Philippines History and Politics

[Soapy Smith]

One of the more bizarre aspects of all of the varous insurgent campaigns-those of the NPA, the Abu Sayyaf, the MILF-is the relative freedom with which they operate. They all have press spokesman, for example, fairly well established bases, give extensive interviews to the press, move relatively unfettered throughout their demarked territories, and don't appear overly concerned about clashes with the military. The individuals in leadership positions within these groups are well known, and often cited by journalists. All of the aforementioned makes me wonder just how serious the national government is here about the elimination of these groups.

As far as I know, the current incarnation of the NPA is that of a group of thugs who make a living by demanding (and receiving) protection money from the larger corporations operating in the region, and from the ransoms related to kidnappings. Regarding the latter, it's often rumored that kidnappings take place with the knowledge and cooperation of local politicians who, presumably, share in the spoils of the efforts. GE

The Misamis Oriental episode is obviously not an isolated event. Another recent gunfight over political campaigning left 13 dead in another part of Mindanao:

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/12-dead-phi...034404598.html

An interesting note here: the opponents of the group that was attacked are endorsed by President Aquino. So Noynoy is in bed (politically speaking) with the group that presumably carried out this attack. Similarly, the Ampatuan clan, which is alleged to have carried out the Maguindanao massacre a few years ago, were politically aligned with the former President, Gloria Arroyo. In that little foray a mixed group of family members and journalists (nearly 60 people) were massacred enroute to filing for candidacy for an opposition candidate for Governor. Some investigative reporters say that part of the connection between the Ampatuans and Gloria was that the national government had provided them with weapons. Their hope was that the Ampatuans could help hold off Abu Sayyaf, the MILF, and other militants. Never mind that this then exacerbates longstanding hostilities between various clans. All of this reinforces GE's point about lack of sincerity on the part of the national government.

So the differences between Syria and the Philippines are that the latter has at least a veneer of government supported by most citizens, and they're much more tolerant in letting outsiders fuck their young women, since it fuels the informal economy. On the other hand, various of the states in the U.S. have current initiatives to arm school teachers with guns as a preventative against future massacres of school children.

[GoodEnough]

One of the more bizarre aspects of all of the varous insurgent campaigns-those of the NPA, the Abu Sayyaf, the MILF-is the relative freedom with which they operate. They all have press spokesman, for example, fairly well established bases, give extensive interviews to the press, move relatively unfettered throughout their demarked territories, and don't appear overly concerned about clashes with the military. The individuals in leadership positions within these groups are well known, and often cited by journalists. All of the aforementioned makes me wonder just how serious the national government is here about the elimination of these groups.

As far as I know, the current incarnation of the NPA is that of a group of thugs who make a living by demanding (and receiving) protection money from the larger corporations operating in the region, and from the ransoms related to kidnappings. Regarding the latter, it's often rumored that kidnappings take place with the knowledge and cooperation of local politicians who, presumably, share in the spoils of the efforts.

GE

[Soapy Smith]

My Philippine news usually comes from sources other than the Manila Bulletin, but I saw this story in RK's link (Manila Thread) to the Bulletin for an article about hot weather.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/philippine-...075005237.html

Most weak interest groups in the Phils are the pols' best friends in the run-up to May 10th. The principal dynamic is the pols buying their votes with cash and promises. But come July 1st, all bets are off. The weak groups are at the mercy of the electoral winners, who have made bigger promises to the well-heeled interests that really matter. The NPA's influence is different. Because they're armed and organized, their influence, whatever it is, presumably remains constant.

The recent gunfight between NPA and a mayoral candidate's security in Northern Mindanao is a telling story.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/aquino-want...042002925.html

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/npa--sorry-...084250455.html

So the NPA controls movement in some parts with checkpoints on the highways. And campaigning candidates are at their mercy? But the President claims they're going to wipe out the checkpoints. Right. The NPA has been operating like this, extracting protection money from businesses, mining operations, and politicians for more than 30 years. And they were birthed from the Huks, who formed during World War II as insurgents against Japanese occupation. After the war their leftist activities persisted, and the Philippine army, even with CIA and American military assistance couldn't eliminate them. The Huks, in turn, were descended from the Communist Party of the Philippines, which dates to the early 1930s, when Americans were in charge. So what has changed that makes Noynoy think he's going to eliminate something that has existed for more than 80 years? Noynoy: put your money into your economy and your institutions, not into your army.

At times the NPA looks like little more than a gang of protection racketeers. But they play for keeps. My squeeze has told me about hiding from the NPA as an 8-year old girl in her rural village in Southern Leyte. Seems like a local woman was known to have joined the NPA. But at some point the woman quit the NPA and came back to her family in the village. A warning went out that the NPA was coming to the village looking for the woman. Like many others in the village, squeeze and her Lola burrowed into a hiding place under their home and hoped for the best. They were scared shitless, and squeeze will never wipe out the memory. They heard gunshots, and then an extended period of quiet. After several hours people began to crawl out from hiding. They found the dead bodies of the woman and her family in their home. A warning to others? Probably. But more important, perhaps a necessity from the standpoint of the NPA because of their need to protect identities and plans.

