This entry is related to my previous entry entitled “Biggest Warlord in the Philippines”, which referred to Pres. Gloria Arroyo and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
To Filipino military officers a bronze cross medal is a symbol of honor, courage and nobility.
But when such a medal is totally undeserved, as in the case of two colonels and their personnel in Tanay, Rizal, Philippines who led the illegal arrest of 43 health workers in that province (on the suspicion that they were communist rebels) without the benefit of valid search/arrest warrants issued by the courts, the freedom-loving Filipinos see such a medal as a repulsive and obnoxious brazen cross symbolizing military abuse, oppression, corruption, hypocrisy, and violence, all of which characterize the abusive and corrupt rule of Pres. Arroyo and her cronies these past nine years.
Read below the editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on the said issue.
It condemns the "Palparan Doctrine".
Palparan was a notorious and infamous military general who was known among militant organizations as "The Butcher". He was the ideal soldier of his protector, Pres. Arroyo, whose violent and abusive mind equaled Palparan's.
Palparan is now a party-list member of the Philippine Congress, an institution derided by Filipinos for its laziness, incompetence, corruption and partisanship and for its scandalous multi-billion pork barrels and junkets that shamelessly bleed the toiling hands and brutally inflame the lifeless hearts of hungry Filipinos.
Editorial
Brazen Cross
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:39:00 02/25/2010
MANILA, Philippines—The decision of the military leadership to award the Bronze Cross to the officers who led the raid on the Morong resort and effected the arrest of the 43 health workers alleged to be members of the New People’s Army is an insult both to the rule of law and the military’s own highest standards. The raid remains mired in legal controversy; the health workers continue to allege torture and other forms of maltreatment; above all, the impact on the NPA remains to be seen. Why rush to (favorable) judgment?
Let us, for the sake of argument, accept the official military version. Assuming that the Morong 43 were indeed medical workers of the NPA, engaged in a “bomb-making” exercise, was it right for the Armed Forces to award its fourth highest medal to the key officers who led the raid? We don’t think so—because the raid itself has been assailed as illegal.
Sen. Loren Legarda, a reserve colonel herself, called it right when she criticized the decision to award the medals as “premature” at best. “The military has not even proven their legal authority to arrest the workers in court,” she said. “What if the court determines that the arrest of the workers [was] without legal basis? Are they saying that it’s all right to award soldiers and even policemen who make accusations they cannot even prove? It’s absurd, even surreal.”
So, even if we were to assume that the Morong 43 were all communist insurgents, the better part of valor would still have been discretion. The AFP should have waited for the court to rule.
But was the raid, in fact, an out-and-out success? AFP spokesman Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner says it gave the military a major tactical victory. “Now that they are arrested, the NPA is not able to launch their plans for the next few months, until June 2010, specifically in areas in Central Luzon and Southern Luzon,” he told ANC. Maybe. But we would have to wait for June to know for sure, wouldn’t we?
In other words, even the most favorable interpretation of the facts would tell us that any awarding of medals is, at best, premature. But wait. Is Brawner offering the argument that the arrest of medical workers who were allegedly being taught how to make bombs (in other words, they still don’t know how) would be enough to cripple the communist insurgency in Central and Southern Luzon? He must enlighten the public on this unusual, self-serving reading of the insurgency.
In the meantime, we will join the public in continuing to view the raid with great skepticism, and to hear the Morong 43’s woeful tales of physical torture, psychological harassment and sexual abuse with sympathy. We have gone down this road before, during the darkest days of the Marcos dictatorship, and yet again during the Arroyo administration’s detour to Palparan-esque butchery.
Indeed, the template the AFP followed, in deciding to honor the controversial raiders with the Bronze Cross, comes right out of the Jovito Palparan playbook. At the height of the politically motivated killings that Palparan, then still in active service, said he may have inspired, President Macapagal-Arroyo singled out her favorite general in a State of the Nation Address for lavish, cringe-inducing praise.
There are many more soldiers, in or already out of active service, who reflect the military’s finest traditions. They can represent the armed services infinitely better than Palparan and his kind. The decision to award the Bronze Cross to the brigade commander and the battalion commander involved in the Morong raid (and, thus, in the subsequent violation of the suspects’ basic human rights, the subject of intense outrage both within and outside the country) commits the AFP to an avoidable mistake. It reinforces in the public mind the unhealthy connection between the President and her remaining Palparans.
A news report summarizes Brawner’s thinking on the legal controversy in this way: “He added that even if the criminal charges are dismissed, the military would always consider the arrested health workers as supporters of the communist movement.” In other words, the law can go to hell. Here we have the true explanation for the decision to award the medals. They are the response of a military establishment lulled or lured into the Palparan mindset; they are a raised middle finger, a prize for brazenness.
See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20100225-255363/Brazen-Cross
