Test Case or Official Policy?

The problem with the way the escalating conflict in Mindanao is officially being handled is that there seems to be no consensus, even within government, on just what to do. Instead of presenting a clear, well-thought out plan on how to combat the ever worsening crisis, the President seems to be bumbling into solutions.

 

Or maybe not.

 

Take the example of raising “police auxiliaries” a.k.a. civilian militias. Just last Friday, Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said government is “thinking” of tapping civilian volunteer organizations to create police auxiliary groups. Puno said this idea is among the many items to be discussed with local government officials of North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte in “consultations” that ended yesterday.

 

In talks with local reporters yesterday, however, Puno admitted that they have already distributed shotguns to some communities, particularly in Kolambugan, Lanao del Norte, scene of one of the bloodiest attacks by the MILF in recent weeks.

 

To justify this unilateral action, unilateral because government is supposed to be still in the process of consulting local stakeholders regarding the wisdom of arming civilians in the ongoing conflict against the Moro rebels, Puno said this is part of the year old “internal security plan” of the Philippine National Police to organize civilians to defend their communities.

 

He said government is planning to distribute 12,000 more shotguns to police auxiliaries who will be “under the command of the PNP” but who will nevertheless be on the payroll of the local governments concerned.

 

That government went right ahead in enlisting civilians to fight the MILF is not unexpected. This is predictable behavior on the part of the President—she has a habit, after all, of launching weather balloons to test public opinion. Public outcry, especially in the aftermath of one of the most vicious attacks in recent years, is a call to arms against the MILF. And this is a President who likes to pander to popular outcry, even when what the public is asking for is not necessarily right. So long as an exit strategy is on hand and ready.

 

By tasking Puno to, on the one hand, ostensibly consult local stakeholders on the issue of raising militias while, on the other, implementing a limited version of the plan, the President is again hoping to play it safe. She can always say, if public opinion becomes too hot to handle, that this was just a test case, not official policy.

 

If, however, the action is welcomed by a civilian population already grown weary of the constant threat of attack, she can always step forward and claim all the credit for herself. Either way, this is a win-win solution for a politically wily President.

 

The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International already issued warnings regarding the use of militias in fighting the MILF. Saying this could only further inflame an already tense situation, Amnesty International said experience from around the globe belie the wisdom of employing militias. Kosovo, Rwanda and our very own experience in the 1970s and 1980s tell us that militias almost always degenerate into gangs susceptible to ambient prejudices, biases, even revenge.

 

Yet here we are. Again.

 

We in Mindanao have been caught up in a war with no prospect for a just peace for too long. What we don’t need is a repeat of the 1970s. This is no political game. This is  literally life and death. The last thing we need is a President who thinks first of her own political fortune than in crafting a solution that works. What we need is a President who offers solutions without skirting accountability for them. Is this too much to ask?

 

But then again, perhaps for this President it is.

 

 

Sanctioned Madness?

Madness. If there is anything that comes to mind after reading official pronouncements regarding government’s handling of the brewing crisis in Mindanao, it is that—madness. 

Instead of bringing calm and sobriety to the people of Mindanao in these times of grave peril, government officials are seeing it fit to add more fuel to the conflagration. Instead of inspiring confidence in the capability of authorities to protect civilians, officials in Manila are encouraging people to turn Dirty Harry. 

In a press conference yesterday at Camp Crame, Quezon City, Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said government is thinking of tapping civilian volunteer organizations (CVOs) to create police auxiliary groups. Puno told reporters that the idea of creating police auxiliary groups will be presented to local government leaders in the two provinces (North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte) in meetings to be held next week. 

Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon, in the same press conference, said the auxiliaries will be given the basic task of securing communities and villages in Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato, the same areas raided by the MILF in the past weeks. Razon said local police “will control” the auxiliaries which will be “screened and trained” by the same and which will be given shotguns for “village defense.” 

What on earth could be in the minds of these people? Yes local officials will be asked next week if they agree to turning CVOs into police auxiliaries. Do you think they’ll turn the offer down? Of course not. Manny Pinol in fact welcomes the idea. 

But is there even an iota of wisdom in raising militias, even if their avowed purpose is to guard their communities against the marauding MILF? Considering that the Army is already going after the groups of Umbra Kato and Commander Bravo thereby freeing the police to guard the communities, why is the government resorting to arming CVOs which are under the control of local politicians? 

