Collision Course

BY THE CENTER FOR PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT IN GOVERNANCE
ISSUE ANALYSIS No. 14
July 19, 2007

This week’s human rights summit held on July 16-17 at the Manila Hotel brought together about 250 participants in search of solutions to the epidemic of summary executions and enforced disappearance that has hounded the nation since 2001. Responding to the invitation of Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno, the participants included lawyers, academic scholars, human rights volunteers, legislators, interfaith leaders, press freedom advocates as well as government executives and magistrates. Conspicuous in their blue and grey uniform were elements of the military and police, led by their top honchos. The presence of some members of the diplomatic corps including a representative of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) underscored the fact that this particular domestic concern has achieved an international dimension, the likes of Rwanda and other countries plagued by human rights violations.

The summit was convened to address the deteriorating state of human rights in the country but it came as a letdown to rights watchdogs, cause-oriented organizations and interfaith groups — whose members were also victims of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances – who had to lobby hard on the eve of the event for them to participate.

Just the same, the summit has been lauded as “unprecedented” for having been initiated by the high court chief justice to address the pressing issue of political killings, with about 865 victims to date aside from hundreds other victims of frustrated murder and enforced disappearance committed allegedly by state security forces under the watch of President Gloria M. Arroyo. CJ Puno, in his keynote address, said the judiciary decided “to unsheathe its unused power to enact rules to protect the constitutional rights of our people, the first and foremost of which is the right to life itself.” Described as a “risk taker,” Puno has sought to marshal “judicial activism” to confront attacks on the rule of law the arrest of which, in his opinion, has failed to draw any action from the legislative and executive branches of government.

Unprecedented

In that light, the summit was indeed unprecedented. But the atrocities, where most victims were unarmed civilians collectively in their tens of thousands, have persisted — fueled no less by a culture of impunity and a fear factor — over the past 35 years or since the Marcos dictatorship, then through the various presidencies that followed, and now. The high court itself had been strongly criticized for its complicit stance during martial law and also for rulings it issued after that, such as on the warrantless arrest and military checkpoints that had shades of authoritarian justice.

Under Arroyo, the failure of the country’s criminal justice system to provide succor to the victims of crimes against humanity forced their families and human rights groups to knock at the doors of the international community for intervention. Thus it took nearly 900 killings more and 50 fallen journalists and for the diplomatic and human rights community to sound the alarm before the high court’s 15 justices would be roused from their slumber to find the atrocities as constituting not only attacks against constitutional, civil and political rights but a subversion of the rule of law.

More petrifying to the magistrates, the victims and their kin have lost hope in the justice system precisely because the system –- specifically many of its investigators and adjudicators –- had been prejudicial to them. Graver injustice was being committed due to the system’s failure to uphold the victims’ rights including their right to be accorded justice. Among many prosecutors and judges, there appears to be poor competence in the field of human rights and humanitarian law let alone a compassion for the targets of political persecution. The high magistrates, benumbed by their so-called “cold neutrality,” should be the first to know: the court system is not for the poor and defenseless. The sword of justice that is now unsheathed has not only been unused –- it has long been corroded by the apathy and cold shoulder of the judiciary itself.

Oplan Bantay Laya

It appeared that many summiteers were prepared with their inputs for the agenda toward a “holistic” solution to the killings, whether in terms of strengthening the judicial power or in making sure that the victims’ constitutional rights are protected. This was not going to be easy, however. Those representing the Arroyo government’s security agencies used the occasion as yet another battlefield of their Oplan Bantay Laya: to “win the hearts and minds” of the summit, with a bag of counter-punches against the Left particularly the human rights alliance Karapatan often delivered with arrogance and chutzpah. The PowerPoint presentations during the plenary and declarations mouthed in many workshops on the second day spoke of their avowed role in defending the state against its enemies reminding participants that the killings should be seen in the context of an internal conflict. One begins to comprehend why government’s counter-insurgency is a wrong strategy because it is premised on the erroneous definition of the problem: The main problem, it was said repeatedly in the workshop skirmishes, is insurgency.

