Torn and frayed in Manila

Another disastrous week for the Philippine security forces

The only amusing part of the story on the discovery of an armoury of government-supplied weapons large enough to supply 1,500 soldiers in the Ampatuan compound was the feigned shock from the leaders of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police.

PNP chief Jesus Verzosa was taken aback on learning that the recovered firearms included two antitank weapons. He said only government forces were allowed to purchase and carry these kinds of weapons.

Pull the other one, Jesus! It has been known for years that military commanders sell arms and ammunition to anyone with the cash, even to the groups the AFP is fighting.
Selling bullets to the enemy that are used to kill your own troops, how low can you get?

This issue was brought out in Gracia Burnham’s book, In the Presence of My Enemies, in which she described her experience as a hostage of the Abu Sayyaf:

“More than once I heard Solaiman on the sat-phone calling Zamboanga, talking to a lady named Ma’am Blanco. He would give her all his specifications for guns, bullets, you name it. ‘Who are you ordering from?’ we asked him one day. ‘Oh, the army,’ he replied. ‘We pay a lot more than it should cost of course. So somebody’s making a lot of money. But at least we get what we need.’

The discovery that massacred members of the convoy were probably killed by guns from the government arsenal in Bataan comes hot on the heels of news that the army and police not only refused requests to protect the convoy but took part in the killings.

Nor did the AFP and PNP cover themselves in glory in disaster relief after Typhoon Ondoy. The very visible presence of the Indonesian military after the Sumatra earthquake was in stark contrast to the do-it-yourself approach here. Although I regularly see army trucks driving around in Manila when there is a perceived threat to national security (such as a small peaceful rally at the Edsa shrine), I saw only one army truck going down EDSA in the soggy aftermath of the typhoon, carrying unfortunate shivering young soldiers in T-shirts.

Presidential candidate Gilberto Teodoro was Defense Secretary at the time and came up with a perfect excuse for the military’s absence:

He said much of the police and military’s modest assets had been apportioned to internal security operations in line with the government policy to crush terrorism and the communist insurgency. “The thing is, we cannot just order the AFP or the police to shift roles.”

What an incredible statement. Why not? The military and police have the equipment and the discipline to respond to disasters, which is why all over the world they are pulled in to help out. Yet here the security forces are too busy chasing NGO activists and communist phantoms to do the same.

There are times when you wonder whether we might almost be better without any security forces. Sure, private armies would flourish, but they do anyway and without the AFP and the PNP around at least it might be harder for them to buy bullets.

Frisco and Caffeine, a couple of old friends

I miss my early blogging days—not so much the writing, since only my laziness and other distractions prevent me from that, but more the camaraderie of the mini-blogosphere that was around when we early birds started out in the early years of this century.

I recently revisited two bloggers I have always had a close affinity for, frisco dude and caffeine sparks. I dunno why I stopped visiting them, just general overload coupled with my return to books over the past few years. Anyway, I am going to try to keep up with frisco and caffeine as their sites always make think and smile.

Frisco dude is such a varied site covering the whole of Asia that it is hard to describe any post as typical, yet his latest is indeed pure frisco dude. The Korean version of YMCA.

Caffeine’s current page includes this extraordinary exchange between Mareng Winnie Monsod and presidential son Congressmen Mikey Arroyo. As for Mareng Winnie, if there is a jugular why not go for it? Apart from anything else you gotta love her disbelieving uh-huh..? I don’t know what you can say about Mikey’s disastrous performance, except that his forced salesman’s smile, his pitiful explanations (many public officials do this also … the lawyers, when he comes back from abroad I am sure he can explain that ... .. if you are in doubt sue me for it), his patronizing smirks and revealing pauses, are exactly what you would expect. The only mystery is why his parents allowed him to enter such a mismatched contest.

The Clash—live

Many of the most intense moments of my life have been at live music events, none more so than the Clash at Brighton Top Rank in early 1980. London Calling, their highwater mark, had just been released and my mates and I had played it non-stop for weeks. I’ve never loved a product so much – from Pennie Smith’s iconic cover photo to the rock steady Revolution Rock and Wrong ‘em Boyo and flat out nuttiness of the Right Profile. They played the whole thing at the gig and as an encore Pete Townsend joined them for My Generation.

I’ll never have a night like that again for sure, but browsing through the Clash videos on YouTube really took me back to another place, time, and, I suppose, another person. I am so glad that I was able to spend my youth during such an incredibly creative period.

They don’t make ‘em like this any more.

This next one is from Paris at about the time I saw them. Oh man ...

Will Erap’s name appear on the ballot?

“The Philippines seems like the sort of country where anyone can do anything” a friend said on hearing that Mae Paner, the pleasantly plump actress known as Juana Change, is featured in an exhibition of nude portraits (a performance described by Jim Paredes as “fearless … a must see”).

However, there is a downside to the disregard for rules in the Philippines, especially in the electoral season.

What has surprised me about Estrada’s declaration that he intends to run for reelection is not just that it is obviously unconstitutional and violates his pardon (which prohibits him from engaging in political activity), but that the response from Comelec seemed so spineless:

Speaking at a media briefing, [Comelec Chair] Melo said the Comelec could not stop Estrada from filing a certificate of candidacy. “We cannot say if he is qualified or not. There is no case against him. Right now, it seems that he is qualified because there is no protest against him,” he said.

Isn't this the sort of issue where one would look to the Commission on Elections to make a preliminary ruling, even if the issue will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court? This point was well made in a letter in the Inquirer this week:

Is the Commission on Elections not supposed to check the certificates of candidacy and see if the applicants are qualified? Are they not supposed to approve or disapprove it? What if nobody files a complaint? Then the application is deemed approved. Comelec Chair Melo said that “it seems that he [Estrada] is qualified because there is no protest against him.” It is the Comelec who should say if a candidate is qualified or not.

However, if the ultimate arbiter in this matter will have to be the Supreme Court, this will throw up huge practical difficulties, as pointed out in another letter to the Inquirer:

The point is the high court’s rulings in these parts generally take at least three months, from when an issue becomes justiciable. And that is ignoring the time for motions for review, etc, after the initial ruling has been issued. At the earliest, then, Erap’s case would become justiciable after Dec. 14, when the Comelec shall have received all the certificates of candidacy and is ready to order the printing of the ballots. I seriously doubt the ballot printing process is amenable, if necessary, to a re-run. At that juncture, then, I ask: “What kind of ballot must the Comelec order to be printed?” Is it one that includes or excludes Estrada among the presidential candidates? I assume that would somehow depend on the Comelec’s own position on Erap’s capacity or incapacity to run. And so, assuming it believes Erap is qualified, and thus has put his name on the ballot, will the votes cast for him be counted even if he may be eventually disqualified? On the other hand, if the Comelec is of the opinion that Erap cannot run and has thus excluded his name in the ballot, what happens if the Justices finally rule in his favor?

I would imagine that a likely scenario is that Erap’s name will appear on the ballot paper, but the Supreme Court will eventually rule that he is ineligible. In that case I am sure that millions of hard core Erap fans will vote for him anyway. If in the final result the number of spoiled ballots (i.e., votes for Erap) is close to the number of votes cast for Villar and Noynoy, or even exceeds them, then where will we be?

Cinemanila 2010: Tulpan, Pandora’s Box, Hunger

The great Kazakh steppe saga, Tulpan

Cinemanila 2010 closes today. Although the standard of films has been extremely high as usual, the showings have been sparsely attended. That’s a great shame and I hope organizer Tikoy Aguiluz who does such a fantastic job every year of bringing the very best international art films to Manila, doesn’t give up.

I know the poor guy has received a lot of unsolicited advice on how to promote the festival, but I do feel that the lack of an overall schedule on the website was an unfortunate omission. That’s really what people need to plan their viewing.

There have been criticisms of Market Market as a venue for the movies, but I think that just goes to show how lazy most people in Manila are; if it is slightly off the beaten track, or a bit masa, they won’t make the effort. I was a Market Market virgin before yesterday, and although losing my virginity wasn’t quite as much fun this time around, I got a kick out of the loud rock’n’roll feel of the mall. The cinemas had nice wide screens, Dolby sound, and comfortable seats. What more do you want (apart from Greenbelt)?

Anyway, on to the movies.

The best movies can help you make sense of the strangest physical environments and social contexts and Tulpan from Kazakhstan did that brilliantly. Although the storyline hangs on the efforts of a young man from the steppe to wed a girl (Tulpan) from a neighboring yurt and therefore escape from servitude to his harsh brother-in-law, this is not a plot-driven movie. Or, if it is, it tells one of the oldest stories of humankind: large families living on top of each other and their livestock, battling an unforgiving environment to survive, and yet somehow creating moments of tenderness, song, and humour. That is pretty much how we have all lived for 99.9% of the time human beings have been on earth—my own family in Scotland practised subsistence agriculture up until less than 100 years ago, and you may not have to climb too far down your own family tree to find ancestors who would have also related perfectly to Sergey Dvortsevoy’s picture of life on the Khazakh steppe.

Technically, the film is a triumph. The performances, especially of the totally un-camera-conscious kids, were as naturalistic as I have ever seen on screen, and the cinematography brought the whole gritty reality of life on the steppe all around you. I felt as though I needed to blow my nose to get rid of the sand as I left the cinema.

Another film with plausible and interesting set of characters was Pandora’s Box, the box in this case being an old Turkish village woman’s descent into Alzheimer’s. As her three Istanbul-based children struggle with the dilemmas of coping with a dotty old parent, the old lady’s presence brings latent problems in their own lives out into the open. I guess that doesn’t sound too entertaining, but in fact the film is full of funny moments, most of them arising from Tsilla Chelton's quite brilliant portrayal of an old woman who is an unpredictable mixture of total confusion and brutal honesty.

Without laying it on with a trowel, the film also presented a vivid picture of a society in transition, from the mother whose life was probably much the same in its external aspects as those of centuries of her predecessors, to her nouveau bourgeois daughters and drop-out son, and onto her grandson, who is characterized by early 21st century ennui and alienation.

I honestly don’t know what to say about the British film Hunger. On the one hand, it is hard to credit that this is director Steve McQueen’s first film, so sure is his directorial touch. On the other, to describe it as unremittingly bleak would make it seem more optimistic than it actually was. I’m not great with on- or off-screen violence and I have to confess that after about 45 minutes of constant battering I left the theatre. Fortunately, Frayed coaxed me back by texting me with a prediction that the worst of the violence was over, so I returned for the last half hour, which, although incredibly depressing, at least did not involve fecal smearing or vicious beatings up.

I was living in Britain in 1981 and I can clearly remember the ghoulish way that the extended suicides of Bobby Sands and the other nine hunger strikers were covered on the evening news. “Has he died yet?” was often the first question people would ask as they returned from work. Hunger is an extremely well-made film about an important subject and I can understand why it won the prize for best film at Cinemanila. Still, I can’t say I took anything positive away from it, not even a deeper understanding of a sad and demeaning period of British history.

Estrada and Maradona

As long as I have a drop of blood left, I will fight to get Argentina qualified,"
Diego Maradona

This is the last performance of my life and I will not fail you.”
Joseph Estrada

I am having trouble telling the manager of the Argentina football team and presidential candidate Estrada apart.

Both are given to histrionic statements that tie the fates of their countries to their personal destinies.

Both rely for their mass appeal on a crude and cliché-ridden populism, yet both have expensive tastes; in Erap’s case for $1,000-a-bottle Petrus wine in Diego’s for fast drugs and cars, and flashy earrings.

Both have histories of substance abuse, womanising, and gambling.

Both are sort of chubby.

Both have had well publicized run-ins with the law.

Both are viewed in their countries with a mixture of adulation and acute embarrassment.

Perhaps they should swap jobs?

Candidate Erap

There are a few things to be said in favour of candidate Erap so, in fairness to the man with the bigote, I’ll start with them.

He can memorize a detailed speech. Unlike the appalling trapo efforts from Binay, Joey de Vencia and others that preceded him, Erap knows that you have to spice your denunciations with facts and names. So instead of “down with graft and corruption” (what’s the difference by the way?) Erap gave us names (Nani Perez) and figures ($40 million) to chew over. Never mind that Nani Perez has long ago left public life or that we can’t quite remember which Arroyo scandal was worth forty big ones, Erap did seem to have some sort of brief and to be roughly in control of it.

He stays on message and it is an appealing one. Unlike FPJ, one of the most out-of-his-depth candidates to have graced the democratic circus, Erap knows that being “for the poor” is not enough. He is for family planning, social spending (his claim that his administration spent more on education and health than any other may not be correct, but I doubt whether many in the audience will look it up), free health care for pensioners and so on.

He understands the socioeconomic structure of the country. Underlying the great things an Erap presidency will bring you is one simple sentiment: class hatred. This is the man whose son JV Ejercito (not there tonight) exhorted Edsa Tres demonstrators to look for a mestizo and punch him on the nose. Erap is too smart to be quite so quotable, but the message is clear enough: “The elite are not hungry for food, they are hungry for riches” and so on.

He’s got stamina. I am sure a few “elitistas” were hoping for the slurred and confused version of Joseph Ejercito Estrada (as the other speakers tirelessly referred to him) we grew used to at the end of his abbreviated presidency, but Erap’s 45-minute speech in Tondo this evening was no better or worse than the thousands he has delivered over his political career. He looked at home and, despite his jacket, he seemed a lot less troubled by the heat than his sweaty companions on the platform.

He can deliver a speech in a unique way. Erap’s humour consists of the worst sort of old man jests, how much more pogi he is than Jingoy and (yawn) his poor English, but he know how to deliver them and after all, this is what the crowd were paid their money to listen to. "This is the last performance of my life and I will not fail you" may sound corny as hell to you and me, but somehow I doubt whether that will bother Erap too much.

Erap is also a convicted plunderer, accused of at least two murders, a drunk and womanizer, a hypocrite who enriched himself while claiming to stand for the poor man, a Marcos-coddler, oh and disbarred from the constitution from running again. It will be interesting to see whether his rivals dare to point these out to the electorate. If not, tonight we may just have seen the start of a juggernaut that will roll them over.

Full circle: A tale of three women and a “simple late night dinner”

My plate was this big!

Philippine public life often has a novelistic, chiaroscuro quality to it; only it is the sort of novel where you think “how unrealistic, that would never happen in real life.”

