Tweet THE LONG VIEW RIP for democratic consensus in PH By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:09 AM May 31, 2017 Three months after the 30th anniversary of the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, the democratic consensus that Charter represented has come to an end. The final rites were pronounced …
Tweet THE LONG VIEW Non-aligned By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:20 AM May 24, 2017 In Asean, if the Philippines is considered the traditional spokesman for America, Cambodia is considered the spokesman for China. Cambodia and China’s is a longstanding relationship, dating back to Norodom Sihanouk meeting Zhou Enlai …
Tweet Effects Of Duterte’s Declaration Of Martial Law In Mindanao | SPOT.ph What President Duterte’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao means by Manuel L. Quezon III May 24, 2017 ILLUSTRATOR War Espejo(SPOT.ph) In our country, Martial Law has been imposed four times. The first was by President Jose P. Laurel on September 21, …
Tweet Game of the generals Manolo Quezon, The Explainer Posted at May 22 2017 04:19 PM Over the weekend, news of the appointment of retired general Danilo Lim led to chatter on why so many military men get appointed to executive positions. Especially because Lim’s last appointment, to the Bureau of Customs, did not …
Tweet THE LONG VIEW Playbook for our times By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:09 AM May 17, 2017 The genius of a great villain lies in knowing that the decent, law-abiding family men and women viewing his antics may publicly proclaim that they loath him, but that they’re most …
Three months after the 30th anniversary of the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, the democratic consensus that Charter represented has come to an end. The final rites were pronounced by Congress this week, when the House announced on Monday it would merely convene as a Committee of the Whole to sit in executive session for a briefing on martial law. And yesterday, 15 senators excreted a sense of the Senate resolution surrendering their even limited ability to influence events by saying they supported martial law. A far cry from the Senate of 2009 which passed a resolution critical of martial law.
No one expects anything but parochial subservience from members of the House. But senators are expected to put forward a national point of view and scrutinize executive actions as the only officials outside the executive who also possess national mandates. While no one reasonably expected anything but approval by Congress of martial law, it was reasonable to expect it to at least make the proclamation legally iron-clad (and lay out the case for it) or subject the decision to some kind of scrutiny—and put on record each member’s vote for or against.
Then again nothing is obvious to those who refuse to see.
In 1973, Ferdinand Marcos, bayonets at the ready, at least permitted those constitutional convention delegates he hadn’t arrested to go through the motions of a final vote on the constitution he instructed them to approve. However token the opposition, it was put on record. As was the enthusiastic approval of the delegates salivating over their vote being a ticket to a seat in the Interim Batasan Pambansa, an ambition shared by senators and congressmen who quietly approved of martial law. Having privately threatened the Supreme Court with abolition, Marcos fortified his position when the Court put its cowardice on record by meekly stepping aside and declaring the Marcos constitution in full force and effect.
The present Charter’s command that Congress convene without need of a presidential proclamation in case of a recess, and that they vote in joint session on martial law, had its origins in the post-1986 democratic consensus that no man or woman should ever have an opportunity to nullify our institutions in one fell swoop. Through an exercise of creative imagination, Congress invented reasons to excuse its dereliction of duty.
By doing so, the 17th Congress of Pantaleon Alvarez and Aquilino Pimentel III has proven itself worse than the 8th Congress of Cornelio Villareal and Gil Puyat: At least, Congress was in recess when Marcos proclaimed martial law, and its abolition before it was scheduled to reconvene in January 1973 provided the excuse that any institutional response was impossible.
But individual responses were possible. There is a reason the country will always remember Doy Laurel, Monching Mitra, Eva Estrada-Kalaw, Gerry Roxas and Jovy Salonga—they were the only senators who showed up to bear witness to their chamber being padlocked by Marcos’ military); whatever they did before or after, in 1973 they bothered to take their mandate as senators seriously when their chamber was shut down.
Similarly, there should be goodwill reserved for Senators Pangilinan, Hontiveros, Aquino, Trillanes, Drilon, De Lima, Escudero and Poe. Each may have different attitudes towards martial law but knowing well enough a joint session was required, at least did not sign (nor were even asked to, it seems).
And particular disgust should be reserved for Senators Gatchalian, Legarda, Villanueva and Ejercito who, despite announcing they were for a joint session, negated their stand as they ended up signing yesterday’s defeatist resolution; and for Zubiri and Gordon who had participated in the joint session of 2009 only to roll over this time, not least when other participants in 2009 like Edcel Lagman remained consistent in insisting that Congress ought to convene.
Four months from now, we will mark the centennial of Ferdinand Marcos’ birth. We can only assume that by then, the country will be closer to his dark vision of the office he once held, more than ever since his disgrace in 1986. Recall American senator Mike Mansfield’s famous quip, describing the Philippines as “a nation of 40 million cowards and one son of a bitch.”
In Asean, if the Philippines is considered the traditional spokesman for America, Cambodia is considered the spokesman for China.
Cambodia and China’s is a longstanding relationship, dating back to Norodom Sihanouk meeting Zhou Enlai in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955. The warmth between Cambodia and China was viewed with concern by countries like the Philippines which were on the other side of the Cold War.
In late January to early February 1956, Sihanouk, then prime minister of Cambodia (he was king from 1941 to 1955 and, afterwards, head of state from 1960 to 1970 and from 1975 to 1976, then king once more from 1993 until his death), visited the Philippines. He would recount in his memoirs that “President Magsaysay invited me to a farewell dinner to which he had also asked the director of the National Library. After the meal was over, he asked the director to produce famous historical documents which showed that during the 17th century, when an ancestor of mine was about to lose his throne, he was saved by Filipino mercenary troops. ‘You see,’ said Magsaysay, ‘we did not remain neutral when your throne was imperiled. We will soon all be in danger of Chinese aggression—but you want to remain neutral’.
“‘Mr. President,’ I replied, ‘if ever the day comes that your independence is threatened, we will not remain neutral. The Cambodian people, the Cambodian government, and I, personally, would not remain neutral. We will repay our debt if you become the victim of aggression, and this applies also to communist aggression’.”
He then added, “My departure from Manila was in marked contrast to my arrival. The US Ambassador was absent from the frigid airport leaving ceremony… (Subsequent) Public disclosure of the scandalous events in Manila had their consequences. Vice President Garcia complained rather picturesquely that I had not even shown ‘gut gratitude’ for I had eaten Philippine food, then had ‘bitten the hand that fed me’.” Sihanouk pointedly observed, “The sight of a nation which had fallen so completely under the domination of a foreign power strengthened me in my resolve to defend Cambodian independence to the end.”
A little later in his memoirs, Sihanouk narrated, “In an ironic turn of fortune’s wheel, in early 1964—eight years after the events described—the then President of the Philippines, Macapagal, asked whether, in view of my good relations with President Soekarno of Indonesia, I could play some role in easing tensions between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It was the time of Soekarno’s ‘confrontation policy’ with Malaysia. The Philippines also had territorial claims on Malaysia. I invited Tengku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia and President Macapagal to Cambodia. First of all we met at Angkor—the calm of which I have found useful for cooling tempers—later to Phnom Penh, where I arranged a tremendous reception for the President of the Philippines—a hundred thousand people lining the streets from the airport.”
Sihanouk continued, “The next step was for me to visit Kuala Lumpur, Djakarta, and Manila. No welcoming crowds at the Manila airport—just President Macapagal and his wife, bravely clapping as I stepped down the gangway. He had arranged for schoolchildren to line the streets with Cambodian flags. But seemingly unbeknown to the President, National Assembly (i.e. Congress) deputies had sent out trucks to pick up the children: ‘Go home!’ they were told. ‘Don’t wave those Cambodian flags!’ So I was met with banners reading: ‘Sihanouk slandered us in 1956,’ ‘Sabotage his visit,’ ‘Sihanouk — enemy of The Philippine People!’ We drove through empty streets.”
Sihanouk, writing as an ex-king in Beijing exile at the time, closed with this reflection: “It was one of the worst moments of my life—worse even than being deposed, because then I knew that I had my people with me and that we would fight back and win. But to be humiliated in this way in a so-called friendship visit was galling to the extreme, and further embittered me towards the US and its satellites.”
So he became a Chinese one, serving as head of state while the Khmer Rouge engaged in mass murder, until he and they were ousted by Vietnam. He lived long enough to return to be king of a nation committed to alliance with China, with a prime minister, Hun Sen, who was former Khmer Rouge.