What makes this emerging policy incomprehensible is the fact that Malacanang, just last Thursday or a day before Friday’s press conference, warned a Mindanao-based armed group calling itself the new Ilaga (Rats) against fighting the MILF. 

The Ilaga came to national prominence in the 1970s and 1980s when the government unleashed the military-backed vigilantes to help combat the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of Nur Misuari. Among the many atrocities attributed to the group was a March 1970 incident in which Feliciano Luces, a.k.a Commander Toothpick, led Tiruray tribesmen in attacking an isolated Moro village in Upi, Cotabato leaving 6 people dead. The group was said to have cut the ears, and nipples and plucked the eyeballs of their victims. Muslims responded in the vigilante tit for tat by forming their own groups, the Barracudas of Lanao and the Blackshirts of North Cotabato, plunging Mindanao then into a virtual civil war. 

The Ilaga later turned into a rabid anti-communist vigilante group whose long list of atrocities culminated in the killing of Italian priest Fr. Tullio Favali in North Cotabato. 

The folly of this latest government caper even drew concern from the London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International. 

“MILF units that targeted villages have engaged in serious violations of international law and should be held to account,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director. 

“But experience from around the world shows that the deployment of civilian militias can set off a chain of reprisals and only increases the danger facing civilians,” Zarifi said. 
 
Amnesty International further warned that arming and deputizing civilians could inflame an already tense situation in Mindanao.  

Consider this further. Most of the so called CVOs in the areas so far affected by the ongoing conflict are either Christians or controlled by local political warlords, Christians and Muslims. These CVOs are already armed with high caliber weapons.  

It is also no secret that these groups are used by local warlords to advance their political interests.  What the Puno “idea”  proposes to do is to turn these groups into active combatants against the MILF, albeit only within their communities, as well as allow them to recruit new members. And with local realities already characterized by decades-old animosity, cultural biases, and/or conflicting political interests, who can say if these groups can even keep from fighting among themselves in the future?

 
Is this therefore the beginning of another era of terror in Mindanao? Is Secretary Puno and, by extension, President Arroyo so ignorant of the violent history of Mindanao to even propose arming civilians at this time?  

Or are we, the people of Mindanao, just pawns in a sinister, obscene game?

Shoulder to Shoulder

The problem with the controversial Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) is that we have allowed politicians and pundits in Manila to transform it to an election issue.  

 

It may have been impossible to skirt the issue of Charter change considering that the MOA-AD necessitates Constitutional amendments. But the manner by which the issue got quickly hijacked by politicians with clear ambitions in 2010 made sober discussion on the MOA-AD impossible.

 

True, things would not have turned for the worse if only President Arroyo had come out and said, clearly, just what she wants and how she intends to get them. True,  it would have helped had the President, in pushing for Charter change, did not equate federalism with a parallel shift to a parliamentary form of government. It would have helped, too, if the President and all her lackeys in the Lower House had not been too eager in pushing for Charter change via Con-Ass.

 

But as things now stand, the issue of forging a peace agreement with the MILF has become a mere side issue, with Charter change now taking center stage. We all know the issue of Charter change to be highly contentious, with politicians and sectors clearly divided between those favoring Cha-cha now and those who think Charter change should come after GMA. Like oil and water, we know, too, that neither side is willing to give ground. Especially since 2010 is less than two years away.

 

Meanwhile, conflict with the Moro rebels has again flared up and civilian casualties are mounting.

 

It is easy for politicians from far away Manila to seize the issue of the MOA-AD and use it for all the political mileage it can serve them.  But when push comes to shove, when political posturing turns ugly and ignites a shooting war as it now has, the worst that can happen to them is a temporary political setback, nothing that a good PR can not remedy.

 

Not so for the people of Mindanao. Here we do not have the privilege of using incendiary language and to hell with the consequences. Here we mind our language. Or we throw caution to the wind and use nasty language as the likes of Manny Pinol has done. But even Manny Pinol lives among us, in Mindanao, not in some comfortable house in a posh village in Manila.

 

We do not mind the likes of Senators Mar Roxas, Chiz Escudero, and other Manila-based politicians using the issue of peace in Mindanao to gain political points. We do not mind anybody from far away Manila to talk about solving the Mindanao problem using language that ignite the tempers of Muslims, Lumads, and Christians alike.