The men in uniform appeared to have missed what various presidents had admitted — after realizing they could not defeat the armed Left with guns alone — that unless fundamental problems of poverty and injustice are rooted out the armed struggle will continue. Jose Almonte, a former guerrilla hunter and national security adviser of former President Fidel V. Ramos, admonished his fellow officers in the summit that to defeat insurgency they must engage the rebels with better ideas and not with bullets. He should have also asked them to re-read Carl von Clausewitz: war is first and foremost a political war.

In the end, the cooler heads and rational minds prevailed leaving the self-anointed “security doctrinaires” sounding more like musketeers than summiteers. Among many other proposals, the summit members sought to expand the Commission on Human Rights’ (CHR) prosecution powers; adopt international laws on command responsibility and determine how the state can be held liable for damages; empower investigators to search government/private premises for victims of enforced disappearances; make killings of activists, journalists, lawyers and judges a new crime; the review of state’s military approach to the armed struggle and the resumption of peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).

Many of the proposals seemed congruent with some of the measures that CJ Puno and company had in mind in line with infusing judicial intervention in an issue that cannot be addressed by the judiciary’s co-equal branches, by reason of complicity or default. Yet, the soundness of the proposals should be measured not just in their validity but in the fruits they are expected to bear. Reform is fine where there is least resistance; in the historic struggles of the poor and victims of human rights violations, the reforms that cry out to be heard have either fallen on deaf ears or been muted with reprisals by the state’s reactionary institutions. Congress is the crafter of laws that mangle constitutionally-enshrined rights and liberties, the latest being the much-condemned Human Security Act. First to break the law, the office of the President will, come hell or high water, pre-empt any move that would place it under the doctrine of command responsibility.

Institutional collision course

Given these circumstances, can CJ Puno steer the course of judicial activism aware that this will put the high tribunal on an institutional collision course with the President and the oligarchs in Congress? Can he rally the entire criminal justice system, along with its prosecutors and magistrates, to help bring coherence to this crusade? Can he put real substance and momentum to his “holistic” strategy against the sadistic violence of the state –- of which the judiciary is part?

On a positive note, the first step taken by the judiciary toward the search for justice and redress has been done. It is a good enough move that warrants a shove by all non-state institutions and organizations struggling for a just and humane society. There is no room, however, for entertaining any illusion that the work can bear meaningful results in this generation. More arduous steps need to be taken.

For reference:

Prof. Bobby Tuazon
PSPA / CenPEG

HSA: Terorismo ng Estado

               

SA ISANG bansang may malalabnaw na utak ang mga namumuno sa gobyerno at parang mga garapatang hindi makahiwalay sa puklo ng imperyalismong Amerikano, hindi na katakatakang paratangan agad na subersibo at terorista na ang sinumang tao o grupong nagtataguyod ng makabayan, makatao at progresibong mga adhikain, lalo na laban sa sugapa sa kapangyarihang pambansang liderato at mapandambong at mapaghari-hariang interes ng Estados Unidos dito. Napatunayan na ito, sa maraming pagkakataon, noon pa mang nagdaang mga rehimen at, lumilitaw, nagiging grabe pa ang lahat sa administrasyon ni Presidente Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Unang-una, hindi pa rin masugpo, at walang nalulutas, sa serye ng mga pagdukot at pagpatay na pampulitika na karaniwang mga biktima’y miyembro ng mga organisasyong itinuturing na maka-Komunista o lantarang mga kritiko kaya ng kasalukuyang liderato’t sistema ng gobyernong mapanikil sa mga karapatang sibil ng sambayanan o mapanalaula sa demokratikong mga proseso mapangalagaan lamang ang pansariling mga interes at ambisyon sa kapangyarihan. Ikalawa, bilang pangangayupapa sa dikta ni Presidente George W. Bush ng Amerika kaugnay ng inimbento nitong giyera kontra diumano sa global na terorismo, igigilgil na nga sa Hulyo 15 ang diktatoryal, despotiko’t mapang-abusong mala-batas militar na HSA (Human Security Act) o batas kontra-terorismo.