In our country, Martial Law has been imposed four times. The first was by President Jose P. Laurel on September 21, 1944, effective the next day. The second was announced by President Ferdinand E. Marcos on September 23, 1972 (he seems to have signed it on the 22nd but backdated the proclamation to September 21). Both these proclamations were national in scope. The third was by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on December 4, 2009, covering the province of Maguindanao. The fourth, covering the entire island of Mindanao, was by President Rodrigo Duterte late in the evening, Manila Time, of May 23, 2017. It comes months after the President’s September 4, 2016 proclamation of a State of National Emergency due to “lawless violence in Mindanao” which still stands.
You might ask, what provoked this proclamation? The armed confrontation in Marawi City, which resulted from an attempt to apprehend the terrorist Isnilon Hapilon early Tuesday afternoon. Bluntly speaking, it took quite some time for people to notice, then care, about Marawi City being in the midst of an urban assault.
Along the way there were rumors, much-shared on social media, of the armed forces preparing to conduct aerial strikes on the city; and a concerted appeal by activists and others, to prevent the armed forces from doing so, even as others angrily demanded to know why the armed forces seemed unable to swiftly smash the Maute Group which, as photos posted online showed, not only responded ferociously to the joint AFP-PNP operation that failed, but quickly grew in scope, including the Maute Group people raising the banner of ISIS.
Many unanswered questions remain. We have been told by the Secretary of National Defense that there was intelligence, but it was poorly interpreted. We have been assured by the armed forces, that what took place was planned, and not a surprise, and that furthermore, that the situation is under control, the Maute Group having fled after it burned down some homes and other buildings. The military says that isolated reports (by this they probably mean both news reports and tweets, FB posts, and pictures from Marawi residents) gave the impression of enemy swarming but what was happening was isolated attacks by sympathizers, as the rebels fled. The military further denied stories of proposed bombing by air, or hostages being taken in a hospital, and so on.
Time will tell if the military can assure the public that their narrative is the most accurate. We know little else besides there being the destruction of property, traumatized Marawi residents, and an alarmed nation, and that the incident claimed the life of one policeman and two soldiers.
Which means one question that needs to be asked is, if President neither Fidel V. Ramos, when 200 soldiers were killed in an encounter with Misuari forces, nor President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, after incidents like the Kauswagan attack in Lanao del Norte by the MILF did not proclaim martial law, and if President Arroyo did so only in one province after the greatest single massacre of civilians in living memory, what, exactly, is epic enough in scale and scope, to justify martial law over all of Mindanao now?
We don’t know. If you look at the military’s statements, it doesn’t seem to know either. Besides our having been told that the President cut short his visit to Russia and has proclaimed martial law over all of Mindanao, and comments, here and there being pieced together by the media, we know little as to what happened, and why the President believes he has no better option that to impose martial law.
But precisely in light of the President repeatedly having mentioned martial law over the past year (he has said he wanted it, then said it was toothless so useless, then said it should be given teeth and used, then said he didn’t want it—but might be forced to proclaim it—then said no he didn’t want it, then said he might be forced to do it, and most recently said he will do it just as Marcos did it), a more helpful question might be, did the goings-on in Marawi City really justify the President’s proclamation, or did it finally give him an excuse to do what he has long wanted to do, anyway?
I’ve seen voices on line loudly insisting that being from Mindanao, they have nothing to fear, outsiders should butt out, because after all they trust their fellow Mindanawon, the President, to do what is right by them.
The problem with these points of view—the President’s pining for Marcos-style martial law, some loyalists saying they have absolute trust in the President—is the Constitution. It neither presumes, nor concedes, absolute trust to any chief executive when it comes to motives or intent, when proclaiming martial law. Instead, it aims to subject any martial law proclamation to—hopefully—thorough public scrutiny, according Congress and the courts, a chance to weigh in. This, of course, assumes a majority of the people who compose both institutions, are not only capable of being objective, but of understanding both the spirit, and not merely the letter, of our laws. We forget how Chief Justice Concepcion went into early retirement because he was broken-hearted over how his fellow justices failed to boldly confront the arguments and methods for executing Marcos’ martial law, and instead, surrendered to it, and blessed it. All the rules in the world can exist but it takes people to live up to those rules, otherwise they’re useless.
The last time we faced a president eager to test the formal (whether written, legal, or informal, the willingness of not only officials, but the public, to accept or reject a president’s actions) rules governing presidential powers in an emergency, that president faced enough people inside and outside government committed to limiting a president’s actions, that in the end, the exercises proved only limited successes.
President Arroyo had declared a state of national emergency in 2006, and the Supreme Court later ruled some of the acts committed by virtue of that proclamation were illegal. It was widely reported at the time that President Arroyo had really wanted to proclaim martial law, but one of the biggest obstacles proved to be then-ambassador Albert del Rosario in Washington, who refused to endorse it (Arroyo dropped the idea of martial law, and promptly fired del Rosario). In 2009, her imposition of martial law on Maguindanao lasted eight days. During two days of Congressional hearings on martial law (December 9 and 10, 2009) her supporters had taken a beating; a final vote was scheduled for the following Monday, December 14. On December 12, President Arroyo cleverly pulled the rug from under the feet of both Congress and the Supreme Court by announcing the was lifting the proclamation of martial law, making any speeches, votes, or cases academic at best.
But first things first. The President is obligated to submit a report to Congress within 48 hours of the proclamation of martial law (see for example, the one President Arroyo submitted to Congress in 2009). Congress in turn must automatically convene to deliberate on the report, and decide whether it will uphold or set aside, the proclamation of martial law. If it upholds it, it remains in effect for 60 days, unless Congress decides to extend it. The Supreme Court, for its part, can look into the “factual basis” for martial law, upon receipt of a case filed by any citizen.
What is martial law? The online Encyclopedia Britannica defines martial law in this manner: “temporary rule by military authorities of a designated area in time of emergency when the civil authorities are deemed unable to function. The legal effects of a declaration of martial law differ in various jurisdictions, but they generally involve a suspension of normal civil rights and the extension to the civilian population of summary military justice or of military law.”
But our Constitution, written when memories of Marcos’ Martial Law and its abuses were still fresh, has imposed many limits on martial law. Neither Congress nor the courts can be impeded in their functions; the Writ of Habeas Corpus is only suspended for individuals, not all of the citizenry, who are charged in court within three days of their capture for rebellion or participating in, aiding, or abetting, an invasion. About all martial law permits, under these limits, is the use of the military where the police would have been otherwise required; and to facilitate arrests which still have to undergo scrutiny in the courts.
Sounds reassuring. But all this can’t cover up the fact that all the best-intentioned rules, elaborate as they may be, depends on the people manning each institution to do their part as expected. The rules assume that a president will behave responsibly, or if not, that Congress and the courts will. It assumes civilian and military people will abide by the limits imposed by the Constitution.
There are three ways in which all the rules could fail. First, Congress: the Constitution requires that the Senate and the House vote as one body, and not two separate chambers. This essentially makes the Senate useless as their numbers won’t matter if the House decides to support the President. Second, the courts: the rules assume our present Supreme Court will never repeat the cowardice of their predecessors in 1972-73. Never say never. Third, it assumes the bureaucracy and the military won’t allow martial law to be used for purposes for which it isn’t intended –a dictatorship, for example. But it can happen, for reasons that go beyond what the Constitution allows.
And here is the heart of the matter. Martial Law is many things, but it is not a cure-all to all of society’s ills. When Marcos proclaimed martial law in 1972, he went down the list of reasons permitted by the Constitution, but added one not in the Constitution: “to reform society.” This was important because being outside the Constitution, it could not be addressed by the charter; and being so broad and ambitious—to change society itself—it could mean anything, and justify everything. Marcos’ “New Society” would last from 1972 to 1981, when it was rebranded as the “New Republic” which lasted another five years until he was ousted.
In a similar vein, martial law as cure-all has been suggested by Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III on Wednesday when he said, maybe martial law can finally solve Mindanao’s ills, including crime. The President himself has famously said martial law would cure all of Mindanao’s problems. But martial law never was, and never is, meant to be a miracle drug for society’s cancers. But suppose, as Marcos did, that if you dangle a juicy enough reason, then public opinion—and the military and bureaucracy are part of the public, too, in that they pay attention to public opinion—will go along with your going beyond what the rules allow?