Gloria’s now infamous $20,000 meal at the Le Cirque in New York is a good example of the Philippines failing the real life test.

Eight thousand miles away from GMA and her sycophants tucking in at the Le Cirque trough, a woman lay dying in Makati Medical Center. Cory Aquino devoted her life to ending the gross excesses of her predecessor, the conjugal dictatorship, the worst of which were committed in, guess where, New York. As a symbol of how we are back where we started that $20,000 bill could hardly be bettered.

Except that it could bettered. The knee jerk response to Malacañang’s excesses (as with the envelope handed out to Ed Panlilio and the other 190 elected officials who visited Malacañang duing the impeachment hearings) is always “oh the president wasn’t paying, it was one of her supporters.” And who was the generous host on this occasion? Leyte Congressman Martin Romualdez, Imelda’s nephew. You couldn’t make these things up.

The source of the story of the Le Cirque was not a journalist from the president’s home country where 40% of the population experiences hunger regularly. It was the New York Post. Even by the standards of one of the richest cities in the world, the Palace bill was so excessive that it made the New York papers. Just like Imelda.

The economic downturn hasn’t persuaded everyone to pinch pennies. Philippines President Maria Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was at Le Cirque the other night with a large entourage enjoying the good life, even though the former comptroller of her country’s armed services, Carlos Garcia, was found guilty earlier this year of perjury and two of his sons were arrested in the US on bulk cash-smuggling charges. Macapagal-Arroyo ordered several bottles of very expensive wine, pushing the dinner tab up to $20,000.”

The sad thing is that the hangers on complained it wasn’t even much of a trough:

The restaurant was “not fashionable” said Quezon Rep Danilo Suarez “the food is not bad. As for the place the surroundings were not pretty.” [That Martin is such a cheapskate.]

Not a single centavo of taxpayers’ money was spent for that dinner,” an angry Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said. [That “not one centavo” line is such a giveaway.]

What we had in New York was a simple, late night dinner because it was already late at night when we arrived there from Washington DC and, of course, we were all hungry,” Remonde said. (Altogether now: “Awwww”.]

Corazon C. Aquino, 1933–2009

“Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues.” St Augustine

Moved by the television coverage of the death of Cory Aquino, I visited the wake at La Salle Greenhills last night. As when I visited FPJ’s funeral four years’ ago, my intention was to play the curious foreigner and get the feel of the event, but joining the queue to see the body seemed the best way to avoid the torrential rain so that’s what I did.

Sadly, the wake was much like Cory’s presidency; despite all the talk about “the Filipino people” the people had to stand still while a parade of the entitled ones waltzed past with their newly coiffed hair. After moving about 50 yards in an hour I gave up (though not without shaking Satur Ocampo’s hand, which gave me a thrill).

***

Cory’s passing is a huge landmark in post-Marcos Philippines. We are no longer living in a post-EDSA world, but in a medium-sized country with king-sized problems, most of which have been either exacerbated or ignored by the four administrations since 1986.

Although Cory’s administration was reviled by contemporary critics, her presidency doesn’t look that bad now that we have the Estrada and Arroyo governments to compare it with. At least Aquino could legitimately blame the seven coup attempts for some of the lack of progress during her six years in office. Erap and GMA can blame only themselves for their failures (not that they will of course).

Aquino’s gender made her task much particularly difficult. Although in comparison with its neighbours the Philippines has an excellent record of female participation in business and government, an acceptance of female equality was not universally held in the 1980s, certainly not by the macho thorns in her side, Honasan and Enrile. To them Aquino was simply an amateur in the game of power, a “mere housewife” as Marcoss called her during the 1986 election campaign.

It is hard to see Aquino’s appointment of Juan Ponce Enrile as Defense Secretary as anything other than a disastrous mistake. On a high from the fortuitous timing of his betrayal of Marcos, Enrile spent the whole of his time in office trying to undermine Aquino and when he was finally dismissed, he was accused of masterminding the 1987 coup attempt.

At critical points in history, the character of the leader is at least as important as the achievements of his or her programs and the immediate post-Marcos period was such a time. It was Cory Aquino’s essential goodness and her humility (the hardest quality to fake) that brought the crowds to La Salle and caused former cabinet colleagues to sob yesterday as they recalled her graciousness. She was a “good boss” one of them said—a minor quality perhaps, but I wonder how many heads of state you could say that about?

***

For those under 35, the television coverage of Cory Aquino’s death will have brought back vivid personal memories of a now closed chapter. The endless coverage of the assassination of Ninoy, Cory giving the Laban signal with her outsized glasses and pleasant Tita’s smile, the hosing of demonstrators, Laurel, youthful versions of Teddy-Boy Locsin and Nene Pimentel … all this is now part of History.

So too is the only moment when the Philippines genuinely led the world. People Power was used as a model for peaceful uprisings from Chile to the Ukraine (in fact according to Katrina David in an interview yesterday the anti-Pinochet crowds in Santiago even chanted “Corazon, Corazon”).

What is lost above all with the death of Cory Aquino is the sense of hope that she gave the country; the possibility that just once simple goodness and a spirit of human togetherness might be enough to win out over naked self-interest. Future historians may look back on that aspiration as hopelessly naïve, yet its impracticality increases rather than diminishes the people who held it.

***

Here are a couple of other appreciations of Tita Cory that I liked.

Say what you will about her administration, the illusions dashed and opportunities missed, but she was decent to us. She never mocked us, made fun of our hopes, or knowingly insulted our intelligence. Born to privilege, she never acted the spoiled brat. ... In mourning for Tita Cory we’re really mourning for ourselves and what could’ve been. Jessica Zafra

I truly marvel at how, with every single challenge, Cory did her best.

She was the sheltered daughter of a wealthy clan who suddenly found herself subjected to the indignity of being strip-searched on her visits to her jailed husband.

She was a housewife with five children who was asked to unite a nation in fighting a tyrant.

She was an old woman, content in her retirement, who never faltered in her fight against corruption and made a stand against two presidents who succeeded her.

Carla Montemayor

Melissa Roxas and the real state of the nation

Melissa Roxas’s simple and matter-of-a-fact affidavit recounting her abduction, torture, and eventual release by the Philippine military deserves to become one of the key primary sources on the Arroyo presidency.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a story from Argentina’s “dirty war” or Pinochet’s Chile, but of an event that happened a few weeks go and a few miles from where I sit. For all I know something similar is going on as you read this. As the recent Inquirer retrospective on Arroyo’s presidency pointed out, military abuses and a culture of impunity have been a hallmark of her rule.

The affidavit is only 5 pages, here is an extract:

22. I was brought back to my cell blindfolded again and handcuffed at the front and I was made to lie down and after a short while, the iron barred doors were banged making clanking sound and I was taken aback and two men entered my cell with one of the man calling the other, “Tatay”, and a man pulled my cuffed hands up raising me on a sitting position and then a fist struck me at my upper sternum and it hurt and then a thumb was pressed strongly to my throat (I heard somebody saying “huh!...huh…huh.”) choking me, making me suffocate for quite a time and when he released the pressure I gagged and I coughed and then he struck me with his fist on my left jaw ringing my ears and numbing my jaw and they were telling me, “Ang tigas ng ulo mo. Sasagot ka na sa mga tanong.” He kept repeating the questions and his pressure on my throat and fists to my jaw. An hour after, they left. But before they left, he said, “matigas ‘to. Barilin na lang natin” and I prepared for the worst;

23. It must have been very late night or early dawn, when he came back to me and he dragged me to the first room and I sensed that there was a kind of leader of the group who kept on whispering on that person who was manhandling me and two other men and the man who got me from my cell asked me, “handa ka bang mamatay?” and I answered, “Opo” and then he told me, “bago namin patayin ang isang tao, mapapaihi at mapapatae muna namin siya”;

24. The whispering man kept whispering questions to be asked and the manhandling man kept asking the questions and I told him that I have rights and that I was demanding for my lawyer but when he asked me about my name, I told them but when they asked other questions, I did not answer and he would hit me on the chest strongly and I would lose breath and gasped for air after and then he would press my throat with his thumb and say “Huh…huh…huh!” and I would gag and then he would hit me on my jaws, ringing my ears and numbing my jaws and he repeated this and added another one by holding my head with his two hands and banging the back of my head repeatedly and each time it hit the wall, I would see a flash of white bright light and ringing in my ears and again the pressure to my throat with the “Huh … huh…huh.” And saying to me, “ayaw mo pa din magsasalita” and then punched me in my rib cage and I crumpled …

Bulgarian goes beserk in Bulacan

For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

I thought I would post this video of an amok Bulgarian buffalo masquerading as a Philippine carabao both because it is of interest in itself, and because it will give readers from outside the country some idea of provincial life here (and of our inimitable news presenters). I saw the video on Howie Severino’s site—Howie is the journalist in the video and this is the description of the event on his blog.

This water buffalo was anything but gentle. After creating havoc along a kilometer-long stretch of the parade route, it stopped to catch its breath next to a waiting shed. Some brave souls detached the wagon and tied the carabao to the waiting shed. A policeman hit the carabao on the head with a plastic chair, provoking the crazed creature into charging spectators who until then were enjoying the rare spectacle. The carabao ripped the waiting shed from its moorings and dragged the metal wreckage a few hundred meters.

No other carabao has run amok in the long history of the Pulilan festival, according to town mayor Vicente Esguerra. He also approved of the town police’s decision not to shoot the Bulgarian buffalo in the midst of its rampage, despite some calls from spectators. “There are so many people here because of the fiesta. If the police used a gun, someone could have been hurt,” Esguerra said.

About an hour after the carabao became the unexpected attraction, it was too tired to resist any longer and was loaded on a trailer for its trip home to Plaridel. Mayor Esguerra said he would not allow Bulgarian buffalos to participate in the parade any more.

I do like that deadpan last sentence.

Although I am sorry for those members of the audience who were scared or hurt by the buffalo’s rampage, I can’t rid myself of all sympathy for this poor beast who must have been very confused and irritated by the festival crowds. After some days at work I feel like behaving in exactly the same way ...

Manila’s beautiful climate

People complain a lot about Manila’s pollution without giving much credit to the generally very pleasant weather here. Compared with the humidity in other Southeast Asian cities such as Singapore and Bangkok, Manila’s humidity levels are very low. I lived in Singapore for four years and, although I am generally a hot weather kind of guy, I did find the soup-like clamminess a bit much from–-it also played havoc with my book and vinyl collections (OK it was a while ago).

In fact it takes a spell of really miserable weather such as the interminable grey days we had in early June to make me appreciate how congenial the climate is in the Philippines. Sure, we have a hot season in April/May but by the standards of, say, Delhi, it is isn’t that hot. Our hottest day a few weeks ago was about 37 degrees, compared with top temperatures of around 45 degrees in the Indian capital—-that’s a shift from the uncomfortable to the unbearable.

Climate doesn’t seem to matter much to some people but it sure does to me. Serene cloudless mornings like the one outside my window are an important reason why, despite everything, I have always been very happy here.

Why they like to criminalize us

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

Walter Scott

Let’s imagine you are engaged in some enormous scam. Let’s also assume it is about something improbable; hmm, how about manure?

You are huli (caught). Would you rather your evil manure schemes were judged by a jury of honest men and true, or by a group so hopelessly compromised that to find you guilty would be to open themselves to prosecution?

This of course is exactly the situation facing the House panel investigating former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc Joc" Bolante’s involvement in the P728-million fertilizer fund scam.

Although the absurdity of distributing funds for agricultural fertilizer to congressmen representing districts in Quezon City and Bolante’s flight from justice might seem to a jury of honest men and true evidence that something stinks in all this, the panel is expected to hold its nose and clear Bolante for the simple reason that, as Rep. Teddy Casiño points out: “more than a hundred administration representatives benefited from that scam in 2004.”

Bolante’s smelly dealings lead me to a broader issue.

It seems to me that the current set-up in the Philippines helps to criminalize virtually all of us, limiting our capacity, and even our desire, to support justice.

Do you pay all your taxes? If you run a business, have you waited patiently for the endless licences the state requires, or have you “eased” the process with a few hundred pesos? What about that time a cop pulled you over for swerving, did you hand over your licence quietly or slip him a couple of hundred?

I won’t go on, but even you have stoutly answered “yes” to all of those questions, what about your family? Is your dad’s business 100% legal? Your mother works in government service, are you sure everything she does is by the book?

The fact that almost all of us are forced or at least encouraged to commit these misdemeanours is an enormous advantage to the high rollers in the grimy game. To return to Bolante, the real beneficiary of the fertiliser fiddle was not the congressman who received an addition to his election war chest, it was not even Joc-Joc. The spider who wove the web was the president, who through this and similar schemes managed to manufacture an unlikely election victory and to ensure that everyone along the way was caught in her trap.

Those of us in the outer circles of the web are not caught as tightly as those in the middle, yet still we can’t quite kick ourselves free. Even businessmen and women who support a fair taxation regime baulk at the idea of even more BIR interference in their companies. At a philosophical level, our enmeshment breeds a kind of resignation, almost a kind of solidarity with the playmakers.

If convicted plunderer “not one centavo” Erap were seen as an aberration, his interest in another run at the presidency would surely be laughed out of court. As it is, although I doubt whether he is quite as popular as he thinks he is, Erap benefits from a sense of hopelessness that no one else is any better. He, Gloria, and the other king pins may sit at the centre of the web, but we have all been caught in its sticky embrace.

The meaning of Manny

Manny Pacquiao’s demolition of Ricky Hatton last weekend was an opportunity to see political scientist Benedict Anderson’s concept of the nation as an “imagined community” in action.

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.

On Sunday morning the image of their communion was the man from Gen San being hoisted shoulder high in the Las Vegas ring while Ricky Hatton slowly and painfully reacquainted himself with consciousness.

And how did we all participate in this imagined community? Through text messaging of course! As soon as I heard the result, I texted my Filipino colleagues in Indonesia, but they already knew. Globe and Smart must love the imagined community.

Another feature of Anderson’s vision of nationalism is its essential levelling character: "regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.” This was one of the only events to be celebrated as fervently in Forbes Park as in Smoky Mountain. To be uninvolved in that left hook was to be unFilipino.