Batay na rin sa pahayag kamakailan ng dalawang pangunahing anghel de la guwardiya ng Malakanyang, malamang kaysa hindi na abusuhin ng mga kinauukulan at gawing instrumento pa ng terorismo ng Estado laban sa sambayanan ang HSA. Ipinangalandakan na nga ni Sekretaryo Norberto Gonzales, tagapayo ni La Gloria sa pambansang seguridad, na maaaring gamitin ang nasabing batas upang ituring na terorista ang mga kalaban lamang sa pulitika. Walang kagatul-gatol at arogante namang sinabi ni Sekretaryo Raul Gonzalez ng Katarungan na, sa pamamagitan ng HSA, maaari nang pakinggan ang usapan sa telepono (wiretapping) ng mga peryodista at iba pang hinihinala pa lamang na mga terorista.

Bagaman sinasabi ng mga tambolero ng rehimen na may ilalatag na mga regulasyon at mekanismo upang hindi maabuso, lalo na ng mga pulis at militar, ang HSA, napakalabo naman dito ang depinisyon o kahulugan ng pagiging terorista. Depende na sa mga diyus-diyosan sa gobyerno, batay sa dispalinghado nilang lohika, kung ituturing nilang terorista o hindi ang sinuman at kung labag sa batas o hindi ang kanilang mga kahingian. Halimbawa, maaari nang ituring na terorista ang mga humihinging umalis na sa poder si La Gloria o baguhin kaya ang napakabalintunang sistema ng lipunang naghahari sa pulitika’t ekonomiya at naglulublob sa grasya’t pribilehiyo ang iilang elitista’t uring mapagsamantala habang, sa kabilang banda, nananatiling nagdaralita’t dayukdok ang malawak na sektor ng sambayanan.

Sa ilalim ng HSA, terorismo na ang “paghahasik ng takot at kalituhan” at “pamimilit sa gobyernong ipagkaloob ang mga kahingiang labag sa batas.” Samakatuwid, mga hakbang na ng terorismo maging ang mapayapang mga demonstrasyon at kilos-protestang tumutuligsa sa balintunang mga patakaran ng gobyerno na, kung tutuusin, sagrado itong karapatan ng mga mamamayan na ginagarantiyahan ng umiiral na Konstitusyon kaugnay ng mga karapatang sibil at pantao (Bill of Rights). Sapagkat masusugid na basalyos ni La Gloria — tulad nina Ermita, Gonzales at Gonzalez, at kung sino pa – ang bubuo ng Konseho Kontra-Terorismo na papapel bilang imbestigador, hukom at taga-bitay sa ilalim ng naturang batas, tiyak, kaysa hindi, na walang habas na gamitin ng mga nasa poder ang HSA laban sa itinuturing nilang mga kalaban sa pulitika at, gayundin, sa sambayanang patuloy na humihingi ng lantay na mga pagbabagong pampulitika, pang-ekonomiya’t panlipunan sa bansa.

Ano pa nga ba ang demokratikong mga proseso kung, sa ilalim ng naturang batas, maaari nang hulihin at bulukin sa bilangguan ang sinuman – batay lamang sa kapritso’t baluktot na lohika ng Konseho Kontra-Terorismo – kahit walang kaukulang “mandamiento de arresto” o wala pang matibay na ebidensiya at “pinaghihinalaan” lamang ang kinauukulan? Ano pa ang saysay ng demokratikong mga proseso kung maaaring basta na lamang kumpiskahin ng gobyerno ang deposito sa bangko at iba pang ari-arian ng sinumang “hinihinalang” terorista? Ano pa ang kahihinatnan ng isinusulong ng gobyernong usapang pangkapayapaan sa CPP-NPA at MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) kung, sa ilalim ng HSA, terorista nang itinuturing ang dalawang grupong ito?