Which is why, as a debate on martial law now takes place, it would do well to step back and reflect on public opinion. How do people feel about martial law?
Last January, Pulse Asia had released survey results with the following snapshot of public opinion as of December, 2016 (and had also asked the same question in September of that year). Back then, the President had most recently proposed amending the Constitution to give more teeth to a martial law declaration.
I asked Dr. Ronnie Holmes of Pulse Asia if there had been a more recent snapshot of public opinion, and he replied the most recent dates to two months ago, in March. With his permission, here’s the snapshot:
As he observed, “In the March 2017 survey, 65 percent disagreed with Martial Law as a solution. 71 percent in NCR, 76 in the rest of Luzon, and 58 in Mindanao. Visayas registered lowest disagreement at 45 percent with 36 percent agreeing.”
Aside from looking at opinion on the basis of geography, one can also look at it from the point of view of age, sex, educational and employment status:
What does public opion tell us? Martial Law is a tougher sell now, than it has been in recent years. But not an impossible one. The numbers uneasy with, or actually opposed to, martial law might be large, but the numbers for it may be small but they aren’t so small as to be insignificant. And while Luzon is overwhelmingly opposed, the case is much less so in Mindanao and even less so in the Visayas, and among the poor and less educated, and older Filipinos.
The first battle will be in Congress. Here, the national voice of senators will be drowned out by the local interests of representatives. The second battle may be in the Supreme Court, the most traditional of our institutions and thus, the one that hopefully has the longest memory about martial law and dictatorship. But all of them: senators, congressmen, justices, generals, even the President—will be looking to the people, to see if this great gamble can be pulled off, or whether the Palace will have to settle for proclaiming victory while quietly sounding the retreat, as happened in 2009.
The President has been candid about his views. He has now turned his views into reality. This is now about Congress, the courts, and us.
Note
I am thankful to Dr. Ronnie Holmes for permission to publish the results of their March survey; for historical comparison, see below my compilation of previous Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations surveys on martial law, which I’d posted in my blog back in November, 2015.
Over the weekend, news of the appointment of retired general Danilo Lim led to chatter on why so many military men get appointed to executive positions. Especially because Lim’s last appointment, to the Bureau of Customs, did not end well.
What is it about military men that tempts civilian presidents to put them in positions of civilian authority? It is the urge present in all chief executives: to have decisive people, leaders of men in their own right, who don’t debate or question orders but instead, implement them. Over the past half century, many generals reach star rank having taken management courses, too. This makes generals, in many ways, even better, for presidents, than technocrats: they know how to manage, and know how to get things done, with force if necessary.
Ever since President Magsaysay appointed Fred Ruiz Castro, then Judge Advocate-General of the AFP, to become executive secretary, presidents have turned from time to time to retired generals or military officers to be their Little President: Marcos appointed Alejandro Melchor, Jr.; President Arroyo had the most, ranging from retired AFP generals Renato de Villa and Eduardo Ermita, and retired PNP general Leandro Mendoza. But here, the built-in problem of putting military men in important executive positions can be seen in what presidents eventually did with these generals. Castro was fired, because he allowed the president’s relatives to merely visit his office; Melchor proved so powerful and independent-minded, Marcos not only removed him, but abolished the position of executive secretary altogether. President Arroyo created a new position, chief of staff, in the Palace, in parallel with that of executive secretary.
Not all generals are cast in the same mold.
We have had five generations, roughly speaking of generals in our national life. There were the revolutionary generals, then the generals of World War II, the generals of the post-war years until martial law, the generals who earned their spurs during martial law, and the post-EDSA generals. Each generation of generals approached power and politics differently.
Revolutionary generals like Aguinaldo were not professional military men, they were landlords, officials, and prominent individuals who happened to engage in warfare out of necessity, not training. Our first professional soldiers rose through the ranks in the American and Commonwealth periods and were tested as generals under fire during World War II.
Their subordinate officers became the generals of the premarital law era, and historian Al McCoy divides them into two types: those who took civilian supremacy over the military seriously, and those who believed civilians had to give way to the military.
The dividing line between the two was Ferdinand Marcos, who retired the older generals who opposed martial law, and put in place generals eager to carry out his orders to impose a dictatorship. These generals, as they overstayed in their positions, were challenged by younger officers who viewed them as inefficient and tainted with scandals. In turn, these young officers would end up choosing one of two paths: to rebel against authority in the hope of instituting a military dictatorship by means of a coup, and those who remained loyal to civilian authority.
Today, our present crop of generals are the tail end of the generations that divided along the lines of coups and people power, and it can be argued that unlike their immediate elders and upperclassmen, they are fundamentally more inclined to take civilian authority as a given, and aren’t as interested in politics. But even if this is the case, appointing them to civilian positions still reminds older Filipinos of the martial law years.
But just as each generation was molded by its era, each general has to be judged according to his record. For every Danilo Lim who once participated in a coup, there is an Año, who some view as decisively opposed to military intervention in politics. If there are supposed to be 12 retired military officers (not all of them generals) in executive positions today, one has to see if the balance tilts towards generals with a record of political causes or involvement, or strictly professional soldiers.
At first blush, the composition is mixed. There are allies who served or were promoted under former President Arroyo: Roy Cimatu, Hermogenes Esperon, Ricardo Visaya, and Ricardo Jalad. We can call them political generals. There are the ones some believe are professional soldiers wary of involving the military in politics or the drug war: Delfin Lorenzana and soon, Eduardo Año. Then there are the former military rebels, Nicanor Faeldon and Danilo Lim, who are at odds with former soldier-rebels in politics, namely Senator Trillanes and Rep. Alejano. Alexander Balutan for his part, once defied an order from President Arroyo, testified in Congress about cheating in Mindanao, and criticized the Aquino administration. Aside from countering Trillanes and company, then, we could classify them as impatient with civilian processes and governance. The rest, former general Jalad, former Major Jason Aquino, are less well-known, so prudence dictates classifying them as unknown factors at this point.
This rough accounting, however, suggests one thing. Just as the civilian allies of any president represent different factions in a coalition, so too do the retired officers and generals a president decides to hire. That the former generals most outspoken against politicizing the military hold both the National Defense and Interior and Local Governments departments, might be reassuring to some. Only time will tell if they really matter, or if all the other retired officers represent the more powerful faction in official circles.
The genius of a great villain lies in knowing that the decent, law-abiding family men and women viewing his antics may publicly proclaim that they loath him, but that they’re most likely secretly cheering him on—until he fails. This is in comparison to the crime-fighting goody two-shoes caped crusader types out to take him down, because Batman, beyond his costume, is not only boring, but a preachy upper-class twit. After all, the Joker likes to present himself to the public as an unfiltered truth-teller, a liberated soul out to do what everyone secretly wishes they could get away with.
If Tom Wolfe, with his linen suits and homburg hats, is a dandy among novelists, then Roger Stone, who dresses like an impeccably-tailored 1930s mobster, is a dandy among political operatives. He’s been called the “The Dirty Trickster,” by The New Yorker, and the “Sinister Forrest Gump of American Politics” by reporter Jeffrey Toobin.
Last Friday, Netflix released a documentary, “Get Me Roger Stone,” which extensively interviews Roger Stone (and Donald Trump), tracing the life and career of the man who claims he has been out to make The Donald president since 1988, and who claims paternity over the methods and messages of the winning Trump campaign.
Stone likes to brag he was the youngest (at 19) to be mentioned in the Watergate hearings. He takes pride in having been mentored by the notorious Roy Cohn, the lawyer-fixer who served everyone from Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his anti-communist witch hunts, to Ronald Reagan. (Like so many notables in our legal profession, Cohn used to say, “Don’t tell me the law. Tell me the judge.”)
Having helped elect Reagan, Stone partnered with Paul Manafort and Lee Atwaler to connect Washington’s powerful with clients like Ferdinand Marcos. His critics say he is a genius at being a publicity hound, but that his claims to being at the center of things is exaggerated.
Beyond chronicling its subject, the documentary relies on “Stone’s Rules”—the maxims he’s been plugging since 2009 when he came out with a book titled “Stone’s Rules for War, Politics, Food, Fashion, and Living”—to lay out today’s political landscape in terms of Stone’s life and time. Some of those mentioned in the film:
1.“The past is f—–g prologue.” Whether true or not, success today can always be explained as having been made possible by a conspiracy to betray past greatness, in Stone’s case, the unfair persecution of Richard Nixon. Think of the ongoing rehabilitation of Marcos.
