Absurd coup has a sting in the tail
By A Lin Neumann
Sunday's shopping-mall putsch in the Philippines gave us just what we have come to expect from the failed Philippine political system: absurdist entertainment.
Some 300 heavily armed soldiers stole through the night, apparently unnoticed despite a week of coup warnings preceding the event, seized the richest chunk of the capital city, cordoned off their prize with explosive charges and proceeded to hold forth on their gripes to a rapt television audience.
"We are not attempting to grab power - we are just trying to express our grievances," one of their leaders, Lieutenant Antonio Trillanes, told reporters as the group detailed alleged abuses of power and corruption in the ranks of the armed forces.
At the conclusion of this soap opera, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, on the eve of her annual State of the Nation address, asserted her claim to legitimacy and raised her hands in triumph, a broad smile on her face, when the rebellion ended. "I assure the world that this event does not in any way injure our national security and political stability," she said. "Once more, this has been a triumph for democracy."
Arroyo is dead wrong in saying the country's stability was not hurt. This replay of the many coup attempts against the Corazon Aquino government in the 1980s is more than just made-for-TV melodrama. It is a demonstration that, at its core, the Philippines seems to be a country that remains unreliable, unstable and, very possibly, ungovernable.
This latest fiasco comes just two weeks after convicted terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, said to be a key link to al-Qaeda, walked out of a Manila jail cell apparently unnoticed by his sleeping guards. That a major terror figure jailed by a key US ally could simply stroll away from captivity pointed to the porous nature of the corrupt Philippine security apparatus and was a major embarrassment to both Manila and Washington.
The shopping-center stare-down is more than an embarrassment. Arroyo's government is reaping the whirlwind sown by its own popularly backed successful coup against the corrupt, but lawfully elected, regime of her predecessor, Joseph Estrada. That event, in January 2001, saw a coalition of political, church and military leaders short-circuit a stalled impeachment process by seizing power in the streets with military support to install then-vice president Arroyo in power. Estrada remains in jail on corruption charges.
Arroyo loyalists seemed to worry on Sunday that this coup could catch fire and depose their boss. "So far the situation is in hand," a senior intelligence official told Asia Times Online by telephone during the Sunday crisis. "But we have to worry about popular support spreading." Could that happen? "It is always a possibility," said the official.
Arroyo will likely not be forcibly removed from office. She is unpopular but probably not that unpopular, and besides, the joint pillars of the Catholic Church and business that brought her to power have not entirely dropped their support for her. They seem content to wait for the 2004 elections, in which she has promised not to run.
Still, the laments of the dissatisfied and idealistic young officers resonate strongly and underscore the many seemingly insoluble crises besetting the United States' chief ally in Southeast Asia. That raising grievances through force of arms is considered a viable option by elite young officers is itself a dramatic example of how far the rule of law has been eroded in the Philippines and how deeply corruption undermines confidence in the country's many failed institutions.
"They are absolutely right in what they are saying, and unfortunately they will get nowhere," said a wealthy Filipino businesswoman reached by phone on Sunday. "These officers are just trying to change things."
Their demands, their concerns, their excellent command of English and their status as graduates of the elite Philippine Military Academy put these young officers in the tradition of charismatic reformists trying to change a corrupt system. They are very similar to the young captains and majors who led the military revolt against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
Now the soldiers, many of them combat veterans, complain that senior military officers are colluding with Muslim rebel groups in the south, supplying them with weapons and materiel. The government, they say, even staged a deadly bombing in Mindanao recently in order to strengthen calls for more aid from Washington. Arroyo has now ordered an investigation into the charges but, sadly, there is nothing new in such allegations and they have long been talked about in diplomatic, intelligence and military circles in Manila.
Gracia Burnham, the former American missionary who was held hostage by Abu Sayyaf rebels for more than a year before a botched rescue attempt saved her but killed her husband, said nearly the same thing in a recent book. "You may wonder how such a group as the Abu Sayyaf seemed to be well supplied with weaponry. Were their al-Qaeda friends sending them supply boats in the middle of the night? No, no - nothing so exotic as that," Burnham wrote in her book In the Presence of My Enemies, published in May. "The Abu Sayyaf told us [its] source was none other than the Philippine army itself ... I was amazed. The fact that such firepower could quite possibly wind up killing one's fellow soldiers seemed not to matter at all."
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, US military aid to the Philippines was increased to more than US$100 million from just $1.9 million the previous year in order to combat Abu Sayyaf. In May, when Arroyo visited Washington, President George W Bush pledged an additional $65 million in aid to battle terrorists, 30 helicopters and heightened status for the Philippines as a "major non-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] ally" of Washington.
With many of the young officers prosecuting that "war on terror" in revolt against the government and a chief terror suspect on the run, Bush may have trouble getting new aid through Congress.
But it is not only Manila's security relationships that stand to suffer from the further unraveling of confidence in the government. The Philippine economy, long in the doldrums, is likely to be pushed even farther off the radar screens of investors. "This comes close to what I would call a worst-case scenario," said Peter Wallace, a leading business consultant in Manila. "But the Philippines is already a subsistence economy and things cannot get much worse than they already are. In a subsistence economy you are just getting by, and that describes the Philippines."
If these young officers represent a core of resentment in the fractious military, the stage could be set for the Philippines to return to the years of instability and negative growth rates that characterized the post-Marcos period. While countries such as South Korea and Thailand have largely solved the deadly cycle of military intervention in politics, the Philippines has yet to implement an effective method of democratic transition - leaving the military as a crucial arbiter of power. Since Marcos declared martial law in 1972, only two Philippine presidents, Estrada and retired General Fidel Ramos, have been elected to office.
With elections scheduled for next year, things might get even worse. Two of the leading contenders are celebrities - a newscaster and an action star - and neither has any substantial experience in government.
The real loser in all of this, of course, is the Philippine public, already battered by rampant poverty, neglected infrastructure, overpopulation and a host of other ills. It does not look set to get any better any time soon. "The reputation of the country is hitting its nadir," said Today newspaper in an editorial after the Sunday rebellion. "The question the citizen must ask is that with things such a mess, what would make this country worth wanting to rule?"
A Lin Neumann is the Asia consultant to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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