Saanmang punto tingnan ngayon, higit pang mga problema – sa halip na malutas ang napapanaginipang terorismo – ang tiyak na idudulot sa bansa’t sambayanan ng HSA, unang-una na ang nakaugalian at tumitinding paglabag ng umiiral na rehimen sa mga karapatang pantao at ang lalong pagsalaula pa, sa isang banda, sa Konstitusyon at demokratikong mga proseso. Sa ilalim ng isang sibilisadong lipunang nagmamahal diumano sa demokrasya, hindi dapat magkapuwang at umiral ang isang batas na gaya ng HSA. Sa halip na mapangalagaan nito ang mga mamamayan laban sa sinasabing terorismo, isusulong lamang nito ang terorismo ng Estado laban sa makabayan at progresibong mga mamamayan – lalo na nga’t ipatutupad ito ng isang iresponsableng liderato. Sa ano’t anuman, lagi at lagi namang isinusumpa ng kasaysayan ang mga diktador at mapang-abuso sa kapangyarihan. – RLO

/pinoyweekly

A Dire Portent of Things to Come for Media under Anti-Terrorism Law

BY THE NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS OF THE PHILIPPINES
Posted by Bulatlat
Democratic Space
Vol. VII, No. 22, July 8-14, 2007

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) treats as a serious threat to press freedom and the people’s right to know Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez’s statement that, under the Human Security Act, he may recommend wiretapping journalists who government believes to be “co-mingling” with terror suspects.

In interviews with reporters, Gonzalez made much of the supposed safeguards in the anti-terrorism law and the principle that media’s sources of information are “sacred.”

Yet, in the same breath, he added: “Of course, unless there is sufficient basis or if they are being suspected of co-mingling with terror suspects.”

This is a statement as vague and as fraught with danger as many of the Anti-Terrorism Law’s provisions, especially those that supposedly define what terrorism is and who terrorists are, provisions so open-ended they could actually lead to anyone and everyone who government deems fit being tagged a terrorist.

What, we ask, constitutes “co-mingling with terror suspects?” Interviewing them? Meeting with them in pursuit of stories?

And, we stress, Gonzalez does not even talk of legally proscribed terrorists but “suspected terrorists” and of journalists being “suspected” of “co-mingling” with these terror suspects.

Gonzalez alludes to the ostensible “safeguards” the law provides against abuse.

Alas, as we have seen all too often, and not only in the case of media, such safeguards too sadly become a recourse after the fact, when rights have been trampled and freedoms ran roughshod over.

Just as disconcerting is the fact that it is Gonzalez himself who can recommend who “are being suspected of co-mingling with terror suspects” and thus fair game for wiretapping.

We still remember Gonzalez’ snide dismissal of the murder of journalists as the probable offshoot of drunken sprees or extramarital affairs, or his derisive challenge to those protesting his oftentimes inane interpretations of the law he is supposed to uphold to go to court.

Indeed, given this administration’s general apathy to the continued assaults on press freedom and the people’s right to know, as seen in its continued inaction on media killings and the continued failure of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to issue a categorical order to end the bloodshed, Gonzalez’ latest pronouncement can be nothing but a dire portent of things to come.

We call on the 14th Congress to act posthaste on this potential threat not just to press freedom but to democracy itself by reviewing or, better still, repealing altogether this law that is worse than the disease it purports to cure.

Posted by Bulatlat

Anti-Terrorism Act to be used for State Terrorism

BY JOSE MARIA SISON*
Posted by Bulatlat
Democratic Space
Vol. VII, No. 22, July 8-14, 2007

The Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA, Republic Act No. 9372 or the Human Security Act of 2007) is part of the global wave of fascist legislation and state terrorism generated by the so-called global war on terror under the Bush regime of the U.S. government. Aside from being a tool of U.S. imperialism, the ATA is a repressive tool of the Arroyo regime for intimidating and suppressing the people’s democratic movement and the broad range of opposition forces.

Even before the enactment of the ATA, the Arroyo regime and its military and police minions have been committing gross and systematic violations of human rights in the name of combating terrorism.  The use of the military, police, paramilitary forces and death squads and fanatical cults for the purpose of coercion and suppression coincides with the desperate drive of the Arroyo regime for political survival. We can therefore expect the regime to use such oppressive law as the ATA as a virtual license for and weapon of state terrorism and unbridled human rights violations.
The ATA adopts a highly emotive political term like terrorism as a legal term. This is given a vague and overbroad definition and does not contain a clear legal standard. Thus it allows and emboldens the political authorities to take arbitrary and ill-motivated actions against their opponents and the people in violation of their fundamental rights and freedoms.  
In its attempt to define terrorism as a legal term, the ATA unwittingly admits that it is superfluous and unnecessary by enumerating and seeking to subsume as elements of terrorism crimes that are already well-defined in the penal laws of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). These crimes include piracy, mutiny, rebellion, insurrection, coup d’etat, murder, kidnapping, serious illegal detention, and those involving destruction plus other crimes like arson and even illegal possession of firearms or explosives.