2. “It is better to be infamous than to never be famous at all.” Only the weak and ineffectual worry about taste, tact, propriety and ethics. Say anything today to ensure being the headline tomorrow. You can always take it back, which guarantees another headline the day after.
3. “The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring.” (As Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast pointed out, this was a famous quip of Oscar Wilde). No one likes the facts. No one likes reason. What people crave is excitement and to hear what they already believe.
4. “One man’s dirty trick is another man’s civil political action.” Everything is relative, so there is no good, or right, side; there is only the winning side, because to concede otherwise is to limit your ability to win at all costs.
5. “Hate is a more powerful motivator than love.” Perhaps the most basic insight of Stone’s political playbook. You must fuel rage, even if you have to invent facts, because rage is the best shield against argumentation, and instantly kills debate—and it brings people to the polls.
6. “To win, you must do everything”; 7. “Attack, attack, attack. Never defend”; 8. “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack”; 9. “A man isn’t finished when he’s defeated, he’s finished when he quits.” All self-explanatory, as well as 10. “Nothing is on the level.” There’s no such thing as good sportsmanship or a fair game.
The documentary ends with Stone sneering. “I revel in your hatred because if I weren’t effective, you wouldn’t hate me,” he says. And for this political cycle at least, in America and here, he can claim he’s been right—so far.
It was supposed to be huge. A big, beautiful firing, straight out of The Apprentice. So when President Donald J. Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, it was meant to project strength and decisiveness. Instead, it revived memories of alarming incidents from the past, and turned into a week of increasingly negative breaking news concerning the White House.
We need to take a step back to understand why. For Filipinos, media and our political class and perhaps a big subsection of the public, too, are hypersensitive to anything that reminds us of Ferdinand Marcos and how he instituted a dictatorship.
For Americans, their hypersensitivity involves Richard Nixon and the manner in which he tried to cover up the Watergate burglary during his reelection campaign in 1972. At one point, angry at Archibald Cox sending him a subpoena to obtain Nixon’s White House tapes of conversations with visitors and staff, Nixon decided to fire Cox, who’d been appointed as a special independent prosecutor to investigate him. Nixon ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson not only refused, but resigned in protest. So Nixon then went to the next in line, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, and ordered him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also said no and quit. Finally, Robert Bork, the Solicitor-General of the United States who became acting Attorney General (that’s what they call their Secretary of Justice), complied. But the damage had been done and has come to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”
The question that galvanized the American nation at the time was, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” It eventually reached the point where Congress decided it had to impeach Nixon, who resigned when he was told he would be convicted by the Senate.
In the case of James Comey, the issues boil down to these. There are allegations of improper dealings between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. The FBI opened an investigation in the midst of the 2016 campaign. Once elected president, Trump talked to FBI Director Comey not once, or twice, but four times, allegedly asking each time if he could rely on the personal loyalty of Comey, who also allegedly replied that Trump could rely on Comey to tell the truth.
That’s the first issue –the impropriety of an American official, the President no less, inquiring into an investigation about himself and his team.
The next issue was, when did Trump decide to fire Comey, and why did the story keep changing? When Trump finally announced he’d fired Comey, he did it during a cable channel interview and didn’t even bother to tell the FBI director, who got the news as he was in a gathering to address FBI staff in California. Then the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, told the media the firing was due to Comey’s handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton. Over the next couple of days, the White House said it was the Department of Justice, and not the Trump, that insisted Comey had to go. They pointed to a memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod H. Rosenstein as the reason (the Attorney General, former senator Jeff Sessions, had previously inhibited himself from the investigation).
That’s what Vice-President Pence told the media, too. As did the Deputy Press Secretary –only for Trump to insist that no, their DOJ didn’t decide, he did –and in fact he’d made up his mind to kick out Comey months ago. The White House scampered to backtrack, even as Trump took to tweeting angrier and angrier tweets about the whole thing, including tweeting a threat that Comey had better be careful about what he says, because who knows, there might be recordings of his conversations with Trump.
As you’d expect, this was all too much a case of déjà vu for the media to take in its stride. Not only had the White House and the Vice President and the DOJ been left with egg on their faces, but the behavior of Trump’s been too Nixonian to ignore.
But here’s the difference. Back in the early 1970s, the US Congress –both House and Senate—were in the hands of the Democrats even though the White House was in Republican hands. Today, Congress is firmly under Republican control, and since US congressmen have two-year terms, they’re all gearing up for next year’s mid-term elections. Trump may be one of the most unpopular US Presidents in living memory, but he has a firm hand and high popularity among the Republican base of voters. And since Republicans have expertly set up House districts to be safe districts where it is almost impossible for Republicans to lose, at the back of their minds is the risk of criticizing an emotional president who just might campaign against them if they act disloyal.
It’s early days, yet. But among American pundits, aside from the political realities I’ve just outlined, there’s another reality. The FBI is one of the most trusted institutions in American public life, today, with a recent poll putting approval at 80%. Comey himself was deeply popular among FBI staff. His successor told Congress they stand by Comey as an institution. One American columnist observed in the PBS NewsHour, that the FBI is therefore highly motivated to investigate Trump and his people even more thoroughly than before.
There’s an old saying that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Trump is trying to prove that no, you can govern reality-TV-style. To be sure, the media, possibly the bureaucracy, and in private, probably most of the political class, are alarmed. Polling suggests the majority of Americans don’t approve of what Trump did –but it remains to be seen if this will have an effect on his political base, who serves as Trump’s insurance against any Republic daring to speak out against the president.
When Gina Lopez burst on the scene like some sort of environmental berserker, quite a few people applauded her passion and New Age enthusiasm. Keen watchers of the insider game in government viewed it as an interesting example of good cop, bad cop. A zealot can always be neutralized by the bureaucracy, as she quickly found out when the Executive Secretary, in typical bureaucratic style, blandly put the implementation of some of her decisions on hold.
In the end the Department of Finance weighed in, to the startling extent of Secretary Carlos Dominguez publicly picking a fight with Lopez not just in the papers but also before the Commission on Appointments. Congress, for its part, handled her inconvenient popularity in characteristic style. It instituted a long-delayed reform: the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule in the Commission on Appointments, to put an end to presidents simply reappointing bypassed Cabinet nominees; it placed a veil of secrecy over the votes taken in the commission itself; and its members took turns making pious speeches proclaiming fervent love for nature on one hand, and deep unease over the impact of too much environmentalism on the economy, on the other.
The result was death by a few dozen cuts. Slowly but surely, under the cover of entertaining chest-beating by the President, Lopez was bypassed once, twice, thrice—and declared to have struck out. Chest-beating in the Palace was replaced with a meek statement on the separation of powers, respect for Congress, the announcement that a replacement was being sought, and the designation of a new secretary within days.
The slow but sure removal of Gina Lopez and her swift replacement with Roy Cimatu are a study in contrasts. Her appointment was trumpeted as the coming of radical change. His marks a return to business as usual. He will be a good security guard—bad news for the New People’s Army and mixed news for miners and loggers, depending on how he is instructed to do his job.
That this possibility even exists is testimony to the nature of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources itself, a schizophrenic institution in which contrasting priorities—promoting and defending the environment or maximizing the profits that can be gained from extracting natural resources—will always be possible. The only remarkable thing is that it has happened so quickly, publicly, and ruthlessly in the same administration.
Prior to the creation of the DENR, natural resources were under the Department of the Interior in 1901-1916. Then, for decades, it formed part of the agriculture portfolio, hence the old Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources in 1917-1932 (renamed Department of Agriculture and Commerce in 1932-1947, with commerce being added to its mandate, and gaining the Bureau of Mines established in 1938 along the way) and 1947-1974. In 1974, a separate Department, then Ministry (starting in 1978), of Natural Resources was put in place until January 1987, when the Department of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources briefly came into being. Its current form was established in June of that year.
Shuffling portfolio responsibilities around during the Marcos years gave a bureaucratic sheen to things but papered over the acceleration of deforestation, with logging concessions being one of the keenly-sought-after political patronage plums that the president could hand out. The same applied to mining, with established mining companies subjected to hostile takeovers by political allies and relatives. The result was rebellion in the Cordilleras, and competition among the military, police, and NPA for protection money from loggers and miners.