This attack on the mayor of Gingoog City is in the same province as Cagayan de Oro, only 60 km away as the Tikling flies. Many reports in the forum about CdO as a safe mongering city, but this raises the prospect that hostile Muslims are not the only threat in Mindanao. I will leave it to expats who know the area to describe the situation, but from a distance it appears the reality of urban Mindanao is very different than rural Mindanao. One of our expats described Compostela Valley Province, not far from Davao, as being similarly hostile, even after devastation from a December typhoon.

But this news account tells much more than a story about the NPA. The mayor, about to be term-limited out, is the 78-year old wife of a former Philippine Vice President. Her son is a Senator. Her daughter is campaigning for the mayoral seat she is vacating. This story is repeated in locales throughout the Philippines. And Noynoy wonders that the NPA won't give up their guns and their extortion.

[Jp Slicky]

Noddy, thanks for the photos of history, that was Interesting reading.

[AfAsia]

Saw this while eating, Angeles City.

[Member #4351]

Too much American navy could also raise the price of mongering in the Phils.

That is the important point!

[Soapy Smith]

USA Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has just announced that the US Navy's proportional 50/50 deployment between East and West coasts will undergo a significant shift to the Pacific Theatre in coming years. Look for the navy to be eyeing former bases in both Vietnam (Cam Ranh Bay) and Philippines (Subic) as top of their wish list. Is this 'Deja Vu' or 'Back To The Future'?

News reports say Panetta met with the Vietnamese at Cam Ranh Bay, and General Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Philippine military leaders in Manila over the weekend also. Dempsey's pitch was reportedly to have the navy do more "friendship visits" to various Philippine ports. Both had attended a major meeting with ASEAN and other leaders in Singapore a few days ago.

The Chinese are not happy with this new American plan and with the addition of American marines in Australia. Of course this is about putting a geo-strategic check on Chinese military expansion, but Panetta has tried to emphasize that he wants to help ASEAN create stable maritime practices for the South China Sea. The volume of trade that flows through the South China Sea is extremely important to the Chinese and to others. The Philippines has made overtures to the U.S. over the aggressive Chinese posturing over island holdings throughout the South China Sea, and so they probably welcome American involvement. But American military presence in the Philippines is not popular among some groups in the Philippines, so this puts Noynoy in a ticklish situation.

Too much American navy could also raise the price of mongering in the Phils.

[Questor55]

USA Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has just announced that the US Navy's proportional 50/50 deployment between East and West coasts will undergo a significant shift to the Pacific Theatre in coming years. Look for the navy to be eyeing former bases in both Vietnam (Cam Ranh Bay) and Philippines (Subic) as top of their wish list. Is this 'Deja Vu' or 'Back To The Future'?

[Soapy Smith]

This thread is not seeing any activity, may as well put it to use. Anybody been following the the ongoing Island standoff between Philippines and China? Scarborough is allegedly rich in Oil and Gas deposits. Perhaps the fishing boats anchored there are not fishing boats, LOL.

Scarborough is just one of many disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Spratly Islands (British name for them) dispute has probably been more broadly publicized. Six countries lay claim to some or all of the islands: Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Some of these countries have people on the islands. The PRC has troops and naval vessels at some of the islands, occupying more than any of the other countries, although they insist their installations are civilian only. Yeah, right! Concrete landing strips have been poured on a few islands. Some of the landing strips are accessible only at low tide. There are also fishing vessels that ply the waters around many of the islands. Various soundings have established that significant petroleum reserves lie under many of the atolls. In '98 or '99 President Estrada supposedly convinced the various ASEAN countries, and presumably PRC and Taiwan, to agree to hold off on further claims and incursions, but clearly all of the countries have violated the truce. In fact, the Philippines and PRC actually collaborated in some geologic soundings a few years ago. So the disputes are colored by various countries historical and outer continental shelf claims, but there's also some strange backroom intrigue as well.

Part of the islands intrigue connects to the broadband corruption proceedings in which President Aquino and his allies have been attempting to nail the former President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. During her administration the Chinese had made an offer of a big chunk of money to finance a national broadband system in the Phils. The offer was odd for a couple of reasons. First, the loan amount was much larger than the Phils Congress had originally projected the cost. Second, the Chinese appeared to attach very few strings to the loan, unlike what all the other bilateral aid and international financial institutions would have required. So GMA was in China to sign the deal, but on the eve of the signing she suddenly returned to the Phils, claiming she needed to be with her husband, who had been hospitalized.

