In my previous blogs, I mentioned that by issuing EXECUTIVE ORDER No. 546, dated July 14, 2006, Pres. Gloria Arroyo had exacerbated the proliferation and gravity of warlordism and political dynasties in the Philippines which in the long run would lead to the early death of democracy and the rule of law in the country.
I wish to comment on the provisions of the executive order.
The executive order is beautifully and misleadingly entitled “DIRECTING THE PHILIPPINE NATIONAL POLICE TO UNDERTAKE ACTIVE SUPPORT TO THE ARMED FORCES OF THE PHILIPPINES IN INTERNAL SECURITY OPERATIONS FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF INSURGENCY AND OTHER SERIOUS THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY, AMENDING CERTAIN PROVISIONS OF EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 110 SERIES OF 1999 AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES”.
The pretexts of the order are “national security” and “peace and order’, which are the very same propaganda covers that totalitarian and George W. Bush-inspired regimes normally invoke to curtail the human rights of their citizens and to maintain their power structures in perpetuity.
The order cites Section 12 of Republic Act No. 6975, as amended by Republic Act No. 8551, which provides that the primary responsibility involving the suppression of insurgency and other serious threats to national security rests with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and that the Philippine National Police (PNP) shall, through information gathering and performance of its ordinary police functions, support the AFP on the matter. The President may call on the PNP to support the AFP in combat operations.
By way of establishing the premises for the order, it states that the 30-year rebellion of the “National Democratic Front, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military arm, the New People's Army” has a negative impact on the economy and that resolving the insurgency will foster a climate conducive to economic growth and national development.
Note that the order does not mention the Islamic rebellion led by the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the organized criminal activities of the al Qaida-assisted Abbu Sayaff Group, all of which are based in Mindanao Island.
The order states that there is a need for a "whole of government approach" to ensure sustained, consistent, integrated and coordinated international security measures against the “Communist Terrorist Movement” and “other organized elements/groups engaged in armed offensives against the Government”.
Note that the two-fold theoretical targets of the order the “communists” and “other organized groups in armed offensives against the government”. The latter should, in theory, include the Islamic rebels, local warlords, gambling lords, drug lords, and organized criminal syndicates, but it seems that the priority of the order is to suppress only the ideology-based armed offensives of the Left.
Section 1 of the order provides that “the PNP shall support the AFP in combat operations involving the suppression of insurgency and other serious threats to national security.”
Section 2 provides that in the exercise of its responsibility, subject to the concurrence of the appropriate Local Chief Executive through the Local Peace and Order Council, the PNP is hereby authorized “to deputize the barangay tanods as force multipliers” in the implementation of the peace and order plan in the area. This provision gives the PNP substantial control over the Barangay Tanods.
More often than not, illiterate and corrupt Barangay Chairmen in far-flung barrios are beholden to local police officers (not to mention their mayors, governors and congressmen). Being the lowest in the echelons of power, they think and act as if they are loyal and unthinking messengers and domestic helpers of local military and police officers (and the local feudal warlords and dynasties that the latter serve and protect). The abovecited provision giving Barangay chairmen the theoretical power to allow or to deny a military or police request to deputize their Tanods for combat operations is an insulting illusion. The euphemistic term “force multipliers” used in the provision is nothing else but a dishonest cover to “militarize” the Tanods who by the very spirit of existing local government laws and regulations are purely civilian in nature, scope and intent. All of these to the detriment of the legal concept of the nonpartisan and autonomous nature of the Barangays as provided by existing laws.
Section 3 provides that the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) shall exert efforts in “securing and institutionalizing funding support from Local Government Units”. For this purpose, governors and mayors, as deputized representatives of the National Police Commission in their respective territorial jurisdiction, and in relation to their sworn duty to implement Section 16 of the Local Government Code, shall ensure that sufficient funds shall be appropriated in their annual budget for “the operational and logistical support of the concerned PNP units for the implementation of this Executive Order”.
Here we see that the “mutuality of interest” between the local political dynasties and warlords, on one hand, and their local police protectors exists, on the other. The local police officers are paid, bribed and corrupted by the local government officials out of the official funds of the local government units generated from the taxes and regulatory fees imposed on the hapless Filipinos in the rural areas. In turn, the local police officers in the pretext of maintaining security provide the local dynasties and warlords with the necessary armed protection. This mutuality of interest is exploited by the national ruling party, led by Pres. Arroyo and her corrupt cohorts in the AFP, the PNP, and the Executive Branch, to perpetuate themselves in power by sham elections in God-forsaken areas where the uneducated and poor voters are easily intimated and corrupted and which are not exposed to the critical and investigative eyes of media reporters and editors.
To stress the official character of the mutuality of interest, Section 4 of the order provides that the Local Chief Executives, in coordination with the Local Peace and Order Councils, shall include in the integrated area/Community Public Safety Plan of their respective city/municipality, the priority program of action/thrust in resolving the insurgency and other serious threats to national security and ensure appropriation thereof for effective implementation of the order.