Or as one report put it:

At least 10,000 people watched a free live screening in Pacquiao's dirt-poor home city of General Santos, while in Manila's depressed Tondo area another 2,000 people packed an airless gym to watch the fight. … Across town, a well-heeled crowd of 200 including politicians and celebrities watched at a cafe in Manila's upscale The Fort district.

Alas, squatting in Manny’s corner looking to profit from this glorious moment of deep, horizontal comradeship were the sleaziest members of the Philippine political class. The degree of a politician’s Pacquiaoness almost acts as a barometer of political sleaze, with Lito Atienza somewhere off the scale.

All nations celebrate sporting success, but is seems to me that victory strikes a deeper national chord in some than in others. England’s victory in the 1966 football World Cup, for example, is a far more prominent part of the national consciousness than France’s lifting of the same trophy in 1998. Great though Pacquiao’s victory last Sunday was, this was not a major title fight and I doubt whether Manny would have been feted to quite the same extent in many other countries. (Cebu City Council even plans to erect a statue to commemorate Pacquiao’s victory).

Why is this? For a country like France, secure in its own cultural superiority, sporting victory is enjoyable, but a defeat would not shake most Frenchmen’s conviction that they enjoy a higher quality of life than other less fortunate nations.

For less secure countries like Britain and the Philippines, a KO or a goal is an aspirin offering temporary relief from the contradictions posed by problematic national identities. I have written before abou how Filipinos tend to underestimate their international image and the outpouring of joy at Manny’s flooring of Ricky Hatton contains within it an element of a score being settled, of the little guy’s moment in the sun. England’s victory in 1966 was of the same kind, a final breakout from the post World War II blues.

That brings me to a final characteristic that is common to the insecurity of Brits and Filipinos. Both countries have suffered a collapse of expectations. When my mum was born in 1925, about a quarter of the map of the world was coloured pink, signifying the extent of the British Empire. Her generation saw all of that disappear; by the famous World Cup victory Britain had acquired the nickname “the sick man of Europe.” No wonder some national cheer was in order.

The decline in Philippine expectations has been less spectacular, but no less damaging. In the 1960s, some estimates rank the Philippine economy as second only to that of Japan in Asia, yet the succeeding decades have seen the country slide steadily down the Asian ladder, overtaken first by the Asian tigers, then by China and (hard to take for many Filipinos) India. I remember a friend telling me that when he was a kid his mum would warn him he would end up “like the Indians” if he continued to misbehave—nowadays that would be more an incentive than a threat. In the meantime, the Philippines has become famous only as an exporter of labour; yet the jobs Filipinos perform are often menial, which has contributed to national sense of grievance that I mentioned in my earlier post.

Given such gloomy skies, it is any wonder that Filipinos and Brits make the most of the passing shaft of sunlight sporting success brings? Let’s hope the little patch of sunlight Manny brought the Philippines continues to last, if only to postpone his inevitable entry into political life.

These Crooked Things, Remind Me of You (Erap)

All perfectly legal

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw that there is finally to be a criminal prosecution over the BW Resources scandal. The scandal even took place last century—the worthless stock, inflated by the stale gas of Erap’s cronies, peaking on 10 October 1999. At that time it was a mere 5,000% its value the previous January.

The funny thing is that the facts are so well known and Dante Tan and Erap’s guilt so palpable that it would take a jury of 5-year-olds half a day to convict the defendants. One of the best summaries of BW is by Greg Hutchinson in Hot Money Warm Bodies. In it he identifies Estrada as a joint owner of BW, a fact that came out during the impeachment trial. He also quotes Edgardo Espiritu, Estrada’s finance secretary from June 1998 to January 2000:

“[Estrada] was a bit excited as he told me ‘Ed, I’m earning quite a lot from BW Resources.’”

You can just see old Erap drooling into his bigote can’t you?

In fact so addicted was Erap to his tumescent stock that he telephoned the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Perfecto Yasay (remember him?), no less than five times to “persuade” him to clear his friend Dante Tan.

Well it may have taken over nine years for a prosecution and a revival of interest in the murder of Bubby Dacer, but better late than never I suppose. Incidentally, while pondering the incredible period of time this has taken, I glanced down to the next story, on a large sale of stock in Lucio Tan’s companies. One sentence in particular stuck out: “The PCGG has been running after Tan since 1987.” So perhaps the BW Resources prosecution isn’t so slow after all.

The Maias by Jose Maria Eça de Queirós

Almost all of the wonderful 19th century European literature that has come down to us depicts a bourgeois, or haute bourgeois, universe. This is certainly true of the great chronicle of a Lisbon family in decline, The Maias, by the late 19th-century Portuguese writer Jose Maria Eça de Queirós.

From a moral perspective, there is little to admire in the decadent and self-indulgent main character, Carlos de Maia, who wastes his talents and his family’s wealth on pursuing a number of dalliances, seems incapable of bringing any practical plan to fruition, and idles his way through the novel’s 600 pages.

Still, that’s not the point. What I loved about The Maias was de Queirós’s leisurely and ironic style and the effortless way he brings Lisbon and the nearby coastal town of Sintra to life.

The slow and inevitable caving in of a once great family is a poignant thing. We see it in Manila in all the time—think of the families you know, the dynasties that once controlled business empires, produced senators and presidents, now surviving on the rent from their one remaining property or on the kindness of relatives overseas. Of course it is in the nature of progress that families should rise and fall, and it is just as well that they do, but it would take a hard heart not to be moved by the frittering away, rather than the spectacular Bernie-Madoff-like collapse, that leads a once famous house down the road to obscurity.

Gathered around the somber main theme of The Maias are some wonderful and memorable characters: the blackguard Damaso, Carlos’s upstanding grandfather, Afonso de Maia, and his wastrel friend Ega; the mysterious Englishman, Craft; the aging poet Alencar … taken together, they bring to life a society that is in itself in a decline. Nineteenth century Lisbon is cosmopolitan, educated, and urbane, yet like the house of the Maias you sense it is going down, that Portugal’s great days are already in the past.

Perhaps I have made The Maias sound rather gloomy, but it isn’t really. The rather melodramatic plot, including its tragic, though rather prefigured, denouement, easily maintains the reader’s interest, as does de Queirós’s pitch-perfect understanding of the world he subtly satirizes. It is a melancholic book in a way, but then isn’t all great literature?

Governor Panlilio will need his mountain boots in 2010

Outsiders’ stars usually shine brightest just before serious campaigning begins. In the UK, this manifests iteself in claims the next election could provide a “break through” for the Liberal Democrats (the perennial third party). In money-dominated US politics, this is when the billionaires, the Bloombergs, the Forbes, and the Perots, start to fish for support.

The hard truth is that it is very difficult to break established political blocs in any country. The Liberal Democrats have never received more than 25% of the vote in the UK and Ross Perot, the most successful US third party candidate of modern times, received only 18.9% in 1992.

The possibility of a Panlilio-Padaca ticket in the 2010 presidential ticket has been greeted with tremendous enthusiasm in some quarters, including this one, but we will need to wait until the provincial strongmen start beautifying the landscape with their handsome campaign posters before we know how realistic its chances are. As the dawn breaks on the campaigning season, the mountain that lies before Among Ed is going to appear through the early morning mists and it’s a steep one.

Nevertheless, there are pointers in favour of a Panlilio run this time.

Even if we forget the surreal prospect of another shot at the presidency by Erap, at this stage the field looks quite dispersed. It is futile to talk of Philippine politics in terms of “parties,” since these form and dissolve as quickly as high-school cliques, but recent years have been dominated by two main “blocs”: a populist bloc congregated boozily around Joseph Estrada, and a neo-conservative bloc led first by Fidel Ramos, then by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (in the executive branch) and Joe de Venecia (in the legislature), and since their falling out, simply by Gloria. The dominance of these two blocs can be seen in the results from 2004, when their combined tally represented 76% of the vote.

The Erap and administration blocs will be heavily represented in 2010 and presumably heads will be knocked together to stop a repetition of Ping’s disastrous campaign in 2004, which split the Erap bloc and effectively denied FPJ the presidency (along with the Garci shenanigans of course).

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Erap bloc puts up Binay and Escudero (sorry Loren) and the administration fields de Castro and Bayani.

That still leaves Manny Villar and Mar Roxas, who will almost certainly run very well- funded campaigns, not to mention the usual crazies (Eddie Gill, Imelda, et al) who pop up to brighten our mundane lives at such times.

These four teams have the money and machinery to pick up at least 5 million votes (about 15% of the electorate) each. That leaves about 40% to be divided between them and a credible fifth candidate. If Panlilio runs a decent campaign, that could be him. If the votes are spread fairly evenly, 25%-30% might just win it. The victor would have great difficulty in claiming a mandate, and we can expect the usual post-poll protests, but that will be the case whoever wins.

Panlilio’s greatest ally will be public dissatisfaction with the current system and the desire for a moral alternative. Still, such disenchantment has been building for a long time and look who was voted in last time. Panlilio also has to expect opponents to work hard to blacken his pure image; criticisms have started already, and it will be difficult for him to make it all the way through campaigning season without some muck sticking to that white shirt he usually wears.

Panlilio’s two most notable achievements have been increasing the revenues from quarry operations from Mount Pinatubo (he collected P29.4 million in his first month in office, which was about the same as his predecessor collected in a year) and his return of a paper bag containing P500,000 after a meeting between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and local officials in Malacañang. These are impressive, but will they be enough to take him all the way?

Panlilio’s victory in 2007 was remarkable, but it took place in very particular circumstances. Even by the standards of Philippine elections, his two opponents (the corrupt and useless Lapid and the wife of the provincial gambling lord, Bong Pineda) seemed to come straight from Third World Politics for dummies. He won’t have such easy targets in 2010.

One of the most important questions Panlilio will have to answer has been posed by blogger Carlo Ople: “If you really want to stay in politics, why not focus on Pampanga first?” That’s a legitimate question, I think. Among Ed has been governor of Pampanga for less than two years, shouldn’t he complete his work there before aspiring to national office? There are legitimate answers to that question but Ed and his advisers are going to have prepare them because it is a point that is already being made.

I am not trying to pour cold water on Brother Ed’s prospects; personally I would love it if he ran and won, especially if he is in tandem with the courageous governor of Isabella, Grace Padaca. If I had the vote, I would certainly put my cross against their names. But winning against the entrenched patronage network that has led the country into its current mess would be an enormous feat, greater in its way even than Obama’s victory last November.

The odds against a fifth candidate, even one comparatively well known like Panlilio, are enormous. His supporters may argue that Panlilio and Grace Padaca won the gubernatorial races in Pampanga and Isabella with no funds and no machinery but surely it would be impossible to run a national campaign on a shoestring. As Nicanor Perlas points out, politicians from outside “the system” can win, but only if they manage to mobilize civil society on an almost unprecedented scale. If there is to be a fifth column in 2010 it will need more than Brother Ed’s sincerity, it will require a campaign with enormous organizational expertise, support from the traditional leftist parties (Bayan Muna is already making positive noises), a huge fundraising effort, and possible links with Mar Roxas's campaign. All that is possible, but since it is starting from zero, the campaign has to start right away.

PS A half hour interview with Ed Panlilio can be found here.

The “Gentleman” Kidnapper

It really turns my stomach to hear kidnapper Albader Parad try to claim the high ground after the release of Mary Jean Lacaba yesterday. Here is what Richard Gordon had to say about the Parad’s behaviour after the release:

Gordon said Parad, in their talk, sounded more aggressive than before. “It was as if he stands on moral ground because of the release of Mary Jean,” he said.

Parad himself claimed that the release was part of a “gentleman’s agreement” with Gordon:

“We just wanted to show that we fulfill what we promise,” Parad said in an interview in Filipino at around 8:30 p.m., adding: “They know no ransom was paid.”

Well what a great guy. Yet this is the same gentleman Parad who has subjected three people and their families to unimaginable distress for the past 77 days. The same Parad who has been hogging the headlines with his gruesome threats of beheadings of innocent people. I doubt whether too many people will be impressed by his new found trustworthiness.

Parad even tried yesterday to shift the blame onto the government:

“But if [the government] will not try to understand us — didn’t they say that life is precious? So, let them show us that the lives of these two are precious. If not, we cannot do anything. The lives of these two are even less important to us.”

Quite sickening.

Meanwhile the Silvio Berlusconi award for tactless sexism goes to Sulu Vice Governor Sahidullah, who described Mary Jean Lacaba as “slimmer, prettier,” after her hellish experience. Nice one Gov!

Jose Rizal: The Man Who Refused to Give Up His Reason

Leon Ma. Guerrero’s biography of Rizal, The First Filipino, is a rambling life, punctuated by too many lengthy quotations, and written in a discursive style. However, it contains genuine insight into the Philippines’ enigmatic national hero and presents a consistent and convincing picture of Rizal as a torchbearer for rationalism and humanism martyred by an essentially medieval colonial government violently opposed to independent thought.

One thing I have never understood about Rizal is why he did not save himself while he could. Having moved most of his family to Hong Kong in 1891¬¬-1892, why did he not settle for life as simple bourgeois eye doctor with a second career as a novelist? Instead of returning to the maelstrom, why did he not decide to have an arms-length relationship with the politics of his country? As Guerrero recounts in great detail, by then he had already fallen out with many Madrid-based exiles, particularly Marcelo H. Pilar, and had refused to write any more for the journal Solidaridad. Even after his return to the Philippines and exile to Dapitan, it was not too late. Why did Rizal not take the advice of Governor General Blanco in 1894 and go to Spain? Or simply escape from Dapitan as many of his friends urged him to do?

Rizal’s own explanation of his return from Hong Kong is contained in a letter “to the Filipinos” dated 20 June 1892.

The step I have taken or am about to take is very risky no doubt and I do not have to say that I have given it much thought. I know that almost everyone is against it but I know too that almost no one knows what goes in my heart. I cannot go on living knowing that so many suffer unjust persecution because of me … I also want to show those who deny our patriotism that we know how to die doing our duty and for our convictions. What does death matter if one dies for what one loves, for one’s country and loved ones?”

This is fine as far as it goes, but it is too general to provide the complete answer—it is possible to imagine Ninoy Aquino saying the same 94 years later. It seems to me there are at least four main ways of explaining why Rizal made the choices he did.