The ATA fails to show how such crimes transmutate into or rise to the level of the supposed super-crime that is hysterically called terrorism, except by suggesting that this involves ideological, political, religious and similar motivations and concerted activities by organizations and individuals (thereby attacking among others the freedom of thought and belief and freedom of assembly) and by pointing to the inevitable results of such crimes, like “sowing and creating a condition of fear and panic among the populace” and “coercing the government to give in to an unlawful demand” as supposed additional elements.

The ATA fails to define clearly and precisely what constitutes these highly political and subjective additional elements and by what scale and degree these aforesaid crimes in the criminal laws of the GRP need to reach in order to qualify as crimes of terrorism.  However, the factotums of the Arroyo regime in the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) – the very same cabal that is behind previous failed repressive measures (e.g., calibrated preemptive response, Proclamation No. 1017, Executive Order No. 464, national ID system) and directors of the bloody national security program (resulting in more then 860 extrajudicial killings, 200 abductions and more than one million displaced people, among others) – presume that they can usurp legislative power and unlawfully continue the process of legislation in trying to fill in what is absent in the ATA under the guise of formulating implementing rules and regulations (IRR). People are waiting to see how the ATC will use the IRR and undertake further actions to outdo the already draconian ATA.

The ATA violates all the principles and standards of human rights established in the advance of jurisprudence and human civilization and in the particular struggle against the Marcos fascist dictatorship.  It effectively sets aside due process and the presumption of innocence by hounding and pouncing on individuals on the basis of  mere suspicion and raw intelligence. It also attacks the freedom of thought and belief, expression, association, assembly, right to privacy and other fundamental rights and freedoms. It resurrects the witchhunts and inquisitions of the distant past. It creates a board of inquisition in the form of the ATC.  It even seeks to extend its fascist long arm outside the jurisdiction of the country and connive with its U.S. imperialist master and agents in inhuman renditions. It brings about conditions far worse than those under the martial law declaration of the Marcos fascist dictatorship.

The Arroyo regime calculates that the law can be made acceptable by first trumpeting it as a necessary weapon against such small bandit groups like the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah.  But even right now, the regime is already threatening to use the ATA against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA) and the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). The position of the Arroyo regime violates the political offense doctrine well-established in the Supreme Court decision in the Hernandez case and the national and international laws that recognize and respect the right of the people to rebel against tyranny or oppression and the political integrity of national liberation movements founded on the just demands of the people.

At any rate, the Arroyo regime cynically estimates that the bandit groups Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah as well as the revolutionary forces of the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant are easy targets of proscription because their representatives cannot present themselves freely before the courts of the GRP. Even if the proscribed entities dare to present themselves before such courts, they would have no access to any of the secret statements and intelligence dossiers provided ex parte by the ATC to the designated courts.  

The ATA is practically a bill of attainder insofar as it seeks through the ATC to proscribe and criminalize and subject to punitive sanctions entire parties, organizations like the CPP and NPA and their leaders and members effectively without any real due process beyond the inadequate and deceptive semblance of it in the ATA.  The ATA uses the long-discredited notion of guilt by association in order to criminalize and subject an expanding number of people to punitive sanctions without truly any due process and without the presumption of innocence before personal guilt is actually proven in court.

The ATA is far more oppressive than the Anti-Subversion Law of 1957. This earlier oppressive law at least required the two-witness rule and a full judicial process before any one could be adjudged a “subversive” and subjected to punishment. But under the ATA, a supra-executive organ like the ATC relying on its political bias and on dubious and uncontested intelligence reports can practically adjudge any party, organization or natural person a “terrorist” and subject this to punitive sanctions.