Separating the environment from natural resources during the dictatorship arguably didn’t help the environment, but neither has combining the two since 1987.
It’s entirely possible it has made things worse, since by its very nature a combined natural resources and environmental department will always be at the mercy of a legislature with members looking out for their—or their allies’—interests, and of a presidency that, by its very design, is held hostage by political parties in large part funded, if not actually owned, by business magnates. The environment can wait.
So perhaps it’s time to consider what was proposed about a decade ago: Separate the two functions. It couldn’t be worse than the status quo.
The American humorist Will Rogers put it best when he quipped that the best job in the country is the vice president’s: “All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ‘How is the president?’” At least in the United States, the veep gets to break a tie when one occurs during voting in the Senate. Here, the only work the vice president has is whatever the president decides to assign—or not. This is due to two things. When the vice presidency was established, the country had decided to experiment with unicameralism and there was no way you could have an executive official presiding over its sessions. Second, a strong presidency was envisioned, and it was impractical and possibly dangerous to tie the hands of the chief executive by specifying a task for the vice president.
Then again it was also reasonable then, and even when the Senate was restored in 1941, to assume presidents and veeps would operate as a team. In the days when party affiliation counted for something, and party conventions put together tickets with regional as well as national appeal, chances were rivalries could be set aside for the duration of the term. It also meant that the electorate, as a rule, also viewed candidates for the presidency and vice presidency as a ticket. Voters could—and still can, and indeed, nowadays, they generally do—vote split tickets. But on the whole, they did not.
That is, until the party system started to break down: it’s no coincidence that the first presidential election that produced a minority president—Carlos P. Garcia, in 1957—was also the first election in which the president and vice president came from different parties: Garcia was a Nacionalista, Diosdado Macapagal was a Liberal. The two parties had their last competitive conventions in 1965 (for the Nacionalistas, when Marcos defeated former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez, who up to 2016 was the highest-ranking Mindanaoan elected to national office) and 1969 (for the Liberals, who nominated Sergio Osmeña Jr.).
Since then, presidential and vice presidential campaigns have been personal coalitions. Party affiliation is more of a financial question (as parties are bankrolled, or headed, by business interests) and a vehicle for logistical requirements like precinct watchers. With no incentive to think in terms of a ticket, candidates, supporters and the electorate have little concern for whether the eventual winners will get along, or not. They may even harbor a kind of malicious glee in ensuring the opposite by voting for candidates they know will rub each other the wrong way, out of a kind of instinctive sense of checks-and-balances.
What is odd is that when the presidential system was modified by the framers of the 1987 Constitution, no one seems to have bothered to ask why it was that Filipinos voted for the president and vice president separately in the first place. In 1935 when that decision was made by the framers of an earlier constitution, voting for the two top positions separately was part of the nation-building exercise of the era. Knowing they were instituting national elections for the first time, it was crucial to ensure that both the president and the vice president (whose job it would be to assume the presidency in case of emergency) had iron-clad mandates the people would respect. Having a two-party system ensured mandates would be majority ones; voting separately ensured no vice president could be brushed off as lacking an individual mandate.
Since 1987 veeps are either a threat to neutralize, or, in the rare exception when a ticket won, to fill with a person so unsuited to be president, their holding the job would in turn help the president keep theirs. What is unique, now, is that there is no strategic patience on the part of the ruling coalition. To dangle impeaching the veep is to reveal they lack confidence in the future.
Before there was Francis Magalona, there was his grandfather, Enrique Magalona, assemblyman for Negros Occidental. In 1936, he wrote a letter to the president proposing a minimum wage for government laborers.
The reply he got on August 5, 1936 contains two interesting nuggets of information. First, it was laborers in Davao City, in that same year, who first petitioned for a minimum daily wage. So if we want to be thankful to anyone for whatever minimum wage exists, thank those anonymous laborers in Davao 81 years ago.
Second, in the response to Magalona, it was pointed out that one problem with a national minimum wage was that the cost of living differed throughout the country, and that should be considered a factor in determining wages.
By November of that year, 1936, Commonwealth Act. No. 211 was passed, establishing a daily minimum wage for government laborers. This was part of a package of legislation we now take for granted: it was in 1936, too, that the eight-hour work day was set, and overtime established for those working beyond eight hours. The amount of that original minimum wage was the princely sum of one peso, soon raised to one peso, twenty-five centavos.
This discussion from 1936 continues to this day. Eighty years after the first minimum daily wage was enacted, NEDA rejected a proposed nationwide daily wage in 2016.
But we have seesawed between regional wage-setting, and nationwide wages over the years. We got a nationwide, public and private sector minimum wage law, under the administration of Elpidio Quirino. This established one minimum wage for the entire country in 1951. By the time President Marcos decreed the Labor Code in 1974, the philosophy had changed to different sectors having different minimum wages. Then in July, 1989, the present setup was established, where geography and industry determined minimum wages. Nowadays, Regional Wage Boards determine the minimum wage essentially on an annual basis.
The basic logic of a high minimum wage was best put into practice by Henry Ford, father of the modern assembly line. His logic was simple. If you pay your workers a high daily wage, they will have a higher disposable income. That income would allow your Ford Factory worker to buy Ford motorcars. Everybody happy. Later on, however, when Ford workers decided they should unionize, Henry Ford became one of the most ruthless union-busters. Which tells you one problem labor has with capital: capital views benefits and wages as a favor; laborers view it as a right; the clash, if it isn’t to get out of hand, requires government to step in, which is why we have labor laws to guarantee minimum benefits and rights to workers.
Of course government plays a balancing act: political leaders are financed by capital, not by labor. But labor has the votes. Which is why, regardless of the screaming of capital when it happens, at least once a year, government likes to play Santa Claus and decree wage hikes to please labor.
But is there such a thing as going back to basics and testing to see if data really backs up the whole idea of a minimum wage? Let me share with you one interesting effort in this regard.
It’s a December 2016 paper published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies or PIDS. It tackles this question: what does the minimum wage aim to achieve? And, does it achieve those aims?
A couple of 2014 studies quoted by the PIDS on the legal minimum wage brought up four troubling points. Let me summarize them for you.
1. Following an increase in the minimum wage, the hours of work significantly declined, and the probability, or chances, of getting a job or keeping it, fell by 8%.
2. The minimum wage had a “significant” negative effect on the ability of all individuals to find work. But it had a particularly negative one among young, inexperienced, less educated, and women workers. The researchers assumed this was because these types of workers had lower levels of productivity compared to older, more educated, experienced and male workers. The study suggested that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would lead to the following declines in the labor participation rate: “by -6.36% (for all workers), by -5.97% and -3.64% (among teenagers and young adults relative to 50 years old and over), and by -2.36% (no schooling relative to college educated).”
3. The average real income of households would have grown by about 20% if the minimum wage had increased more slowly. Not only that, but household poverty would have been lower. The reason for this is that if you had one minimum wage worker in your family, you would be earning less than another household in which the wife and perhaps the older children, were also working but at non-minimum wage jobs. The study also observed that a faster rate in the increase of the minimum wage significantly increases povery incidence by 1.7 to 3 percentage points.
4. Finally, the minimum wage, according to one of the studies, had a “significant” adverse impact on employment by smaller firms. These are companies defined as having average assets below 1.1 Billion pesos. On the other hand, larger companies (those with an asset size above 1.1 Billion) had less of a negative, and sometimes a positive one.
So what did PIDS conclude?
First, there is a difference between theory and reality. Theory, PIDS says, actually puts forward three possible effects of a minimum wage on employment: positive, negative or zero, “depending on one’s assumptions about the market situation and the underlying mechanisms governing wages and employment decisions.”
Second, by looking at the actual empirical data, the result is a mixed story. PIDS says in developed countries, the effect of a minimum wage “tends to be negligible or slightly positive.” This is the basis for proponents of a large minimum wage increase here at home.
Third, when PIDS conducted empirical studies that it says “were rigorously done using Philippines data,” what works abroad did not work here at home. PIDS said that raising the minimum wage “had [a] statistically and quantitatively significant negative impact on employment and hours of work.” It added that raising the minimum wage had an even greater negative impact on already disadvantaged sub-groups. It also observed that larger hikes in the minimum wage “tend to reduce average household income and raise the prevalence rare of poverty.”
