Torn and frayed in Manila

Blair's love of war

Ever since seeing Michael Sheen’s depiction of Blair in The Queen, I can’t help wondering whether Tony Blair died back in 1997 to be replaced by an actor, so obviously scripted is his every move. Even "Blair's" thoughtful pauses in the clubby atmosphere of the Iraq War investigation last week seemed part of the screenplay, just so he doesn’t look too glib.

Anyway, Tony and war — he loves it doesn’t he? Give Tony a couple of choices and he will always pick the one that gives him a chance to look like a “great leader” and forger of destinies, especially if it involves dropping bombs.

Remember the illegal bombing of Serbia back in the 1999s, where “Blair” stiffened Clinton’s resolve to press ahead with attack? The British playwright Harold Pinter has it about right:

"He was well to the forefront. He loves to drop a few bombs. It gives him, I think, great excitement," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

What came out most forcefully from Blair’s testimony to the Iraq War inquiry was not his complete absence of any regret for having caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for non-existent weapons of mass destruction (I don’t think great leaders express remorse) but his bellicose statements on Iran.

For if Tony were still in Downing Street he would be planning war with Iran right now. He mentioned Iran 58 times in his testimony and urged the international community to take a "very hard, tough line" (such a Blair line) over its banned nuclear programme.

Blair’s love of war seems to me some sort of sickness. His religious fanaticism and vanity over his “world leader” status have intermingled in a terrible way to create a modern crusader prepared to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Iranians in support of a few poorly defined and often false principles. The actor playing Tony Blair is a very dangerous man and I for one am very glad he has been written out of the script.

Erap: it's all about me

I've been meaning for weeks to write about how Estrada's reasons for running are always purely egotistical: I wasn't able to finish my term, I was robbed, and so on.

Today's Inquirer editorial says it perfectly:

MANILA, Philippines—The presidential bid of Joseph Estrada can be summarized in three words: it is about I, Me and Myself. He is the male counterpart of the faded silent movie-era star Nora Desmond in Billy Wilder’s classic film, “Sunset Boulevard.” It tells of a failed screen writer who gravitates to Desmond, who dreams of making a cinematic comeback. In the end she kills the screenwriter in a jealous fit, and ends up losing all touch with reality, thinking that the news crews covering the murder are a film crew that has begun filming her comeback role.

One of the Nora Desmond character’s famous lines is “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.” In his mind, Joseph Estrada is still the big shot matinee idol, champion and idol of the masses; but the reality is it’s his fantasy of relevance that has enlarged over time even as his box office and electoral clout has diminished.

For more, see Erap's absurd pronouncement after Comelelec's spineless statement last week:

“I want to be king again myself (and) recover my throne that was stolen from me”

War and Dissent, National Museum of the Filipino People

This exhibition occupies only one hall, which is just the right size for a low-museum-stamina type like me. In addition to clear and well written presentations on the major events, it contains some unusual angles on the Philippine–American War. There is a separate section on African-American US soldiers, for example, and excerpts from diaries and correspondence throw light on the impact of the war on both young Americans and Filipinos. The exhibition is fair, covering both water torture by the US army (highlighted in a 2008 New Yorker article) and atrocities by the Filipino forces. Although it doesn’t use the phrase “war crimes,” it doesn’t hold back in its description of the US Army’s scorched earth policy in Samar.

Here are a few snippets I noted down:

• As is well known, the US war with Spain began with an explosion on the USS Maine in Havana harbour on 15 February 1898, which the US claimed was caused by a Spanish mine. However, an investigation in 1978 by Admiral Hyman, USN found that the probable cause was spontaneous combustion. That sets off some intriguing “what if” questions. If those molecules had not combined in such lethal way in the hold of the Maine, perhaps the Spanish–American war, which had such far-reaching consequences for the Philippines, Cuba, the USA, and Spain, might never have taken place? Or would the Americans simply have found another casus belli?
• President McKinley’s message to Congress on 11 April 1898 stated that forcible annexation of Cuba “by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression,” a comment that reads oddly when set beside his later authorization of exactly that to the Philippines.
• “Had the Filipinos been white and fought as bravely as they have, the war would have ended and her independence granted long ago,” Bishop A. Wuthers, speech to the National Afro-American Congress on 2 September 1899.
• About 20 African–American US soldiers went over to Aguinaldo’s forces, one of them becoming a general.
• This next quotation is well known, but loses none of its impact through the retelling. In October 1901, after Filipino guerrillas had killed 48 US soldiers at Balangiga in Samar, Brig. General Jacob H. Smith ordered marines under Major Littleton W. Waller to make Samar “a howling wilderness … I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn and the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms.” Smith applied the latter definition to all over the age of 10.
• In 1903, new President Theodore Roosevelt ordered “the most stern measures to pacify Samar” and Admiral Chaffee virtually declared war on the civilian population, incarcerating 300,000 people in “reconcentration camps.
• McKinley was not sure where the Philippines was when Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet.
• Although the war began because of events in Cuba, on 20 May 1902 the US Army withdrew from the island and the Cuban Republic was born (albeit as a de facto US protectorate). However, with the exception of the period of the Japanese occupation, the US was not to relinquish direct control over the Philippines until 4 July 1946.
• In 1999, the US Library of Congress reclassified the conflict from “the Philippine Insurrection” to “the Philippine–American War.”
• The exhibition contains a map of the colonial possessions of the European nations at the end of the 19th century showing the northern part of what is now Papua New Guinea as “Kaiser Wilhelm Land.” Gotta love that name.

Computerized elections in the Philippines: It’s too late to stop now

The sense of foreboding over the computerization of the 2010 election continues to swell. In yesterday’s Inquirer the chairman of the Makati Business Club, Ramon del Rosario, called for automated elections to be scrapped. In his view the consequences of a breakdown are too great: “A failure of the 2010 elections is simply not an option.”

Concerns about the insufficient time left to deliver the machines, fix the source codes, decide which names should go on each of 1,630 ballots (since each ballot will contain local candidates in each town and municipality), print the 1,630 ballots and distribute them to the polling stations, and train teachers and others to supervise the elections and the count were also voiced last week by former chief justice Raul Pangalangan (and reinforced by him in today’s paper).

On the possible implications of failed computerized elections, see Antonio C. Abaya’s scary column last month.

Still, if a failure of elections is not an option, nor is giving up the attempt to computerize them. Surely we are too far down the road to turn back now? Comelec and the outgoing Arroyo administration have to drive on and ensure that, against the odds, computerized elections are carried out efficiently in May. We can take solace from the fact that the Philippines has already conducted a successful computerized election, in ARMM in August 2008.

This is, of course, the second time the Philippines has tried to computerize elections this decade. Remember the P1.3 billion Mega Pacific Solutions poll automation deal that was scotched by the Supreme Court in 2005? Those counting machines remain rotting in a warehouse to this day, completely unused. Another failed attempt would mean we will be left with a manual system for the foreseeable future, driving the country further back into the 20th century while the rest of the world strides into the 21st.

Another costly and unsuccessful modernization attempt (to add to the NAIA 3 debacle, the counting machines already referred to, the ZTE scandal, and many others that we can all name) would add significantly to the international perception of the Philippines as a “cannot do” country.

Ballot visibility

India is often cited as an example of a chaotic developing country that successfully computerized its polling system. However, as Abaya points out, Indian elections are party-based, allowing illiterate or semi-literate voters to follow the party symbol, rather than trying to find their candidate in a forest of names.

The Philippines has higher levels of literacy than India, but even so the huge number of names on the ballot (whether computerized or manual) must make life tough for the many semi-literate voters.

For an indication of how important the candidates themselves take visibility in the ballot, see the desperate campaign being waged by the Aquino campaign to keep Vetallano Acosta off the ballot (the point being that without Acosta on the ballot, Aquino would be the first name listed, which according to a University of Vermont study would increase his vote by 2.5%).