1. He was a true intellectual who valued ideas above everything, even his own life—“a man should die for his duty and his convictions” he wrote to his parents (note not “be prepared to die for his convictions”). Rizal knew, with a certainty only the truly brilliant can ever have, that his ideas were correct and would conquer the forces of obscurantism that overwhelmed his country. Even on his last night, while assailed by priests trying to force him to recant, he clung to his Enlightenment beliefs: “But Father, what do you want me to do? It seems I cannot give up my reason” he told one persistent Jesuit.

2. Rizal found the mantle of leadership of the Filipinos impossible to shake off in favour of bourgeois respectability. Since his patriotic speech to celebrate the gold medal awarded to Juan Luna’s Spoliarium in 1884 (“the Oriental chrysalis is breaking out of its sheath”), he had been anointed the leader of the illustrados (although Guerero points out that “Rizal did not have the temperament that makes for success in politics”).

3. Rizal’s tragic and in part self-inflicted death was consistent with a dominant trait of Filipinos, a love of melodrama and the dramatic gesture.

The fourth possible explanation comes not from Guerrero, but from Rizal from Within by Ante Radaic, who refers to Rizal’s “Hamlet disposition.” (See Nick Joaquin’s essay on the two works here.)

"Rizal, the bold dreamer, strikes me as weak of will and irresolute for action and life. His withdrawal, his timidity, proved a hundred times, his timorousness, are no more than facets of his Hamlet disposition. To have been a practical revolutionary he would have needed the simple mentality of an Andrés Bonifacio. He was, I think, a faint-heart and a dubitator."

This is too strong to describe a man who displayed such heroism in his final hours, but at key points in his life Rizal did show great indecision. None of his numerous relationships with women ended in marriage until his wedding to Josephine Bracken in his death cell two hours before his execution. He travelled continuously around Europe, and his inability to settle down anywhere, or even to decide on Europe over Asia, suggests a man overwhelmed by the many and competing choices that lay before him.

This indecision pursued him to the end. Despite the statement in the letter to the Filipinos quoted above, when Rizal was finally arrested in 1898 for the crime of subversion he had just arrived in Barcelona on his way to Cuba to join the Spanish forces fighting the revolutionaries as a doctor, surely a curious occupation for a revolutionary. It is fascinating to speculate what would have happened to this brilliant man had Bonifacio not begun the revolution a few months earlier, which Rizal was unjustly executed for leading. The fourth reason for Rizal’s refusal to leave danger before it was too late would therefore read something like this.

4. Unable to decide on a career (doctor, writer, political agitator), a wife (Leonora, Tottie, Josephine, to name just a few), where to live (Madrid, London, Paris, Heidelberg, Hong Kong, Manila, Borneo), he remained in the Philippines, paralysed by indecision, until events overtook him.

To accept at least part of Radaic’s thesis does not seem to me to diminish Rizal. He was an intellectual and an artist, why should we expect him to be a Napoleon as well?

There are so many sides to this fascinating man that I can well understand why historians such as Ambeth Ocampo have dedicated much of their lives to try to figure him out. However, it is the preternatural calmness with which he awaited his (completely unjust) execution that is the most impressive part about him. To the end, he was vigorously debating theology with the many friars who pestered him to recant, writing poignant letters to his family (“Tell our father I remember him. How? I remember his tenderness and love. I ask him to forgive me for the grief which I unwillingly caused him”), marrying Josephine, and of course writing the beautiful poem Mi último adios. Perhaps the most affecting part of Rizal’s final preparations is in the last line of a letter to his family, in which he asks them to look after the dulce extranjera of Mi último adios

Pity poor Josephine.

This Bigote Business

Me bigote?

There is some justice in the fact that it is former President Estrada’s bigote (moustache), for so long a critical prop of his roguish image, that is now causing him so much grief.

Jinggoy Estrada’s claim that “There are so many men sporting a moustache,” is simply not correct. Compared with, say, India, this is a clean-shaven country; Erap the actor knew that when he was constructing his on-screen persona, hence the bigote. Therefore, whatever the truth of the rest of Cezar Mancao’s statement, his claim that “bigote was the commonly known pseudonym of Erap” rings true.

The most intriguing article I have read about the Dacer-Corbito killing is “Dacer’s Killers: Who and Why?” by Supreme Court Justice Antonio F. Carpio, originally published on 24 June 2001 (when Carpio was in private practice) and reprinted in Friday’s Inquirer. Please read it—I think it is important for two main reasons.

First, Carpio points out that an affidavit by one of the accused policemen Glenn G. Dumlao, “is like a map that leads us right to the very doorsteps of Dacer’s killers.” In essence, Dumlao links the killing to papers on the BW resources scandal supposedly held by Dacer, thus providing a motive for the rub-out. According to Dumlao, Michael Ray Aquino, one of the shadowy figures who people this murderous cast, had been ordered by Lacson to enter Dacer’s office at the Manila Hotel to steal documents. The hotel surveillance cameras made that impossible, with the result that we all know. Dumlao’s affidavit was eventually withdrawn, but if it can be corroborated by other evidence this version of events could prove very damaging for Erap.

Second, Carpio’s article recreates the atmosphere surrounding Erap’s mafia presidency. A stock market fraud carried out by the president and his business cronies that virtually destroyed the national stock market; policemen stalking hotel corridors in an attempt to carry out illegal activities; an abduction in broad daylight on one of Manila’s busiest thoroughfares, almost certainly by policemen; a grisly murder in an isolated spot; a key witness (Teofelo Vina) gunned down at a party in Cavite before he was able to execute an affidavit—it is a poisonous mix of Watergate and the Sopranos, carried out by PNP goons.

I really hope that the media and the Department of Justice pursue this, so we can get to the bottom of this bigote business.

Were Ninoy Aquino and Bubby Dacer killed on presidential orders?

The release of the 10 remaining soldiers convicted of assassinating Ninoy Aquino in 1983 in the same week as an announcement that a former policeman is willing to spill the beans on the murder of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver in 2000 is an intriguing coincidence. How high do orders for assassinations go in this country? Did the instructions to kill Aquino and Dacer come from Presidents Marcos and Estrada?

Aquino Assassination

Most commentators have argued that the Aquino assassination was too crude and blatant for an experienced operator like Marcos. In America’s Boy, James Hamilton-Paterson tells a nice story: “The president was alleged to have thrown a dish from his bedside table at the faithful Ver, furiously exclaiming ‘Idiot! Now they’ll all blame me.’”*

However, Hamilton-Paterson’s claim that “Oddly enough, Marcos was the one person not to have been seriously blamed” is not correct. In Waltzing with a Dictator (pp. 348¬¬-349), Raymond Bonner notes the following.

In July 1983, after Aquino had let it be known that he planned to return to the Philippines, Marcos asked one of his most trusted assistants to research political assassinations and expressed particular interest in the killing of Archbishop Romero, a human rights activist gunned down with a single bullet while saying mass in El Salvador.

US intelligence reported that Marcos sent Colonel Abdilla, a notorious torturer, to the USA to trail Aquino. Some intelligence officials felt that Abdilla was under orders to assassinate Aquino if the opportunity arose.

Bonner continues:

Abdilla’s mission and other evidence led one [US] diplomat, who was a in a senior position in the embassy at the time of the assassination, to conclude, “It was Marcos. He wanted get to rid of him. In effect, there was a standing order to shoot on sight. The order had gone out to take care of Aquino. It wasn’t an order to kill at the airport.” The operative words were the last three. Marcos wanted Aquino killed. But he didn’t give the order to do so at the airport.

Nevertheless, Bonner concludes that “most people believe that the cumulative weight of the evidence points to Imelda Marcos and her brother Kokoy Romualdez … The two were motivated, some American officials concluded, by their belief that Marcos was dying and by Mrs Marcos’s desire to run the country if he did.”

The official inquiry into the killing of Aquino, the Agrava Commission, was split, but unanimous on the involvement of the military, which most have taken to mean the head of the armed forces and Marcos’s fellow Ilocano, General Fabian Ver. In the words of Roberto Ongpin, the trade and industry minister, “Galman did it. Ver set him up” (America’s Boy, p. 372).

There is also plenty of evidence to implicate Imelda Marcos in the assassination, not least because the Agrava Commission found that, at an operational level, the operation was masterminded by General Luther Custodio, whose relationship to Imelda was succinctly described by a US intelligence official, “She owned him, lock, stock, and barrel” (Waltzing with a Dictator (p.350).

My guess is that, while Marcos probably didn’t issue a direct order, he certainly thought about it. By 1983, he was a very sick man, and in the atmosphere of paranoia that surrounds the sickbed of a strongman, it is reasonable to look for those who might be looking to establish a chain of succession, a chain that would be threatened by the arrival of Aquino. That seems to point to Imelda in concert with Ver, a conclusion that is also reached by Mark Thompson in The Anti-Marcos Struggle (p. 115). It is a shame that the assassination is rarely if ever raised in interviews with Imelda, which mainly concentrate on banal questions about her shoe collection.

Dacer and Corbito Assassination

Former Senior Superintendent Cesar Mancao has apparently signed an affidavit identifying the perpetrators and the mastermind behind the brutal killing of publicist Bubby Dacer and his unfortunate driver Emmanuel Corbito in 2000, a skeleton that has been rattling around in the Estrada-Lacson closet for the last eight years. I think someone had better tell Ping that running around all over the town denying a crime no one has directly accused you of might not be such a smart move. On the other hand Ping, as head of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, was Mancao’s boss, so it seems unlikely that he is going to escape an accusation of involvement.

The really intriguing question is the participation of Erap. Did he issue an order? Or did he, as writers have argued above for Marcos, simply set the context for the killing and allow his subordinates to figure out what he wanted? Or did he have nothing to do with it?

Option C is clearly the one Erap himself wants us to believe. Speaking of his meeting with Dacer (“one of my good friends”) in Malacañang shortly before Dacer’s abduction, a meeting he can’t deny, since it will have been officially recorded, Erap reminiscences in today’s Inquirer “We talked about many things, for old time’s sake.”

That’s not quite how I remember contemporaneous reports of that meeting. In fact after Dacer’s disappearance newspapers reported that his meeting with Estrada had been acrimonious, shouting had been heard from inside the room, and Dacer had left hurriedly. Given that Dacer was abducted and killed in November 2000, at the beginning of the impeachment proceedings that were to lead to Erap’s fall two months later, there was conjecture that Dacer had tried to blackmail Erap by threatening to expose some more of his good friend’s shady dealings. Someone should dig up those old newspaper articles I think.

In all this interesting speculation, we should not lose sight of the pure horror of Dacer and Corbito’s last moments. Here is the account of Diloy and Jimmy Lopez, both of Indang, Cavite, who witnessed this ghastly scene:

Lopez said a group led by SPO4 Soberano arrived at his home in Barangay Buen Alejos I, Indang, on the afternoon of Nov. 24, and asked him where they could hold the two victims for safekeeping.

Hog-tied

Dacer and Corbito were already hog-tied and their eyes and mouths covered with masking tape when they were brought to Lopez’s house, according to Wycoco.

Lopez recalled that the party arrived in two vehicles. Dacer and Corbito were still alive and were inside a white Toyota Lite Ace, he said.

Soberano and the two other PAOCTF agents, Escalante and Purificacion, were aboard another vehicle, he said.

From Lopez’s narration, it was not clear which car carried SPO3 Torres.
"When they arrived, they were looking for a place to hide the two men they brought with them. I said I would find a place, so I brought the group to the garage of my brother, William," Lopez said in Filipino.

Lopez said the group waited until it was dark. Around 8 p.m., the party left for a nearby creek, bringing the two victims along, he said. He told reporters he stayed behind because he has trouble walking long distances.

At this point, Diloy took up the narration.

Face down

Upon reaching the creek, Diloy said, he was ordered to gather firewood for the pyre.

Dacer and Corbito were made to lie face down, he said. Three men used the electrical cord to strangle them to death, he told the news conference.

Asked by reporters to identify the killers, Diloy replied, "Mauro Torres, William and Diego."

The murderers placed the bodies on top of the pyre of wood and tires, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire, he narrated.

They let the corpses burn for about half an hour, he said. When it was over, he walked toward nearby Binakayan town, leaving the others behind.

* In the version in Waltzing with a Dictator, Marcos throws something at Imelda (not Ver), hitting her on the cheek.

Meanwhile the killings go on …

For people who are basically charming, decent, and gentle, Filipinos spend a lot of time killing each other. After a lull in the extrajudicial killings that were attributed to the Armed Forces of the Philippines by the report of UN special rapporteur Philip Alston in 2007, another atrocity has been reported from Davao

Believed kidnapped by military agents only 24 hours earlier, the daughter of a ranking communist guerrilla has turned up dead with stab wounds and torture marks. A farmer found the body of teacher Rebelyn Pitao, 20, late on Thursday near an irrigation ditch in Purok 5 in Barangay San Isidro, Carmen, Davao del Norte. She was the younger daughter of Leoncio Pitao, aka Commander Parago, of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The President has announced an investigation into the killing, which will no doubt prove to be as effective as all the previous commissions and inquiries into brutal killings that might lead to inconvenient places.

Still, everyone knows it is very hard to receive justice in Philippines unless you have powerful friends, and there is one intriguing element to the despicable killing of this young woman:

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a close friend of Pitao or Commander Parago, called Rebelyn's murder "a deed most foul." "Kung galit sila (NPA), mas galit ako (If the NPA is angry, I’m more angry)," he said.

Duterte is a pretty big man in Davao and this killing of the daughter of one of his friends on his home turf is big loss of face. Let’s see how he responds.

The Big Queasy: Magnet Café, Sarah’s, Likha-Diwa, and Conspiracy

Sunset at UP Diliman

The first thing you notice about a night out in QC is how much cheaper it is than drinking in Makati. A few early evening beers, dinner, music, and drinking to midnight at the places above would buy you a couple of glasses of wine in Green Belt.

QC joints are also just that much bigger than those in Manila and Makati. Many come with small terraces, taking their cue from QC’s broad thoroughfares and old trees, which give it a more open feel than the rest of Metro Manila.

My friend Raju and I opened up with a couple of ice cold pales at Magnet Café on Katipunan, which is conveniently placed to break up the journey to the Diliman area. From there we moved to Sara’s, a congenial outdoor student bar on the fringes of UP. It has been a long since I have been to Diliman and returning there reminded me of my first year in the Philippines in 1997. Apart from anything else, I love the dark pockets on the campus, which offer some relief from our light-polluted Manila.