The lesson PIDS drew from all this is a simple one: what works abroad does not necessarily work at home. Before you think the study should be a cause for celebration for capitalists who hate the idea of minimum anything for workers, think again. All PIDS calls for, is a more scientific, evidence-based approach. Go back to the drawing board, in other words. Find a better way to give labor its due.
(SPOT.ph) ASEAN marks its 50th anniversary with a summit in Manila this weekend. Member countries take turns hosting the annual top-level talkfest, but Malaysia gave up its slot, which is why we’ve ended up being the host. Like the European Union or the Organization of American States, ASEAN aims to foster cooperation among countries that belong to a particular region. We are a large region, a young one, and an increasingly rich one.
A lot of work goes into high-level summits like this one, but by the time they take place, most of the work has been done (as far as the member governments and the leaders that head them are concerned). In a sense, the summit then, is like an unveiling of the results of meetings and discussions that have been taking part over the past year, and to kick off the next round. A lot of the work involves paperwork: the announcement of what took place and why it matters (in diplomatic language, a communiqué); the various agreements that formalize, because the leaders have committed, the association’s goals; and the statements and speeches of individual leaders during the summit.
All of this effort is to ensure that the summit goes smoothly, avoiding the one thing all countries hate: surprises. ASEAN, in particular, because of its history of strongmen leaders with healthy egos and past friction between individual member states, has a tradition of insisting on consensus in all things. The thing about consensus is, it’s hard to achieve; and when it doesn’t exist, then the ASEAN tradition is to set aside the topic.
In the 2017 summit, the elephant in the room is the People’s Republic of China. The Philippines is not alone in having a complicated relationship with this emerging superpower. Over the past few years, quite a few ASEAN member states have had disagreements with China or have been alarmed by Chinese actions. Malaysia was alarmed by a Chinese naval exercise that simulated an amphibious assault; Singapore has had its armored personnel carriers used in military exercises in Taiwan, impounded as they were being shipped home through Hong Kong. Indonesia has taken to blowing up Chinese fishing vessels it apprehended in its waters, while the Philippines famously filed—and won—an arbitration case against China. Vietnam, too, has taken a firm position against China when it comes to the West Philippine Sea.
On the other hand, Brunei has been warming up to China while Cambodia is widely considered as the spokesman for Chinese interests in ASEAN. So even if a sizeable number of ASEAN member countries might want to come together to pursue a firmer line concerning China and the region’s waters, the ASEAN tradition of operating by consensus means any statement requires an all-or-nothing approach.
A case in point is that news on Wednesday highlighted that the draft ASEAN communiqué makes no mention of the proposed Code of Conduct on the West Philippine Sea, an effort ongoing since the Ramos administration, for an agreement among nations in those contested waters, over what sort of behavior is allowed.
But China and the West Philippine Sea are only one item in an extensive agenda for the region. ASEAN operates on three tracks: as a political-security community; as an economic community; and as a socio-cultural community. In turn, member governments work together to achieve six “thematic” priorities: to have a “People-oriented and people-centered” association; to have peace and stability in the region; to ensure maritime security and cooperation; to obtain “inclusive, innovative growth,” to foster resiliency in member countries and in the region; and to be a model of successful regionalism as well as be a global player as a regional bloc. Progress on any one of these points is significant; on more than one point, even more so. And it can be argued that it is the slow, but sure, increase in cooperation between ASEAN countries and other regional powers that in the long run ensures stability and prosperity for the citizens of all the countries involved.
This is all the more remarkable because so many histories weigh heavily on our region. There are ancient rivalries and resentments, in the lands once occupied by kingdoms that ruled territories now comprising independent nations (think Thailand and Burma, or between Cambodia and Thailand); disputes between and among countries that came into being because their territories were defined by the colonial powers: think Malaysia and its tensions in the 1950s to the 1960s with the Philippines and Indonesia, or Malaysia’s expulsion of Singapore from its federation, and Indonesia and East Timor. There are ethnic tensions—on the basis of race, or religion, with rebellions in Mindanao, in the North of Thailand, among minorities in Myanmar, and massacres of the Chinese in the 1960s and 1990s in Indonesia while there was a racial basis to Malaysia and Singapore parting ways. And there is Superpower politics, whether the Cold War up to the 1990s, or China’s regaining its confidence in the 2000s.
And there are different political approaches as well. In a sense, the story of ASEAN in its first 50 years is also the story of an era of leaders who were either the founders of their countries, or the second generation of post-independence leaders. Men—and they were exclusively men—who built monolithic parties, were larger-than-life personalities, who molded their nations in their image. Only in the late 1990s and in this century, has the mantle of leadership passed on to leaders who never knew what it was like to be born the subject of a colonial power; and just as the priorities of creating a nation is different from sustaining it, so, too, have the challenges of leadership changed. People are less inclined to obey; political careers tend to be shorter; and globalization has given more and more ASEAN residents the power to vote with their feet.
Having reached the halfway mark, ASEAN can look at a region and a world different from that in which the organization first came into being. Whether absolute monarchies, party dictatorships, or democracies, what ASEAN feels in common is an increasing need to be bold in facing the rapidly evolving challenges of our world. And it is here where the communiqués matter less than the personal interactions among the leaders. Because all the policy briefings in the world can only get you so far. Statesmanship is still a personal affair; when one leader picks up that phone to try to avert a crisis or solve one, that personal touch and knowledge of the other person on the line, still counts for a lot.
DDS stands for the “Directorate of Documentation and Security” of Chad,. It was the secret police of the dictator Hissène Habré who came to power in a coup in 1982. He began to target ethnic groups he felt were against his rule; as reported by the BBC, these were “The Sara in 1984, the Hadjerai in 1987 and Chadian Arabs and the Zaghawa in 1989-90.” In 1989, after a failed coup attempt against him, Habré intensified a reign of terror in which an estimated 40,000 people were killed and another 200,000 tortured. In 1990, he was ousted in another coup and found refuge in Senegal.
His victims had a difficult time bringing him to trial. When they appealed to a court in Habré’s place of exile, Senegal, the court said it had no jurisdiction over crimes committed in another country. In 2005, after four years of investigations, a judge in Belgium issued a warrant for Habré’s arrest, as the Belgian constitution authorizes its courts to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity anywhere in the world.
What made Habré’s prosecution possible after decades of delay, was the precedent established by the arrest of the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, while he was in London in 1998. An arrest warrant had been issued by a Spanish court, which had accepted the case on the principle, in Spanish and international law, of “universal jurisdiction” for human rights crimes committed even if committed in Chile. The British courts rejected Pinochet’s assertion of immunity and said he could be extradited to Spain for trial (he managed to avoid extradition by being declared mentally incompetent to stand trial).
Using the “Pinochet precedent” as its argument, a case was again filed in Senegal and a judge ordered that the former dictator be placed under house arrest. Senegal, however kept changing its mind on whether to proceed with a trial, largely due to the question of who should fund it. Four extradition requests from Belgium were rejected in the meantime.
Another major breakthrough was the discovery, by Reed Brody, of the detailed records of the DDS: untouched and forgotten, in the former headquarters of the organization. As Brody recounted, an analysis revealed “The documents mention 12,321 victims of abuse, including the death in detention of 1,208 of them. Habré himself received 1,265 direct communications from the DDS about the status of 898 detainees.”
Finally, the African Union (the association of African countries) appealed to the then-president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, who relented. The Senegalese constitution was amended to permit war crimes and crimes against humanity prosecution in the country, even if it was committed elsewhere. Then Senegal decided it would extradite Habré to Chad, at which point the United Nations stepped in, saying doing so ran the risk of the ex-dictator being tortured in his home country. Finally, in 2012 the International Court of Justice at the Hague issued an order to Senegal: put him on trial immediately, or extradite him to Belgium.
In 2013 the Special African Chamber was established for the specific purpose of the trial of Habré. Lasting nine months, the trial resulted in a conviction on May 30, 2016 for crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, and rape. The ex-dictator was sentenced to life imprisonment in Senegal.
Human Rights Watch traces the concept of “universal jurisdiction” to the crime of piracy, since pirates would have been difficult to pin down if the law insisted on countries only trying cases involving crimes within their territory. For human rights, a similar principle operates: no violator of human rights should be able to enjoy a safe haven on the basis of national sovereignty. The UN Conventions on turture, genocide, and war crimes, ratified by many nations, further fortifies this principle.
