the US traditional role (gleaned
from a broadsheet column) is that the plotters were
warned by US agents not to go through with their
conspiracy, otherwise 5,000 US Marines already in the
country under the Visiting Forces Agreement would stop
them.

The other version, apparently contradicting the other,
was that the coup plot was instigated by US agents
themselves who supposedly called the restive military
leaders “meatheads” for not moving to oust the
leadership that had become a liability to US
interests­like the war on terror.

The first version is consistent with earlier US
official and business statements that any regime
change must be constitutional. It seems that the US
has had it with the present administration whose
continuing repression of civil liberties would be an
embarrassment to US professed policy of “spreading
democracy” around the world.

The second version may be seen in the context of
William Blum’s Rogue State which gives as a lurid
catalogue of US covert and overt interventions (from
1945 to the present) into the affairs of other nations
during the Cold War, the US fight against the Soviet
Union and other socialist states (like China, North
Korea, Vietnam, Cuba), and national liberation
struggles (particularly in the Third World).  Now add
Iran and Syria as US targets.

US policy then was one of “containment” to prevent
“developing” nations from falling under the influence
of either Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of
China. The US went to war in Vietnam precisely to
negate the “domino theory” inherent in its “national
security doctrine” underpinning US foreign policy.
Under the Bush’s policy of waging war on terror, the
US has embarked on ill-advised military incursions in
Afghanistan and Iraq where, as in Vietnam, US troops
are dying and hard put to disengage themselves from
the quagmire of suicide bombings and escalating civil
war.  Key officials in the conduct of the US war in
Vietnam like Kissinger and Haig, speaking in a
postmortem forum, are either on denial mode or
conscience stricken­unable to see the connection of
the Vietnam debacle with what is happening in Iraq. As
President Johnson said in 1966: “I oughtn’t to be in
this country [Vietnam] but I can’t get out.”

The lessons of Vietnam have not been grasped by local
supporters of the war in Iraq. I remember nationalist
writers here warned about the perils of supporting the
US war in Iraq in the name of fighting terrorists
(their slogan after 9/11).  Then the US began labeling
as terrorist national liberation forces/
personalities­effectively stopping NDF/GRP peace
talks.

The history of US intervention in this country goes
back to the turn of the century when revolutionary
forces had practically defeated the Spanish
troops­surrounding its remnants in Intramuros. What
followed was a series of US betrayals of Filipino
interests and a ruinous Philippine-American war. The
“benevolent assimilation” or “pacification” drive of
the US had so thoroughly Americanized our way of life
and thinking that by the time the country became
nominally independent in 1946 our leaders and most of
the people looked up to the US for practically
everything.  It would take nationalist-minded leaders
and groups in struggle to regain our humanity and
pride as a people.

William Blum has this to say about US intervention
after EDSA:

“Another scenario of poverty, social injustice, death
squads, torture, etc. leading to wide-ranging protest
and armed resistance. . . time once again for the US
military and CIA to come to the aid of the government
in suppressing such movements.  In 1987 it was
revealed that the Reagan administration had approved a
$10 million, two-year plan for increased CIA
involvement in the counterinsurgency campaign.  The
CIA undertook large-scale psychological warfare
operations and US military advisers routinely
accompanied Philippine troops during their maneuvers.
The Philippines has long been the most strategic
location for US war-making in Asia, the site of
several large American military bases, which have been
the object of numerous protests by the citizens.  In
1991 the US Embassy informed the media that embassy
polls indicated that 68 percent, 72 percent, even 81
percent of the Philippine people favored the bases.
The polls, however, never existed. ‘I made the numbers
up,’ an embassy official conceded.”

The US bases are gone (thanks to nationalist
protests), but a Visiting Forces Agreement,
gratuitously ratified later by the Senate, has indeed
the effect of enabling US Marines to intervene
militarily in Philippine affairs.