Right next to Sarah’s is Likha-Diwa, a funky little vegetarian place. This is a little bit of Brighton (my old stamping ground) in the heart of the city, with arty furniture, some Japanese-style seating, area, an extensive menu, and tasty and incredibly cheap food. My way of judging a vegetarian café is to taste their burger and Likha-Diwa’s soya burger was disposed of in about 30 seconds. It was a wee bit small to be honest, but hey it was about 85 pesos so you could have a couple and still be some way short of that Green Belt glass of wine. We shared some pokoras (which were freshly cooked and met with Raju’s approval) and I washed them down with a carrot and apple juice from the extensive list of juices. It was bloody great—just my sort of place.

Our last port of call was Conspiracy to see “Salinawat ni Pete”, an evening of standards translated into Tagalog by Pete Lacaba. This was an outstanding end to a fine QC evening. Apart from anything else it was fun trying to recognize the songs, here are some of those I spotted:

Cooky Chua
I’ll never fall in love again
Cold cold cold heart
Kat Aggarada
As time goes by
The look of love
Susan Fernandez
In the wee small hours of the morning

I loved the crowd; a bunch of long-grey-hairs fresh from a First Quarter Storm rally. There was some curiosity as to why a couple of foreigners with about 50 words of Tagalog to rub together between them should be at such an event but everyone was extraordinarily welcoming, even by Filipino standards (thanks guys!). We ended up swapping stories and rums with Cooky and Conrado de Quiros before melting back into the night.

Postscript: We did Conspiracy to Makati in less than 20 minutes, yet the reaction from a couple of friends I mentioned this evening to was “You went all the way up there …?” C’mon, it ain’t that far!

Thanks for the tip (and the nickname) Butch and thanks to Dahon for the pic.

From another evening at Conspiracy, Cooky does the Look of Love

Jackson Browne Versus John McCain

Even by the standards of Republican party logic McCain's arguments in this case take some beating.

The legal dispute between Jackson Browne and Senator John McCain over Mr. Browne’s song “Running on Empty” will keep running: a federal judge in California has denied motions filed by Mr. McCain and the Republican National Committee to halt a lawsuit brought against them by Mr. Browne, according to court documents. Mr. Browne said in his suit that Mr. McCain and the committee had infringed on his copyrights by using “Running on Empty” in a presidential campaign commercial without Mr. Browne’s permission. Mr. McCain and the committee had argued that First Amendment and fair-use rules permitted the use because the song occurred in a political context, but Judge R. Gary Klausner was unconvinced.

I hope Jackson pushes this as far as he can and refuses to settle.

The Shame of the Brits

There are many reasons to feel ashamed of being British and Jade Goody is probably not the most significant of them, but since the ghastly travesty of cancer-stricken Goody’s wedding is taking place as I type, today I will choose to feel humiliated by her.

Fortunately, I’ve managed to steer clear of all but the barest outlines of Goody’s absurd “career” as a reality show contestant and I hope you have too. However, if you are fortunate enough to have absolutely no idea what I am on about, this Wikipedia entry will bring you up to speed.

In short, Goody is a perfect representative of a country that

• puts ignorance on a pedestal (“Rio de Janeiro, ain't that a person?" she remarked in one show);


• is besotted by “celebrities” who, like Goody, cannot sing, act, dance, nor (of course) write, yet have become famous through such programs as Celebrity Wife Swap, Celebrity Driving School, Celebrity Weakest Link and Celebrity Stars in their Eyes (all of which starred Goody);


• has a nasty seam of psychological aggression (Goody’s bullying on the programmes is one of the reasons for her infamy) and physical violence (guess what, her beloved has just been released from 18 months in prison after he was convicted of assaulting a 16-year-old boy); and


• is characterized by chauvinism and bigotry (Goody was accused of racism towards Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother).

There are (a few) grounds to be proud of being British of course (the anti-Goody) but right now Britain’s enormous contributions to world literature and popular music (to name just two of the most obvious) are not in the ascendancy.

Instead a trend that I thought must have reached the bottom with the canonization of the tragic but bird-brained Princess Diana drills ever deeper into the primeval slime of the great British public’s taste. Today, the foul-mouthed Jade Goody—who would be brave enough to predict what is to follow?

So glad to be a long, long away from this weird and sad country.

Dealing With Unwanted Calls

This has been around before, but it is well worth a re-run.

Here is another approach from a British Telecom customer who works himself up into a state of apoplectic rage impressively quickly.

Yale University linked to international war criminals

Now that tabloid headline caught your eye didn’t it?

Both major perpetrators of the Iraq war now have ties to Yale. As is well known, the accursed Bush was a graduate of that once reputable academic establishment and now his fellow crusader Blair is to join the faculty.

Yale University is pleased to announce the appointment of Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Howland Distinguished Fellow for the next academic year.

Mr. Blair will lead a seminar at Yale and participate in a number of events around the campus. The course in which he will participate with Yale faculty will examine issues of faith and globalization. His efforts at Yale relate to the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that he will be launching later this year.

You can’t help wondering what the Yale President Richard C. Levin had been smoking when he stated:

The appointment of Mr. Blair provides a tremendous opportunity for our students and our community. As the world continues to become increasingly inter-dependent, it is essential that we explore how religious values can be channeled toward reconciliation rather than polarization. Mr. Blair has demonstrated outstanding leadership in these areas and is especially qualified to bring his perspective to bear.

How can warmonger Blair possibly regarded as an agent of “reconciliation rather than polarization”? This appointment is just absurd and a disgrace to Yale. I hope the students show better sense than their teachers and give slimy Tony Blair the reception he deserves when he arrives.

Incidentally, it is good to see that Yale's tradition of nepotism (dimwit Bush's family connections were the only reason he got in) are alive and well. I don't need to tell you where Blair's son Euan goes to college do I?

See the next story for a link between the university’s founder Elihu Yale and the Philippines.

Thanks for the information Steve and apologies for dissing your alma mater ...

Historical background to corruption in the Philippines

Carmen Guerrero Nakpil reviews English trade in Manila and Mindanao (1672-1699) by Serafin Quiason in the Philippine Star.

In the second half of the 17th century in Manila, things were pretty much what they are today. Smuggling, illegal trade, secret agenda, false labels flourished. The rulers were the worst offenders and foreign governments and traders made the most of greed in high places. Identities remained hidden and religion kept both eyes on heaven. The poor were never considered except as sources of hard, often forced, labor, the taxes and servility they provided. … “The bureaucracy was so plagued with corruption,” writes Serafin Quiason, “that bribery was a deeply ingrained part of the game at the Manila Customs House. The Hindu aides or the English sea captains, under a carefully contrived cloak of secrecy, were granted an audience at the Palace or the Town Hall, bearing suitable gifts and fictitious names, conducting trading operation during many years.”

The book sheds light on another cultural trait that can still be seen today.

Another side to the corruption in 17th- century Manila and the damage it inflicted on our ancestors sheds light on our lives today. The illegality flourished because there was a deep and wide market for imported goods. What we now call “the colonial mentality” of the Filipino consumer. That weakness in the national character is described by Dr. Quiason thus: “The indios Filipinos developed a special preference for the imported fabrics of bright colors (hand-woven chintz, muslin, calico, gingham, taffeta, especially the wovenfolk who made them into exquisite saya and tapis worn by the affluent indio women. The importing craze whetted the appetite for diamonds and precious stones brought by Armenian merchants.” Now we know where and when the taste for flamboyant clothes and accessories displayed by our generals’ wives and cabinet-members’ mistresses comes from.

Finally, the book explains the link between the Philippines and a famous seat of learning in the USA.

An interesting sidebar to this glimpse of illegality in 17th-century Spanish Manila is the little-known participation of at least one great man of American academe. A Welshman born and raised in America, he left for London at the age of 21 where he worked in various offices, then spent the rest of his life at Fort St. George on the Indian coast, finally becoming its governor, but also one of the richest merchants trading in diamonds, slaves, money-lending, spices shipping and other contraband enterprises in Manila and Maguindanao. It was from the great fortune he made in the “Indies,” specially “Manilha” and the Spanish Moluccas” as this country was called then, that he made mammoth donations to an obscure college in “Conecticot” which became one of the pillars of the US Ivy League and bore his name: Elihu Yale. Many of the most successful and learned Filipinos have been Yale men, graduates of Yale University like Dr. Serafin Quiason.

Welcome Barack and Farewell Accursed Bush

Some of you will have already seen these photos on Frayed's Facebook page but they tell the story of a day of anticipation and togetherness much better than I ever could.

First, one from the Chinatown bus from New York to DC on 19 January, the last full day of the accursed Bush.

The contrast between that desolate scene and the clear blue skies of inauguration day couldn't have been sharper.

The organizers deserved both cheers and rotten tomatoes. Full marks to the Washington Metro, which brought hundreds of thousands of participants in comfortably and efficiently.

At the station the crowds were moved on firmly but politely ...

... to meet, utter chaos! None of the police seemed to have clue what to do, or where to direct people with or without tickets. Thousands of people, including us, were shoved down a walled in area on 3rd Street, subsequently dubbed the "Tunnel of Doom".

This Post story describes the chaos well:

...in command centers around Washington, security officials were starting to get alarming e-mails and calls. A giant bottleneck of people had developed near a security checkpoint on the Capitol's north side. Thousands more people were stuck in the Third Street tunnel, many of whom had been standing for hours with their tickets. A combination of official miscalculations and inadequate response contributed to a breakdown in order at half a dozen ticket entrances and intersections around the Capitol before the swearing-in of President Obama.

Thank God we decided to get out of that horrible tunnel while we still could, another 5 minutes and it would have been impossible as thousands filed in behind us.

What followed was a couple of hours wandering the barricaded streets with the colorful crowds thinking "this is what we came 10,000 miles to do?"

"I'm not from here" this cop told us blithely. Thanks, mate.

But then ... thanks to modern technology (our friend called her husband at home who could check on the internet) we learned that if we walked almost to the end of the Mall, to 18th Street, we would get in. I tell you, once we realized this plan was going to work we went singing and dancing into the Mall. Hallelujah!

After that it was fantastic, everything went perfectly. The crowd,from eight months to eight decades, from African Americans to Scandinavians to Filipinos, was wonderful. I was concerned that there might be too much of a stadium rock band feel (and there were indeed some chants of O-BAM-A) but in general people were just happily taking it all in, just amazed that it was actually happening. The first photo below is of one of many great slogans, the second of Jamaicans for Obama.

Of course we gave a huge cheer when Barack first appeared on our jumbotron screen:

My favourite bit was definitely Aretha, I understand there is a Facebook group "fans of Aretha's hat" -- that almost makes me want to renounce my vow never to join. Somehow,hearing Aretha's still familiar voice, first heard in the Jim Crow South, singing "let freedom ring" at the inauguration of the first African-American president ... you'd have to have a heart of stone not shed a few tears over that.

But where exactly were they, I hear you ask. Well, you see this amazing photo? We were actually behind the Washington Monument, in other words not even in shot! But I don't care a bit -- we were there, close a screen, we were cold and happy, and it was worth every one of those 10,000 miles.

Thanks to the Washington Post for the photo of the Tunnel of Doom and to Boston.com for the aerial shot.

Inauguration Day

We are off to the States tomorrow to see the inauguration of Barack, among other things. Can't believe that a rush of post-election enthusiasm and a few glasses of wine is actually resulting in our going to this thing! We'll be gone for one frostbitten week.

Slumdog slush

I’m amazed at all the praise for Slumdog Millionaire, which has just won four Golden Globes and is being touted as "the movie to beat at the Academy Awards". “Dickens with rupees” the Village Voice called it (what a brilliant turn of phrase); that’s almost as much of an insult to Dickens as this clichéd and daftly plotted movie is to India.

There are good, even great, elements to Slumdog Millionaire (although many of them seem to have been borrowed from the much better Brazilian slum movie, City of God). The colours and cinematography are wonderful and they blend seamless with the atmospheric score by A.R. Rahman (which deserved the Golden Globe it won this week). The final faux Bollywood routine over the credits is a funny and appropriate ending. The child actors are beguiling.

But that is far as I can go.

There is nothing to say about the evil stereotypes that litter the film—the wicked Fagin-like character who kidnaps the children, the fat and sadistic police torturer, the boorish gang boss—except that the film-makers obviously didn’t see creating characters as part of their remit, not if you can buy them all at a fire-sale of worn out Indian “types”.

And the plot! OK, leaps of faith are a feature of Indian cinema, but this story just makes no sense. The only advantage of having a quiz show contestant fortunate enough to be served up a diet of questions that all miraculously echo incidents in his own life is that this implausible device enables the film-makers to tell his hackneyed story is a series of flashbacks.

However, Jamal’s story has holes big enough to drive a Tata truck through. Isn’t it a bit curious that these slum kids speak to each other mainly in English? Why would the police torture a nationwide TV celebrity? How come whenever Jamal, the main character, tries to locate his beloved (bearing in mind that this is Bombay, a city of 15 million people), she miraculously appears? The kids fall off a train and guess what, they’re at the Taj Mahal.

Some of this, especially the Taj Mahal sequence, is presumably intended to inject dreamlike interludes into the grimness of the main story line, but you have to be very good to carry that off. Slumdog Millionaire’s improbabilities just diminish your belief in the already far-fetched plot.

Despite its efforts to make a statement on modern India, and the transition from the slum culture to the media culture, Slumdog Millionaire is an old fashioned film, designed to pander to Western viewers’ biases about the dirtiness and brutality of life in India. It’s a bummer, despite what them Golden Globes folks say about it.

Jamby Madrigal’s reading matter

I was buying a book at the Rockwell Fully Booked this afternoon when I looked over at the somewhat dishevelled looking woman at the next cash register, hey it’s Jamby! I’ve chatted with her briefly a couple of times in the past so we sort of nodded at each other (being a multitasking politician she was also on the phone while making her purchases) and I craned my neck to check out what she was buying.