The very existence of the International Criminal Court at the Hague bolsters these convenants, as it is precisely meant to be the “court of last resort” for the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The ICC has convicted former heads of state and other leaders, for example, Jean-Pierre Bemba, former Vice President of the Congo was arrested in 2008 and convicted in 2016 (an additional year was added to his 18-year sentence just this year); ex-president Laurent Gbago of the Ivory Coast was ordered arrested in 2011 and his trial at the Hague began in 2016. President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan became the first incumbent head of state to be indicted by the ICC: he has two ICC arrest warrants on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity: 2009 and 2010 but remains free.
Bashir continues to visit countries uninterested in the Rome Statutes. While he remains in power, chances are he will remain a free man. But as Habré and his DDS discovered, your luck can eventually run out in the face of relentless prosecution for your crimes.
Why impeachment is a threat to President Duterte — even if everyone knows it won’t pass
By Manuel Quezon IIIApril 25
On April 8, in Navotas city in the Philippines, family members mourn a man who was allegedly involved in the illegal drug trade who was shot dead by unknown gunmen. (Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency)
Manuel Quezon III is a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper and the host of the political affairs show “The Explainer” on the ABS-CBN TV news channel.
As Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was preparing to host ASEAN leaders in a summit in Manila this week, he received an unpleasant surprise. A Filipino lawyer, Jude Sabio, filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing Duterte and 11 others of crimes against humanity. His 77-page complaint puts forward the testimony of his clients, two self-confessed hired assassins who claim they took part in a campaign of liquidations stretching back to 1988, when Duterte became mayor of Davao City. By this account, the president’s current war on drugs, which has taken the lives of at least 4,000 people, is merely the latest installment in a long history of bloodletting.
These two witnesses have bedeviled the administration for months. Earlier this year, a Duterte ally, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, offered a glimpse of how the government aims to contain the allegations. One of Sabio’s clients, a police officer named Arturo Lascanas, confessed that he had personally participated in the liquidation of drug suspects and political enemies of the president. Lacson held a hearing, allowed Lascanas to make a statement and then promptly gaveled the hearing closed, forestalling sustained questioning and testimony on the matter.
But the issue won’t go away. Earlier this month, Patrick Murphy, deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia, briefed reporters on the situation in the Philippines. “We however do have a very sustained and deep concern when elements of the drug war are operating outside the rule of law,” he said. “The growing number of extrajudicial killings is troubling.” At about the same time, Time Magazine released its 100 Most Influential list, which included both Duterte and one of his foremost critics, detained Sen. Leila de Lima.
Foreigners are not the only ones worried about how things are going. Public opinion within the Philippines is showing increasing unease with the drug war. In one recent poll, 73 percent of respondents said they were worried that they or someone they knew could become a victim of extrajudicial killings. (That was slightly down from 78 percent last December.) Filipinos remain divided on police claims that drug suspects who were killed resisted arrest: 24 percent said they believed the police, 31 percent said otherwise, while 44 percent are unsure.
This sets the stage for May 2, when the Philippine congress returns from its Holy Week recess to confront a festering problem: the impeachment complaint against Duterte, filed two days before the recess began in March.
The complaint was filed by House of Representatives member Gary Alejano. He is a highly decorated former military officer who was court-martialed in 2008 for leading a military mutiny in 2003 and joining another one in 2007. He is a political ally of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who has been a consistent thorn in Duterte’s side since the 2016 campaign.
The impeachment complaint accuses Duterte of “bribery, murder, and crimes against humanity” in his war on drugs, alleging a continuation of the death-squad methods Duterte pioneered during his long years as mayor of Davao City. It also charges that he committed graft and engaged in plunder by allegedly having 11,000 nonexistent people on his city payroll and supposedly pocketing the salaries, and claims that he failed to reveal all of his property and earnings in mandatory asset declarations. On March 30, Alejano added more claims (betraying public trust, culpable violation of the constitution and other “high crimes”) linked with the president’s policy of seeking closer relations with China at the cost of tolerating Chinese encroachment on Philippine territory in the South China Sea.
Neither Alejano nor the rest of the political opposition are optimistic about their impeachment effort per se. Duterte continues to enjoy overwhelming support in both the House and Senate, bolstered by the most recent opinion poll results, which remain very high: One recent survey gives Duterte 78 percent for performance and 76 percent for trust (both were at 83 percent in December). Another finds that 76 percent of respondents (from 77 percent in December) are satisfied with Duterte’s performance, which makes dismissal of the impeachment motion inevitable. Even a member of the former administration Liberal Party (today part of the current administration coalition in the House) said an impeachment at this time would be “divisive as well as polarizing.”
And, yet, even though impeachment proceedings are likely to go nowhere, the issue still presents a fundamental problem for Duterte. Alejano and company have stated quite openly that they see impeachment as a prelude to a case in the ICC against Duterte. Their assumption is that the ICC will be more inclined to act if it can be proven that accountability mechanisms under Philippine law are a dead end. Impeachment being dismissed on purely procedural grounds would prove this. Such a dismissal would strengthen the argument of his critics that an international case is required. The ruling coalition could, on the other hand, go through the motions of allowing witnesses to testify and submit evidence. This would be a risky move as it could start swaying public opinion beyond personal concerns over safety.
During the congressional recess, key witness Lascanas went to Singapore due to concerns for his safety. That did not stop other police sources from revealing information about a bounty system, allegedly instituted with official blessings, for the liquidation of drug suspects. The Philippine media has been giving time to the families of victims who have also begun to speak out against Duterte and the police. Officials have started muttering about a global conspiracy to bring down the president. One is inclined to wonder if Filipinos will believe them.
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May 24
SpotPH Commentary: Effects Of Duterte’s Declaration Of Martial Law In Mindanao
Articles, Commentary
by mlq3
Effects Of Duterte’s Declaration Of Martial Law In Mindanao | SPOT.ph
What President Duterte’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao means
May 24, 2017
(SPOT.ph)
In our country, Martial Law has been imposed four times. The first was by President Jose P. Laurel on September 21, 1944, effective the next day. The second was announced by President Ferdinand E. Marcos on September 23, 1972 (he seems to have signed it on the 22nd but backdated the proclamation to September 21). Both these proclamations were national in scope. The third was by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on December 4, 2009, covering the province of Maguindanao. The fourth, covering the entire island of Mindanao, was by President Rodrigo Duterte late in the evening, Manila Time, of May 23, 2017. It comes months after the President’s September 4, 2016 proclamation of a State of National Emergency due to “lawless violence in Mindanao” which still stands.
You might ask, what provoked this proclamation? The armed confrontation in Marawi City, which resulted from an attempt to apprehend the terrorist Isnilon Hapilon early Tuesday afternoon. Bluntly speaking, it took quite some time for people to notice, then care, about Marawi City being in the midst of an urban assault.
Along the way there were rumors, much-shared on social media, of the armed forces preparing to conduct aerial strikes on the city; and a concerted appeal by activists and others, to prevent the armed forces from doing so, even as others angrily demanded to know why the armed forces seemed unable to swiftly smash the Maute Group which, as photos posted online showed, not only responded ferociously to the joint AFP-PNP operation that failed, but quickly grew in scope, including the Maute Group people raising the banner of ISIS.
Many unanswered questions remain. We have been told by the Secretary of National Defense that there was intelligence, but it was poorly interpreted. We have been assured by the armed forces, that what took place was planned, and not a surprise, and that furthermore, that the situation is under control, the Maute Group having fled after it burned down some homes and other buildings. The military says that isolated reports (by this they probably mean both news reports and tweets, FB posts, and pictures from Marawi residents) gave the impression of enemy swarming but what was happening was isolated attacks by sympathizers, as the rebels fled. The military further denied stories of proposed bombing by air, or hostages being taken in a hospital, and so on.
Time will tell if the military can assure the public that their narrative is the most accurate. We know little else besides there being the destruction of property, traumatized Marawi residents, and an alarmed nation, and that the incident claimed the life of one policeman and two soldiers.