The ATA can be used to pressure, persecute or punish any party, organization or individual beyond those already proscribed and persecuted.  The Arroyo regime can easily use the ATC to expand the targets of attack under the catch-all provisions of the ATA. The Council can arbitrarily designate suspected officers, sympathizers and members of any organized entity or any individual for that matter as accomplices or accessories in the crime of terrorism or in a supposed conspiracy to commit terrorism.

 The Arroyo regime can use the ATA in an unlimited way to serve its selfish economic and political interests and intimidate and suppress the broad range of opposition, including the legal progressive and conservative forces.  We have already seen how the regime has generated waves of human rights violations against the legal patriotic and progressive organizations and progressive party-list groups, the social, peace and human rights activists among the religious, truthful journalists and other forces in the broad range of opposition to the regime.

The ATC can unleash against the political opponents of the Arroyo regime a series of oppressive actions, such as wiretapping and other forms of surveillance against which the victims have no prompt remedy; indefinite proscription and freezing of financial assets and accounts; fabricated charges of terrorism to cause the permanent imprisonment on the ground of non-bailability or house arrest which result in the curtailment of the freedom of expression, movement, communications and other rights; the three-day detention limit (easily extendible upon a mere claim by security officials of an “imminent terrorist attack”) either to force a confession and consequently imprison victims indefinitely on the ground of non-bailability or to eliminate witnesses and evidence of forced disappearances and thus to ensure impunity for the minions of the regime in committing torture, murder and other atrocities against their victims.

The entire nation and the people of the world have witnessed how the Arroyo regime has used the Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security and the Anti-Terrorism Task Force (predecessors of the Anti-Terrorism Council  and its Secretariat) to direct the murder, kidnapping and torture of hundreds of legal activists (including workers, peasants, women, youth, teachers, journalists, religious, human rights activists, lawyers, NDFP consultants and other people) and the large military campaigns to intimidate, harm and displace more than a million people from their homes and land under Oplan Bantay Laya I and II.

Given the license and weapon like the ATA, the Arroyo regime and its military and police minions are set to escalate human rights violations. Under such circumstances, we can expect the broad masses of the people and the revolutionary forces to intensify all forms of resistance. The Arroyo regime is bent on killing the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations with the use of the ATA. It can only fuel the flames of the armed revolution by escalating human rights violations in the futile effort to use brute military force to subjugate and pacify the people and the revolutionary forces. Posted by Bulatlat

*Prof. Jose Maria Sison is chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and chairman of the International Coordinating Committee, International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS).

Terrorist Tag and Peace

It is tragic that the Arroyo regime is wasting time and squandering what has been achieved so far in the peace negotiations in a bid to maintain itself illegitimately in power. After five years of using “anti-terrorism” as a trump card to pressure the NDF, the government has in fact moved farther from reaching an agreement that could bring about a truly just and lasting peace.

BY CAROL PAGADUAN-ARAULLO
Streetwise / Business World
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 22, July 8-14, 2007

Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez assures the media and the public that wiretapping, surveillance, warrantless arrest and freezing of bank deposits – among a few of the draconian measures the new anti-terror law aka the Human Security Act has in store – will not be used against anyone unless he or she is a “terrorist” to begin with.  Now that’s a laugh.  The law is indeed quite vague about who a “terrorist” is, so much so that it is the likes of Mr. Gonzalez and other right-wingers cum militarists in the Anti-terrorism Council, who will end up saying who is and who is not, a terrorist. Small comfort, that.

Even now the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime is itching to use the anti-terror measure to outlaw the Communist Party of the Philippines or CPP (the repeal of the Anti-subversion Law effectively legalized it) and to impose the onus of terrorism on its armed wing, the New People’s Army or NPA.

National Security Adviser (NSA) Norberto Gonzales rants about the success of “communist propaganda” in placing the blame on the military and the entire GMA regime for unabated extrajudicial killings.  He eagerly anticipates the HSA’s effectivity, insinuating that it will be used to bludgeon not just the communists and NPA but also their so-called front organizations and mass base meaning leaders, members and supporters of the legal national democratic movement exemplified by Bayan (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan or new Patriotic Alliance) and its allied organizations.