 

We do not mind them at all, even if they muddle issues and feed decades-old animosity between the peoples of Mindanao. So long as when the shit hits the fan, as it now has, they come here with their families, in the war-torn areas of Mindanao, and stand with us shoulder to shoulder, and face the consequences of all their off-the-cuff talking.

 

 

 

Has The Middle Class Gone Richer?

The President, in her State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday, said she is neither scrapping, suspending, nor lessening the 12% VAT on oil and electricity.   

In so many words, Mrs. Arroyo repeated her often made argument that tinkering with the VAT now would only benefit the rich and hurt the poor. 

“If the VAT on power and oil would be scrapped, it would benefit the rich who consume 84% of oil and 90% of electricity while hurting the poor who will lose P80 billion for programs,” Mrs. Arroyo said. 

This is a clever argument and I must say the President really has some very good speech writers in her employ. It is like saying that, faced with the dilemma of having to choose which to save, the poor or the rich, she is opting to side with the poor. 

But, forgive my stupidity, but whatever happened to people like me who in all honesty belong to neither? Whatever happened to people like me who belong to the thinning ranks of the middle class? 

While it is understandable to buck demands from various sectors to rethink and retool the VAT imposed on fuel considering the P18 billion windfall government expects to collect from VAT on oil this year, this is nevertheless an obvious attempt to put a populist spin on an unpopular issue.  

We really have to hand it to Mrs. Arroyo. She makes getting screwed from behind sound as if it is thoroughly enjoyable. 

The 2006 Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES) contains a breakdown of the total oil consumption by income bracket. The poor’s share is 5.4 percent.  The rich and upper middle class consume 40.3.  The lower middle class has the biggest share of oil consumed, accounting for 54.3 percent.   

Listening to Mrs. Arroyo last Monday, however, you get to wonder: has the lower middle class’ fortunes, from 2006 to 2008, suddenly improved to the extent that they now can be classified as “rich”? 

She said further that, faced with the twin global crises on food and fuel, she has had to make unpopular but right choices.

“Thank God for the guts not to flinch in the face of tough choices. Thank Congress for the intelligence and thank the taxpayers for footing the bill…Take the VAT away and you and I abdicate our responsibility as leaders and pull the rug from under our present and future progress,” she said.

But the truth is the President, far from making “tough” choices, has been taking the easy way out. Instead of going after tax cheats, ridding the BIR and Customs of corruption, and generally improving tax collection, she has instead relied on the VAT to plug shortfalls on collection.

In fact, some critics of government, aside from those favoring the scrapping or the temporary suspension of the VAT, have been calling on the reduction of the VAT rate for all products from 12 percent to 10 percent.   

The Philippine Finance Institute of the Philippines (PFIP), headed by former Finance Secretary Bobby de Ocampo, believes that the loss of revenue from reducing the VAT rate for all goods can be compensated by tax reforms that are in fact long overdue—tax administration, the indexation of the excise tax on sin products, and the rationalization of fiscal incentives. 
 
The PFIP further argues that “the increase in the VAT rate from 10 to 12 percent (in 2006) was an exigency measure when the threat of an unmanageable budgetary deficit threatened fiscal stability.”  

In other words, the increase from 10% to 12% should have only been temporary in the first place and that government should have improved its tax administration in the meantime.  

“We are afraid that continuous reliance on exigency measures would ease the pressure on collecting agencies to perform their responsibilities with utmost integrity and competence…. Exigency measures would continuously mask the fiscal problems that we have in tax evasion, avoidance, corruption, and proliferation of incentives,” the PFIP statement said. 

But Mrs. Arroyo obviously had other things to consider last Monday and we are stuck with a 12% VAT on oil. I only wish she had us in mind.  

But then again, that’s just me.

Whiter Upriver

For two years now I have been urging the guys behind Kagay to open the section above Ugiaban Bridge to those willing to kiss class 4 to class 5 rapids. Kagay, the pioneer of Cagayan de Oro’s whitewater rafting outfitters, made several exploratory runs upriver two years ago. I was with them in one of those early runs and I have been wanting to go back since.

There is talk now of building a dam just before Ugiaban Bridge. Several groups, notably the City Council of Cagayan de Oro as well as the Oro Chamber (of Commerce in Industry), have opposed the  proposal. But with the prices of coal and crude oil projected to skyrocket worldwide in the next five years coupled with rising demand for power, who knows how long opposition to the dam can hold out.

That said, there really is not much choice but to go upriver. Which really is not so bad. Not so bad at all.