Jamby’s pile was nearly all Filipiniana. I spotted Nick Joaquin’s Culture and Society, a book called Kubrador, which I assume was something to do with the movie, and the wonderful An Anarchy of Families by Benedict Anderson and his Cornell colleagues (there were two or three others I couldn’t see the spine of). Anyway, I thought Jamby did pretty well there – I wonder how many of her fellow senators read such serious books…

Bizarrely, as I left the store I was almost knocked down by an old man striding in – Lito Atienza! Holy cow,. Now I would have really liked to have seen what he was going to buy. The economics of the mining industry? Family planning is the devil’s work? Destroying parks for dummies?

“Alabang Boys” – give us a break

Here’s a game I sometimes play.

Imagine you are a visiting businessman with no prior knowledge of the Philippines. You have stayed here for a week and gathered various impressions about the country from the copy of the Inquirer that arrives under your door every morning.

Here are three conclusions you might have arrived at from the relentless coverage of the “Alabang Boys” case in recent days.

• Drug taking in the Philippines is almost unknown — this is why this exceptional case has attracted so much attention.

• The Philippines must be as incorruptible as Singapore — this is why the papers are so outraged at this alleged bribery attempt.

• The Philippines has no serious problems to attend to — this is why the papers are devoting so many acres of newsprint to this trivial case (not to mention the ruckus at a golf club that competed for space on the front page).

• This place is weird.

Unlike the Inquirer, which has clearly decided that the Brodett family is guilty (or so it seems to me), I haven’t reached a conclusion about the rights and wrongs of the case.

Given the way things work here, it seems to me quite possible that the Brodetts may have tried to pay money for their sons’ release. Facing similar circumstances, many of us might have done the same.

On the other hand, it also seems quite possible that, realizing that the young men were from a wealthy family, members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) either set them up or tried to use their sons’ predicament to “encourage” a bribe from their parents. After all, it would not be the first time such a thing has happened in the Philippines.

That’s why we have courts; to decide which of prima facie equally plausible explanations reflects what actually happened.

I have reached a couple of conclusions about the furor over the case though though.

• The PDEA claim that the three young men represented “a syndicate that sold illegal drugs at the Metro Manila club circuit and did business online” isn't too convincing, if only because it has supplied no evidence of this, beyond dropping the name of Embassy (surely an easy target), which the club has strongly denied.

• It seems much more likely that this whole thing is about young people taking drugs for fun, an activity that has been widespread throughout the world for at least 40 years and will still be practised long after the Brodetts, the PDEA officers, you, and me have all kicked the bucket. So why can’t we have a public policy that reflects the realities of the 21st century rather than those of the 1940s?

What bemuses me, as much as my imaginary visiting businessman, is why the press has treated this as such a vital issue. The Inquirer alone has published an incredible 92 articles on the “Alabang boys” in the last 12 days, some of which, such as today’s ridiculous front page article “Retired generals rally behind PDEA”, seem to have been written solely to keep ramming the issue down the throats of its long-suffering readers. What’s it all about?

Demotivational posters

You may have seen some of these demotivational posters before but they made me chuckle all the same (mainly because I hate the posters they mock so much).

View this photo

and of course:

Thanks to motivated posters.com, My PE Port Elizabeth Images, and Despair Inc.

Put it where you want it (Remi Gaillard)

In case you have been wondering what I think about before I drop off to sleep every night (go on admit it, it's a question that has been bothering you for a while) this video comes pretty close ...

Thanks Nige.

Child elopers’ marriage plans thwarted

Here is a heart-warming little story for you. These kids’ marriage plans are more logical than those of some adults I’ve known …

Two German children - aged five and six - have been stopped by police from eloping to Africa to tie the knot in the sun, reports say. The budding lovebirds, identified as Mika and Anna-Lena, packed bathing costumes, sunglasses and a lilo and headed for the airport. They even had the presence of mind to invite along an official witness - Anna-Lena's seven-year-old sister. The three got as far as Hanover railway station before police intervened. The young couple were "very much in love" and had decided to get married in Africa "where it is warm", police spokesman Holger Jureczko told the AFP news agency

You can read more about these young romantics here.

New NAIA terminal

Gentle reader, since you may not have had the pleasure of being whisked through our new world-class air terminal like a character in some airline TV advert, let me give you the vicarious pleasure of spying on our little Christmas Eve adventure.

I’ll start with the approach road to NAIA 3, which forks as you approach the terminal; one lane for VIPs and two for the rest of us. If ever a road sign encapsulated the social structure of a country, this is surely it.

If you are a frequent traveller to or from Manila, I suspect that the idea of being treated like a paying customer in a modern facility rather than like a fish at a wet market may make you rather nervous. Lay those fears aside! You will be treated as crappily as ever, despite the fact that the terminal seems to be operating at about 10% capacity.

I won’t burden you with all the grim details of our voyage through NAIA 3’s icy wastes, except to say that it was made much enthralling because we were on a “Lucio Tan Special”. Allow me an aside to explain how the Special works.

First, overbook the flight by 100% and hope you can crisis manage the unlucky 50% onto a flight in the afternoon.

Second, inform nobody about what is going on; not the luckless Air Philippines ground crew, not the security men holding back the increasingly frustrated passengers, and certainly not the passengers themselves (who, like us, will have woken at 3.30am for a flight that ended up leaving almost half a day later).

It is in the third stage that old Lucio really puts in place an imaginative business model.

Let’s say you own a large and unsuccessful hotel not a million miles from the airport. Now there is nothing more depressing for the few guests at the vast Century Park Hotel than to come down to an almost deserted breakfast room. “My God”, they will say, “this place is like a morgue, next time I am going to stay somewhere with a bit more life.” On top of that what are you going to do with all that food you have to prepare every day? However, let’s also say you also own an airline with hundreds of delayed passengers—bingo! The hotel guests look on in admiration at the bustling breakfast room and we poor schmucks get to eat an admittedly decent breakfast buffet. So decent in fact that I heard a fellow passenger exclaim “Sana every day delayed ang flight” while piling his plate high with Lucio’s bacon and egg.

(If you think I’m exaggerating about this being a business model, as we boarded the bus down to Lucio’s diner the driver smiled at the Philippine Airlines steward and said “Third day in a row!”)

But enough of my whining! You want to know about our new terminal! Well, it’s freezing, cavernous, empty, and hollow sounding. The screens are too small, the outlets too few, and the announcements too muffled. In fact it is exactly as you pictured it.

I never thought I’d say it but I missed the old domestic terminal; at least it seemed authentic, rather than another multimillion dollar bodge job that made someone rich but ended up on the never-ending pile of the country’s missed opportunities.

See this earlier post on the new airport.

Best nonfiction reads of 2008: Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell, A Shameful Act by Taker Akçam

Last year was an outstanding year for reading (perhaps because I was so busy neglecting this blog) so I thought I would kick start the latest attempt to revive good old Torn and Frayed with some notes on some of the best books I read over the past 12 months. I’ll start with three very different nonfiction books, each outstanding in its own way.

Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano

I’m a sucker for tales of goons and thugs and Roberto Saviano's description of the Camora, the Naples mafia, is a cracker.

Our ignorance of the vast criminal economies of the world suits everyone; the criminals who can continue making their invisible billions and the forces of social control who don’t want us to see how easy the money is on the other side of the tracks.

Yet relying on the reports of the legal economy is like looking at the world with one eye shut. In many parts of the world, including, obviously, the Philippines and Naples, the black economy is what really makes the money go round. One of Saviano’s great achievements is to bring out the weird symbiotic relationship between modern organized crime and the state. These lines are spoken by a Neopolitan Mafiosi but they fit the Cagayan car smuggler and businessmen such as Lucio Tan like a greasy glove:

For us the state had to exist . Our philosophy was different from the Sicilians … we wanted to live with the state.

Saviano’s philosophical asides (he is a philosophy graduate and book opens with a Hannah Arendt quotation) and Gomorrah’s unconventional structure take a bit of getting used to, but the power and modernity of the subject matter—“the houses around here are disappearing, the Chinese are taking them” says one of the small-time Neapolitan hoods—make this a essential guide for the century that is scarily opening up before us.

The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell

Few non-British readers, or even Brits under the age of 60, have heard of the six Mitford sisters, but a biography of a family that included Hitler’s platonic girlfriend (Unity), a best-selling novelist (Nancy), a famous beauty and wife of the British Union of Fascists (Diana), and a communist and anthropologist (Decca) is unlikely to be dull. In fact The Mitford Girls is a beautifully written and organized history of six eccentric, not always lovable, daughters of minor British aristocrats who breezed their way onto the world stage by virtue of their beauty, charm, talent, and strangeness.

I loved this book so much that from about 10am I would find myself longing to leave my office to return to it. It is fascinating not just because of the sparkling characters that people its pages, but because of their closeness to the centres of power. Surely no other family can have had equal access to Churchill and Hitler? The fact that Deborah, the youngest and one of the less dramatic of the sisters, was briefly related by marriage to the Kennedys is just one of many ways in which the sisters were connected to the central pieces of the vast jigsaw puzzle that was the 20th century.

To really appeal to me, a book has to have a blue note running through it and the second half of The Mitford Girls becomes increasingly poignant as the sisters die off or, in one way or another, fail to find happiness. As one of the characters in Nancy’s witty novel Love in a Cold Climate says, “It’s the dropping off the perches. I’ve always dreaded when that begins.” Still, what perches they dropped from and how well their biographer has charted their fall.

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taker Akçam

There were times this book made me so angry I just couldn’t read it any more. It also completely changed my view of Turkey, a country that I had previously been quite well disposed to.

Taker Akçam is a Turkish historian who has, inevitably, had to go into exile because of his research into the Turkish state’s active participation in the genocide of over 1 million Armenians from 1916 to 1920. Before reading it, I had wondered whether perhaps there might be something in the Turkish argument, which reads something like “yes, people died but you have to remember this was wartime—and even if Armenians died, this was the result of rogue elements, not a systematic government policy.” A Shameful Act makes it clear that this is a complete lie, that the massacres were systematically coordinated by key elements of the Ottoman state, the ruling Union and Progress Party, and elements of the military. Akçam’s book carefully and dispassionately documents the planning of the genocide as well as the clumsy cover up, the burned files and silenced witnesses.

Amazingly, Turkey not only continues to deny that the genocide took place, it has closed the Turkey–Armenia border and persists in persecuting writers and journalists (including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk) under the notorious Article 301 of the country’s penal code for the ludicrous “crime” of “insulting Turkishness”. The gunning down of Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in broad daylight in the streets of Istanbul in 2007 was a bloody reminder of the risks courageous people like Taker Akçam run in laying bare Turkey’s shameful past.

Philippine—US relations in the age of Obama

Despite the fact that Barack Obama is a “a fan of the Philippines” according to US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, I have a feeling that the Philippines may be rather marginalized in the new administration’s foreign policy.

That’s not the view of the President of the Philippines, who should be portrayed in that cartoon above as an annoying little gnat, buzzing around the head of the president elect. According to Ambassador Kenney, Gloria’s (unanswered) congratulatory telephone call to Obama went through at “2 or 3 in the morning” (nice planning, Palace) and will be returned in due course. Back in June, the president (who has no shame in these matters) and her staff remorselessly hounded the Democratic candidate for a meeting to justify a US junket but had to be satisfied with a short telephone call, which, nevertheless, left her “elated”.

It is true that Asia as a whole seems likely to receive more attention from Obama than from previous presidents. According to a fascinating New Yorker piece on the candidates' foreign policy agendas, the blueprint for the new administration’s foreign policy can be found in a Phoenix Initiative report. This document lists only five “strategic priorities” for the United States and of those only two are regional:

1. counterterrorism,
2. nuclear proliferation,
3. climate change and oil dependence,
4. the Middle East, and
5. East Asia.

Although East Asia is often narrowly defined (the Harvard Department of East Asia Languages and Civilizations, for example, concentrates on China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam), the Phoenix Initiative’s definition is much wider, something closer to the now discarded term “the Orient”.

So if the USA is going to increase its focus on “East Asia”, won’t that be good news for its traditional allies in the region?

Unfortunately for, say, the Philippines and Japan, who fit into that category, the Phoenix Initiative concentrates heavily on the anticipated future economic powerhouses of China and India. The comforting remark that “the long-term U.S. strategy must also reassure traditional friends and allies” can’t disguise the fact in a world dominated by real politik the USA will go where the action is.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita was keen to stress yesterday that back in June Obama had written to Arroyo stressing the two countries’ shared interests, including “climate change, food security, poverty reduction, the future of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, human rights in Burma and defense reform.”

That’s fine and no one is going to claim that the US is going to abandon the Philippines, but let’s say you were an aspiring foreign policy professional in Washington, would you be brushing up on your Tagalog or your Mandarin?

The ties that bound the US and the Philippines together for the whole of the 20th century—the colonial experience, shared suffering during the Bataan death march and the rest of the second world war, Philippine support for the US military during the Cold War—are going to seem increasingly irrelevant as our new century grows into adolescence. In that sense McCain, who actually took the trouble to meet Arroyo during her June trip and whose world view seems rooted in the 1950s, would probably have placed the Philippines higher in his list of priorities than Obama will.

Thanks for the cartoon Nige.

Stabbing in Taguig: 23 October 2008 update

Please see previous posts for details of this incident.

Powerful arguments can often be marshalled on each side of difficult problems. Yesterday I received two pieces of advice from friends on the question of whether or not to pursue the case; both were eloquent and convincing, although they reached very different conclusions.

First, here is a British friend who has lived in the Philippines for many years.

... everything I see [on Torn and Frayed] reinforces my earlier gut instinct.

There is no gain and possibly some danger in pursuing this case.

Just be grateful that Noel and Tina are alive.

Mr. Benzon is clearly a deeply unhappy and disturbed man.

It is highly unlikely that you will have him put behind bars without an incredible lot of frustrating effort against a bunch of people who want to do nothing -- unless you pay them handsomely, which is like throwing good money after bad.

Even if Mr Benzon goes to clink he will get out one day and he will get drunk and might resume his mindless violence against you and yours or Noel and Tina or the neighbor.

I really think your generosity and admirable sense of civic duty need go no further than helping Noel and Tina find a home in another neighborhood.

As for retribution, have no doubt: Mr. Benzon will meet a deservedly bad end and will die unmourned and unloved, a sad waste of a life.

Be thankful that you had better luck with your parents and your upbringing etc.

I forwarded the letter to a Filipino friend who came back with this analysis.

Let's put the issue of cost aside for the moment.