When U.S. President George W. Bush bombed the hell out of the Taliban in Afghanistan for hosting Osama bin Laden, the presumed mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the US. mainland, few could argue against the move.  It seemed only right that the U.S. government avenge the close to 3,000 civilian
casualties of the Twin Towers collapse alone.

In no time, the Avenger Bush launched the borderless “war on terror” that saw the U.S. invading and occupying Iraq on the basis of the falsehood that Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.  The U.S. spread out its military tentacles all over the Middle East as well as bolstered its presence in East Asia where the Philippines was declared as the “second front” in the fight against “terrorism”. It became increasingly clear that the U.S.-led “war on terror” was just the convenient cover for America’s
reinvigorated economic expansionism and military adventurism under the rubric of what Mr. Bush and his fellow neoconservatives called the “Project for a New American Century”.

To Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her inner circle of die-hard anticommunists, closet fascists and power-hungry bureaucrats, the U.S.-led “war against terrorism” was heaven sent.  Mrs. Arroyo’s unquestioning support for it achieved two complementary objectives: 1) maintaining U.S. backing for her beleaguered regime and 2) justifying political repression and military attacks against her critics, most especially the Left, in the name of “anti-terrorism”.

Mrs. Arroyo, her generals and rabid anti-Left advisers like Fr. Romeo Intengan SJ and Norberto Gonzales pushed hard for the government-touted anti-terror law, both to please her U.S. sponsors as well as to have a powerful legal instrument to use alongside the policy of “all-out war” against the CPP-NPA, extrajudicial killings of unarmed activists and the virtual collapse of peace negotiations with the umbrella formation, the National Democratic Front or NDF.

There are a host of things to criticize and oppose in the purported anti-terror measure but oftentimes one thing is overlooked; that is, its effect on efforts to resolve the decades-old armed conflict in the country,
specifically the prospect of restarting the almost collapsed peace negotiations between the government and the NDF.

The Arroyo regime, in collusion with the Bush government, used the U.S. designation of the CPP-NPA as a “foreign terrorist organization” and CPP founding chair and NDF chief political consultant, Jose Maria Sison, as a “terrorist” to try to pressure the NDF into capitulating at the peace talks.  The government threatened the NDF with all the dire consequences of being tagged as “terrorist” if it did not agree to an open-ended ceasefire and a government-dictated “final peace agreement”.

Five years later, the government is no closer to its objective of making the CPP-NPA and other revolutionary organizations of the NDF surrender by using the “terrorist” tag.  In fact proscribing the CPP-NPA would cause the permanent termination of the peace negotiations, according to Mr. Sison.

In a 3 July press statement,  Mr. Sison averred, “The NDFP has made clear its just and reasonable position:  it is willing to resume the formal talks of the peace negotiations on the remaining issues in the substantive agenda (socio-economic and political reforms) if exploratory talks can bring about a formal written agreement on certain prejudicial questions, such as the ongoing human rights violations by the regime,  the murder and kidnapping of NDFP personnel and consultants, the ‘terrorist’ listing of the CPP, NPA and
NDFP by foreign governments and the indemnification of the victims of human rights violations under the Marcos regime.”

The NDFP also said it was willing to enter into a ceasefire agreement under its proposed 10-point Concise Agreement for an Immediate Just Peace. However, it rejected any ceasefire “which blatantly violates or runs counter to the existing agreements between the GRP and NDFP, the national and democratic principles of the NDFP and the people’s demand for the adoption of basic socio-economic and political reforms to address the roots of the armed conflict.”

Mrs. Arroyo’s handling of the terrorist labeling of Mr. Sison by the U.S., the European Union and others is turning out to be a gross miscalculation. The belief that such hardball tactics would work on a revolutionary movement that has survived and even flourished in the face of the worst that the Marcos fascist dictatorship could do to it is proving to be the height of political naiveté.

It is tragic that the Arroyo regime is wasting time and squandering what has been achieved so far in the peace negotiations in a bid to maintain itself illegitimately in power. After five years of using “anti-terrorism” as a trump card to pressure the NDF, the government has in fact moved farther from reaching an agreement that could bring about a truly just and lasting peace.

Business World/ Posted by Bulatlat