What is the reality on the ground? The truth is that the local politicians are in control of the armed Tanods and other civilian volunteer groups which they utilize as their private armies. The AFP and the PNP arm and train the Tanods and the CVOs and then abandon them to the full abusive control of the local politicians. The local police and military officers are maintained in the confidential payroll of the local politicians to make them beholden and loyal to the latter’s beck and call. The local politicians in turn benefit from the protection of the armed Tanods, CVOs, and local military and police officers during sham elections to perpetuate themselves in power at the expense of democracy and social justice.
How can you expect democracy and justice to survive under such debilitating and awful conditions? How can republicanism survive in an evil power structure that is dominated by warlords, dynasties and corrupt law enforcers?
See also:
Public Lives
Warlords in a weak state (Part 2)
By Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:38:00 01/08/2010
THE CREATION OF A SPECIAL COMMISSION to investigate the existence of private armed groups, and to recommend ways of dismantling them, would be nothing short of revolutionary, if the commission were to seriously do its work. Basic information alone on these private armies—for example, who maintains them, how long they have been in existence, how big they are, what kind of firearms they have, the personal backgrounds of their members, where they operate, etc.—could be so revealing as to explode all our illusions about Philippine democracy.
For all its brutality and barbarism—and the personal tragedies it brought to many families, notably of the media people who were used as human shields—the Nov. 23 Maguindanao massacre gives us a rare opportunity to ask questions about the nature of our political order, and why it has remained incapable of protecting our people from lawless violence. If only because of this, the senseless deaths of 57 unarmed civilians would not be in vain.
At the outset, the commission’s work will be hampered not by lack of information, but by the enormous power and influence of those who keep private armed groups. The police and the military know who they are. They have a rough estimate of how many such groups exist—170, according to one report (102 in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and 68 in the rest of the country). The key sociological question is: why has the state tolerated and, at times, subsidized their existence?
I suspect that the figures cited cover a wide range of armed groups—communist rebels, Islamic rebels, “lost commands,” kidnap-for-ransom and other criminal syndicates, bodyguards of politicians and businessmen, “civilian volunteer organizations” and other paramilitary units set up to help fight terrorist groups, etc. The list could be so mixed as to be useless. I believe the investigation must focus on armed groups associated with politicians, especially those with large properties and businesses. Then it may see for itself how all the other groups fall into place under our feudal political order.
The definition of a “private armed group” will be the first contentious issue. Many of those groups that precisely need to be dismantled will seek exemption from the scope of the commission’s investigation. We may anticipate the lines of possible exemption by simply deconstructing the object of the hunt: “private armed group.” What is “private”? What is “armed”? And what constitutes a “group”?
We only need to take a look at the situation in Maguindanao to appreciate the complex issues that will confront the commission. As public officials, the Ampatuans were clever enough not to use their own money to pay for the upkeep of their armed groups. Most of these security personnel were “civilian volunteers” who drew their salaries from public funds. A number of them were, in fact, regular policemen on special assignment. They were government employees, even if their services were privately appropriated. The Ampatuans can always claim that these men were securing them in their roles as public officials, rather than as private persons. Not that it makes any difference, however. It is not uncommon for influential private individuals to enjoy police security on an almost permanent basis at government expense. This is how blurred the lines between public and private are in our society.
What does it mean to be “armed”? Surely the directive does not include all armed individuals. Nor does it cover the private security agencies that have sprouted nationwide in just the past 20 years. While it may be easy to distinguish the legitimate professional security agencies from those used as covers for private armies, it will not be as easy to tell the difference between an “army” and an armed staff. How will the commission treat drivers and personal assistants who double as bodyguards and, as part of their work, happen to be armed? But one can imagine how an army can be assembled from a pool of personal bodyguards. If there is one driver and one personal assistant for every member of an extended family or a political clan, the number can easily attain the critical mass of an armed group. This brings up the question: what is a “group”?
A group is not just any loose collection of individuals; a group would have an authority structure, some rules, and a set of regular activities that constitute the roles of members. The number of people involved is not the crucial element. The crucial factor is the objective purpose for maintaining the armed group. As I understand it, the commission’s mandate is to go after those groups that are routinely deployed not just for self-defense or protection of property, but, more significantly, as an integral instrument of their owners’ political power or economic strategy.
There is logic to this: no state worth its name can afford to share its power with warlords. “If within the state,” said the political theorist Carl Schmitt, “there are organized parties capable of according their members more protection than the state, then the latter becomes at best an annex of such parties, and the individual citizen knows whom he has to obey.” In Maguindanao and almost everywhere in our society, the ordinary citizen bows to the warlord, the boss, the patron, the datu—the one who takes care of his needs and protects him. Do we wonder why we have a weak state? We may learn from Schmitt’s conclusion: “The protego ergo obligo (I protect therefore I oblige) is the cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) of the state.”
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public.lives@gmail.com
see:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100108-246282/Warlords-in-a-weak-state-Part-2