Which means one question that needs to be asked is, if President neither Fidel V. Ramos, when 200 soldiers were killed in an encounter with Misuari forces, nor President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, after incidents like the Kauswagan attack in Lanao del Norte by the MILF did not proclaim martial law, and if President Arroyo did so only in one province after the greatest single massacre of civilians in living memory, what, exactly, is epic enough in scale and scope, to justify martial law over all of Mindanao now?
We don’t know. If you look at the military’s statements, it doesn’t seem to know either. Besides our having been told that the President cut short his visit to Russia and has proclaimed martial law over all of Mindanao, and comments, here and there being pieced together by the media, we know little as to what happened, and why the President believes he has no better option that to impose martial law.
But precisely in light of the President repeatedly having mentioned martial law over the past year (he has said he wanted it, then said it was toothless so useless, then said it should be given teeth and used, then said he didn’t want it—but might be forced to proclaim it—then said no he didn’t want it, then said he might be forced to do it, and most recently said he will do it just as Marcos did it), a more helpful question might be, did the goings-on in Marawi City really justify the President’s proclamation, or did it finally give him an excuse to do what he has long wanted to do, anyway?
I’ve seen voices on line loudly insisting that being from Mindanao, they have nothing to fear, outsiders should butt out, because after all they trust their fellow Mindanawon, the President, to do what is right by them.
The problem with these points of view—the President’s pining for Marcos-style martial law, some loyalists saying they have absolute trust in the President—is the Constitution. It neither presumes, nor concedes, absolute trust to any chief executive when it comes to motives or intent, when proclaiming martial law. Instead, it aims to subject any martial law proclamation to—hopefully—thorough public scrutiny, according Congress and the courts, a chance to weigh in. This, of course, assumes a majority of the people who compose both institutions, are not only capable of being objective, but of understanding both the spirit, and not merely the letter, of our laws. We forget how Chief Justice Concepcion went into early retirement because he was broken-hearted over how his fellow justices failed to boldly confront the arguments and methods for executing Marcos’ martial law, and instead, surrendered to it, and blessed it. All the rules in the world can exist but it takes people to live up to those rules, otherwise they’re useless.
The last time we faced a president eager to test the formal (whether written, legal, or informal, the willingness of not only officials, but the public, to accept or reject a president’s actions) rules governing presidential powers in an emergency, that president faced enough people inside and outside government committed to limiting a president’s actions, that in the end, the exercises proved only limited successes.
President Arroyo had declared a state of national emergency in 2006, and the Supreme Court later ruled some of the acts committed by virtue of that proclamation were illegal. It was widely reported at the time that President Arroyo had really wanted to proclaim martial law, but one of the biggest obstacles proved to be then-ambassador Albert del Rosario in Washington, who refused to endorse it (Arroyo dropped the idea of martial law, and promptly fired del Rosario). In 2009, her imposition of martial law on Maguindanao lasted eight days. During two days of Congressional hearings on martial law (December 9 and 10, 2009) her supporters had taken a beating; a final vote was scheduled for the following Monday, December 14. On December 12, President Arroyo cleverly pulled the rug from under the feet of both Congress and the Supreme Court by announcing the was lifting the proclamation of martial law, making any speeches, votes, or cases academic at best.
But first things first. The President is obligated to submit a report to Congress within 48 hours of the proclamation of martial law (see for example, the one President Arroyo submitted to Congress in 2009). Congress in turn must automatically convene to deliberate on the report, and decide whether it will uphold or set aside, the proclamation of martial law. If it upholds it, it remains in effect for 60 days, unless Congress decides to extend it. The Supreme Court, for its part, can look into the “factual basis” for martial law, upon receipt of a case filed by any citizen.
What is martial law? The online Encyclopedia Britannica defines martial law in this manner: “temporary rule by military authorities of a designated area in time of emergency when the civil authorities are deemed unable to function. The legal effects of a declaration of martial law differ in various jurisdictions, but they generally involve a suspension of normal civil rights and the extension to the civilian population of summary military justice or of military law.”
But our Constitution, written when memories of Marcos’ Martial Law and its abuses were still fresh, has imposed many limits on martial law. Neither Congress nor the courts can be impeded in their functions; the Writ of Habeas Corpus is only suspended for individuals, not all of the citizenry, who are charged in court within three days of their capture for rebellion or participating in, aiding, or abetting, an invasion. About all martial law permits, under these limits, is the use of the military where the police would have been otherwise required; and to facilitate arrests which still have to undergo scrutiny in the courts.
Sounds reassuring. But all this can’t cover up the fact that all the best-intentioned rules, elaborate as they may be, depends on the people manning each institution to do their part as expected. The rules assume that a president will behave responsibly, or if not, that Congress and the courts will. It assumes civilian and military people will abide by the limits imposed by the Constitution.
There are three ways in which all the rules could fail. First, Congress: the Constitution requires that the Senate and the House vote as one body, and not two separate chambers. This essentially makes the Senate useless as their numbers won’t matter if the House decides to support the President. Second, the courts: the rules assume our present Supreme Court will never repeat the cowardice of their predecessors in 1972-73. Never say never. Third, it assumes the bureaucracy and the military won’t allow martial law to be used for purposes for which it isn’t intended –a dictatorship, for example. But it can happen, for reasons that go beyond what the Constitution allows.
And here is the heart of the matter. Martial Law is many things, but it is not a cure-all to all of society’s ills. When Marcos proclaimed martial law in 1972, he went down the list of reasons permitted by the Constitution, but added one not in the Constitution: “to reform society.” This was important because being outside the Constitution, it could not be addressed by the charter; and being so broad and ambitious—to change society itself—it could mean anything, and justify everything. Marcos’ “New Society” would last from 1972 to 1981, when it was rebranded as the “New Republic” which lasted another five years until he was ousted.
In a similar vein, martial law as cure-all has been suggested by Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III on Wednesday when he said, maybe martial law can finally solve Mindanao’s ills, including crime. The President himself has famously said martial law would cure all of Mindanao’s problems. But martial law never was, and never is, meant to be a miracle drug for society’s cancers. But suppose, as Marcos did, that if you dangle a juicy enough reason, then public opinion—and the military and bureaucracy are part of the public, too, in that they pay attention to public opinion—will go along with your going beyond what the rules allow?
Which is why, as a debate on martial law now takes place, it would do well to step back and reflect on public opinion. How do people feel about martial law?
Last January, Pulse Asia had released survey results with the following snapshot of public opinion as of December, 2016 (and had also asked the same question in September of that year). Back then, the President had most recently proposed amending the Constitution to give more teeth to a martial law declaration.
I asked Dr. Ronnie Holmes of Pulse Asia if there had been a more recent snapshot of public opinion, and he replied the most recent dates to two months ago, in March. With his permission, here’s the snapshot:
As he observed, “In the March 2017 survey, 65 percent disagreed with Martial Law as a solution. 71 percent in NCR, 76 in the rest of Luzon, and 58 in Mindanao. Visayas registered lowest disagreement at 45 percent with 36 percent agreeing.”
Aside from looking at opinion on the basis of geography, one can also look at it from the point of view of age, sex, educational and employment status:
What does public opion tell us? Martial Law is a tougher sell now, than it has been in recent years. But not an impossible one. The numbers uneasy with, or actually opposed to, martial law might be large, but the numbers for it may be small but they aren’t so small as to be insignificant. And while Luzon is overwhelmingly opposed, the case is much less so in Mindanao and even less so in the Visayas, and among the poor and less educated, and older Filipinos.
The first battle will be in Congress. Here, the national voice of senators will be drowned out by the local interests of representatives. The second battle may be in the Supreme Court, the most traditional of our institutions and thus, the one that hopefully has the longest memory about martial law and dictatorship. But all of them: senators, congressmen, justices, generals, even the President—will be looking to the people, to see if this great gamble can be pulled off, or whether the Palace will have to settle for proclaiming victory while quietly sounding the retreat, as happened in 2009.
The President has been candid about his views. He has now turned his views into reality. This is now about Congress, the courts, and us.
Note
I am thankful to Dr. Ronnie Holmes for permission to publish the results of their March survey; for historical comparison, see below my compilation of previous Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations surveys on martial law, which I’d posted in my blog back in November, 2015.
Tags: Congress, constitution, Ferdinand E. Marcos, Fidel V. Ramos, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Isnilon Hapilon, Jose P. Laurel, Marawi City, martial law, Maute Group, military, philippine politics, Philippines, politics, presidency, public opinion, Rodrigo R. Duterte, society
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