Having been a police reporter and having had various experiences with the police over the years, I would say that "the system" (of law enforcement in the Philippines) is not completely unreliable. It works "in a certain way", which is to say that you need to know what buttons to push, and that is rarely very obvious.

What has happened is a basic and manifest crime. There is evidence, a witness. The police now know that people are very aware of what has happened. For them to fail to investigate it and prosecute it would be a public dereliction of duty.

Noel and Christina need to provide the necessary paperwork— nothing gets done in this country without reams of paperwork.

Benzon is demonstrably dangerous and needs to be put away. Whatever connections he may have with the local authorities will do him very little good if the spotlight of public attention is focused on him. If the current channels fail to make headway, I can bring this to the attention of people like Ramon Tulfo who just love cases like this, whatever else you may think of him. His Honor the Mayor of Taguig is now aware of this case, which should make Benzon's life a little more uneasy.

Of course, if Benzon can get away in Taguig with stabbing random people for unclear reasons, that tells me that the place where he lives is the kind of situation where, if someone were to ride up to his house on a motorcycle, shoot him in the head, and ride off, very little would be done about it. I am, of course, not suggesting that you or anyone should do this, simply that Benzon is well aware of it.

What I'm saying is, give the system a shot and see if it works. I've seen it work before and I know it can happen. I've also seen the system fail, but for me, it's a 50-50 proposition, which means there is a chance.

Time and emotional energy are up to you. I didn't need the stress and expense of time to fight for Louie Gonzalez, but I did it because I know for a fact that he is innocent. I think if we let Benzon get away with what he has done, at least without a fight, then we have no right to complain about the kind of society we live in. Justice is never automatic, it must be fought for. Injustice fills the unwatched spaces when we choose to look away.

There is always a turning point at which you realize the chances are too slim. The moment you come up against a brick wall, e.g. someone asks you for a lot of money, then you decide whether to drop it or not.

I don't see a brick wall right now. When Major Obong phoned me, he was all effusive and obsequious, evidently Mayor Tinga had had something to say on the matter. I would go with that flow right now.

If you want me to turn up at Taguig Police Station for a chat with Major Obong, I would be quite happy to do so. It would, of course be more effective (and I know this is totally Kafkaesque) for the paperwork to be complete first.

Here are some extracts from my reply to the second letter.

If only my interests were at stake, I would certainly pursue this case. Everything I feel about justice and civic responsibility revolts against walking away from it. I am also keen to see where it may lead and to document every grubby step of the way. As you say, the result may not necessarily be a bad one and I would certainly learn a great deal about how the system here functions “in its own way”. I also agree that in a country like the Philippines we do not have an all powerful state that we must submit to; the state is what we, in our actions, large and small, make of it. Refusing to pursue such a blatant and violent breach of the social contract would be another small step away from the society that we need to build to prevent this sort of thing happening.

Rightly or wrongly, I don’t feel personally threatened by our involvement in this. We are too far removed from Benzon and his world to allow him much opportunity of taking revenge on us, even if he and his family had the resources, which I doubt.

Noel’s situation is very different and I am not sure that his and his family’s interests would be served by his involvement in what is certain to be a long drawn out affair. If we pursue it, he will not be able to draw a line under this horrible incident and to move on; leaving aside his vulnerability to some sort of attack from Benzon, the case is something he will have to carry with him for many months, or even years. I am concerned about his wife in particular, since she is a simple provincial soul, quite overwhelmed by the city even before any of this happened.

My main concern with pursuing the case is whether we would be exposing Noel and his family to some sort of violent response from Benzon. Even if Noel hides himself in the great wen of Manila, Benzon knows he works for [Frayed’s company] and of course Noel will maintain contacts with his old neighbourhood. He won’t be that hard to find. Even if an attack never comes, Noel will carry an anxious burden as he passes every shadow. I would feel so awful if he were to bear the cost of our search for social justice.

On the other hand, I am so far from the world where this took place that it is quite possible I am overestimating Benzon’s capacity to react in any way. Even if he has barangay connections that have rendered him an “untouchable” in his own milieu, in the broader scheme of things, the odds are stacked against him. It is also true, that, since he has not demonstrated any capacity for rational thought, he may pursue Noel even if we withdraw from the case, though I suspect that if Noel leaves the neighbourhood that is not very likely.

We will mull over the arguments in your very good letter over the next few days and discuss them with Noel and Tina. I have always said that the decision has to be based on what they want, even though Noel is happy to leave it up to me.

Stabbing in Taguig: 21 October 2008 update

Please see previous posts for details of this incident.

I don’t know which is worse, Taguig police force or Makati Med.

However, since it is just possible that the Taguig police might eventually come through for us and at least they haven’t cost me nearly $5,000 for inferior and probably unnecessary procedures, I’ll give the award to Makati Med.

Attempted killer walking free

Nestor Benzon, the man who tried to kill an innocent stranger for no reason, is back in his street. He has not actually moved back into his home, since that might be a bit brazen, even for him, but he is in the neighorhood.

Not only is Benzon back, he or his allies are continuing a campaign of harassment against Benzon’s next-door neighbor, Cristina, whose son witnessed the attack. This poor woman is frightened to leave her house and at midnight every night a hail of rocks lands on her roof, just to remind her that that they are there.

The Good Mayor

Fortunately for us, a friend went to school with Mayor Tinga of Taguig and he kindly wrote to the mayor explaining the case and the police inaction. Mayor Tinga has not done anything to give us preferential treatment, but he has prodded the police and this has been effective, for which we are extremely grateful.

Taguig Police

Noel has been phoning the police almost every day and has been given the run around. However, now that the mayor has got involved they have smartened up their act a little. Frayed took Noel to the station today and at last, he was able to give his statement. We also learned that what we were told on our first visit, that unless a statement is taken within 24 hours the suspect can go free, was not correct. Apparently it is 5 days. Noel was discharged four days after the attack and if we had known he could have given a statement within that time frame. But of course that might have meant the police doing their job, which they have seemed conspicuously reluctant to do.
It turned out that chief of police who took Noel’s statement actually lives on the street where the incident took place. He knows Nestor Benzon’s son, who, gulp, wants to become a policeman. He has talked to the son since stabbing. The son’s line is apparently “he didn’t do it” which is obviously why Benzon is doing his best to intimidate anyone who might say something to the contrary.

The fact that the cop investigating the case is local doesn’t reassure me at all. In fact we seem further than ever from the idea of the police as a neutral arbiter and enforcer of society’s laws and more and more enmeshed in the complex network of power relations of a poor Manila neighbourhood. The cop even said to Frayed that he quite understood why the sons would want to protect the father.

Anyway, we have at least got the statement made, which is something. The cop also gave the Cristina (who came to the station) his card and he has “guaranteed” her safety. The next step will be the medical certificate.

The world’s most useless medical establishment: Makati Med

When a hospital receives patients who have been victims of a violent attack they are supposed to explain to them before discharging them that they will need a medical certificate and tell them how to get hold of it. Did Makati do this? Do you need to ask?

In fact, Makati Med would rather not go to the trouble of producing the certificate themselves. Noel had to do that. When he returned to the hospital to try to get the certificate, he had to go to one office to get the form and then to try to chase down doctors all over the hospital to get them to sign. Eventually, frustrated and tired (this was still a few days after being discharged) he gave up. Since 16 October, the preparation of this document has been the responsibility of the medical records department. As usual, Frayed has had to intervene and to phone the records office. They say they will give it to us by 24 October. Way to go Makati Med.

Meanwhile Cristina and her son go to bed with rocks crashing on their roof because these useless idiots cannot produce a one page piece of paper. It’s just pathetic.

Should we pursue the case?

I asked this question a few days ago and thanks to those of you who answered. At the time of writing, the score is: 1 yes, 2 don’t bother, 2 hire some thugs.

However, since I wrote that last post, matters have taken on a life of their own. With Benzon and his allies strutting around and making life hell for Cristina we seem to have no choice. Both Noel and the mother of the witness, the people most directly involved, seem to believe that pursuing the legal route is the only way forward.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (1926-2008)

Singaporean oppositionist J.B. Jeyaretnam (JBJ), who died on 30 September, was an existential 20th century hero.

Courage comes in many forms, and JBJ’s willingness to stand almost alone against overwhelming odds, his dogged persistence, and his adherence to his principles drew grudging admiration even from his detractors.

When I arrived in Singapore in 1985, JBJ was one of only two opposition MPs in the world’s smallest totalitarian state, having been elected MP for Anson in 1981. His Workers’ Party was the only dissenting voice against the hegemonic People’s Action Party of his nemesis Lee Kuan Yew. Lee’s response to a figure who would in other polities be regarded as an irritating gnat was overwhelming.

By the time I left in 1989 JBJ had been jailed and fined enough to disqualify him from standing for election and disbarred from practising law, although that decision was overturned by a devastating judgement of the UK Privy Council (which by a curious post-colonial quirk was, even in the 1980s, the final court of appeal in Singapore). Here is a quote from the judgement:

Their Lordships have to record their deep disquiet that by a series of misjudgements, the appellant and his co-accused Wong, have suffered a grievous injustice. They have been fined, imprisoned and publicly disgraced for offences of which they are not guilty. The appellant, in addition, has been deprived of his seat in Parliament and disqualified for a year from practising his profession. Their Lordships order restores him to the roll of advocates and solicitors of the Supreme Court of Singapore

Needless to say, that was the end of the Privy Council’s role in Singapore judiciary. Once appeals to the Privy Council had been abolished, Lee continued his campaign of persecution. Abusing the laws of libel and taking advantage of a complaisant domestic judiciary, he hounded Jeyaretnam to bankruptcy.

In all, Mr Jeyaretnam calculated that over the years he paid out more than S$1.6m (more than $900,000) in damages and costs, sometimes for remarks that in many democracies would not lead to libel actions but be regarded as part of the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary politics. (Economist obituary)

At times Lee Kuan Yew seemed physically disgusted by Jeyaretnam:

“I think I am slowly convincing my colleagues that the only way to get a skunk is to skin him and nail his skin”.

Asked by Jeyaretnam whether he hated him and thought he should be destroyed, Lee replied “you have to be debunked, exposed as a charlatan, as basically dishonest, as immoral and utterly unscrupulous, that you make any allegation against anyone so long as you are protected [by parliamentary privilege] but the moment you bar the consequences you flinch and you cringe, which is shameful”.

Even Jeyaretnam’s death couldn’t stop the Lees from aiming one more kick. Here is part of the, ahem, letter of condolence from LKY’s son, the current prime minister of Singapore, to JBJ’s sons Kenneth and Philip:

I was sad to learn that your father, Mr Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, has passed away…[Jeyaretnam] and the PAP never saw eye to eye on any major political issue and he sought by all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government. Unfortunately, this helped neither to build up a constructive opposition nor our Parliamentary tradition. Nevertheless, one had to respect Mr JB Jeyaretnam’s dogged tenacity to be active in politics at his age.

However, our differences were not personal.

Of course not.

JBJ had his eccentric side, with his Victorian sideburns and rather theatrically aggressive stance, but what an important function he served. It is hard for anyone unfamiliar with the Singaporean “policeman in the head” to appreciate just what a splendid advertisement for brainwashing the island's economic and social miracle is. I believe a lot of JBJ’s criticisms of Lee’s elitism were justified, but that’s really beside the point. His most important contribution was to get up every day to demonstrate that there can be an alternative.

To simply accept the PAP world view uncritically as many Singaporeans do is to substitute your humanity for something closer to the sensibility of an unthinking automaton. Through his ceaseless and thankless Sisyphean struggle, J. B. Jeyaretnam taught his fellow Singaporeans what it is to be a man.

Stabbing in Taguig: 18 October 2008 update

Please see the previous post for details of this incident.

Noel’s recovery from his stab wounds continued this week and he has now taken off all his dressings, which is great news. Otherwise there is little progress to report.

Witness intimidation

I mentioned in my last post that the relatives of the attacker had been seen prowling the neighbourhood. Noel and Tina’s friend lives next door to him and they have decided they have to move out. Another neighbour who witnessed the attack has had stones thrown onto his roof at midnight every night, every one saying “keep quiet, or else”.

Court case

“Pro-negative” is the only word I can think of to describe the Taguig police. Although they have had Tina’s report for 10 days they have done nothing. After initially saying they would come to us to interview Noel, they now say they need his hospital certificate before they will do this (see below). Yet that can’t be right since they took Tina’s statement last week without a certificate. We will just have to keep at them to do something, which will probably mean Frayed visiting the station next week with Noel to get them to take his statement.

More apathy and gouging from Makati Med

There seem to be two types of hospital certificate: one simply says what happened and costs only 100 pesos, even from Makati Med. However, now it has taken its $4,800 from me, the hospital is in no rush to provide this simple document. Noel has been phoning every day and being given the run around. We will follow up next week and again nothing will probably get done until Frayed gets involved.

The other type of certificate is a “medico-legal” certificate that costs P3,500 per patient. Although this seems like more daylight robbery from Makati Med, I am willing to pay it to get things moving. However, according to Noel, we can wait until the court requests it and then we don’t have to pay, so that is what we are doing. I don’t know whether that is the right approach.

Should we be pursuing the case at all?

I have been wondering whether it is even worth going ahead with this. The decision has to be Noel’s since it is his family that was attacked and that would have to bear any consequences. We have told Noel that we will support him in whatever he decides. However, I know that he looks to me for guidance and is likely to follow whatever I suggest, so against my wishes I feel drawn into this complicated moral problem.

My initial feeling was that we owe it to the rest of society to put this guy away. Since he has already attacked and nearly killed Noel and Tina for no reason, it seems quite possible that he will do so again. In fact if he gets away with it this time, he will probably feel emboldened and may commit even worse acts of violence.

However, now I realize how little support we are going to get from the so-called criminal justice system, I am wondering what the long-term implications of all this may be for Noel and his family. Ok, Manila is a big city but you can’t disappear that easily. And if they come who will be there to protect him?

I just don’t know what to do. However, since I have said all along that it must be Noel’s decision and he seems willing and even keen to pursue justice, elusive though it is, I guess we will continue battering at the door of Taguig police station for a while yet.

Stabbing in Taguig

Last Sunday a neighbour of our driver, Noel, tried to kill him with a filed down screwdriver.