But the Senate starting looking into it, and they found some guy who'd been part of the deal-making hiding out in Japan or some such place. They brought him back and forced him to testify. He started to spill the beans on the Arroyos, the Elections Commission Chair and some of their other buddies. The story that unfolded was that the amount was much larger than the projected cost because the Arroyo cabal was planning to rake a huge amount off the top of the loan. Then some journalists started to question why there were so few strings attached. Some suggested that the Chinese knew all about the Arroyos' skimming plan, and they actually anticipated that the Phils would default on the loan. But the Chinese liked that, according to some journalists, because they believed it would give them substantial leverage over the Phils regarding claims to the oil reserves under the Spratlys and other islands.

That GMA backed out on the loan a few hours before she was supposed to sign has been explained in a couple different ways. One is GMA's story that she needed to be with her husband. Another, suggested by some journalists, is that somebody Warned GMA that her political opponents had caught wind of the scam and were laying a trap for her. I suspected the USA State Department caught wind of the deal and the likelihood of the Chinese gaining greater influence over the oil reserves, and they grabbed her by her short curly hairs and told her to get her ass back to the Philippines.

I stopped following the story of the efforts to convict her and her cronies, as it seemed its resolution would be about as conclusive as the prosecution of Estrada ten years earlier. But that's a story for another day-that could only happen in the Philippines.

[AfAsia]

This thread is not seeing any activity, may as well put it to use. Anybody been following the the ongoing Island standoff between Philippines and China? Scarborough is allegedly rich in Oil and Gas deposits. Perhaps the fishing boats anchored there are not fishing boats, LOL.

Also interestingly, the oddly named Maoist, New Peoples Army? It would appear China has a far greater goal than just Scarborough Island, LOL.

[Wicked Roger]

Press TV is reporting an attack in the Tinoc region. I checked the map. Of real concern, Tinoc appears to be north of Baguio City, Luzon. CNN and BBC have no such news. Interesting!

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/237997.html

You mean this, had been there 2 hours

Gives a map and say it was a small isolated town Ifugao.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17837179

[AfAsia]

Press TV is reporting an attack in the Tinoc region. I checked the map. Of real concern, Tinoc appears to be north of Baguio City, Luzon. CNN and BBC have no such news. Interesting!

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/237997.html

[Soapy Smith]

I also quite like Randy David who is, I think a Sociologist by training, and who does tend to write rather more analytically than Conrad does. On the other hand, David lacks the passion, the firebreathing of de Quiros, and lacks the sometimes tortured sentence structures as well. In the case of both columnists however, it's refreshing to find two local columnists who write well. GE

Randy is in the sociology department at UP. I have been told his classes attract students from all over the university. Somebody told me that he had at one time been in a graduate program at Oxford or Cambridge but quit before finishing a terminal degree. I agree that his Inquirer columns are fairly dispassionate by nature. He seems to be devoted to the work of the late German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann. I don't know Luhmann's work intimately, so my interpretation may be suspect. But he seems to cast the world in a grand theory sort of perspective, assuming a view from 60, 000 feet that can explain everything as part of one fantastic social system. This sort of grand theory depiction is not such a new idea. Think Karl Marx, or Georg Hegel, or Talcott Parsons (hopefully you were never forced to read any of Parsons' work). So this perspective means rejecting both optimistic humanists and critical realists as being too micro-focused. From that vantage point individual events and passionate actions all look like miniature pieces of flotsam bobbing along under a Pasig River bridge. And if Randy really does buy into this view, it could explain the distance from the human subject that seems to pervade his columns.

But I have seen some occasional exceptions in Randy's columns. One column in particular from about 2007 (maybe 2008) sticks in my memory. He started telling the story about a young student leader at some university in the Bicol region. The young man had attracted a lot of attention from university administration and even local political leaders for his ideas and his ability to rally students into protest. He also was apparently a gifted student with grades near the top in all his classes. One night he stayed late on campus for some meeting, and having no other way home, accepted a ride home on the back of a motorcycle with one of his professors. As they traveled toward the student's home some unknown person shot the student in the back, and he died soon thereafter. These stories repeat themselves regularly in the Philippines, as Maguindanao and countless smaller scale events show us, but Randy grasped the special significance of this story. And I recall his alarm at the snuffing out of the kind of young person who held real potential to make true and desirable social change in the Philippines-and at the apparent self-serving lack of concern of police and political leaders to find the murderer. We can hold out hope that Randy might more frequently write stories like this that touch down on earth.

[GoodEnough]

I guess I like old Conrad because he's such a reliable left wing liberal, though I agree that his rather endless polemics get tiresome and somewhat predictable. I also quite like Randy David who is, I think a Sociologist by training, and who does tend to write rather more analytically than Conrad does. On the other hand, David lacks the passion, the firebreathing of de Quiros, and lacks the sometimes tortured sentence structures as well. In the case of both columnists however, it's refreshing to find two local columnists who write well.

GE

[Soapy Smith]

Most of the other journalists do some good detective work and ferret out some data. It is rare to read any research in Conrado's articles these days. I also find his journaistic "style" irritating, and his columns over the past 2 or 3 years have become very disjointed.

See what we've got to look forward to? Sorta makes you not want to grow old. I find his recent columns predictable. Not much new stuff these days.