Noel and his wife Tina had just popped into a friend’s place to check on their kids. They were walking back to their motorcycle when their friend’s next-door neighbour, a notorious and violent drunk, approached them. Apparently without provocation or warning he began stabbing both of them. Tina received a minor wound and rolled away from the attacker. Noel fought back but was still stabbed four times; the first from the back and the others in the front. The most severe wound, 5 cm deep, actually “touched’ his heart according to the doctors. His left lung was punctured.

Tina managed to separate the two men and, curiously, the attacker then seems to have left the scene, leaving Noel pouring blood and his weapon (which is now with the police). They piled into a tricycle which took them to the local “hospital”. This establishment said it could not treat them because it didn’t have an X-ray machine—what kind of hospital does not have an X-ray machine?—and advised them to go to one of the private hospitals in the city.

An ambulance began driving them to Medical City in Ortigas, but Noel figured it would be better to go to Makati Med, presumably because it is nearer to where we live. Unfortunately, the ambulance driver did not know where Makati Med was—what kind of an ambulance driver does not know that?—so, in between passing out from the pain of his stab wounds, Noel had to direct him. At one point in his frustration he even said he would even drive himself.

We received a call from a distraught Tina at about 7 in the evening and rushed down to the accident and emergency ward at Makati Med.

It’s been rather a grim week since then, but thankfully Noel and Tina are doing quite well. Tina was discharged last Tuesday and Noel on Thursday. They and their two kids are staying with us since the psycho who committed this crime returns to the neighbourhood intermittently. Until we can get him locked up, which I am determined to do, they will either remain with us or we will help them find them somewhere else to live.

Accident and emergency at Makati Med

An accident and emergency ward in an inner-city hospital is not designed to display the most positive aspects of a society. In fact it is the epicentre of urban stress (in the UK, for example, the ward is usually full of abusive drunks). Last Sunday, in addition to stab victims Noel and Tina, a young man was a carried in by two friends covered in blood from 3 gunshot wounds, one in the neck.

I’d like to be able to say we saw hardworking and dedicated professionals delivering high-quality care under difficult circumstances, but in truth I didn’t find the place too encouraging. Although the care that Noel and Tina received seemed reasonable, the atmosphere of the ward was extremely casual, with medical and auxiliary staff wandering around texting, joking, and chatting. In fact it was something like a bus station with blood.

Despite the clear sign on the door limiting guests to one per patient, there was no attempt to enforce this rule, either within the preliminary area or, incredibly, in the operating area, where visitors milled aimlessly about, getting in the way of medical staff and spreading their germs over the patients.

In addition to the general lassitude of the staff, there was also an indefinable feeling of sleaziness about the place. From the word go, I felt that patients were regarded as a lucrative source of income rather than as lives to be saved. OK, private medical care is a business, but as a foreign employer willing to foot the bill for his employee I could almost feel the rubbing of hands as soon as I entered the swing doors. Initially, I wondered whether I was being paranoid, but that was before I received the bill (see below).

Taguig police station

The violent attack on Noel and Tina happened in front of several witnesses. The attacker was well known to the police, having already accumulated a thick police blotter. The incident was even written up in a local paper. Yet here in the do-it-yourself Philippine state nobody is going to get off their fat asses unless prodded from above.

Frayed and Tina visited the nearest police station the day she was discharged. Their presence was clearly an inconvenience to the first policeman they met, who claimed that unless Noel was actually dead there was nothing they could do. Fortunately, they persevered and the next cop they spoke to was prepared to take Tina’s statement and was quite helpful. Of course this was after they told him that they had contacts who knew the Taguig mayor.

By this stage, the attacker was back in the neighbourhood (he had left for 24 hours after the attack) and could easily have been picked up. Alas, Manila’s finest could not move until they had additional corroborating evidence from Noel, who was still seriously ill in hospital. Nor is a sight of his ghastly wounds enough; they need a certificate from the hospital that he was indeed nearly stabbed to death.

We can do all that (Noel’s testimony and the hospital certificate), but guess what? The attacker has now disappeared again, no doubt because he found out from the station that a case was being filed against him. The police have told us that, once there is a warrant for his arrest, the attacker can be arrested anywhere in the country. That sounds great, but since the local police station has shown no interest in pursuing a criminal in Taguig, what can we expect from policemen in Iloilo, or Laoag, or anywhere else in this vast disorganized and uncomputerized country of 90 million people? Our only hope seems to be that he will be stupid enough to return, which actually seems a reasonable possibility.

Makati Med hospital bill

The realization that the attack on Noel and Tina was going to be an expensive affair dawned when Tina was discharged at a cost of P22,237.75 ($480). Unlike Noel’s, her wounds had been superficial. In fact beyond some cleaning up, a few short consultations, and two nights in a shared hospital room with Noel (cost P2,400 per person per night) she had received almost no treatment and few drugs.

I was therefore primed for a shock when we went to discharge Noel and I got it.

Noel received no complex surgery. He was stitched up in the accident and emergency room and after that he received numerous tests, including an endoscopy, CT scan, and a large number of X-rays.

Although the bill was nickel and dimed to the max (alcohol swab = P1.96), the lengthy computer printout is not presented in a way to aid understanding, which may or may not be the intent.

Nevertheless, here is the summary:

Room and board: 9,800
Pulmonary lab dept: 3,888
Pharmacy: 25,250
Laboratory: 5,300
Operating room: 27,395 (I think this is for the endoscopy)
CSS: 3,181.53 (your guess is as good as mine)
Radiology department: 8,035
CVDL: 6,590 (see above)
Emergency department: 13,374.13
Switchboard section: 65

Total: 122,738.16

We had just absorbed this when the accountant told us sweetly that this did not include the doctors’ fees, these could be picked up from the cashier.

The doctors, only one of whom we met (Dr Duran), were as follows.

Dr Gabriel: 2,200
Dr Duran: 20,000
Dr Cedeno: 25,000
Dr Sanchez: 3,500
Dr Gonda: 4,000
Dr Diaz: 7,500
Dr Dy: 4,500
Dr Tuazon: 16,800

Total: P83,500

The total bill for Noel’s treatment was P206,238.16 ($4,325), bringing the bill for Noel and Tina’s stay to P228,475.91 ($4,805).

In case you are wondering about insurance, I initially thought that Noel was insured with PhilHealth through Frayed’s company. In fact although the office had given Noel the forms he had not yet filled them in. So it goes.

Sadly for all of us, this story is not over by a long shot. I’ll add updates when there is something to report.

Dickensian Manila

"All of the characters are me,” he said, with a boisterous laugh. “Neither a British nor an American young man living in the twenty-first century can understand Dickens as well as I can! I am living in a Dickensian atmosphere. Our country is at least one or two centuries behind the Western world. My neighborhood—bleak, poor, with small domestic industries, children playing in the street, parents fighting with each other, some with great debt, everyone dirty—that is Dickens. Rangoon resident quoted in Letter from Rangoon, New Yorker, 25 August 2008

Sound familiar? I re-read Bleak House recently and was struck by how it resonated with contemporary Manila. Here is Dickens at his most passionate on the death of the lovable urchin character, Jo.

“Jo, my poor fellow!”
“I hear you, sir, in the dark but I’m a-gropin—a-gropin—let me catch hold of your hand.”
“Jo, can hear you say what I say?”
“I’ll say anything as you say, sir, fur I know it’s good.”
“Our father.”
“Our father!—yes, that’s very good sir.”
“Which art in heaven.”
“Art in heaven—is the light a-comin, sir?"
“it is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!”
“Hallowed be—thy—“
"The light is come upon the dark benighted way: Dead! Dead, your Majesty. Dead my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

And here we are in Manila, 160 years later with children like Jo still dying all around us every day.

Bleak House revolves around a court case about a will that drags on interminably until, once years of lawyers’ fees have been deducted, there is nothing left (better watch out Jamby!). Any reader of the “what happened to?” occasional column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer will surely see parallels between Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Bleak House and the glacier-like pace of the Philippine justice system.

Perhaps it is not so much “Dickensian Manila” as “Victorian Manila”, because I also felt a strong nudge of recognition when I read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair recently. This fabulous novel of social ambition reminded me of nothing so much as the vapid smiles of the smart and empty “it” people that gaze out from the social pages of the hundreds of magazines devoted to class assertion in Manila.

Manila and Rangoon will develop in their own ways of course and will not follow London’s path. Still, the Victorian feel to Manila doesn’t bother me too much; in fact I would hate to live in a city like Beijing that is so remorselessly dedicated to the present. As the Rangoon resident quoted above points out, it is much easier to appreciate 19th century literature from a grimy city in the developing world than from the swish 21st city that London has become.

Scotland

Frayed and I are off to Scotland for a few weeks--back in early September. This is us taking the sea air.

A heavy uniform cigarette tax has to be the right move

This evening I stood behind a woman at Seven Eleven who bought three packets of Marlboro Lights for P110. What kind of an incentive to quit is that? Even someone on the minimum wage here can easily afford to kill themselves by smoking cigarettes.

To give you an idea of how incredibly cheap that is, a pack of Marlboro in the UK costs £5.50, about P460. Three packs would therefore cost the equivalent of P1,380, or over 12 times more than they cost here.

The IMF has pointed out that a single rate of cigarette tax in the Philippines would yield anywhere between P31.8 billion and P33.8 billion in additional revenues in the first year of implementation. Along the way it would also save hundreds of thousands of Philippine lives by dissuading people from smoking (the Philippines is the 15th biggest consumer of cigarettes in the world and the largest consumer in ASEAN).

So since a flat cigarette tax would have such huge benefits for both government revenues and for public health, why isn’t this tax implemented tomorrow? Because, as an article in the British Medical Journal put it, “the Philippine tobacco industry is "the strongest tobacco lobby in Asia".

Hell, Lucio Tan, the owner of Fortune tobacco doesn’t even pay his current taxes. Those of you with long memories will surely remember how during the presidency of Tan’s friend Erap a tax evasion case in 2000 was conveniently thrown out because the Department of Justice conveniently forgot to file a records request on time (thanks Erap!)

A Philippine court has dismissed a 25.27 billion peso tax-evasion case against Lucio Tan, a Chinese-Filipino tycoon and close friend of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, on a technicality, media reports said Thursday.

The Court of Appeals dismissed the case against Tan, 66, because the Department of Justice filed a records request 11 days late, the reports said.

Even as I type this I am sure the domestic and the US tobacco companies operating in the Philippines are preparing some nice fat brown envelopes to make sure that that inconvenient IMF report is quietly shelved.

Mark Spitz and the meaning of “pikon”

Seventies man Mark Spitz made such an idiot of himself in an interview with AFP yesterday.

“I never got invited. You don't go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am," Spitz told AFP in Hong Kong.

"I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That's almost demeaning to me. It is not almost—it is."
…
"They voted me one of the top five Olympians in all time. Some of them are dead. But they invited the other ones to go to the Olympics, but not me," he said. "Yes, I am a bit upset about it."

Now a stockbroker and motivational speaker, Spitz also thinks he could have won eight golds himself in Munich if only he had had the chance.

"I won seven events. If they had the 50m freestyle back then, which they do now, I probably would have won that too," he said.

Spitz, whose brief stint in show business in the 1970s never quite matched his success in the pool, said he attended the Athens Olympics four years ago—when Phelps also tried to break the record.

"They did not once put my face on television," he recalled. "But as soon as the swimming was over, and Michael Phelps didn't break my record, every time I went to beach volley, they put my face on the volleyballs."

Spitz said it would have been a great idea if he could be the one presenting the gold medals to Phelps, who has for years been candid about his ambition to eclipse the mark of seven golds.

And Spitz thinks Phelps will succeed—for one very good reason.

"He's almost identical to me. He's a world-record holder in all these events, so he is dominating the events just like I did," Spitz said. "He reminds me of myself."

Impermanence in Philippine life

The socioeconomic structure of the Philippines may be as fixed as the stars in the heavens, but its substructure is amazingly fluid.

Names*

Filipinos have a more casual attitude to names than most. The other day I met someone called Grace. At least that is what everyone calls her but it turns out her name is really Sophia, nickname Pia. So where did Grace come from? “When I came to my Manila everyone called me Grace, I don’t know why!” Perhaps in a few years, Grace/Sophia/Pia will add an “h” to her one of her names to give it that little bit of class.

Has any other country had a head of state with a stage name? President Estrada/Ejercito/Erap (two of whose charmless sons carry the name “Estrada”, with the lovely JV bearing his dad’s natural name “Ejercito”) with his famously hazy family boundaries and interrupted presidency is a good example of impermanence in Philippine life.

Families

The fluidity of familial life here is partly a consequence of the wanderings of the priapic Filipino male. Last week, for example, a friend told us that he was startled on a visit to his family home by a reference to his bunso (youngest sibling). “But I am the youngest”, he protested. Well, it turns out he wasn’t the bunso of the family, although it must have been a bit traumatic for him in his forties to discover he had a younger half-brother.

Traumatic but not at all unusual; I am sure almost all Filipino readers will know of similar tales.

Families are loosely structured in other ways too. A few years ago I noticed a new photo of a baby on my assistant’s desk. Since she had not manifested any of the usual physical changes to that precede the birth of a child I assumed the baby must have been a niece or a nephew, but it turned out that a younger and poorer relative had had got herself in trouble and my henceforth my assistant would be bringing up the child as one of her own.

Only yesterday, Frayed and I were offered a baby! There was even a “viewing”!

The reasons for all this are quite varied, and, include the generosity of Filipino families; the notion that wealthier families have a responsibility to their poorer kin; the balikbayan (overseas worker) experience; the prevalence of intense poverty that makes it impossible for some mothers to bring up their children; the discouragement of contraceptives by the Catholic Church and politicians like former Manila Mayor Atienza; and, as mentioned, the habitual infidelity of many husbands.

Nor are the consequences necessarily bad. The famous adaptability of Filipinos, which enables them to blend into apparently radically different societies with relative ease, probably has its roots in the shifting tides of family life. From an early age Philippine children experience change more frequently and have to learn to accommodate it.

* One of the best discussions of Philippine names is Matthew Sutherland’s “Rhose, by Any Other Name”, 10 years old now but as relevant as ever.

How not to take a breath test

An American friend tells me that this video has been doing the rounds for a while but I saw it for the first time a couple of days ago. Fair play to the cop, who seems genuinely concerned about the man in his charge.